Beth and her friends have been getting together semi-regularly for 15 years or more to play cards. They play a game they call “Grenouille,” which nobody new to the group has ever heard of it before. Beth apparently taught it to the group after having learned it from her boyfriend John-Pierre when she lived in Cadaques, Spain. The boyfriend didn’t have a name for it so Beth named it after him: grenouille is French for frog, the boyfriend was French, his nickname was “Froggy,” et voila — game name! I did a little webcrawling and found this game called Oh Hell, which is pretty close to Grenouille, but has a less amphibious name.

The game itself isn’t really all that important, though, it’s more the hanging out and joking and drinking various adult beverages and smoking various non-tobacco products and cracking themselves up. There are in-jokes aplenty, notes from past games to howl over, and, as always, adult beverages and non-tobacco products. And merriment ensues.

We hosted the game tonight and three of Beth’s best friends came over: Kelly, Les and Todd. I usually don’t go to these things with Beth but I joined in tonight since it was happening at my house. Being a relative outsider, I was a topic of much discussion, especially after I hung a BA at Beth and invited her to “kiss my ass” at one point. Les and Todd said I have a “perfect gay ass,” Beth says I’m a “top,” and there were a few half-joking offers for a three-way, which was a nice invitation but wouldn’t have been all that much fun for me since it would have been with Les and Todd.

I played cards with them (and lost) and stayed sober while they got all Joe Walsh on me (“The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get”), smoking their herb and doing shots of tequila and generally fucking themselves up good. They went through two bottles of tequila, at least one six-pack of Corona, three pints of ice cream, several buds of non-tobacco product, six orders of take-out Chinese food, and got louder and louder as the night went on. And much fun was had by all. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Beth that drunk before. It was fun to see her having so much fun.

And because I’m such a giver, I documented the evening for you with my digicam. Check it out:

(Or you can check out the slideshow.)

I poured Beth into bed an hour ago and I think she was passed out and snoring before I made it to the door when I left her there. And then I cleaned the kitchen. Being the designated driver is even less fun when you don’t need to drive.