Underpants On The Outside

Thank God for insufferable heat and my cable being broken.

On Saturday, I invited my friend Sarah to Brooklyn to hang out, enticing her with an offer of my delicious rainbow sherbet margueritas (patent pending).  I was actually low on tequila, but when it came to lies my pantry was very well stocked.  There was nothing to do at my house, but we couldn’t go out because New York had some apocalypse-caliber thunderstorms.  (Normally I pride myself on my superior electrical conductivity, but every once in a while it means I have to spend an evening indoors.)

On top of that, my cable crapped the bed about a week ago.  Only the major networks come in clearly, and since my two favorite shows right now are Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance, you can imagine how bad the summer schedules are.  It makes me wish I knew how to read. 

I knew all this ahead of time, of course; I also knew that with nowhere to go and nothing to watch, there was only so long we’d be able to talk to each other without looking for some game to play.  (Actual time: fifteen minutes.) And as it turns out I’ve been playing an awesome game lately.*

So Sarah learned to play Magic.  And then she beat me.  Twice.

I guess beating me sounded like a whole lot of fun, because last night my roommate Mary agreed to learn how to play.  And then she beat me.

Seriously, I have to ask: what the hell is it with this game?  First there’s thugs playing Yu-Gi-Oh, and now women are kicking my ass at Magic.  I couldn’t be more shocked if I walked outside and saw a mermaid give birth to a fish taco.  Am I pissed about it? Sure, but only about as much as I was when my ex-girlfriend cheated on me and told me all about it, except this time I got to watch the disaster unfold right in front of me.  On my dinner table, no less. 

This was my plan, originally: Wonder Woman knows she can’t trust my opinion in these matters, but I figured if I could get some girls to start playing, particularly girls who would be around the apartment, then that would be enough to convince WW, and I’d be one step closer to my utopian relationship consisting entirely of humping, Magic and grilled cheese sandwiches.  Knowing that she will probably beat me at it should make Magic all the more enticing to Wonder Woman, but if she learns not only how to play, but how to beat me consistently, I imagine it would be like being given a car for your sixteenth birthday and running over your dog before you’ve left the driveway.  

This is a disaster.

*Well, not so much “playing” as “sitting in my room, reading the cards and wishing I had someone to play with.  And crying.”