Barbecues and Bradford Pears

Despite what you, dear reader, may be thinking—that is, if you’ve been unfortunate enough to have actually read any of these stories thus far—I do have friends other than Desdemona and the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge, and I try to branch out every now and then.  Which is precisely why I decided to throw a little shindig at my house the other day.  A barbecue, to be exact.  Nothing crazy.  Just a few neighbors from the cove, really.  Or excuse me, the cul-de-sac, or Morning Wood Court, as the street sign says.  As a transplant, it took me a while to realize that where I’m from is quite possibly one of the only places on earth that refers to such dead-ended roadways as coves. 

Anyways, like I said, I was trying to branch out, so I didn’t even invite Des or Rev. Al, but, somehow, they caught wind—perhaps a mole on Morning Wood?—and showed up together.  To their credit, though, they didn’t come emptyhanded.  They arrived together and strode in through the side gate, Des holding a key lime pie with a fifth of Jägermeister tucked under her shoulder, Al two-handing a casserole dish and struggling noticeably with the weight of his unknown plat du jour.  They spotted me and walked over, and Al gave me a wink as he lifted the lid off the glassware, revealing what must have been a couple dozen deviled eggs, the soft white flesh of them sweating like they’d just been released from a steam room.  They set down their dishes, though Des kept a tight grip on the Jäger, and then they began to socialize with the other guests: Sparkplug Dixon, manager extraordinaire at the Smoothie King up the road, a rather large—and by that I mean mind-blowingly rotund—individual who, six days a week, takes advantage of his store’s policy permitting free meals while on the clock, downing a smoothie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, not realizing—or perhaps simply not caring—that the smoothies are really just glorified milkshakes; twin brothers Corncob and Giovanni Esposito, the former a mute from birth but an otherwise totally normal guy, the latter a notorious mush whose friends can never agree on whether to keep him around and win easy money off of him or to permanently unfriend him and avoid the risk of being infected by his inescapable bad luck; and Clive S. Roosevelt, a methamphetamine-addicted and disbarred attorney who spends the majority of his time sampling Method Man tracks and recording and uploading his own homemade rap videos to YouTube under the all-too-clever moniker Meth Man.  A real crew, the lot of them.

Things seemed to be going swimmingly, though.  People were mingling, which gave me the space I needed to man the grill and cook wieners.  I admit, I was a bit nervous in the days leading up to the barbecue, not just because I’m terrible on the grill, but because of the four Bradford pear trees in my backyard, all of which had, very conveniently, decided to bloom at the same time.  I mean, look, they’re pleasant enough, with their shapeliness and their white blossoms, but let’s be real and not sugarcoat it: they smell like fucking jizz.  I finally decided to do a little Googling on it the other day—was I going crazy or did my backyard actually smell like semen??—and, while most of the results likened the unpleasant fragrance to rotting fish or animal urine, a few of them did confirm my olfactory suspicions.  I had enough on my plate, literally and figuratively, what with the six packages of hotdogs, than to worry myself sick over whether my guests were wondering why my backyard smelled like a teenage boy’s tissue-laden wastebin.  

But the guests didn’t seem to notice.  In fact, as I was arranging the forty-eight hotdogs across the grates, everyone was quite enraptured by Sparkplug’s recounting of his most recent trip to Cockburn Town.  An annual trip, he said, but quite possibly the last of them, on account of the ridiculous and embarrassing treatment to which he’d been subjected.  It was no way to spend his hard-earned Smoothie King vacation days, he said.  Turned out, while at a local juicer (terrible stuff, he said, no flavor, too much fruit), he’d happened across a flyer for a nude cruise and, ever the adventurist, decided to go, but, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as he’d found the courage to step out of his clothing, the captain commanded that “private parts” had to remain covered, males and females alike.  Well, that’s some false advertising, Sparkplug thought, and, besides, weren’t his parts indeed private, considering they were hidden beneath his hanging gut?  It’s like a loin cloth, he’d protested, trying to reason with the captain.  But the captain said that he could still see his ass, which set off a heated debate as to whether the butt is a private part. 

