Usually I shun any event en plein air, especially those that involve sitting next to massive speaker stacks in someone’s yard wearing my only dress, a lot of make-up and grinning desperately at strangers. I’m dog’s balls and I know it. I’ve tried to fit in by hand-dancing round the fruit display but my face goes red. Cool, slim, pretty girls in spangly dresses don’t mean to be mean but make it worse: ‘Wow, your face is really red!’ If old people are invited there’s usually a lot of polite sitting on wood and my knees are fucked from spending too much time on them in the ’90s. Plus there’s duck-web salad.
But the weather has been so fat-friendly lately; even I’ve succumbed to the whispering lure of a breezy day out with remote family members in bucolic settings. The unseasonal cool has lulled me into a perspiration-free figment. I imagine twinned bluebirds fluttering past bearing trays of glacial mimosas. I’ll miraculously understand Khmer, or there’ll at least be smatterings of convivial backslappery in my mother tongue. With down-soft, tickless puppies gambolling at my feet and the scent of sun-warmed limes wafting past my marshmallow chaise, hope springs eternal that there’ll be something nice to eat.
One recent and delightfully temperate CharmingVille Sunday I put a cardigan over my pyjamas and accompanied husband to his fri’s place on Cow Island for a bev or two hundred thousand. I call it Cow Island. It’s not really an island, but you get there by ferry and there’s a bunch of cows there. There’s a couple of giant concrete prawns guarding a wat, and a charming lad with a monkey on his shoulder walking down the main drag. French or not, you should go there if you like riding a bike with a picnic in the front basket.
They’d put on a real spread and the knees-up was in full hammer by the time we arrived. There were no speakers, which augured well. The all-bloke party had assumed the position: cross-legged on the daybed under the house with t-shirts rolled to underboob and tube ice tonged into glasses after every second ‘cheers’. In mid cavort, rosy cheeked and shiny, the fellows invited me to dig in.
The scales dropped from my eyes at once. There were portly rats – roasted inflatably plump with little stick legs at each corner. Actually they looked quite good. But, still, they were rats.
To be polite I put a tiny bit in my mouth. I don’t know which bit it was and I’ve had worse things in there (I think I alluded to this in an earlier paragraph). But nothing chases a rat better than a whole can of warm Klang. There was also a dark, goat-like chunk on a plate.
Me: “Darling, what kind of meat is that?”
Darling (carefully): “It’s an animal from the forest, but I’m not sure what it’s called in English.”
Giggling succubus sitting next to me: “Woof! Woof!”
Hysterical guffaws all round, except for husband, who could see where this might lead. His genius ruse in tatters thanks to the feckless pillock next to me, hubster watched keenly for signs of dummy spit. I do not chow down on puppies and I would never eat bushmeat. Would I up sticks for an early exit and the seething ferry standoff home? Just for once, could I ignore the little poppet’s whole roast head in a pot, his rictus underbite snarling defiantly up at me, pissed off but yapless? Perhaps it was the sniff of cowpat commingled with barbecue and jasmine that moved me to stay. Or my husband’s big, brown, pleading eyes. I made a cushion of my cardigan and poked at the mixed pickle salad. Dog is $3.75 a kilo at the market, in case you were wondering. Sokapeap l’or.