Never Offer a Jew And a Born-Again Christian a Meal

I am going to give you a bit of advice...if you want to try to make new friends with a couple, suggest a dinner at a restaurant before inviting them into your home.

My husband has lived out of our home city for about ten years and has since lost his network of neighborhood friends. He works at a gymnastics school so he doesn't often have a lot of adult interaction, or time to entertain his hobbies and make new friends. I recently had the chance to meet his small group of co-workers and ended up having some nice conversation with the gym manager. The gym manager happens to be our age, and is engaged. Since married people typically hang out with other married people, the light bulb went on and I thought "Great! We can setup a dinner at our house and see how it goes!". So my husband invites them over for a Saturday dinner, and since I love to entertain, I planned on a spread of great food and stiff drinks.

Shortly after their arrival and we all had drinks in hand, we sat in the living room enjoying some appetizers and conversation was just flowing. A little nervous about having people I barely know over for an evening, dreading the mismatched personality or lack of things to say, I was quite pleased with the way things were going. As if to point out my mistake of speaking too soon, manager's fiance turns to me and says "so what religion are you?" I occasionally slip into my own brain during conversation and had missed whatever could have brought us to this question and replied "pardon me"? Apparently they had been talking about how their families have been having a very hard time with their engagement due to the fact that she is Jewish (aspiring to be full Orthodox) and he has recently accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior and wants more than anything to just not be damned to hell. I have a real distaste for discussing religion or politics with people I don't know, so I brushed it aside saying "oh, we haven't really encountered anything like that with our families". That seemed to put an end to the possible religion discussion and I was back to enjoying the evening.

Shortly after dinner, I was in the kitchen cleaning up and fiance comes in to get another drink. She sits down and starts chatting about her job. I really didn't want to hear much about her job since I loathe mine and would rather not discuss work on a Saturday night when I have an outstanding pinot noir in my hand. This is where it all got bad. Very bad. She talked about her job, for HOURS. I was literally trapped in the kitchen while my husband was gleefully playing x-box in the living room with manager guy. It wasn't even a conversation, it was being talked at. For HOURS. What's worse is that she works at state social services, and thinks she is the savior of all the poor and wretched people I typically scoff at and say "get a job you lazy fuck" or "put an aspirin between your knees and you'll have less problems". She went so far as to say that if God had not put her on this path to monetarily-deprived glory, thousands of babies and unwed cracked-out mothers would have been lost to the system and probably dead by now. Since I happen to believe that our system is setup to encourage the poor and pathetic to suck every single dime out my pocket via taxes, I thought to myself that God must not be a very nice guy at all to give her that job.

It gets worse.

There was no escaping the religion discussion. She hammered at me about my beliefs and my probable damnation. I explained to her that I was raised Catholic and currently consider myself more pagan than anything. She wondered why I had left the church and I told her that after my first Communion, at about age 10, I promptly told my mother after the service that was all she was going to get out of me and I had no intention of making my confirmation. If you ever want to make your Roman Catholic Italian mother weep for about a month, that's the line I would use.

She managed, in the five plus hours (not an exaggeration, I was watching that clock like a man on death row) that we were trapped in my kitchen, to bring up every loaded topic imaginable. Gay marriage, which is wrong because it says so right there in the bible. And the bible is verbatim the actual word of God and since she can read Aramaic, she has been able to properly translate the bible and is fully confident she's got the right message. Abortion. Definitely totally wrong. Her stance : what if the next aborted baby was to be the next Einstein? My response, I am perfectly ok with throwing out one good baby with the cesspool. I like to play the odds, and there are a hell of a lot more fucked up, waste of life individuals than there are monumental geniuses. I'm willing to sacrifice.

I think all in all, I managed to get about 10 minutes worth of talking into the five hours of conversation. It was like being molested, completely against my will, forced to hear the rantings of a lunatic who is really nothing more than a big fucking HYPOCRITE. For all of her talk, all of her beliefs and divinity, she is MARRYING a Christian. Which, according to her translated version of the bible is just plain wrong. Big no-no. Another big no-no? Having pre-marital sex and living together before marriage. Manager guy was particularly worried about this part of their relationship, since it is most definitely a hell-worthy offense. She didn't seem to make a very big stink about it, so I guess its the truly exceptional ones like her that receive the get-out-of-hell free card.

Finally, my husband comes into the kitchen all smiles. He is always happy after a mind-numbing session of x-box. I wanted to poke him in the eye really bad. "You guys sure have been talkin for a long time!" I shoot daggers at him with my narrowed eyes. Fiance: "Oh yeah, it's been a great night, I can't believe how the time just flew by!" I felt as if I had been in one of those dreams where no matter how fast you think you are moving your limbs, you are actually moving as if trapped in sand. "We will have to have you over at our house in a couple weeks." I almost screamed. I got up and started to get coats ready, trying to herd them out the front door. It was 2:30 in the morning and I was exhausted. They got to the door and manager guy turns around and says "Oh, by the way, we want to sponsor you for our business venture. Come to one of our meetings at the Holiday Inn this Wednesday." AAAARRGHHHHH!!!!!!!

I called my friend the next day and asked her how it is appropriate to get rid of unwanted guests when an evening is going sour. She said, "oh that's easy, all married people have codes for that"! Codes? No one told me about codes when I was saying my vows. There is no handbook bitch, what do you mean codes? I am probably the only one that did NOT know this, but in case I am reaching anyone who has been living under a rock, you will want to setup a hand or body signal that alerts your significant other when your evening is sucking big hairy monkey balls.

We have a code now. Word to the wise, make yours up beforehand.