It was not going as planned.  The pot had been stronger than he feared, and all eyes were on Dave.

“Inhale,” said Dave, and the other three inhaled.  Dave’s heart, concealed in his broiling chest, crashed against his ribs like something trying to escape.  In five seconds everyone would exhale their held breath as Dave Revealed His Shame.  Dave’s partner Alice nodded, cheeks puffed like a fish, encouraging him.  He felt words welling up unchecked, hot and new, surging towards the surface.

Oh no, thought Dave, meeting her eyes.

He had never wanted it to be like this.

Alice was pretty, in a big Audrey Hepburn kind of way, if Audrey Hepburn were more powerfully built, like a scrum half, or a husky milkmaid.  Dave stayed in the car outside Venici's Wines, at the curb, and watched Alice through the window.  They were running slightly late for Tom and Parul’s.  He had been dodging this night for months, but in the end, she got him.  Alice traced her finger along the rows of bottles, fingering the labels until she found something correct. 

Dave and Alice’s first date had begun in a wine bar, while Dave’s OkCupid girl was in the bathroom.  Dave had glanced back towards the bathroom and swiftly proposed that they go someplace else, someplace with beer, or dancing.  They went to a bar with loud music and took shots and then stumbled onto the dance floor and heaved against one another while Dave’s phone piled up fourteen missed calls.  He had meant to tell Alice the actual account of how they began – maybe it was a charming story, somehow - but hadn’t found the right moment.  Dave had been trying to communicate to Alice since that first night they’d spontaneously met and slept together that he wasn’t actually spontaneous and wasn’t all that much fun, but couldn’t figure out how to do that except through rote repetition of being inertly not fun.  And Alice, who liked projects, was still trying to get them back to the level of organic connectedness they had experienced in the wine bar, where it had all started. 

Dave chewed his lip and switched off his seat warmer, which if he ran it too long gave him a stomachache. 

They parked across the street from Tom and Parul's house.  Tom and Parul had been renting for a while but had just bought.  Fresh wood chips dotted with dainty succulents lined the front walk and two huge agaves framed the cement steps.  The door in the porchlight glowed a very bright Santa Fe blue.  Alice pulled the paper bag with the wine bottle out of her handbag and left the handbag on her seat.

"It'll be fine," Alice said.  Dave felt a surge of disdain.  Alice was always doing spontaneous things that flew in the face of logic, to bait Dave.  They walked across the street and rang the bell.  Of course it would be fine.  It was her bag, anyway, and he had complete auto and glass coverage, in case she was wrong. 

“Oh!” Alice exclaimed, and ran back across the street, retrieved her bag, and hustled back.  “I can’t believe I almost left my bag!”  She shook her head in disbelief at Dave, who then realized she had been referring to going to Tom and Parul's for dinner being fine, and not about the handbag left on the seat being fine, and then he felt disdainful all over again. 

“Welcome, travelers!” boomed Tom.  Parul was smiling, Tom was standing hugely behind her, wiping his mitts on a towel.  Their size difference made their sex life difficult to imagine, which meant that it was probably very good.  Tom threw the plaid towel over his plaid shoulder like a lumberjack temporarily storing his axe.  Tom was basically the Brawny paper towel guy, except he made more money.

Parul and Alice shrieked towards each other.  Alice reached out both arms and slid into a long embrace with Parul.  They staggered together, from side to side.

"Dave," Tom reached out his hand.  Dave squeezed it hard and pumped it.

"Hi, Tom," he said.

"It's great to see you," confirmed Tom.  "Come in."  Parul’s sweater was a loose and almost iridescent green, the thick pliant kind that showed off people’s tits without showing off their tits.  She was the type of Indian woman who had no ass but bafflingly nice boobs.  She gave Dave a tight hug.  They stepped inside, and Dave's glasses instantly fogged.

"Oh my god!" Alice squealed.  "I love the remodel.  What's the floor made out of?"

"Bamboo," said Tom.  "Isn't it interesting?"

"It's great," said Dave, though he couldn't see anything.

Tom and Parul toured them through the remodeled house.

"You can take off your socks if you want," said Parul.  "We've got radiant floors."

Was that a yoga term?  Parul was into that stuff, Dave remembered. 

"Radiant floors," he remarked.  "Does that mean they’ve been blessed, by a…?"

"No," Parul smiled, "it just means the floors are warm."  Dave peeled off his socks and followed them through the house, being fed bits of information:

The countertops were slabs of marble all the way from Proctor, Vermont.

