Girls in Gruene

As we converge upon the house and begin mixing cocktails, Cowgirl presents us with goodie bags complete with penis straws. Ooooh this is going to be fun. How many jokes can we make about this one?

Out on the back porch, we spread out the nude playing cards Lady Butterfly was given as a gift and check out some more penises. I decide to organize the guys into piles: Uncle George, Jailbait and Mullets. The Uncle Georges are decidedly older than the rest of the deck and sport a lovely porn star ‘stache. This leads to a discussion of ‘staches and what men can really pull it off. We come up with Tom Selleck and the guy who plays Victor Newman on Young and the Restless. Collectively, we decide that all other men requiring facial hair should opt for the goatee.

After dinner, it’s time to mix more cocktails for our walk down to Gruene Hall to see the Derailers. We encounter a couple of men just outside the hall who ask us, “Is there anyone in your group who doesn’t hate men?”

We stare at each other in confusion. Do they see that we’re gnawing on miniature plastic penises? What could be more man-friendly than that? All of us rack our brains to see if we said something rude about men as we walked up. Nope, Madame V was talking about dogs and I was probably going on about GWH.

We grab some beers and enter the hall. It’s like we’ve walked into a small-town saloon. Everyone eyes us warily. Maybe they haven’t seen such hotties in cowboy hats before.

It’s later…much later…when Madame V and I attempt to dance together. It’s not pretty. There’s a point where I actually step on her shoe and it falls off…and we can’t get it back on. I have to lean down and flip it over so she can get her foot back into it. And then we decide we really have no business being on the dance floor and take off.

“We need scores!” I declare, and grab Madame V so we can ask the guys across the bar. She asks one of them who won the Arkansas-Alabama game and he says that Arkansas won with a score of 21-1.

“You’re a liar,” I sneer. “That’s not a real football score.” We ditch these losers and discover Cowgirl and the crew harassing someone new. He has a web-enabled phone, which I promptly snatch from him to check football scores.

“How do you surf the Web on that thing, anyway?” he asks.

“I’ll show you some other time,” I tell him, waving him off. Ahh, good. Texas and Arkansas both won. JT and I can both be happy.

I turn around to tell Madame V, who’s proudly displaying how she’s holding the penis from her straw in the finger next to her wedding ring. “Penis…wedding ring,” she points out, and we both giggle.

Web Phone Guy and his friend Old Guy want to dance, so we head back over to the floor as I protest.

“Really, really, really—you DON’T want to dance with me,” I keep saying, as I’m forced to two-step. Old Guy spins me and I wonder vaguely if I’m going to hurl on the dance floor. Then the four of us are doing some sort of weird dance together. Madame V and I break out and try dancing again. We’re sort of galloping toward the edge of the dance floor when I realize my left boob is flopping free. Hmmm. What’s going on here? I reach down to fix my dress and discover that yes, indeed, the boob is free. And my strap has broken. I squeal with embarrassment and grab Madame V.

“My boob just CAME OUT!” I scream.

She doubles over with laughter but manages to tie my strap back together. Behind us, the band is singing about chicken breast and the other white meat. And then we wonder if that’s really about me. A group of tourists asks us to take their picture. I try and slink away, when one of them yells, “It was a great tit!”

I’m too embarrassed to go on and I drag Contrary and Madame V out of the bar with me. Cowgirl and Lady Butterfly barely notice. The three of us trek home. I’m happily chewing on another plastic penis, until it pops right out of my mouth. Dammit.

“Shit, I dropped my penis in the street,” I say.

“You can’t pick that up—you don’t know where that thing’s been,” Madame V says. The three of us crack up.

Back at the house, I realize that a two pound block of cheese never looked so good. That and jalapeno artichoke dip. Madame V is hard at work on some quesadillas when the girls pull up outside. Who the hell is driving? Cowgirl stumbles into the kitchen and announces that she was kicked out of the bar. Apparently, they don’t look too kindly on dancing on the tables at Gruene Hall.

We hear the engine in the Navigator start up with a roar. “What the hell are they doing?” Madame V asks, and goes to investigate. I’m sure that no one can drive right now, but I’m really involved with this quesadilla. Madame V will take care of it.

Out on the back porch, Cowgirl looks at me with as serious a look as she can muster. “Shakira, I need to ask you a question.”

Uh-oh. This sounds personal.

“Do you think my feet are sexy?”

Contrary has passed out in her clothes, the pregnant sister in law has turned in for the night, and there’s just a few of us left on the porch. Flower busts a move while three of us watch, finishing one last drink before we pass out for the night. “I found a guy who wants to have sex with me!” she exclaims.

“Um. You’re tall, blond and pretty. I think there are a lot of guys who want to have sex with you,” I point out.

Flower finishes her dance and looks thoughtful. “I’m going to bed now!”

“Be selective and use a condom,” I call after her. “That’s my bit of wisdom.”

****

In the morning light, there’s still a stack of tortillas on the table next to a half-empty jar of Pace. The kitchen is a wreck and we find just one nude playing card on the porch steps. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of water when I spy something weird on the table.

“What is that?” I ask.

“It’s a sticky burr,” Lady Butterfly answers.

“I think I got that stuck in my jeans when I peed in the yard,” Flower says.

Now that’s a party.

-Shakira 09.27.04