Too Hot to Cook

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I welcomed them with an awkward airhug and escorted them directly to the drink table. They offered up gifts of wine, which I promptly took to the kitchen, first pressing them against my face and then shoving them down into my tube top. Ahhh. Cold white wine had never felt so good.

By this point the chef had nearly sweat through his white v-neck t-shirt, I had boob sweat issues, our friends had immediately begun looking miserable, and there were thirty minutes left until we were to eat dinner. Amid comments of, “Wow, this weather is crazy,” and, “This heat wave just won’t break,” I escorted the two couples out to the front porch with their cold drinks. “Please get drunk and forget that this front porch feels like we’re under a heat lamp,” I urged my friends.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, my fiancée the chef was just seconds away from pouring the bowl of gazpacho over his head in order to cool himself down. His tall, six-foot-five-inch physique was towering over a skillet full of hot oil as he fried up the delicate little crab soufflé cakes. They smelled delicious, through a haze of sweat and body odor.

I sprinted—still in a tube top full of boob sweat—between the kitchen and the front porch, where our guests had not yet drunk themselves silly enough with cocktails to forget the heat. More drinks, please! Between amusing our guests with stories of the sweatshop our kitchen had become, and keeping my beloved chef sane with praise (and frequent misting with water), I was working a double shift.

When we finally sat down to eat, we were all pleased to find that the dinner looked ten times better than we did. What fine hosts we were. My mascara and eyeliner were running down my face, and I had a pool of sweat between my breasts. My fiancé was totally pitted-out and smelled of cooking oil and B.O. Delightful. Yes, this couples dinner party would most certainly go down in history…as the worst, smelliest, most miserable dinner party ever hosted. Bravo. Thankfully, our guests were tolerant people with a great sense of humor; we all joked about the debacle. But make no mistake—no one was enjoying themselves. There we were, on the hottest day of the summer, eating hot food, in the dining room of an apartment with no ventilation. Who was the brainiac behind this idea?

Food for thought: if you’re going to have a dinner party, check the weather forecast and plan your menu accordingly.

From that day on, we have not only avoided hosting couples dinner parties—we’ve also completely given up using the kitchen on hot days altogether. On that first, fateful night, we had emerged from the kitchen looking as if we’d run through a car wash that had sprayed us with cooking oil, perhaps with hopes of entertaining our guests. What rookies! Now we enjoy being the entertaining guests at others’ dinner parties, telling the old “Remember that time we tried to host a party? What a nightmare” story.

Hey, every couple has their role.