The bedroom curtains were swaths of batik bought on honeymoon in Indonesia.

The coffee table was a polished hunk of redwood from southern Oregon purchased straight off the set of The Burl Hunter.

Everything in the house was something expensive from somewhere else.

While Tom led the tour to the living room, Dave peeled off and went to the bathroom.  It was luminous and smelled of potpourri.  The faucet was sleek and geometric.  The elliptical sink was filled with polished green rocks.

Dave evaluated himself in the mirror, rotating.  The light rendered him healthy and tanned, a bit like Tom.  It seemed to increase the thread count on his clothes.  He selected a rock from the sink and put it into his pocket.  He returned to the living room just as Tom popped the cork on their bottle of wine.  He poured four glasses and handed them out.  Dave's had a bit of cork floating in it.

"To friends," Tom said, raising his glass.  "It's so good to see you both." 

Dave cringed.

"To friends," they chorused.  The wine they’d brought was somehow already cold.

"How'd you get this chilled so fast?" Dave asked.

"We just got a soapstone wine sleeve," said Parul, "In the freezer.  I'll show you later, when we serve.  Rotates the bottle automatically."

"Wow," said Dave, "Soapstone.  That's something."  Parul smiled.  Alice winched her arm through Dave's elbow.

"Dave, you wanna give me a hand out at the grill?  With the steaks?" Tom was brandishing a carving knife towards the yard and nodding enthusiastically, like the steaks were something very exciting.

"Sure thing," Dave said.

"How's the new job?" Tom asked, needling the hissing steaks with a long, twin-pronged fork.  The steaks smelled really good.  Dave was hungry.  Talking made him hungry, and he was already so damn hungry, like all the time.

"It's, a lot of, you know," Dave waved his hand, "computer time, but.”

"Marketing," said Tom lamely, to the grill.

Dave was a user interface programmer.

They both stared at the grill. 

"You said it," Dave said.

Tom worried the steaks with the prongs.  The hissing meat perforated the silence.

"Where'd you get these cuts?  They look nice."

"Costco."

"Oh, yeah?  Nice."  Their eyes met briefly.

Shriek of shared laughter from the kitchen.

"Well," Tom gestured to the yard with the grill fork.  "Feel free to have a look around."

"Sure," Dave nodded, and ambled off as casually as he could, grateful for the permission to leave but resentful that he needed permission.  Dave jiggled the bathroom rock in his pocket inside his shapeless pants.  Dave had a hackled feeling around Tom.  Like if they ran out of things to talk about, they would be able to stand together in silence for only so long before, inevitably, they'd have to fight to the death.

            Dave perambulated slowly, inspecting each individual plant, pacing himself, frowning at each one.  It was freezing, but he didn't dare walk in to get his jacket because then he'd have to walk past Tom.  Dave felt surrounded by the force field of awkwardness that he experienced mostly intensely when physically proximal to other people.  He was pretty sure Tom was a dick.  He felt weird.  Maybe he hated Tom.  He wasn't really sure.

Alice and Parul opened the sliding door, refreshed glasses winking in the patio light.

"Come inside!" yelled Parul.  "It's freezing out here."

"Not so bad, actually," said Dave, controlling his shivering as he strode back across the lawn, just strolled on over, as if walking back over to where Tom stood was no big deal, just like the cold.  Why should it be?  "There's a nice speckled geranium over there," Dave remarked.  Alice found his love of geraniums cute, he was aware.  Maybe Parul did, too. 

Dave trailed the women into the kitchen, leaving Tom outside to load the steaks onto a platter.  Dave refilled his wine glass and sat on the counter while Alice and Parul chatted.  Parul leaned over to pull the potatoes out of the oven.  And: Well, well.

She had something of an ass after all.  Dave imagined it, bouncing up and down.

Sometimes he imagined terrible things.

At dinner, they toasted again.  Tom uncorked a bottle of red.

"Great wine, Tom," ventured Dave.

"Oh, we love this wine," said Tom.

"I notice there's an animal on the label," said Dave.

"Dave," said Alice.  Parul examined the wine bottle.

"Well, wouldn’t you know it!  A kangaroo.  I don't even think I saw that." 

Alice looked at Dave, not like he was a confidently seated man making astute conversational observations, but something inscrutably out of place.  A cuttlefish, maybe.

