Them's Fightin' Words

“I’m in a gay relationship,” he said, “I’m not sure if you… might have… heard anything about that…?”

When complete strangers open up like that with me, my first instinct is to go deadpan. I fake nonchalance because I’m totally cool with that. This is 2010 for chrissake, people are entitled to live free and without prejudice when it comes to their lifestyle choices.

 

 

And no, it doesn’t alarm me on some level that I’m sharing a room with this man, didn’t he just say he’s in a relationship?

“No, I hadn’t,” I replied, “but, um, I respect that.”

“We’ve been together 8 years now.”

“That’s a long time,” I said, genuinely impressed, “the longest relationship I’ve managed so far is about and year and a half. Straight relationship. The longest straight relationship. Um. Not that I’ve tried any other kind, haha… yeah, so…”

“Should we head downstairs?”

“Fine with me.”

And that’s pretty much how our first conversation went. They got much better after that, as they do once alcohol is introduced, and by the time we all met up for dinner that night, Gary and I were good friends.

Also, because we were two out of the only three males on the conference with about 26 women, we ended up hanging out a lot purely by default.

Shortly after we all sat down for dinner the MD of the company told me that they weren’t going to make us n00bs dance or sing a song for everyone, but that we would have to stand up, introduce ourselves and make a speech during dinner instead.

I love shit like that and so the second the MD, henceforth known as ‘Hot-Boss’, made the announcement to the table, I volunteered to go first, right then and there, before dinner had even been served.

Always go first. Don’t be a pussy. People will respect your courage and, having no one else to compare you with, will love everything you say.

I kept my speech nice and short. I thanked them for hiring me, I thanked them for inviting me on the conference, told them how excited I was to be starting out at such a friendly and rad company and sat back down.

“Wait a minute,” one of the girls chirped, “tell us why you got arrested!”

Ahh Christ.

 

 

In one of the ‘getting to know you’ games earlier that day it had emerged that I had been arrested when I was 13. Funny how things like that seem to pop up at the least appropriate moments.

Eyebrows were raised. Hot-Boss tried to brush it off by saying, ‘Well, there’s a question we’re definitely going to add to the list the next time we interview someone.” Queue polite / nervous laughter (keep in mind this was before the alcohol started flowing).

Under the surface though I could see she was a little unsettled – the last thing you want to find out about the person you’ve just hired in that they’ve had a run-in with the fuzz.

You can read all about the first time I got arrested here, it’s actually a pretty tame story. Me and some buddies smashed a few windows on a derelict building and got caught and arrested for vandalism.

Still though, it sounded bad when I explained the story over dinner that night, it was awkward and I sat down sheepishly when I was done and made a mental note to just shut the fuck up about that stuff in future.

Shortly thereafter Jager-bombs began to drop like grenades down a VC trench.

The next n00b stood up after dinner was served and got a slightly more severe grilling than me, she clocked in at about 4 minutes. She survived with her dignity intact though, but only just.

More Jager-bombs dropped. Speeches got longer and longer as the people listening grilled the n00bs with one question after the next. Questions like ‘How old were you the first time you got drunk?’, ‘When did you first have sex?’ and ‘Who’s the hottest girl here?’ started popping up. Much hilarity ensued.

Jager, Jager, Jager. Bomb, bomb, bomb.

Eventually everyone got tired of speeches and hit the upstairs lounge to party on down and cut up the dance floor.

Sometime during the festivities someone figured out that Gary hadn’t made his n00b speech at which point we all started chanting ‘Ga-ry! Ga-ry! Ga-ry!” which reminded me of the crowd chanting ‘Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!” from the movie with the same name about a retarded football player.

 

 

Being surprisingly shy in front of a crowd, Gary tried to get us to simmer down in the hope that we’d all forget about it after awhile and carry on partying.

No such luck.

Hot-Boss asked him to tell us about himself and he told us a killer story about how when he served in the army (navy?) he was sent on a ship to guard PW Botha only to end up accompanying ol’ Pik on what can only be described as a ‘ho-run’.

Pik was in the mood for some Eastern European women, of which there happened to be a few on a neighbouring ship, so they rowed off in a life-raft towards this other ship only to get shot down completely by the women / security on the ship and forced to row back empty handed.

“Hahaha!” people chuckled, “nice story Gary!” “Tell us another story Gary!” “Yeah, tell us another one!” everyone shouted in happy, drunk unison.

“Well,” said Gary, “another thing I’ve learned is that human flesh is overrated.”

[Insert record scratching sound effect]

“What?! Overrated how?” one of the braver girls present asked.

“As a food source,” Gary stated, matter-of-factly.

The room exploded. “What the fuck?!” “You’ve eaten human flesh?!” “Tell us you’re joking Gary!” everyone shouted in bewildered, drunk unison.

“It was in North Africa back in the day when a lot of people still did that and it wasn’t really frowned upon. I had no idea what I was eating, I was only told afterwards,” he said defensively, “it tasted quite sweet.”

Cut to the inside of my head where the opening scene from the movie Ravenous started playing, the one where a tent full of starving soldiers all tuck into a bloody meal of suspicious-looking circular steaks.

 

 

It’s shot mostly in close-ups. They tear at the meat with their teeth, blood running down their chins and congealing in their beards, while the wet sound of them all chewing gets louder and louder and the cuts get faster and faster and faster and…

“GARY THE CANNIBAL!” I screamed like a man waking up from a nightmare. Everyone burst out laughing, well, everyone but the intern who was struggling to lift her jaw back off the floor.

Me, on the other hand, I was ecstatic. Gary’s priceless over share nullified my earlier confession completely – who the fuck cares about a few broken windows when you have a human flesh eater in your midst?

Now there’s a question to add to the interview list – True or False: Human flesh tastes sweet?

Hahahahahaha! Ahh, good times I tell ya, good times 😉

-ST