It’s socializing season on Cape Cod. Don’t you hate spending this time with couples that bicker?

Our friend was over with her husband. “Where did you put my glasses, dammit?” she snarled at him. The husband, just as belligerent but quieter, saw that she was wearing them but didn’t answer. He’s an aggressive guy in a passive way. He left the table, but not before knocking the cranberry sauce onto her lap.

Bob and I attract pairs that drive us nuts. Last year, we had dinner with a couple that made constant sexual innuendos. I don’t want to hear about someone’s sex life while I’m sucking in linguini noodles. The husband was pompous and smarmy – always trying to impress us with lofty stuff.

“You’ve read Kafka, of course,” he said.

“Oh yes,” I said. “Didn’t he write, ‘All the Girls in France Never Wear their Underpants’?” Bob elbowed me. Then he handed the husband a jar of our homemade raspberry jam.

He opened the jar, smelled the jam for a long time and said, “I’d like to smear this on my wife’s face and spend an hour licking it off.” Now, what on earth am I supposed to say to that? “Great. That’s just why we brought it. So you could stick your wife’s face in it.”

What I wanted to say was, “I could puke.” Instead I said, “It’s also good on toast.”

When his wife came in, carrying a plate of chilled shrimp, he said, “Ah, my nubile bride.” Never in my whole life have I heard anyone say the word nubile. He opened his mouth. I think she was supposed to put a shrimp in it, but I’m not sure what was on his mind. Bob and I sat like stick figures, knowing that if either of us so much as glanced at the other, we would have to be carted away from busting our stomachs open with hysterics.

Once we had dinner with a couple that put on their bathrobes and invited us to sleep over. I didn’t get it. I figured it would be fun to have sodas and cookies at 3 in the morning. Bob got our coats and pulled me out of there. 

We used to socialize with a pair that never heard a word we said. They just wanted to spout loudly about whatever this week’s issue was.

“How are you?” the husband would say, not looking at me.

“I broke off my big toe and then I ate it,” I’d say.

“Uh huh. There’s too much development. We don’t need a supermarket in Cotuit.”

“Last night I set fire to Bob’s face.”

“There’ll be more traffic,” his wife said, shaking her head.

And so, I asked Bob. “How come we keep meeting couples that are nuts?”

“If you asked them about us, can you imagine what they’d say about you?”

“They’d say I have a few quirks.”

“A few quirks? It takes us a half hour to get out of the house because you stand in front of the stove and stare at it. What do you think it’s going to do? Turn on by itself?”

I went pale. “Can it do that?”

Once we had a barbeque. Lick-face lectured the non-listeners about Camus. They screamed about airport noise while passive-aggressive man knocked over the red wine. All the while, I kept bugging Bob about the fumes I smelled leaking from the gas grill.

“Now I know why I get involved with flaky people,” I said, with relief, to Bob. “Compared to this group, I look normal.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, adding briquettes to the fire. “We’ve never owned a gas grill.”