Turds in the Punch Bowl (A Story of No Ordinary Friendship) Read Online Free PDF

left me wishing I had written my plea on a paper napkin and handed it to him under the bar before I left. I had become a hostage of my own tragic date, and my last hero was fading into the distance as I walked out of his life and into a car with two drunken idiots and a mute girlfriend.
    “Where to now?” Joe called out from the front passenger seat.
    “Home,” I answered at the same time Anthony overshot me with his bright idea.
    “The Beach!”
    “The beach?” we all chimed in, confused by his request because we lived in the desert.
    “My bar,” he reminded us. “Let's go to my bar. I can get us free drinks!”
    The name of the bar where I had met Anthony was, in fact, called The Beach. He worked there and I had no doubt that if we pressed on, he could adequately continue to intoxicate himself and my other friends with limitless amounts of free alcohol. Seemed nothing short of a bad idea to me.
    “No!” I called out, again overshadowed by the other voices in the car that found him to be brilliant for suggesting so.
    “Joe,” I said discerningly.
    Joe turned around to find me nodding my head and rolling my eyes.
    “C'mon, be a sport! What’s the worst that could happen?” I loathed those words and Joe knew it. Every instance in our past where those words had been spoken, things had only gotten worse, and at this point, I was having a hard time imagining what worse could look like.
    I cringed as I thought about the answer to his question. I knew right then that I didn’t have my best friend's support. He had been wooed by the booze. Even Joe’s own inhibitions were straying as he taunted my disgust.
    “You know what Jen loves the most?” Joe patronized, looking at Anthony. “She loves affection. She absolutely adores touchy-feely guys.”
    I snapped a look of death at Joe just as Anthony placed his hand on my knee and smiled. I shook my head as politely as I could in the heat of all the anger brewing inside my little body and forced a fake smile.
    “No need to play coy,” my date assured me, adjusting his seat belt to stretch over to my side of the back seat so he could snuggle up. “I knew you were playing hard to get.”
    “Joe,” I growled, “Thanks!”
    “My pleasure,” he replied, turning back around with a cheesy smirk.
    Once inside the nightclub, Joe and his girl found a dark corner booth to canoodle in while my date drug me from bar to bar introducing me to his fellow coworkers. Pulling me through the crowd by my wrist, he was enthusiastically showing me off to his colleagues. One after another, they pacified his arrogant display of showiness and shot me pitied stares behind his back. They felt my pain. There was no doubt in my mind.
    Cue Joe. He must’ve finally felt my pain too. He approached us from behind, placed his hand on my shoulder to relieve my worries and tapped my date on the back.
    “Hey bro, whataya say?” Joe pointed to the stage where there was a line of meatheads waiting for the beer bong contest. Anthony's eyes sparkled like a child's on Christmas morning. His smile grew, and grew, and grew.
    “Fuck yeah!” he shouted. “Watch this!”
    He ordered me to be impressed by whatever he was about to embark upon and I couldn’t have been more repulsed and relieved at the same time. I mouthed the words thank you to Joe as he grabbed Anthony and slipped into the crowd on their way to the stage.
    Somewhere between my planned escape and Anthony's ridiculous performance onstage, as I was standing alone on the dance floor, I was hurled around by a cloud of white caped invaders and suddenly surrounded by a swarm of flying Elvises (Elvi, as I prefer to call them). Could this night get any fucking weirder?
    “Hello,” One Elvis whispered into my ear with a British accent.
    Before I knew it, I was chatting up a slew of English gents celebrating a bachelor party the best way they knew how. A time or two, I glanced at the stage where Joe, and what was left of his sobriety,