You pays your money

Linking up with the Light & Shade Challenge.

Here is the quote

You pays your money and you takes your choice

- caption on a Punch cartoon

I heard the bustle of new arrivals from across the room; I was in the kitchen area serving drinks.

I looked across at my co-host, Paul, all 6ft 4 of him dressed in a black & white French  maids outfit and wearing killer stilettos, unlike me, he’d wear the heels for an entire evening, I’d take mine off as soon as I could. 

I was somewhat amazed at the sight of our new arrivals, I know we like people to dress up and have fun, the rules say clothing should be ‘scene appropriate or smart casual’ but a cowboy outfit is not what people usually wear to one of my parties.

Once he’d greeted our new guests Paul called across the room to me ‘Scarlet, honey, could you pour me a vodka & lemonade, I’m parched’ Paul is teetotal, this is our code for ‘We have a problem, we need to talk now’. It was very unusual for us to have any problems, maybe someone would overindulge on alcohol, usually through nerves, but that about as serious as it gets.

I wandered casually over to Paul and passed him a glass of lemonade, ‘What’s up?’

‘Go, introduce yourself to our new guests’ he muttered cryptically ‘You’ll soon find out’

I made my way over towards them, noticing that there was a large space all around them, this was  strange, as the room was quite crowded by now, I also noticed that a few of our more predatory guests had approached them  and then rapidly backed off.

 As I got nearer I realised the problem, I slipped behind the bar, opened the cash box & grabbed a couple of £20. I headed back towards the couple, who were by now bickering heatedly. The closer I got the worse the smell was, I wanted to take a deep breath and hold it, but I needed to talk to them so I needed to breathe.

Plastering on my brightest smile I introduced myself & asked ‘Are you new to the scene’,

‘Not exactly’ replied the cowboy, he smiled at me, showing a mouth full of blackened rotting teeth.‘We’ve met a lot of people but we never get beyond the first meeting’ he said ‘’I blame her, she’s fat, she puts people off’  'They don't want to have sex with us, so we've come to a party' I turned towards his wife, her BO nearly knocked me sideways.’ I don’t think weight is an issue’ I reassured her. ‘Sometimes people gel and sometimes they don’t.’

‘Unfortunately you just aren’t gelling with anyone tonight, so I’m afraid you will have to leave’

‘But we’ve paid our money the cowboy insisted’ 'we’re entitled to have sex with people at the party, we’ve paid our money it's our choice'.

‘Sorry’ I said firmly ‘you may have paid but so has everybody else and it’s their choice not to have sex with you’r At this I returned their payment, plus enough to cover their petrol money and ushered them smartly out the door.