"Wines with animals on the labels sell at a much higher rate than labels without animals," Dave continued.

"Is that so?" said Parul.

"How much more?  Like, what percent?" asked Tom, chewing.

"Not sure," said Dave.  "But quite a bit, I think.  A lot more."

"Well," said Parul, "I guess I'm no different than anyone else.  I just love animals."  They allowed the sentences to float an appropriate distance away, like turds. 

Then they started talking about something else.

The rest of dinner was the conversational version of two people clearing their throats at the same time, but everything had been fine because there was always food to return to.  There was no food now, though, in the living room.

Tom hoisted himself up from the lush couch and disappeared into the kitchen.  Alice and Parul curled confidentially towards one another like parentheses, next to Tom’s impact crater on the cushion.  They had played volleyball together in college, Dave recalled just then.  That's why they were here: volleyball.  Something kinky about volleyball.  All that spandex, everyone wearing kneepads.  Dave leafed through an oversized coffee table book filled with grotesquely beautiful images of the Pacific Trash Gyre and covertly watched them whisper. 

Alice and Parul maintained lots of eye contact.  It was easy to imagine them kissing.  He bet that they'd made out at least once, or had at least kissed drunkenly during a game of some kind, at a party.  Maybe they'd even fucked.  Or fucked the same guy at the same time in some unheard-of geometric confabulation of bodies.  Dave felt faintly jealous of Alice, for having fucked Parul during their time together on the volleyball team.  He wondered-

"Caught you napping, big guy," Tom's voice was loud and close.  Tom set down a clinking tray of coffee and pastries on the coffee table.  Dave felt nabbed.  He reddened, reached for a mug.

"You sure did.  It's been a long day."

"I hear that," said Tom.  "This'll set you right.  It's half-caff."  Tom chummily extended his own mug towards Dave’s, to cheers the coffee, and winked.  They clinked mugs.  Dave didn't want to drink it anymore, but he swallowed anyway.

Alice bit into a fancy-looking pastry.  The thing crunched, and little flakes of pastry jumped from the pastry onto her lips and face.  She chewed with exaggerated enjoyment, glanced at Dave.  Dave was having that weird feeling of being intensely hungry even though he was full, but he didn't take a pastry.

Alice took another bite.

Dave's big armchair was oriented at a right angle to the couch on which the other three lounged, like they were all interviewing the coffee table from different perspectives.

“God,” Alice said.  “I’m inhaling this thing.  I shouldn’t.  I just eat whatever I want.”

“Oh, stop,” said Parul.  “In college you ate whatever you wanted, and you had the best ass on the team.”

“Oh, shut up,” Alice said.

“Best ass on the team,” Parul said again, this time to Dave.

It was true, Alice did have a good one, in a majestic, Elizabethan sense.  Dave loved her ass, actually.  So why did his skin break into sweat prickles when it was his turn to say something about it?

“It’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of,” he managed.  Alice looked at him and blushed, though Dave wasn’t exactly sure why.  He couldn’t quite figure her looks.

"I eat like a cow," Alice mourned.  “It is shameful.”

Parul and Tom exchanged a glance.

Parul crossed her legs beneath her and turned towards Alice on the couch.

"You know, we've been talking a lot about that word lately."

"Shameful," added Tom.

"It's a strange word," said Parul.  "There's a lot of work to be done around it.  We've been going to a therapist together."

Alice swallowed.  "Really?"

Dave's fingers tightened around the bevelled mahogany ends of the armrests.

"Really.  Therapy isn't just for when you're having issues, we think."

"It's a great way to move forward, to keep working towards-"

"-greater intimacy-"

"-with one another."

Dave noticed he was applying enough torque to the armrests to potentially tear them from the body of the chair.  Also that he hadn't added anything to the conversation in a little while.

"That's great," he said.

"We think so too," said Tom, making eye contact with Dave and nodding.

"Tom, should we do the Exercise?" asked Parul.

Tom raised his eyebrows, shrugged.  He turned to Dave and Alice.
"Do you guys want to do a little Revealing Shame exercise?  A Shame Game?  Working through shame?"
Please, thought Dave.  Please let's not do a little exercise working through shame.
"Please!" cried Alice, like she was begging for gruel.  "We'd love to."
"Great," said Tom, setting down his coffee mug to allow for more expressive gesticulation.  "So the thing about shame is that it's about hiding, or covering, things that you don't want others to see or know about yourself.  It's a complex emotion, because it plays such a big role in our socialization.  But that's a whole other can of worms."

