Finally, I make it to the presentation room, and after a minute of scouring the sizable crowd, I spy Charlie sitting up near the front. I excuse myself and slide by several people already seated in the row before taking my spot next to Charlie.
“How’d you get seats this close? This place is packed.”
She shrugs. “I bribed an old lady.”
“You bribed an old lady?”
“Yeah. I gave her and her friend some of my tequila and they were happy to give up their seats. They didn’t even stay for the demonstration after that. Said something about going to look for some young guys to help with their own booth. I almost offered to go with them before I remembered I was waiting for you. They seemed like they know how to have a good time if their matching shiny track suits and fanny packs are anything to go by. We should find them after this. Something tells me their booth won’t be your standard knitting or crochet.”
I glance at her sideways. “Matching track suitsandfanny packs? That seems a little over the top, don’t you think? Whatever they have in their booth is something I think I need to see.”
Another shrug. “They also had matching white high-top sneakers and one of them was wearing a trucker that read ‘fuck bitches, get money’ so…I wasn’t going to question it. They seemed cool.”
I open my mouth to answer when a man and woman walk out to the center of the stage at the front of the room. The man taps the microphone, causing a squeal of feedback to blare through the speakers, sending the room into a chorus of pained groans followed by uncomfortable silence.
“Welcome to Yarn-Bombing: Time to Take aStrand.In this demonstration, we will explain our theory of yarn-bombing as a form of peaceful protest and then share ways to take your yarn-bombing to the next level.”
“Well, that was…informative?” I snicker. “I mean, I liked the beginning and the middle, but the end was a little suspect.”
Charlie snorts and takes a full swig of her tequila before I take it and do the same. “Yeah. I was not expecting thenext levelto be…to be…yarnbumming.” Charlie bursts into hysterical laughter and I follow suit. The thought of butt knitting is too disturbing and ridiculous to be taken seriously.
“The way he opened the flap on the back of his overalls and bent over—” My voice cracks with laughter.
“—and then she reached between his cheeks, grabbed a strand and started pulling. I can’t…I don’t understand why. WHY?” Charlie wails dramatically, shaking her hands to the sky.
We stumble our way to the wall and slide down to sitting, our legs tucked close so we don’t get trampled by the crowd passing by.
“And then she started knitting with it. And he sat there, hands on his knees, ass out, smiling at the crowd like this was a totally normal thing.”
I twitch my shoulders in the barest of shrugs, laughter still rolling through me. “Maybe it is to him? This is just another day where he stands around while his wife knits with his butt yarn.”
“It had to be in something, though, didn’t it?” Charlie asks. “Like, it’s notin there, in there?”
Is it? No. That wouldn’t be safe. “I’d think it would have to be in something. Like one of those yarn bowls we saw earlier? It can’t be loose in there. That could cause way too much damage if it got loose and tangled up internally, wouldn’t it? Imagine the damage to his intestines.”
Her sneaky grin tips me off that she’s about to say something she finds hilarious, that I’ll no doubt find completely mortifying. It’s the look she always gets when she tries to make me uncomfortable.
“You know, you could ask Archer. As the owner of a sex toy factory, I’m sure he knows all about what should and what should not be inserted into the butt. He gave you those gorgeous trees, after all.”
I groan and drop my head back against the wall. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
She shakes her head and takes her flask back. “Never. It is officially my favorite holiday story. Someday, when Lincoln is old enough, I’m going to tell him the story of how his dad made his mom fall in love with him with an offering of butt plugs. It will humiliate both of you, making it doubly hilarious for me.” She lets a laugh out before taking a drink from her flask. “Actually, it might be more than doubly hilarious. I’m not sure we can adequately measure the level of hilarity yet. I might need a few years to determine how much distance I’m going to get out of this story. I’ll talk to Gavin, too. I know he thinks it’s as hilarious as I do. I’m sure together we’ll be able to parse out an adequate measure of the hilarity we can reliably expect this story to produce.”
“Awesome,” I deadpan. “I can’t wait to hear how much laughter my humiliation can garner.”
She nods sagely. “I’ll be sure to add it to the family newsletter.” Charlie gets to her feet and holds out a hand for me. “Now come on. Let’s go find the ladies I shared my tequila with. I want to know what they’re up to.”
A few booths down from the conference room is the booth hosted by the Yarn Bumming couple. The man has already returned to his station, thankfully with a refastened butt flap. He’s sitting on a stool, knitting from a multicolored skein of yarn that is in a bowl, not coming out of his rear-end. Evidently he’s no worse for wear for having been shitting out yarn on stage mere moments ago. Good for him, I guess. Whatever makes you happy.
I’m working hard to avoid making eye contact with him when someone calls me.
“Phoebe? Oh man, what a coincidence. What are you doing here?”
I spin toward the voice and spot Ryder sitting on the ground in the booth across from me. Am I drunk off Charlie’s tequila, or is he wrapped in a pink rope tied in intricate knots?
“Hey, it’s you.” Charlie makes her way through the crowd, stopping in the booth where Ryder is, for lack of a better term, resting. “This is what you do? Shibari? So cool.”
I wrench my eyes away from Ryder and the pink rope he’s tied with, to see two grinning old ladies in matching track suits. They look exactly as I pictured when Charlie described them to me.
