Games We Played

Tonio and I were a couple who made up games. We would take on different roles and improvise, the point being to make the other one crumple into a fit of diabolical laughter. Of course the games would begin in one form and very quickly morph into something almost unrecognizable from the original. I still laugh thinking about some of those games. I wrote once about one of our stupidest jokes, which was when we made up a ridiculous song about how you could find no fruit in Beloit, Wisconsin. That anecdote alone pretty much describes our entire relationship. We would take something small (the fact that the grocery store in Beloit had no fresh produce) and turn it into something absurdly huge. We laughed so hard we cried.

But there were also the GAMES. Many of them are relatively offensive.

Here is a sampling:

1. The Liberal Couple Game

The point of this game was to mock political correctness. Tonio and I would be the “liberal couple”, and act in the most suffocating politically correct I’m okay-You’re okay manner – but here was the joke: deep down the “liberal couple” was horrified by the very things they knew they were supposed to support. We needed a third party for this game to work. Namely, our dear friend Mitchell, who happens to be gay. Mitchell loved to play along, as the gay friend – as we turned ourselves INSIDE OUT to show him how liberal we were. If you think about it, it was the stupidest game in the world, because we actually WERE liberal, but what we found funny was to make the liberal couple really biased and judgmental beneath their “Hey, man, whatever floats your boat” exterior. (Sort of like what this website lampoons.) I think this might have come out of our experience belonging to a food co-op where we had to deal with a lot of self-righteous prigs. You know, the kind of people who look at you as though you are Satan when you show up with plastic grocery bags instead of paper. Or who literally would not be friends with you if you weren’t a vegetarian. You know the type. We shared many of their beliefs, but we hated their humorlessness. Ick. We liked to laugh about EVERYthing, not just stuff approved by the feckin’ party. Tonio and I were complete and utter goofballs and many of these people were comedically tone-deaf. So I think that was what made us laugh, the hypocrisy, and we pushed that envelope further and further, every time we played the game. Mitchell, as always, played his own part to expertise. The “liberal couple” could only show their true colors with a third party present.

Here is how, more or less, the game would play out (and I have put emotional directions in parentheses):

Tonio: (putting his arm around me in a cloyingly heterosexual way) But honey, we’ll work it out. Don’t worry. We’ll find a sitter.

Mitchell: Why? What’s going on?

Me: (overdone air of nonchalance) Oh, it’s nothing.

Mitchell: No, really – what is it?

Me: (trying desperately to be a devil-may-care good sport) I wouldn’t want to bother you with it.

Tonio: (arrogance masquerading as tolerance) Besides … our lives are so different from yours—

Me: (rushing in eagerly – inappropriately) And that’s fine! That’s great!

Mitchell: (trying to be polite) Actually … I don’t know … I don’t think our lives are all that different …

Me: (ignoring him) We love to have friends from all different kinds of backgrounds!

Mitchell: (deadpan) Wow. That is really sweet of you guys.

Tonio: (screaming suddenly) I KNOW SOME BLACK PEOPLE.

(Big long horrifying pause.)

Mitchell: (deadpan again) Good for you.

Me: (trying to save the moment) Well, since you asked … it’s just that … we have a parent-teacher conference tonight – (He and I exchange goopy smiles remembering our procreative sexualties with pride) – and we can’t find a sitter for Junior—

Mitchell: (interrupting, eager, glad to help out) Hey! I’m free tonight! I could babysit for you!

( Tonio and I freeze, in utter panic and loathing. We frantically try to keep up the facade.)

Me: Well …

Tonio: Oh, but … hm … well –

Mitchell: (playing up innocent confusion) What?

Me: Well –

Tonio: It’s just that –

Mitchell: What?

Me: (softening my facial expression, full of understanding) We don’t want to put you in an awkward position.

Tonio: (nodding manically in agreement) Right! Right! We’re just thinking about you.

Mitchell: What is going on here? You guys seem upset.

Me: (shrieking) No! We’re not upset! Right? (to Tonio)

Tonio: Right! (then, in an ultra-rational matter of fact tone) We know that … well … that … homosexuals (the word comes out awkwardly) are … people too.

