Cameron was actually really into Astrology and Palmistry and anything else that could give him some kind of hint as to what to put money on. One afternoon after lunch and still a long ways until dinner, we decided to split a bag of mushrooms and barricade ourselves in one of the drawing rooms. I found myself on a chaise lounge by the window rubbing an expensive lotion I had found in one of the bathrooms all over my legs(this was when I was still in my swimsuit after a swim in the bay). We had one of Vivian’s old Victrola’s playing some obscure rag time record older than the both of us, and Cameron was dancing spritely all over the room. He landed in a spot finally next to a large, basketball sized crystal ball on a pewter stand in the corner of the large room.
“Oh my fucking God!” I heard him yell, like he had just found that pot at the end of his Gay rainbow. I heard him start to shuffle and grunt, frustrated and swearing under his breath as he moved spastically in the corner. Still high and seeing fish on the Persian rug swim beside the lounge I sat on, and called out to him;
“What are you doing?” He whipped around excitedly, peering out between the giant potted ferns in front of him.
“I’m trying to get this ball out of the stand, you have to see it. Can you just come over here and see it? It’s ‘A-fucking-mazing’!” I looked up from my leg with a slight grimace on my face. Out of my peripherals I could still see the swordfish swimming slowly below me, and now it seemed, that the Persian rug had started to breed small lobsters that floated slightly and awkwardly up to near my feet.
“Oh, Christ, I can’t swim over there right now. Can’t you pick it up?” I moaned. I do remember really, really, wanting to see this crystal ball. Who the fuck has a basketball sized crystal ball in their house? It was most likely older than the house itself and I have always had a fondness with anything with a history – obviously.
“It’s too heavy,” Cameron whined, tugging at one of the silk scarves he was wearing. “Please.”
Two lobsters fumbled over themselves trying to pinch my left foot. I hissed out a ‘Goddamn it!” to them as I grabbed a pillow of the lounge and swatted them away. I felt tiny beads of sweat on the brows, and the whirlwind of the high was beginning to subside.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re too Gay to pick up the crystal ball….that is so ironic.” I said, smirking.
It was then that another song began to play and Cameron went back to dancing around, and explaining how Astrology was ‘more science than magic ‘.
“You see, someone like me, a Gemini, has to always have something going on! And if I let my hands be still for one minute – oh my god!” He gasped and folded his arms and shook his head vehemently. “I could end the world if I was angry enough, I mean, I really could!” He flew over to my side of the chaise lounge and sat in front of me like a puppy asking for some kind of playful romp, but Cameron wanted to play with words. He would get into these long conversations about nothing and everything and what people wore and who they fucked, how they fucked, when they fucked – Cameron didn’t get fucked enough. The conversations were tedious and obligatory to begin with, but then they started to be like radio shows and personal Opera performances. Cameron played every character out with voices and mannerisms and brought every story to life. Soon, I was starting to prepare myself a large tumbler full of Jameson and head down the hallway to his room. He’d start a conversation and always beg me to listen to his problems with the world. “Nobody ever listens!” He’d whine. Offer me a cigarette and by then I was nearly drunk so I’d accept and drowsily smoke while he rattled on. The conversations were a warm blanket of self-indulgence for him and a thick layer of cozy comfort for me. I loved to be an audience for someone.
It was Cameron’s great idea to do Thanksgiving at the House. He had planned and arranged – with Vivian’s funds – for the dinner to consist of 5 amazing courses. The appetizers being scallops wrapped in bacon, with some sort of lemon and black pepper sauce drizzled all over. Then the New England clam chowder, with some sort of added sausage mixed in and served with fluffy Southern biscuits with a sausage gravy as a dip. Then, we had a thick lobster each, complimented by a salad with artichoke hearts and hard-boiled eggs, and then there was a tiramisu the size of a football before each of us.
An hour before dinner was to start I smoked an entire bowl in my room. I had been doing this ritual of getting myself baked before I knew I was going to devour an amazing meal since I was 15. After an hour, the munchies have set up camp in your brain and have had a fire burning for a while. The last 20 minutes before the meal are always the worst. Your brain is teetering on making you get a snack and ruining the fine meal,and clawing at the seats and Google-ing ‘food porn’. Those giant, Hi-def images of pizzas, cheesesteaks, fries, burgers, and fried chicken. By then it is 5 minutes until, and you are about to jump out of your goddamned skin.
‘If you don’t eat soon, you will die.” I looked up from a deep train I was riding in the kitchen, sitting on the high wicker chair against the wall by the fridge, and Cameron was looking down at the bacon he was wrapping around the scallops, but there was a smirk on his face.
“What?” I asked, confused.
“You’re so stoned and your munchies are kicking in.” He said, looking up at me. Smug motherfucker.
“Marijuana is a dangerous drug and should be exterminated." I said, mockingly triumphant, and jumping off of the chair and walking over him to inspect his work.
“But it cured my Anorexia!” He cried sarcastically, throwing an arm up in the air, dramatically.
“Anorexi-o. A new designer drug.” I said slowly, watching my words float out of me, over the appetizers.
“I’m from the planet Anorexia. Our god is Donatella Versace and we only have sex ‘up-against-the-wall.”
Oh!" I smiled, 'Up-against-the-wall' sex is the best...it's so chic."
