I might get in trouble for this...

Picture a man (or me, if you're going for realism) comfortably reclined on his sofa cum bed, a barely-read novel in his hand, the TV blaring The Simpsons with only half the usual amount of static, and a cat comfortably sleeping in a new bed (it being some three hours before said cat would decide to pee in said new bed). Kim is buzzing around getting ready for a small party we're going to in Sycamore, but I'm all decked out in my finest: sweat shirt, t-shirt, blue jeans without holes. It's the ideal kind of Friday night: somewhere to be, but nowhere too hectic. If this were a Norman Rockwell painting, I would have finally graduated to the old man with the pipe rather than the geeky red-haired eight-year-old who's always showing his rear end in the doctor's office.

Then a phone call comes. Kim answers it, mutters a few quick replies, then hangs up. My curiosity is mildly piqued at the quizzical look on her face. Upon mild interrogation, I learn that the host of the party just called on account of a show that's supposed to start on time.

My Spider Sense starts to go off a tad here. Previously, I'd been told this was a tupperware party, but one with free booze and food. "I'm there," I said.

Then I learned it was a candle party, but still with free booze and food. "Well, I'm still there...I guess," I said.

Then, after that phone call, I learned that there was a candle show to go along with it. "This doesn't have anything to do with me dressing in white robes and carrying a candle to some kind of altar for a human sacrifice, right?" I asked. "Okay, I guess I'm there."

It doesn't particularly speak well for my intelligence to note that I was more or less ambivalent about going to the party at this point. Key words like "presentation" "representative" and "candles" were not added together accurately in my subconscious; else I would have run to the hills like any sane person. And yet, I can hardly be blamed. I've heard of Patty Brite Makeup Girls and their suitcases of products. I'd heard of Avon calling. I vaguely remembered walking out of some kind of water purifier conference in Chicago some years ago. I'd never heard of someone selling candles like this.

Of course, I've never heard of a dating service for men who like sheep. But if I heard "dating service," "men" and "sheep," I suppose I could figure it out. Sadly enough, I did not figure last night out in time.

Well, we got there right in time to catch the last three-quarters of a fairly lengthy presentation on candles. There were short candles, long candles, middle-length candles; there were glass candle holders, multi-layered holders, ceramic holders; there were combinations of all of these hastily cojoined by some mad scientist in a mad scientist's candle making laboratory. The lady giving the presentation was effective enough--she knew enough about her material to keep an ongoing flood of commentary on the product line. The trouble was, she could tell by the look on my face that I didn't give a good goddam about candles, which made me minutely uncomfortable. I don't like to silently begrudge someone giving a presentation for their own livelihood (unless it's the band Like Hell opening for the Cult).

If that were all the evening provided, though, I could have lived with it. But things got a little weird soon enough.

First, the presenter had a strange little rule: Every time you heard the word "candle" you had to pass along a small candle that was being hot-potatoed around the room. If this were a lecture on the Big Bang, or perhaps the history of the automobile, it would have been a tad less distracting (again--not that I could have been distracted: distraction implies interest, and interest I had none). But since it's a presentation on candles, I couldn't help but wonder how this woman expected to keep anyone's interest for more than a milisecond if they were listening so hard for their turn to pass along the candle:

Presenter: Now when you light these candles--
Customer #1: Hey, she said candle! Pass it along!
Frenzied, drunken passing of candle. Wine spilled.
Presenter: Good job. Now like I was saying, when you light these candles--
Customer #2: Candle! Candle!
Another frenzied, drunken fumbling.
Customer #3: What were you saying about that candle?
Presenter: I have no idea--I didn't get that far. I was talking about this...thing (You can tell she's hesitant to say the word again, for fear of losing her audience's attention). You can use it on holiday occasions or just to set the right mood.
Customer #2: (drunk beyond human capacity) You're talking romance there, baby!
Presenter: Yes, the best way to set a romantic mood is by lighting a candle--
All: Candle! Candle!
Candle gets passed around; several more drinks are knocked to the floor.

At this point, I decided to get as drunk as I possibly could, and in the space of twenty minutes I downed three glasses of Merlot. Kim kept casting apologetic looks in my direction, which I perversely ignored. The two guys whose apartment this was taking place in sidled up to me and told me to go to the bathroom if I felt like throwing up, though I didn't know if he meant from the wine or from the presentation or from the rapidly-evaporating ennui from the repressed housewives around me.

It was a lot like being in a high school classroom, I must say. The presenter would start in on a monologue, one of the drunken housewives would chime in with a quip, everyone would giggle their asses off, and one or two more or less sober people would be reduced to hissing "Shhh!" to everyone else while the head presenter either smiled and kept talking, or smiled and waited for the ruckus to die down. I sympathize--I'll take a Basic Junior English class any day over those broads.

The topping "group activity/game" (a torturous phrase to me--it reminds me of those dorky getting-to-know-one-another games we used to play at Smelly's Camp when I was a wee slip of a lad) was called "Pass the Candle When You Hear the Name of a TV Show." Then the presenter read a fairly long speech about becoming a representative of the candle company (much like an Avon Lady, I would imagine) with the proper enunciation on certain words:

"I'd always wanted to live in a Little House on the Prarie, but I was Married With Children. So my dreams weren't quite there. But The Facts of Life are we all have to work hard at what we want, and these candles are a way to do that. You can be part of The A-Team of candle-selling and you and your family can all have a Silver Spoon in your mouth.

Everyone was congradulating himself/herself on managing to ferret out all the TV Show names when the clapping died down and all eyes fixed on me. The candle was still in my hand, where I had refused to relinquish it.

"Silver Spoon was no TV show," I said arrogantly. "I think you mean Silver Spoons."

Well that put everyone off their marmalade, and the presenter ran off into the nearest broom closet to cry her eyes out over my ruthless exposure of her ignorance of TV minutia.

Okay, okay, that didn't actually happen. I didn't even say anything about this little faux pas of pop culture, but I wished I had. At this point I'd downed most of the bottle of wine, and all the lit candles around me were beginning to swarm together in an eerie montage of lights, like one of those high-speed photographs of Lake Shore Drive. So smart-ass remarks would not have been out of the ordinary.

Then evaluation cards were passed around:

Question 1: Rate this presenter's performance from a 1-5.
My answer: "Not applicable. To me, candles are for getting rid of fart smells or cat pee reek. I can't see buying a crystal decanter for this purpose."

Question 2: How interested are you in obtaining more information on our merchandise?
My answer: "Not applicable. I haven't really gotten any information on this merchandise, though that's not the fault of the presenter."

Question 3: How interested are you in becoming a sales representative yourself?
My answer:" Not really interested at all, but what about combining it with bachelorette parties somehow? I could go into a striptease dance, and keep pulling out candles and somehow incorporating them into my act. Then, at the end of the show, they could be hosed off and sold."

I never did find out what the last two questions were. Kim took my card away from me and burned it before anyone could see it.

The good news is once the presentation died down and the crowds thinned, the evening was spent pleasantly enough. Kim showed off her wig, Scott showed off his computer, Bob played with his nephew, and I lowered the level of their wine bottles inch by beautiful inch.

But now I've become pathological about candles. Don't even mention them to me.