I shrieked, “I’m so far out of my comfort zone that I’m in another time zone!”
Standing on the porch of Isabelle’s house waiting for her to open the door, I had the sudden strong premonition that everything was about to change.
I looked at Mahjong and just as I was about to fake an epileptic seizure, despite having no history of the disease whatsoever, the door I had willed to stay shut forever suddenly flung open.
“Hi!” Isabelle’s smile was almost as wide as her cleavage. As joyfully as our hostess shouted her greeting, it was still hard to hear her over the loud rise and fall of women’s voices coming from just beyond where she stood. Mahjong instinctively pulled me into the foyer of Isabelle’s house, immediately handed her coat to her and with only a casual greeting to our hostess, headed towards the cackling crowd abandoning me. I slowly crept backwards towards the door. I contemplated becoming a permanent fixture in Isabelle’s entrance. I’m already brown, so what’s the big deal if I get mistaken for a bloated wooden coat rack, I thought. People could just hang their coats on my head; weather permitting I could hold umbrellas. No one would notice me.
“Hi Isabelle.” I reluctantly took off my jacket. I tried not to stare too openly at her heaving cleavage barely contained in her red and black leopard print bustier. I handed her a tin foil pan of fresh mini samosas I had picked up at a local Indian grocery store. My original plan to bring brownies backfired when I ended up eating more than half the batch in a hormonal fit the night before.
“Thanks, Leena! Oh samosas!” she said peering under the foil. “They look so good! Did you make them?”
“I made the chutney from scratch.” It was an old recipe of my paternal grandmother. My sweet Dadi would probably never guess I would introduce her secret coriander chutney to a bunch of drunken Westerners at a party to buy vibrators.
“Well I’m so glad you came.” Isabelle flashed her usual party-till-we-puke grin. She paused and studied me for a second as she felt my grip tighten on my jacket. In my reluctance to leave the foyer, I had inadvertently gotten into a tug of war with her over my coat, her massive breasts jiggling in her top from even the slightest yank on my jacket.
I feigned a fake laugh, finally surrendering my coat.
“You look nice.” I suspected she was just being polite.
“Would you like me to take off my shoes?” I asked stalling for more time.
“Don’t be ridiculous Leena. Keep your shoes on. Go on in and enjoy yourself.”
There was no getting around it. It was time to face down my fears. My mother had filled my head with stories of bohemian Western culture since I could first remember. She was convinced that behind closed doors, Westerners engaged in satanic type rituals that were not part of my culture. I was Indian, according to her despite what my North American passport said and I’d never been allowed to mix with the besharam before school, after school or during the day in school. I did however manage to break free of her judgmental eyes while away at university and never once saw someone drink chicken blood or partake in group orgies with goats as she often warned me I would if I hung out with heathen ghoras.
I heard a loud scream of joy as soon as I entered the living room behind Isabelle. From the pitch alone I could tell we had arrived late and the alcohol had already begun to flow. I needed a drink too.
“Yippee! It’s Leena!” screamed Jenny, the bride-to-be and guest of honour. She was sitting in the middle of a group of at least a dozen women. Someone had covered her long blonde hair in a silver plastic crown with blown up condoms hanging from its side. She was wearing a pink penis necklace and was drinking from an oversized black plastic penis. I suspected from the glazed look in her eyes it had something other than water in it.
I’d met Jenny in high school. She hung out with the pretty popular types while I spent my lunches under the stairwells. That is until the head bangers found my spot and the smell of their drug soaked clothes drove me to find another hiding place. I hadn’t seen her in years until I met her again at Isabelle’s birthday party. She always seemed warm and sincere. I wanted to believe she liked me.
I stepped over and around two girls on the floor to hug and kiss the bride and smiled nervously at a few unfamiliar faces. I instantly found myself longing for Mahjong like a safety blanket. Suddenly I was so grateful for her quirky style; her dyed red head should jut out like a matchstick above the sea of smiling faces.
As I looked around the main floor my eyes landed on the dining table in the adjoining room. At first glance I could see black canisters with Japanese figurines on them, several bright pink containers, a few game boxes, a large white feather on a stand and small silken black bags neatly stacked off to the side.
My eyes spotted a set of pink fuzzy handcuffs and a plastic whip next to what looked like a child’s paint set with the word edible blazed on the front of it. I tried not to seem overly interested or like I was staring, but at the same time I couldn’t figure out exactly what the two Japanese characters were doing on the long canister in the centre of the table. Was that his leg?
I could see the outline of Isabelle’s large black marble island in her kitchen with what appeared to be an enormous spread of food. Only food in the kitchen; check. No naked people; check. So what was I so worried about? I doubled checked that there was no one there that might know my mother and tell her that I was at a sex party before moving forward. I ventured in looking for my safety blanket.
“Grab something to eat. You must have a drink!” Isabelle’s large breasts bounced like they were nodding in agreement with her.
I surveyed the long island. I saw plates loaded with homemade cookies and peanut butter and cream bars. Next to them were apple dome tarts with cherries provocatively place on top. There was a loaf of sourdough, the centre carved out and filled with spinach dip. The pieces from the centre of the loaf had been arranged in two round circles at the base of the bread creating a phallic image. And just in case anyone wondered what shape Isabelle was trying to simulate with the loaf, one of the girls had drawn a long white trail out the top of the bread with sour cream.
“That looks like my boyfriend Zach!” one of the young ladies said dribbling cream out the side of her mouth.
“I dated Zach in high school and he ain’t that big!” the pretty brunette next to her said.
I waited for the two of them to break into a fight, but instead they turned and high-fived each other snapping pictures of themselves with their mouths open near the front end of the loaf.
I spotted a big bowl of tortilla chips with salsa, guacamole and homemade cream dip next to it; each bowl had a phallic shaped spoon in it. I saw a plate of mushroom caps that looked less embarrassing than the rest of the food. After I had picked up three and put them on my paper plate, a girl next to me whispered, “Those nipples are really good! She stuffs them with cheese.” I looked down at the serving tray and realized that I had plucked the brown mushrooms from small beds of rice that had been shaped into breasts, the caps forming the nipples. How was I supposed to eat them now? With no one else around me I grabbed three kinds of chips, salsa, guacamole, a nonsexual piece of bruschetta, the only two brownies that did not have dyed coconut simulating pubic hair on them, one peanut square, one chocolate chip cookie and one of the bars with the apple on top. The cherry one made me blush too much. I paused and added a carrot for good measure careful not to place it anywhere near the mushrooms on my plate.
“Leena!” Mahjong screamed as I entered the living room. “We’re sitting over here.” She pointed