"It's the only way the Parisians do it." Cameron said, putting the serving tray of scallops to the side and reaching for the ladle to stir the pot of gravy with. I suddenly realized that there was no catering staff anywhere around, the kitchen was marble silent with just Cameron and I to fill the high ceilings with noise.
“Where are the caterers?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Cameron’s back was to me and I watched it rise swiftly as he drew in a frustrated sigh.
“I sent them away. All they were doing was fucking everything up.” He said, stirring the gravy faster ass the thought of the caterers ate at him.
When he finally decided to feed us all, we assembled in the White dining room on the 20 foot long cherry oak table Vivian had acquired in Charleston after the Civil War. China on top a black lace table runner, Waterford crystal glasses filled with champagne, and $500 in rich ingredients to consume each. I felt a moral obligation to every blue-collar person in all of earth's timeline to become the epitome of glutton and satisfaction during this meal. When you are handed a plate of the finer things in life, is it so wild to put faith into the thought that you owe it to all of the poor bastards who have never and will never? Or do you eat and somehow tuck into the back of your head that, someday, somewhere, you will be given a second chance to have this finer thing once again? I have to say enjoy it because no one else is currently present to take your place. The idea of wasting anything spectacular and grand is a shipwreck – a devastating little tear on the face of history. I sat up in my chair and put my best table manners on display, garnering a brief but elegant nod from Vivian, whose place was at the head of the table, four seats up from me on my right.
That first bite into the meal was like water on a wild fire – instant calm and relief from that superficial hunger I created myself. Everything tastes so much more complex and alive when I am stoned. But this was the first time I was stoned off of the regular stash that sat in the green glass jars – one in every room of the House. Each jar was always full of at least an ounce of weed in it at all times. Making the House even more utopic, was the constant stickiness and pungency of it. The rooms the jars sat in where always thick with sour sweetness of the weed. The times I wanted to fill my nose with the scent, I would go to each jar and take a lung full – and always leave with an acidic tear in both eyes.
By Thankgiving, I had been at the House for a continuous two or so weeks, and had not left once. I had finished the last of my own weed about four days before, and in order to fufill my gastronomical ritual, I had to smoke the House’s stash. To ease any back-brained uneasiness I felt about using these accessible drugs that I knew no concrete origins of, I reasoned that each glass full of dank was just ‘an adult version of candy dishes’ in each room. After only one toke, my head began to float on it’s back while it allowed me to navigate the rest of my body through the pool it had placed me in. I had never noticed the House’s light humming; soft like a harp chord – sharp as a sickle. Once the humming entered my ears I felt the floor slip from underneath me. It was exhilarating, but smooth – a controlled, safe, but fast boat ride through a still black lake. Eating was sensational. The seasonings were blooming all over again on my tongue, the meat was soothing the wolf gnawing away at the inside of my belly, and the breads were making peace with my serotonin levels.
From down the table 5 seats, I watched as Vivian cut into her lobster with precision, and then cracking the claws open without a nutcracker. She sunk chunks of meat into the ramekins filled with melted butter and Old Bay seasoning, thickly coating it with the lipid. She would then take a bite to divide it in half, and drench the remaining half in butter and repeat the process. Finishing her lobster quickly with this starving vigor, I snuck a glance at her eyes as she eyes everyone else’s plates.
It was as if she wanted to steal the lobsters out from each one of us. She looked blood-thirsty and desperate for more food. I kept my head low hoping she wouldn’t notice me staring out of my peripherals to watch her. Watching her stretch her back, adjusting in her seat like a predatory feline, getting comfortable with the notion of ending someone’s life, my head buzzed up to a auditory alarm.
It’s all about the dinner, babe.
Crown clinked his goddamn crystal with his salad fork.
“A toast?” He said, grinning and standing. Vivian rolled herself from plank straight plank back to a demure elbow on the table and her head resting on her fist. Her iris’s were swimming with a deep mahogany color, near looking reflective and red. Her eyes had relaxed into a dozy, sleepy U-shape. Her brows were relaxed and the air around her seemed to purr – as if she was fed and satiated.
Everyone turned to look at Vivian, a silent signal on whether we should all this to what this prick had to say about the season. Vivian made an approving nod and Crown raised his glass.
“For the pilgrims, who wanted to forget God, but then they realized they needed him when they got here and didn’t know how to plant or build anything. It is because of them that our country is full of Christian imposters with hollow insides. A people that are hell-bent on creating fantastical re-creations of the past and commemorating them into holidays in order to alleviate our guilt from subjeceting entire races into brutal slavery, slaughtering millions in order build upon stolen land, and for the countless – and useless- hours people spent praying about the genocide, rape, and starvation we incurred. May we always have the spirit of those Pilgrims – a soul that looks for independence and success in unfamiliar territory, and then who selfishly uses others in order to get them.” Crown downed his entire glass of champagne in one large gulp against the background of the entire dining hall clapping him on. I looked up at Vivian and she smirked, amused at Crown. He straightened back his black hair, shiny today with pomade and gel with one hand as he poured himself a glass from the table bottle with the other. He then stood and raised his glass again, and this time Vivian raised hers in a polished response.
“And, to the Indians,” Crown began.
“Yes,” Vivian said, all eyes looking at her. “They were delicious.”
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