Lies and Such

Posted June 15th, 2006 by Sean Williams

So, I’ve been hiding several facts from the world which is why I can’t write. I discovered a long time ago that the best way for me not to spoil a secret is to not talk about anything at all. Last week, I was at dinner at Otto with my three best friends and our rental whores, and I found I couldn’t say a word because I knew the first thing out of my mouth would be “THERE’S A SURPRISE PARTY TONIGHT!!!”

Which there was. Deb and I managed to pull a surprise on our spouses, who’s birthdays are just about one month apart. The levels of subterfuge were incredible, we had to pile lies on top of lies on top of sleight of hand bullshit, and still, if my wife weren’t so distracted by two or three things she’s been working night and day on, she would have figured it out.

I meant to take pictures. But I didn’t.

Here’s the set-up

Deb and Steve came to New York (that’s right, it was a surprise party for Steve in a town THAT HE DOESN’T LIVE IN) in order to surprise Mac in his play. Mac knew they were coming, and Deb knew that Mac knew, but Steve and Jordana didn’t know that Mac knew. I knew everything.

So, Jordana was trying to get Mac to give us tickets to his play, which we weren’t going to, and she was lying to him so that he would give us four tickets, which he knew we needed, but which he also knew we didn’t need because we weren’t going to use them.

Our friends said they wanted to meet up with us at 6:15 on Saturday before Mac’s play. They said this on an email list that both Mac and Jordana are on, so they had to pretend, on the list, that they didn’t know Steve and Deb would be there because, even though Mac knew they were coming, Jordana didn’t know that Mac knew, and the rest of the list had to cover. Plus, none of them were going to meet us for drinks. They were already at my house.

To meet them for drinks at 6:15 meant we had to eat dinner around 5. And Mac should have come to this, or Steve and Deb basically wouldn’t see them, so Jordana had to invite Mac to dinner for a surprise that Mac already knew about, before we all went to his show, that we weren’t going to, after we had drinks with our friends, who weren’t meeting us for drinks. Mac showed up and tried to pretend to be surprised that Steve and Deb were there, which he totally wasn’t, and his head came *this close* to exploding.

In the middle of the meal, I called Deb, pretending to be a group of our friends cancelling drinks, and then Deb pretended to call the other group to cancel just as I got back to the table and discovered that I didn’t have the tickets, which I never had. Jordana said “we should go home and grab them before the show” and I said, “but we’re supposed to meet our friends for drinks” and she said, “they just called and cancelled, we’ve got plenty of time”. So, Jordana was insisting that we go back to our house to grab non-tickets for a show we weren’t going to, in order to surprise Mac, who was sitting right in front of us. It was all going according to plan.

Meanwhile, at 4:30, just after we left the house, my mom, Jordana’s mom and sister and a couple of other brave souls, came into my house and set up decorations all over, cooked finger food and started serving drinks. At 6:30, I called and said we were on our way home to pick up the tickets.

This is why, when Jordana and Steve walked through the door of my house and some 40 people yelled “surprise”, Jordana’s first thought was “what the hell does Sean’s mom do when we’re not here” and her second thought was “I hope these people know I don’t have time to talk to them, I have to get to Mac’s show…”

Mac showed up at about 10, the party ended around 2. The fact that people drank from about 5:30 on is pretty extraordinary.

The best thing- we had a fountain of melted chocolate and fruit and pretzels to dip in it. The fountain was frickin’ awesome.

Also, it was nice for Deb and I to pull the wool over the eyes of two people who are generall smarter than we are. From now on, until the two of them do the same to us, we are officially smarter than they are. No matter who the doctor is.