Parul nodded.  "A whole other can."

"And it's self-fulfilling.  If we maintain shame - that is, by holding onto it," he gestured holding onto something very close to his sternum, to illustrate what holding onto shame looked like, "we keep it alive in our lives."

"And hearts."

"Which keeps our own selves hidden to others."

"And ourselves."

Alice was nodding solemnly, her half-eaten croissant stalled halfway between plate and mouth, as if this intro to shame was blowing her fucking mind.

Parul looked at Tom, nodded.

"I'll go first," she said.  "So I'm going to reveal something - something I've actively kept hidden from you guys.  I'm going to reveal it to you because I trust you, and trust that you're going to love me for something closer to who I actually am, after I tell you."

"Of course," Alice leaned forward sharply to say it, to show she meant it.

"What you three have to do is take a deep breath in.  I'll count to five in my head, and then I'll say it.  Whatever it is.  Just one short admission.  When I say it, you all exhale.  I'm revealing it, and when you exhale we're all letting go of it together."

"OK, wow."  Alice shook her head.  "I'm ready.  Let's do it."

Ready to reveal the shame.  Exorcise the shame.

Parul arranged herself on the couch.

"Inhale," she commanded.

They inhaled.  Counted in their heads.  Exhaled.

"I'm a pothead," said Parul.

"What?" said Dave.

Parul reclined back on the couch, flipped her hair.

"Yup.  I love to get high."

"She does," Tom nodded.  "Both of us do, actually."

This seemed like a copout.  Smoking pot was not something one might readily admit among semi-casual friend-acquaintances in a semi-casual social context, but it wasn't shameful.

"We smoke it too!" exclaimed Alice.  This was not actually very true.  It was more like they had smoked pot together a few times after they first met, but didn't presently own any actual pot and hadn't for years.  But Dave figured that contesting this point of information would go against the general zeitgeist of Togetherness and Opening Up that was happening, so he kept quiet.

"Well," Parul shrugged.  "I've got some rolled, if you think it would help with this."

Alice raised her eyebrows.  "Really?"

"Like I said," Tom said, "we both love it."

Alice looked at Dave, dumbstruck, asking: Are we really doing this?  Dave shrugged.

"OK - yes.  Yes!  Parul, we'd love to."

"Great.  This is good stuff, too.  Very mellow.  I'll get it from the kitchen."

"No!" shrieked Alice.  "Please.  Don't get up.  I'll get it.  You've been so nice.  Where in the kitchen is it?"

"In the fridge door."  Parul was amused.

"Got it."  Alice strode confidently into the kitchen, like: Totally about to do pot.  Fridgelike rummaging sounds.

"Parul?"

"Yeah?"

"I can't find it."

"Top shelf, honey.  In the door.  Next to the vaginal suppositories."

Alice poked her head out of the kitchen.  "What?"  Parul shrugged again.  "While we're working through our shame together, doesn't make sense to pretend they're not there, does it?  They have to be refrigerated.  Not sure why."  Alice stood shocked for a moment, and then returned to the fridge, searched the top shelf and exploded into laughter.  Vaginal suppositories!

Alice came back in with a joint and handed it to Parul.  Tom pulled a lighter from the coffee table drawer and lit it for her.  Parul took a long, luxuriant pull. 

This latest development, the pot, was producing some dissonance for Dave.  He had convinced himself that Tom and Parul were uptight squares and that Tom, just Tom, was an asshole.  But this behavior - the shame-dispelling and now nonchalantly smoking pot with guests after dinner - was not in keeping with his preconceptions.  Was anyone here uptight, or an asshole?  Him, maybe?  Was that why he wasn't having fun?  Or could it be that he, secretly even to himself, was actually enjoying himself?  Why this plummeting feeling coupled with rising pressure in his chest?  Maybe, one day, he would go insane, and then he wouldn't have to worry about figuring this stuff out anymore.  Maybe someday.  But right now, Dave was focused on the present, specifically on his increasing level of anxiety concerning which of his hidden shames were appropriate to reveal.

The joint came around to him.  He shouldn't.  He knew what happened when.  But if he didn't, was he an uptight square asshole?

He took a big hit.

"Like a champ, huh Dave?" Parul was snuggled against Tom's bulk, her lids lowered like a cat's.

