Fear and Loathing at the Pornstar's Dinner

The Pornstar is pretty deep in my debt right now.

As I take every opportunity to remind her, I have faciliated her meeting of men, her filling of the belly, not to mention the fact that I had a hand in her getting a degree! On last Friday her repayments began.

Dinner at the Pornstar Mansion has a very exciting ring to it, and the night was no let-down.

To get myself in the mood, I had a visit to the Markevicz Leisure Centre just off Pearse Street. The Pornstar and I are currently competing. The rules are simple. Whoever goes to the gym the most by the end of each month wins, earning something worth around EUR30.

Our gym visits are complicated by the fact that we both play sport, so it is very much based on an honour system. Fortunately, I trust the Pornstar, and I do not cheat at games, so it has proved to fun.

Anyway, I knew the Pornstar was tied up on Friday with the food preparations, so I decided to make an opportunist gym visit, thereby taking a well-deserved lead. I love swimming, and it helps my recovery a lot after training and matches, so the added bonus of winning something is barely necessary.

The gym visit held me up slightly, and I had to detour to Tesco on St. Stephen's Green to buy some drink and some ice-cream, so I arrived a little later than planned.

Things were hectic as I got in the door. The food was almost ready and there was a collection of stressed females fussing around in the kitchen. The Pornstar herself was in full-on hostess mode, so as Jimi Hendrix once said about Gloria "it was all happenin' baby!"

I did notice something strange.

The Pornstar has two female friends. Displaying the decisiveness of a woman in a clothes shop, I originally liked Number One (she who I desperately and ineffectually tried to talk to at the Pornstar's birthday), but have now moved over to Number Two.

While trying to put drinks into the fridge, Number Two fussed over, demanded I get out of the way, and muttered something about being "put you number two on my hit list." Somewhat perplexed by this hostile attitude, I got out of there. If the girls where the lionesses and the food was a litter of cubs, I was very much the lame gazelle loitering around the edges of the pride in a state of ill-advised bravado.

Dinner was served a little later. The food was fantastic, as artistic and exotic as my fare is functional, the chefs did a wonderful job. Initial fears about quantity proved groundless. The tuna and tomato risotto was a particular favourite, though I was extremely impressed by the cheese-stuffed peppers prepared by Number One.

The Pornstar had a male friend visiting from England. Nervous and paranoid, I was warned from numerous people to be on my best behaviour "but in a vetting and assessing sort of way." What exactly everyone was expecting me to do at the dinner is anyone's guess. While I had no intention of embarrassing anyone (at least in a bad way) - I had ZERO intention of behaving myself.

Still somewhat shocked at being put on a hit list for putting soft drinks in a fridge, I resolved to ascertain exactly what I had done to offend Number Two. After all, one cannot very well shmooze when one is on the shit list. It was possible it was just the Crazy Factor at work (I remember getting in trouble with my sister one morning for eating Cornflakes for breakfast), but I needed to be sure.

It seems that the Chameleon had arrived before me and succeeded in inadvertently antagonising the girls. My arrival and unfortunate choice of timing rendered a verdict of Guilt By Association.

A strange consequence of the smoking ban in Ireland is the custom of going outside to smoke. Many smokers have developed an aversion to smoking indoors and now automatically, irrespective of what building they are in, head for the outdoors to satisfy their nicotine fix.

The Pornstar's doorstep was a testament to this new phenomenon. The main dinner room was quite full, and warm with radiated body heat, so the time had came to venture forth. The Chameleon had already struck up a conversation with the Swede (despite her boyfriended status), but I never really warmed to her and left him to it.

Two minutes later I was sitting on the doorstep involved in a conversation about dEUS with one of the friends of the Pornstar. It was moments like this where my iPod comes in very handy. She had never heard of them, so I played her a few songs. She seemed to really like "Instant Street" and "Hotellounge (Be the Death of Me)" but was not as impressed by "Suds N Soda" or "Secret Hell".

Over to my left, Number One and Number Two were involved in a phone/text combo conversation. Number Two became worried when she realised she had accidentally vouched for a male friend seeking to live with two other females, known to both by Number One and Number Two, but not each other.

Determined to keep her credibility, but now quite drunk, Number Two called up the new tenant on the phone, and warned him he needed to not screw up.

"Listen to me! I've vouched for you with the two girls! Their mother is wary of a guy living with them and the only reason you got it is cos of me! I'm serious now. Fuck this up and you are dead! ... Stop laughing! It's not funny! ... I'm dead serious! I mean it, if you screw this up I will kill you! ... Will you stop laughing?"

Number Two then started talking about an ex-boyfriend of the Pornstar, and how he now is "just one of the girls" Apparently, you can say anything in front of him, and it does not matter. He does not count as a man, not really. Littered amongst the conversations where those classic chestnuts "He is such a dote!" and "Bless him, he is such a nice guy!"

Horrified for the poor bastard, it was time to go bacl inside. Shuddering at the thought of what he hears from the girls on a regular basis, I shut down my imagination before it rendered me unconscious and insane.

Billy Joe was sitting by himself, enjoying a cool one. The Swede had gone upstairs to check on her sick boyfriend. Sitting down beside him, I realised that Number One and Number Two were both very drunk and were going home.

Still, I had tried!

A while later, my freshly-minted dEUS fan was washing dishes at the sink. Somehow the conversation moved around to the topic of gross moral turpitude.

FMdF: Turpitude? What the hell does that mean?
C: Well, gross moral turpitude is what get fired for if you are a lecturer and have sex with your students. You are "dismissed by reason of gross moral turpitude."
YHN: I'm sure turpitude means something like that, but you only ever really see it in that context.
FMdF: I don't like it when I am in a conversation and people start using words I don't understand.
YHN: I wouldn't worry about it, I'm sure it is just your contrafibularities getting the better of you!
FMdF: WHAT?

Bewildered at what I said, she stared blankly as the Chameleon and I creased with laughter. As cruel as it was, I could not resist the temptation of using the Blackadder joke. Once we explained it to her, she saw the funny side and I my pangs of guilt faded.

By 0100, I had become fatigued and we headed for the Glasnevin. My attempts to speak to Number Two had failed as ignominiously as with Number One at the Pornstar's Birthday.