The night air is crisp and cool as the darkness blankets us. Our group is rambunctious and made up almost entirely of men; I see only one other woman in our group, a chef on the far side of the patio. We crowd around multiple tables shoved together to accommodate about a dozen of us. The guys push aside foamy glasses of beer and begin to make a small tower out of blocks. “Dare Jenga” is the game, and the rules are simple. Whichever block you draw, you have to complete the dare or you chug your beer. And if you knock over the tower, you chug your beer. High stakes for a Tuesday night–that is, if you can’t handle your beer.
Do you want to play? my lover asks me, and I surprise myself by answering quickly with a yes. I’m usually not much for dares, almost always opting for “truth” whenever possible. Simple facts don’t feel as serious as the possibility of embarrassing myself in front of others. But just like the night we met, there’s a spark of adventure flickering within me, and instead of dread, the idea of doing a dare fills me with excitement.
I sip on my bread-water and watch over the rim of my snifter glass as the gentlemen around me are subjected to tasks such as phoning an ex, moaning opprobriously into the night, or planting a kiss on their seat-neighbors. The Jenga tower falls into disrepair and becomes shakier by the second, but is somehow still standing when my turn comes around nearly at the end of the line.
My first few hesitant taps on the blocks prove quickly that I’m not even going to get the chance to perform a dare. After accepting that there are no good options, I pull a block and watch defeatedly as the wobbly tower becomes a simple pile of wooden rectangles on the table. The guys heckle and shout in anticipation as I wrap my fingers around the almost-full glass of beer and begin to pour it down my throat.
The cold, carbonated beverage seems to scrape against my esophagus as it goes down and the gasses inside make me full before I’m even halfway through. It seems endless, the time it takes for me to stand there and gulp it all down. The guys get bored of their chanting and turn to reassemble the tower of wooden blocks. But I drink without pause, leaning forward on my toes slightly like a bird about to take flight, and soon enough the glass is empty. I wipe the foam off my lips, let out a weak, wet burp from the top of my throat, and give a sheepish thumbs up to the crowd.
My lover gives me a round of applause as I wobble back to my seat and I slap my hand firmly against his in celebration. With each passing second, my freshly chugged beer sloshes in my stomach and weighs me down further, slipping into my bloodstream and blurring the scene around the edges. He’s up next and I watch him carefully remove a block from the fresh new tower. He cringes at the words written on the block and the guys near him crowd around to read it, their faces quickly falling into the same grimace. They collectively give him a pass because whatever is scribbled onto it is too crass, and the game continues on.
He sits back down next to me and circles his arms around my waist, dripping body heat into my skin. I lean my head against him and breathe him in, that familiar and comforting scent like nothing else in this world. The joy in my chest starts to bubble up and pushes out of me as a giggle in the back of my throat. The smile pulling on my face forces my eyes to close, but I can still see the scene from behind my eyelids–a conglomerate of friends and strangers gathered around the table, warming the cold dark night with playfulness, good company, and laughter. And of course, with a mighty fine glass of beer.
Method of Mancy 