Fred Looks Back on Disastrous Pre-COVID Party
By: Nolan Yard
Tags: 2020, Breakups, Party, Anxiety, Dating

Photo by Franco Antonio Giovanella on Unsplash

Journal Entry #5, Feb. 2020 — Update Note, Dec. 2020: If only a small vegetable would have been the worst of this year’s problems…

Toxicology came back on Gretchen. It was the cryptofluptids in the mini potatoes. She’s lucky to be alive — and it was all my fault. I just grabbed them in a hurry at Stater Bros. Didn’t have the slightest inkling of looming pot luck catastrophe. Or did I?

Of course, I’d scribble it down. Foremost, I’m a writer — it’s what I do, what I’m getting in debt for in school. The scholarly writer soon-to-be bestseller or English professor, whichever career goal pans out first.

Secondly, I’ve been keeping tabs on the series of disasters that have befallen me since my ex, Cassidy, put a hex on me the day we broke up.

It was mostly me who wanted to breakup, but she definitely had her reasons. But the rage so engulfed her superego, her parting rejoinder included a curse javelined at my core.

I don’t know if it was her recent reading of wiccan cookbooks she’d bought, or the fact that her mother’s job was one of those telemarketing, over-the-phone fortune-tellers like Miss Cleo — but in the past year since the breakup, I’d been plagued by misfortune, especially when interacting with greater society.

Cassidy had said she’d wanted my troubles to last for the next few years as a lesson for my relationship mismanagement. I think this hex was meant to cajole my complete sense of isolation: to combine the holy trinity of my crippling anxiety, anti-social tendencies, and fear of next impending social-appearance-disaster.

Yet, human will can surprise us. I found myself persuaded by my friends Alan and Abilene, who I was interested in dating (despite my recent travails), to attend a Hunger Games-themed pot luck party that just so happened to be put on by their multiple roommates.

Alan and Abilene were just friends, you see, who happened to share a tenement with several other collegiates to make living more manageable and less debt-leaden.

Agreeing to wear fascist-oppressor-type attire, the theme being that or rags for the rebels, I dressed in all black and headed to the market in a rush after class so that I had something to contribute to what Abilene said should be “homey food-faire”, whatever that means. Unfortunately, my choice in victuals turned out ill-advised.

I enter the household at 7:42 pm. Not quite forty-five minutes late. Abilene looks hot as usual. My pal Alan rushes me towards the kitchen. “Potatoes? Why are they so small?”

I shrug and help him arrange the tiny spuds on the oven pan. “They’ll do nicely with Tom’s beer chicken. But they gotta go in now. Everyone’s getting hungry.”

“Beer chicken?” I say perplexedly, surveying the roomful of Jennifer Love-Hewit-or-whatever wannabes and the ragged rabble intermixed with fascist military types belonging to the villain’s (Mr. Blizzard?) reprehensible bureaucracy. Many of the guys present followed my lead and wore all black, so it looked more like we were from The Matrix rather than a post-apocalyptic tween sci-fi flick.

The mini-taters, Tom’s beer chicken, and Alan’s side salad appear to be a hit. I attempt to triumphantly confabulate with Abilene, playing at jocosity while brushing of the dew forming over my brow. The jimjams of Cassidy’s hex grip me with their interminable talons. Like a You Tube comment-troll I keep vigil out of my peripherals for some irrevocable doom.

It took less than an hour.

One moment, everyone’s happy in their hunger games and Bud Light fowl, in their cups and post-apocalyptic soiree. The next, Abilene’s friend Gretchen is convulsing on the floor after taking a bite of one of my mini potatoes.

Alan calls 911, but instead his phone auto-corrects to 411, which is robotic now without the perspicacity of a human on the other line. Apparently, under the latest iPhone updates, Apple wants you to turn off certain settings before dialing in a life or death situation.

I grab my phone but it’s stuck in my jean pocket. The pockets are rather tight, so I am forced to awkwardly pry my phone out the narrow stitching. And since poor Gretchen has her fit in the kitchen, it also so conveniently happens that I pry my phone loose but lose my handle and it unceremoniously plops into the party’s punchbowl.

“That’s not good,” I say, reaching for my now defunct phone, feeling Alan’s dismal look.

Fortunately, the fairer sex is on top of things and Abilene reaches the dispatcher and an ambulance arrives. Gretchen looks not a little worse for wear, but she’s holding on. Two of her friends join her and the paramedics on the way to the hospital. I hop in a car with Alan and Abilene, who is following the sirens. Party’s over.

As we’re sitting in the waiting room, the doctor assures us it’s all right. In a one in a tens of thousands shot, Gretchen had a rare allergy to the cryptofluptids found in, you guessed it, miniature potatoes from Ecuador, which serendipitously happened to be stocked by Stater Bros. They had to call in a toxicologist, which I thought happened after someone died. Gretchen was a lucky duck.

To top off the extravaganza, somebody notifies the authorities about the occurrence, likely due to our uncanny attire. The cops stand over us in the waiting room and ask if we were associated with any religious organization or cult.

A very tall, beefed-up cop pulls me aside and offhand asks if I was playing in an 80s Devo tribute band. I say I’m a fascist. Not for real, but for our Hunger Games party. He wears a look of defeat.

The doctor wants Gretchen to stay overnight and her boyfriend Paul is allowed to sit with her. We all head back to the house and the scene of the incident. After Alan goes inside, it’s just Abiline and me outside.

“It was all my fault,” I say, shaking my head.

“What’re you talking about?” Abilene puts a hand on my shoulder. “How could you have known about those crypto-favio-whatchmacallits?”

“I guess life has a grudge on me.”

Abilene’s hand squeezes and I meet her eyes in the 3 am moonlight. “Yeah, but I don’t.” She hugs me. “Goodnight, Fred.”

“Goodnight.” I’m stunned, returning the embrace, looking up to the sky for a sign of a wrathful lighting bolt about to strike.

Abilene turns around and heads back inside. Heart glad, I walk back to my car like a ninja expecting a skulking assassin. If it wasn’t so late, there might’ve been a neighbor or two thinking to themselves what’s up with this guy?

Dec. 2020 Update: Abilene and I are still dating, mostly virtually, and it turns out that maybe disasters didn’t just strike me. Let’s face it: 2020 has been a disaster for everybody.