Golf

We're at La Gloria, down by the river. It's approximately Mexican, but due to the location caters mainly to braying pricks with too much money; so we have bits of farm machinery nailed to the walls for the sake of ambience, bottled beer or five billion varieties of marguerita, and the sort of fare which inevitably draws screeching twats who just love love love that num nummy numptious Mexican street food. Everything above head height is a television screen blasting out the game, the Dallas Cowboys legendary play off against the Dallas Cowboys or something of that general nature. Men in helmets and padding have grunting fights which last two seconds before we cut to five minutes of grinning salesmen discussing what just happened as though it matters.

I am here because my wife is here, and because Zara has just chucked in her job and is moving to Austin. There are a load of folks from the office so why not, I figured. I know some of them. We enter the bar and familiar faces mouth greetings which I don't hear due to the noise of the Dallas Cowboys legendary play off against the Dallas Cowboys, except for Hunter. I hear him fine. I had my fingers crossed in hope of his having stayed home, but no luck.

'Hey buddy!' he bellows like I'm some long lost pal, eyes big and deep like those of a needy hound, the kind which eventually tries to hump your leg. 'It's been a long time!'

That's because we don't actually know each other, which is in turn because we aren't friends due to having nothing in common besides very vaguely mutual friends, but I say, 'Sure.'

He's clearly been hoping I would show, and I don't like to think why. I'm trying to say hello to a few of the others, people I actually sort of know. 'So when we gonna party?'

'Huh?' I'm caught out. It's a truly weird question.

'You and me, we're gonna party!' There's something seriously creepy about the smile on his face. I'm trying not to think about what it could mean.

'No,' I state firmly. 'We're not. You don't know me. I don't party. That's all there is to it.'

'We're gonna party, buddy!'

'No, we aren't. You are mistaken.'

'We're gonna party.'

Maybe it's meth. Maybe it's booze. Maybe it's just Hunter.

Bess pulls me to a seat at the opposite end of the table, which is thankfully fourteen or fifteen feet in length with others from the office all packed around the circumference. We squeeze in between Bob and Santina. I wave distantly at Rowena.

Rowena arranged our wedding. Bess and I were married within a month of my arriving in America, although obviously we had known each other longer. It was just going to be a registry office, but Rowena said oh hell no, possibly whilst doing that cobra head wiggle made popular by disgruntled female guests on talk shows.

Oh no you di'nt, girlfriend.

So Rowena arranged it all, or most of it, or some of it. They all showed up at our house. Edi ordered cupcakes. Rowena made enchiladas, and the preacher was a friend of her husband - and her husband was Hunter; so that's how I know him.

Hunter and I stood out in the garden smoking. I was in a state akin to shellshock. I dislike crowds and it was my wedding day, or at least the day of the ceremony, the stuff you tend to remember. Hunter was simply entertained to meet an English dude.

Tonight it seems that he's back with Rowena, which is why he's here at La Gloria guzzling bottled beer. It's hard to keep track. She sticks with him because he's good with the kids and takes care of them while she's at work, and because he's so handsome.

Some weekends he disappears, just vanishes without a word and doesn't answer his phone. It's meth and hookers, and specifically pre-operative male to female transexual hookers, although apparently his thing is enemas, so maybe it doesn't quite count as sex, or at least not intercourse. You would probably have to ask Bill Clinton about that.

He usually resurfaces, regretting everything or regretting some of it. Someone told me that the deal with transexual hookers is a surprisingly common pendant to meth abuse, although I don't know if that's true. It's just a thing for Hunter, but everybody is a little bit curious, right? I mean, we all love to see that shit, don't we? This is usually the case for his defence as he swears never to succumb to temptation ever again, or at least not for another couple of weeks as it usually turns out. Once he came back claiming to have found God, and even made plans to train as a preacher.

We always wondered who Rowena's facebook posts were for, each time the fucker crawled back, and there he was doing a little dance while firing up the barbecue because baby, you so crazy, filmed on a phone with a string of hearts and hashtags, that man of mine. I guess the posts were for Rowena herself. One of these days she'll change the locks. One of these days she'll come to her senses.

Hunter grins at me from the far end of the table, mouthing something about a party which isn't going to happen because I don't really do parties and no-one is sticking a rubber tube up my bum, no matter how nicely they ask.

The football has changed to golf across the upper half of the room, and somehow it's still deafening.

'Really?' I mutter to Bess. 'Does anyone who isn't a complete wanker really give a shit about golf?'

Bob, who clearly gives a number of shits about golf picks up on the one word, my identification of his favourite sporting pastime. He leans over and begins to tell us about golf, and about playing on courses in Scotland, which is of obvious interest to me because I was born somewhere near there; but it's still a better proposition than the one with the meth and a length of rubber tubing.