Pud Muddle

I’m going to visit a friend tomorrow and, at this point, I think I might enjoy myself.  Not only will it get me out of this house (of which I have been a prisoner since January), but I’ll get away from the last vestiges of art fair.  Not that it’s been bugging me, but I do like to bitch and moan about it as I’ve said before.

The only thing I’m not looking forward to tomorrow is the discussion of an annual party which I’ll call Mud Puddle.   Mud Puddle is a gathering of my friend and her sibling’s friends at an old watering hole that the family owns.  I have been to it once, and I swear upon my copy of the Riverside Milton that I will never, ever go again.  Ever.  It was one of the dirtiest, nastiest experiences in my life.  Not only am I not programmed for camping, but I’m clearly not programmed to interact politely with inbred central Michigan hicks.

Harsh?  Hmm, no, don’t think so.

Mud Puddle happened earlier this month, that is to say, last weekend.  I was fortunate enough to have the Harry Potter release as a ready excuse for not going, but really – I haven’t gone since 2001, my first and only time.  The first time I was invited, I sought to avoid it by traveling to Mexico that weekend.  You’d think my friend would give up on inviting me.  How much clearer can I make it?  I never RSVP, I unsubscribed from the Mud Puddle Yahoo! group, and I always say "no" to her verbal invitation every year.  Alas, she’s even gone so far as to calling me from said Mud Puddle, asking in a hurt voice (you’d think I’d refused to go watch her perform a rendition of "Carmen" or something) if I was going to show up for Mud Puddle.  Um . . . no.

Mud Puddle, when I went, involved about 40 people, lots of Boone’s Farms, a mud puddle, and camping.  What contributed greatly to my non-enjoyment of the event was that my friend proved to be a poor hostess.  She introduced me to five of the 40 people on a dark Thursday night (I couldn’t even see what people looked like, so I had no idea to whom I’d been introduced), and then left me to my own devices from Thursday night to Sunday morning.  And I was forced to participate in Mud Puddle Pickup when the event was over (note to self: force her to clean up after one of my parties).  I spent the entire weekend reading The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir, ignored by friend and non-friends alike.  People got tremendously drunk every single day (the point of Mud Puddle, as far as I can tell), had loud conversation about dune buggies, fucked each other indiscriminately, and held a fireworks show that was, to say the least, singularly unspectacular.  It was a hick’s dream, but for someone who requires intellectual stimulation on at least the most basic of levels, Mud Puddle proved to be a disappointment.  Not to mention that camping totally sucks.

I did not enjoy not being able to a) bathe, b) engage someone in a conversation that did not involve tractor pulls, c) sleep in peace, d) run without ridicule (yes, I ran every morning – that’s how uninvolved I was with Mud Puddle’s events), and e) leave at my leisure.  I was completely dependent upon my friend who, although she is pretty shy and talks to basically no one at this event, feels the need to stay until the last minute.  I clearly did not enjoy myself – if I had enjoyed myself, I wouldn’t have had my nose stuck in a book about Henry VIII’s marriages and nearly always subsequent betrayals.

I did not go the following year, but my friend managed to embarrass the hell out of me.  In Summer 2002, I was courting a handsome young man who has subsequently grown older and steadily more obnoxious (but my heart still goes aflutter around him).  My friend, thinking she was doing me a favor (at this point, I’d hastily committed to going to Mud Puddle that year – my friend has a habit of asking me favor while in tears, which is horribly manipulative if you ask me), harassed my young man about going to Mud Puddle.  While at the illustrious Dominick’s, she asked no fewer than one billion times if he was going to go to Mud Puddle.  We’d be sipping sangria, talking about other things, and she would suddenly jump in to say, "So, you going to Mud Puddle?"  As I buried my face in my hands over this, my poor young man stared at her, clearly alarmed.  Wouldn’t you be?  I don’t think he even knew what Mud Puddle was back then.

Thanks to my rants, he knows now.  My last discussion of Mud Puddle with him occurred last night, in which I proudly described my escape from going this year.

So now, when I visit my friend tomorrow, I’m going to have to sit through the funny events that happened at Mud Puddle this year.  Then I’ll be asked if I’m going next year.  Then, if I say that I’m not, she’ll ask why.  And I’ll have to hem and haw, trying to avoid an outburst that would go like this:

"There is no way in hell I’m ever going back to Mud Puddle.  I’d rather stick flaming hot needles underneath my fingernails, undergo a root canal without anesthesia, be subjected to the rack, and then watch "Gigli" repeatedly."

I’ll keep my mouth shut, I’ll look at the pictures, but I won’t enjoy it.  It’ll be as if I had been there, experiencing Mud Puddle in all its fetid glory.