I’ve been having these strong urges to go bowling. I haven’t bowled in years and I couldn’t figure out what was causing me to think about going bowling so often. Years ago I was in a bowling league, I was good but by no means spectacular, my average was around 200. My good bowling helped a friend learn what an asshole a really cute guy she had been asked out by was. She was unsure about going out with him by herself and had arranged for me and a girlfriend of hers to join them for bowling. He couldn’t stand that he was being beaten by a fag and threw a tantrum. If I wasn’t so entertained by escalation of his fits I would have been offended. There was no second date for him, he lost the game and lost the girl.

But to meander back to the point, I realized I’ve been wanting to go bowling because I am being dragged to a country club this coming weekend in Grass valley for a “crab feed”. I never had a good impression of country clubs growing up, of course I had also never been to one. I just saw the way they were portrayed on TV and my experience with privileged people allowed me to draw a conclusion. So in 1993 when my parent told me we would be going to my Aunt’s country club in Laguna Beach (think Real Housewives of OC) for Thanksgiving I was not excited. My mom warned me that I needed to look nice so I got dressed up in a pair of fitted slacks and my new crisp white Nehru dress shirt. The outfit got the thumbs up from mom.

Unfortunately neither of us knew country clubs have very strict rules about dress code. No jeans, and Collars are a must. It was quite an unfortunate choice my expensive new Nehru shirt, sure it buttoned up and looked dressy but Nehru is the Indian style that doesn’t really have a collar. I was pounced upon almost as soon as I sat down. It took me about an hour to drive to the club and I was being asked to leave before I had been there five minutes. My instincts were right and I was fine with leaving, sadly my mom wasn’t. She had my Aunt ask if there was something that could be done and was told that they would check to see if any jackets with collars were available for me to borrow.

It goes downhill quickly from here. Not only did they find a jacket for me to wear but it had been balled up so it was wrinkled. It’s collar was frayed. As I attempted to unball the jacket, it stuck together and made a crisp sound as the fabric began to separate itself. I’m sure the look on my face was priceless as I realized what was causing the difficulty in uncoiling the jacket. There was a small amount of ancient dried puke on the right side of the jacket. I was out of my seat and on my way through to the door in moments but my dad stopped me. He asked me to put it on just for the hour or so the meal would take for my mom. It took quite a bit of work on his part but he finally coaxed me back to the table.

I don’t remember much about the meal I ate while wearing the vomit jacket, I don’t remember if people stated what they were thankful for before the meal began. I could think of a few things I was unthankful for that’s for sure. It really made an impression on me that while I looked very together and well off when I walked in the club, it wasn’t good enough for the club. They preferred that I look like the homeless kid with vomit on himself that the kind family invited to be their holiday good deed.

Both Golf and bowling are sports in which you compete with yourself, but bowling is considered low class while golf is the rich man’s sport and they pride themselves on their exclusivity. To this day I detest golf and country clubs. I’ll take stinky rental shoes over vomit jackets and a false sense of superiority any day.

The Meaning Of Lice - Stephin Merritt - Plague Songs