"Like riding a bike," said Dave tightly, exhaling, and passed it off to Alice.  He felt the familiar tug behind his eyes.  They were quiet together for the first time since coming over.  They passed it around until the whole thing was smoked.

"Whoa," Alice blinked.

"Yeah," agreed Parul.

"Can I go now?" asked Tom.  "Shame Game?"

Shit! thought Dave.  The Shame Game!

Parul nodded.

"Inhale," said Tom.

They did.

"I felt up my cousin when I was twelve."

They exhaled.  That was a good choice, thought Dave.  Incest.  Appropriately shameful, but equipped with the alibi of youthful exploration/mistake.  He began racking his brain for memories of youthful mistakes.

Parul turned to Tom, grinning.

"Really?  Which cousin?"

"Jenna.  She asked me to."

Jenna sounded like she had big boobs, even then.

"Really?" said Alice.  "That's so…funny!"

"I'm lucky I escaped with just second base," said Tom.  "You haven't met my cousin."  They chuckled, except for Dave, whose throat felt like the Gobi.

"My turn," said Alice.

I'm next, thought Dave.

"Inhale."  Alice looked at all their faces during the long-seeming five second pause.

"I used to cut."  Exhale.

Dave had not known. 

"On my palms.  In seventh grade."

Tom and Parul were nodding.  "That's a really brave reveal, Alice," Tom said.  "How does it feel?"

How does it feel, thought Dave.

"Good, I think," Alice looked at Dave.  "It was a short phase, but I guess it's something I've never talked about.  Even with Dave."

"How's that feel to you, Dave?" said Parul.  "You OK?"

"Fine," croaked Dave.

"All right," she said.  "Your turn."

Well, OK.  He didn't know what to say.  He was sure that he'd think of something, when the time came.  He had always needed a little bit of pressure anyway, in order to perform.

"Inhale," said Dave.

I felt up my cousin, too.

Once masturbated the neighbor's German Shepherd.

I enjoy prostate stimulation.

Tom, I have a onesie pajama fantasy about your wife.

Tom, I stole one of your bathroom sink rocks, not sure why.  It's in my pocket.

Parul exhaled, then the others.  "Dave, you need to say it within five seconds.  Otherwise we just run out of air."

"Five seconds, right.  I forgot."

"Try again?"

"Absolutely.  Inhale."

I listen to Hootie on my commute.

My college roommate raped someone.  I didn't tell.

Ass notwithstanding, Alice looks sub-par when naked.

Alice and I aren't right for one another.

I don't know what I'm doing, generally.

"Dave."

"Dave!"

"Five seconds, Dave."

Dave shook his head, grinning apologetically.  "Sorry," he said.  "I'm not very good at this game.  I'm sorry.  I know the rule says five seconds."  He swallowed some coffee.  "I'm really stoned.  My words get a little stuck.  And then when they come out I don't have, like, the best filter, you know?"  He pleaded to Parul.

"Sure," said Parul.  "I get like that, too.  But you don't need a filter here, Dave.  It's us."

"You're in a safe place, Dave," said Tom.

"I know, Tom."  Fuck you, Tom.

"Whatever you say, whatever you choose to reveal here, stays here."  Parul nodded encouragingly.  "One more try?"

"I can say anything?"

Easy Dave, thought Dave.

All three heads on the couch were nodding.

"Anything."

Think, Dave.

"Inhale."

 

On their way home, Dave drove very slowly.  The night was spitting wet, raw and cold, and their headlights roved through streets socked in with fog.  Neither spoke or made a sound until, at a stoplight, Alice began to sob.  She held her handbag and sobbed into it, face down, like she was considering crawling in.  Something was ending.  The space between the seats containing the emergency break seemed vast and foreign. 

They pulled to the curb in front of their house and sat listening to the ticking of the cooling engine, looked out the windshield for a while.  Dave's body felt jangled and live, like he had been dipped in something very hot and pared down, the old feelings boiled away.  Alice turned her head towards him.  Dave could feel her gaze on his cheek.  It was a couple of seconds before he could return it, but when he did, he was surprised to find her face empty of contempt.  She was just sitting there, salty red cheeks slicked wet, with a faint smile that might have been amusement or forgiveness.  A car hushed by.  A gust of wind culled some limp wet leaves from the sycamores lining the road.  The streetlamp's light pinned each fat pebble of rain against the windshield while they both sat, waiting for the next thing to happen, looking at her, looking at him, the stranger.