In the Garage

I can usually spot people with ulterior motives easily enough. I am drawn to them. But distinguishing those motives has taken time to refine.

Girls who I thought wanted to suck my cock only wanted to sell me drugs. Guys who I thought wanted to sell me drugs only wanted to suck my cock. Guys who I thought wanted to suck my cock only wanted to shove Christ up my ass.

So when someone from the gym started talking to me and invited me to his house for ‘a dinner with some friends’ I was intrigued. Pyramid scheme? Orgy? Real Estate deal? Designer drugs? Who knew? But it was worth an evening to find out.


Due to a rain storm, I arrived quite late. When I got there, the salad had already been finished and the beef stroganoff was being served. I looked at the people seated around the table. I wasn’t exactly surprised or disappointed, but a bit uncertain what to think.

My seat was at the head of the table. To my right was Don, the forty year-old exec who invited me, a nineteen year-old software engineer who worked for Don, the engineer’s elderly mother, a man in his thirties who taught drums at the local music shop, and a single mother with her fourteen year-old son.

We looked rather like we were having a big meal before heading out to the comic book convention. I checked my pocket half expecting to find a twenty-sided die.


As the not awkward small talk continues, someone asked what I did for a living and I began the conversational dance I have fairly well rehearsed:

‘I work at the hospital.’

‘What do you do there?’

‘I work for the internal medicine department.’

‘What do you do for them?’

‘I help out with patients, what ever needs doing, really. Are those Wasabi peas? Could you pass them down? Are they terribly spicy?’

By that point, I hope, people figure I am ashamed of whatever it is that I do, and let it drop.

This time, they didn’t. The questioning continued with an endgame confrontation, ‘Are you a doctor?’

‘Yes,’ I confess.

‘Oh,’ the drummer exclaimed, ‘I have something I want to ask you.’

When this happens, you have to take your lumps. I prepare myself to hear about a mysterious ache or look at a rash, but instead he asks, ‘have you ever watched Scrubs?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I have.’

‘I love that show,’ he says, and that’s it.

I think about pointing out that he didn’t ask me anything, but decide against it when I realize he, technically, did ask me something.


The dinner continues in this way. I get to dust off my Monty Python and Dr. Who jokes that I haven’t used since sophomore year—and even then with nostalgia. I am a little disturbed that the two teenagers find them as funny as the rest of us. I’m not sure if it’s healthy to expose young geeks to the same material we were exposed to, but whatever.


The evening ends with us spending several hours playing in the guest bedroom that has been entirely converted into a model train diorama. We have to crawl on the floor under the platform to pop up in the separate control centers. Don tells us which ones are limited edition and which ones were made in which factory.


All in all, a more enjoyable evening then I could have ever hoped.

Given the scope of things I might have been exposed to that night, model trains and a return to über geekdom were not illegal, not something that required me to shower afterwards, did not need a $12,000 initial down payment or cause me to blackout and wake up in a Puerto Rican transvestite bar.

Unfortunately, they also held no interest for me.


I did not return any of Don’s other calls.