"Hey Silvana, there's someone I want you to meet!" Called the devil herself, arriving with some conjured fiend.

"This is Tom. He does vocals for a hardcore band called Psychomantis."

"Yo!" Tom greeted me, saluting me with a beer bottle.

"Sup." I acknowledged.

"Okay so let's play a game!" Rene implored us.

"Oh no." I lamented

"No no! A fun game! The funnest thing to talk about while stoned!"

"Okay. Listening."

"So what's something in life or in pop culture that you just- like one day you just have this insane world-shattering realization about it and you can't believe you hadn't noticed it for like, a forever."

"Like, give us an example?"

"Okay, I'll start, so do you guys remember that song, Mambo Number 5 by Lou Vega?"

"Uhhhh" I stammered drawing a blank.

"A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Jessica da da da" Tom mocked.

"Right! Exactly! Okay, so back in the early 2000s when this thing dropped, inexplicably it was like everywhere. It was like this huge pop hit."

"Right."

"So anyways, as a kid I never really had payed attention to what was going on in the lyrics. I was just like, 'boy that guy must just sure like hanging out with a bunch of different girls.'"

"Yeah, it is like really weird that a song about all these chicks that this guy banged, presumably prostitutes, was literally everywhere." I said.

"Right? So anyways, I was in a carpool with this group of kids whose parents my mom worked with, and there was enough of us that their mom would put on radio Disney in the car, and like, they would basically take pop songs that were big at the time and if there was any swearing they would edit in something Disney themed or something."

"Uh oh." Tom said.

"So they played that song Mambo Number Five, and where they should say the names of the girls they edited in Disney characters so like "A little bit of Mickey na na na, a little bit of Donald da da da a little bit of Pluto...' And that's when I, as an nine year old girl came to this horrifying primordial realization of, like, 'oooohhh, he's talking about fucking all these cartoon animals..."

Tom and I chuckled.

"Okay Silvana, you're next." Rene said.

"Oh me?"

"Yeah!"

"Well mine's pretty classic. When I started smoking pot for the first time when I was 18 I would get high in the bathroom and the pipe eventually got clogged with resin. So I went to go find something to unclog it, and I was looking through the drawer in my mom's stationery desk, and I found pipe cleaners, and like, for the first time ever, while stoned, my mind actually processed the idea of the word 'pipe' and 'cleaner' together, and I spent the next hour just stunned there was actually a practical use for this fluffy wire shit besides gluing them to art projects in first grade. It was like in that moment yeeeears of propaganda and brainwashing were deprogrammed. Like, I just figured out the exploitation of labor is endemic to capitalism itself and Jefferey Epstein didn't kill himself all at the same time."

"That must have been a beautiful hour of not being able to get off the couch." Kurt said.

"Oh, it was!" I affirmed.

"Okay babe, your turn." Rene implored Kurt.

"Okay, well, mine's not as impressive but it's pretty recent."

"Do tell!" Rene compelled him before chugging down her bottle.

"So I was just on one of those weird Wikipedia rabbit holes where you're basically clicking through a subject- for me recently I've been trying to find all these classic novels I've never heard of. I think I want to get around to doing more reading soon.

Anyways there's this book, The Master and Margarita. Apparently it's a Russian satirical novel about the devil coming to Moscow, and he has a mistress named Margarita. So like, the first time I heard about this novel years ago, probably back in college, I couldn't even imagine that Margarita was like, actually someone's name and not the drink. Like in my head I thought this was like, Jimmy Buffet erotica or something."

I snorted.

"Okay, Tom, what was your blind spot peering into the fabric of our reality?" Rene asked.

"Oh I've got a good one!" He said.

"Do tell!"

"Well my ex eventually got me to watch RuPaul's Drag Race, and I was like, super disappointed because when I'd first heard about it like... I kind of knew it was a drag queen show, but for some reason in my head I had imagined they would all be in little go-karts actually racing. You know, like some kind of queer version of Mariokart or Deathrace 2000."

Kurt and I began wheezing with laughter from our stomachs.

"Needless to say, the real thing was fine but it was a pretty big let down from what I had for some reason imagined in the back of my head for the last four years."

"Fuck, Deathrace is a great movie." I said.

"Oh, you've seen it?" Tom asked.

"It's sublime 70s sleaze. Of course I've seen it." I said.

"Silvana watches weird-ass movies like most of us breathe air and eat food." Rene explained.

"Hey what can I say, I'm a masochist." I said.

"Have you seen The Room?" Tom asked.

"Do bears shit in the woods?" I grumbled. "I've met Tommy Wiseau. He's legit a vampire, you know, King of Vampires: Vampire King of Alcatraz."

"Ahaha, what a story, Mark! Anyway, how is your sex life?" Tom asked in an ambiguous European accent.

"Don't worry about it." I retorted in kind.

I looked down at my phone to see that it was already almost 11. There'd been no sign of Grant, and then I remembered I'd have to be up and fresh at dawn for the next step of the ritual.

"Shit you guys, I think I've got to go." I reluctantly groaned.

"Come oooonnn!" Whined Rene. "Stay with us! Fuck Grant! We'll have a good time!"

"Nah, I'm sorry! I've got something tomorrow I've got to be up for really early."

"Are you sure!?" Rene asked pouting, clearly pretty fucked up at this point.

"Yeah, sorry. I'm sure I'll be back at one of these before the end of the summer..."

"Okay, well text me when you get in alright?"

"Will do!" I said. "Oh and it was nice to meet you uh..."

"Tom! And it was nice to meet you too, Silvana!"

"Cool! See you guys on Monday!" I said as I wandered out towards my car and drove the lonely road through the woods home.