Mitchell: (a brief flicker of annoyance now) Uh-huh …

Me: (discerning the annoyance – reaching out to grab Mitchell’s hand) No! No! He didn’t mean anything by that … it’s just that … well… (and then, in a ‘You understand’ tone) Tonio Junior is a little boy.

(Long pause as we wait for Mitchell to understand. Mitchell maintains a blank uncomprehending face.)

Me: repeating it emphatically – the problem should be self-evident to Mitchell, right?: He’s a BOY.

Mitchell: Right, sure. No, but I’d love to babysit. I love kids.

Tonio: But – well – with little boys there’s a lot of rough and tumble –

Me: (laughing, showing Mitchell that I understand his ‘lifestyle’) Oh, but Mitchell looooves the rough and tumble, don’t you, Mitchell?

We could have gone on interminably with it, and often did so, testing how disgusting we could be, how offensive, how much could we keep up the façade in the face of our abhorrence and fear.

2. How Heavy Is Your Head?

This would involve one of us lying across two kitchen chairs, and letting the head fall over the side, while the other one pretended to weigh it. This one was very very difficult to get through with any seriousness, due to bursting guffaws of laughter. But the one doing the weighing needed to maintain a poker face, because this was, after all, a scientific experiment. So to watch Tonio leaning over me, WEIGHING MY HEAD in his hands, with a BARELY controlled expression of absolute hysteria on his face was often too much, way too much.

3. African Colonialist Game
This game was born after we watched “The Flame Trees of Thika” on PBS. We were struck by the image of stiff-upper-lip British people colonizing the continent of Africa, superimposing their language, ideals, traditions, phonographs, on another culture. The Brits making the Africans cart their china and damask tablecloths out onto the savannah. Silver tea services in the middle of the desert. Mkay? We found it all fascinating. (Anyone remember “Flame Trees”, by the way? With a grown-up Hayley Mills? It was awesome.)

So here is our game: This game had very few limits – but when boiled down to its essentials, it had three elements that you HAD to hit, in order to make the game successful:

1. A greeting called out to a person with an Anglo-colonist-type name
2. An order given to a servant with an African-type name
3. The order needed to be a request for a fizzy inappropriate country-club-type drink

And all of this had to be done completely improvisationally, and all had to be spoken in a Masterpiece Theatah accent.

Here is just one of the MYRIAD examples of how this game would (and could) go:

“Good afternoon, Nigel! Have a seat! Mbaake, please bring in two mint juleps!”

You get the picture. That was it. That was our game. But he and I never got tired of creating endless variations on this theme.

“Hail, Merriwether, welcome! Rest in the shade. Njebe, two cherry cordials, please.”

Once we started, we could. not. stop.

4. The “I Fancy Myself” game
The point of this game was to state about oneself: “I fancy myself something of a ________” (fill in the blank). The stupider and more asinine the better. “I fancy myself something of an amateur botanist.” “I fancy myself something of a Nordic skier.” My personal favorite was when Tonio said, “I fancy myself something of a New Zealander.” And he said it in this self-pleased I’ve-got-a-few-tricks-up-my-sleeve tone. WHAT? How can you be “something of a” New Zealander? He took it one step further, showing off his foreign-ness by ostentatiously pretending to forget the word for “pepperoni”, of all things. He said, “Yes, I adore pizzas with those … oh, what do you call them … those little meat cylinders on them…”

At that point the game had to end. Basically because I had to beat him up, shouting, “MEAT CYLINDERS? WHAT???” while he guffawed with laughter.

In the end, that was really the goal of all of this: to make the other person LOSE IT. How far can we go, how far can we push the game into absurdity … who will break first???

A good friend of ours was driving down a road in our hometown, and she saw our Honda Civic coming towards her – she knew it was us. She beeped, and waved, glancing over at the car as we passed one another – and what was the fleeting glimpse she got of the two of us, as our car whizzed by? Tonio was driving, convulsed in laughter, and I sat in the passenger seat, head thrown back, guffawing. It was her brief snapshot. We always loved that story. Even though we had some rough times, etc., I think the odds are – if you had glimpses of us, chosen at random, over the three years we were together, you would probably have seen the two of us howling with laughter. I think that’s pretty cool.