Dinner Party

We threw a dinner party. Why not? We were in San Antonio, which is not my home but close enough. We rented a house: my friend and two people who were not friends yet but becoming. There were cacti in the front yard. Lemon tree in the back. We gasped when we saw it, dripping yellow. Inside was decorated by someone who flirted with Eastern philosophy but never made a move: tiger figurines, prayer flags, books about mushrooms. But we didn't care. We were so happy to be there we touched the tchotchkes as if they really were holy. On Saturday, we blew off the Alamo to cook. We invited three people to our dinner party but we prepared enough food for forty, and this is where I am most at home, oil on my hands, salt underneath my fingernails as I toss potatoes, waiting for everyone to arrive. Waiting to arrive. There was a chicken in the oven. I don't eat meat but this felt right somehow, the scent of baking flesh and rosemary. Everybody had a beverage just like on television. When our guests arrived, we greeted them by screaming their names and giving each other the tightest hugs. We were there. In the kitchen. Gossipping about someone. The more scathing the remark, the better. It's as if we knew nothing would survive this room. My lover arrived, and it was all I could do to keep myself from tracing her earlobe with my tongue right there, in front of everyone. I hadn't told her I loved her yet, but love buzzed under my skin, hummed beneath each of my words, and I had gotten salad dressing on my jumpsuit, the one that didn't fit, the one that kept threatening to expose my nipples. My friend -- now, a friend, no longer becoming -- kept having to help me tie it up. We set the table as if we wouldn't make a mess of it in five minutes. We filled our plates as if we hadn't eaten for weeks, and then we broke to eat in silence. I can still taste it: the rosemary, the potatoes, the salt. I had wine. I don't drink wine, but somehow this felt right, being a part of a long history of people who have been wine drunk. We ate and drank and ate and drank and then stumbled down the street to the honky tonk, and this also felt right, that a honky tonk should be down the street, and along the way we shouted things like, I fucking love you all!, with the fervor of a vow. It wasn't hyperbole; it was truth, bare as bone. At the bar, Mary Bush taught my friend to two-step and my lover and I waltzed along to the country band, glowing red in the Lone Star sign. Everything in me buzzed. We stepped on each other's feet but we didn't care. We weren't looking at our feet. I was looking at her. I was so close to being a person that night. Just a few more honky tonks, and I would have been. Just a few more nip slips and a few more friends pulling up my jumpsuit strap, and I would have been. Just a few more hugs in the doorway with an evening awaiting us, and I would have been. Now I'm just following the same steps over and over, but I'm not moving across the floor. One two three, one two three, one two three, one.

Kathleen Gullion