“The boat was split 50-50,” Sparkplug said.

“So,” Al asked, “what happened?” 

“I had to resort to simply going topless.”

“What are you, a girl?” Des said, taking a swig from the bottle of Jäger.  “You’re a man, just say shirtless.”

Corncob shook his head in agreement, and then Giovanni, seeing Des and Al as two fresh faces, took this as his opportunity to recount his own woe-is-me tale, one which the other neighbors had no doubt heard a hundred times already.  Well, a year ago, Giovanni had submitted the “winning” bracket into his office’s March Madness pool.  “Winning” because, in a first-round matchup, he’d highlighted the team he had advancing through—and correctly predicting to ultimately win—the tournament, but in the blank space provided he’d accidentally written in the losing team.  His boss, he said, ever the schmuck, declared his bracket void on account of the discrepancy and disqualified it.  It was a simple scrivener’s error, Giovanni explained, one that could’ve been rectified if his bastard of a boss had used his eyes and simple logic and wasn’t hellbent on making Giovanni’s life a perpetual kick to the nuts while he himself spent his days driving in fancy sportscars and frolicking around Europe with his third wife, Phoenix.  Giovanni’s face was turning red.  Corncob placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, silently urging for restraint, but even from my position at the grill I could see that Des and Al had been galvanized by Giovanni’s tirade.

Des was shaking her head.  “That stupid prick.  And fuck Phoenix, too.”

“That’s preposterous,” Al said, holding out his hand for the Jäger.

Des agreed, taking another swig before passing it to Al.  “So, where does this guy live?”

Al took a pull from the bottle and wiped his lips.  “How much did you lose, my friend?”

“Yeah, and where does he live?”

Giovanni shook his head.  “None of that’s not important.  It’s the principle of it!”

“Seventy-five dollars,” Clive interjected.  “He lost out on seventy-five dollars.” 

It was as if a match had been dropped into a bucket of water.  Des and Al were no longer interested—Des actually looked pissed, but whether it was because she felt like she’d been duped by Giovanni, or because her desire to take part in a pitchfork insurgency against the aristocratic elite had been doused, I couldn’t tell.  Just then, a strong breeze swept through the backyard, bringing with it a nauseating wave from the Bradford pears.  I watched in horror as the invisible funk rolled over my guests, all of them scrunching their faces and turning their heads in unison in an attempt to locate the source of the stench.  Sparkplug said he felt lightheaded and needed to sit down, but he toppled over in a coughing fit.

“Good heavens,” Al said.

“It’s nauseating,” Clive said.

“It’s like an abandoned fish tank stuffed with soiled sex rags,” Des added.

Only Corncob seemed to be unaffected by—in fact, he appeared to be quite pleased with—the smell.  Sparkplug then emitted a pained groan and expelled, rather violently, a steady stream of sickly, yellow matter from his mouth.  I watched as the puddle grew into a pool of biohazardous waste, wondering if that was actually steam that I saw rising from it, while also surrendering myself to the unfortunate fact that grass would probably never grow in that spot again, when I was aroused from my musings by Giovanni’s shouting.

“God damnit, Sterling!” he barked.  “Sparkplug’s unwell.  Where are you on those dogs?!”

I realized at that moment I’d been so absorbed with listening to my neighbors’ stories, so consumed by my fear of the Bradford pears, that I’d totally shirked my glizzy grilling duties.  I opened the lid and was enveloped by a thick black cloud of smoke, which, once dissipated, revealed an utterly charred mess on the grates. 

“Way to go, Sterling,” Des said, finishing off the bottle of Jäger.  “Forty-eight hotdogs and you managed to burn every last one of them to fuck.”

I was a bit embarrassed, but the barbecue wasn’t a total disaster, because we still had Al’s deviled eggs and Des’ key lime pie.  We shoved a few of the former down Sparkplug’s gullet and the fat bastard was right as rain after that.  We did, however, move the party inside.