The Great Pizza Caper

If meals are served in Heaven, I’m quite sure it’s pizza.

Recently, my friends Paul and Frank had a group of people over for an impromptu pizza party. They are the premier party hosts in the Detroit gay social world. If you are invited to one of their parties, you do everything you can to attend. I’m not sure if it’s their talent for putting together the best guest list, or the party games mixed with wine, but everyone at their parties immediately turn into alcohol induced five-year olds on their first day of kindergarten.

This particular party was on a Thursday night and was very casual. We work late on Thursday’s so we arrived at the same time as the pizza delivery man-perfect timing!

There were about 20 people, so they had ordered six large pizzas with various toppings; Pepperoni, Pepperoni and Onion, Sausage, Cheese, Vegetarian (which hardly anyone touched) and Chicken, Onion with Barbecue Sauce.

Anthony and I had been dieting that week, so not only was I starving; I was craving pizza. When Frank put the boxes and salad on the kitchen counter, I played the “wait twenty seconds to see who is going to go first” game before I ran to the counter to dig in. It’s always good to be the first person in line at a pizza party; you have full choices before all the good ones are gone.

I grabbed my plate and made my way along the buffet line. First, I piled on some salad (just to make it look like I care about healthy choices), and then I made my decision-Chicken Barbecue. My friend Bill was right behind me and was eyeing the same pizza. Since I was first in line, none of the pieces were taken yet, so not only did I have my choice of pizza; I had my choice of slices too. My mouth was watering and I was so excited to finally eat something decadent. I took my fork and gently lifted up the perfect slice, when something mortifying happened; as I was transferring my piece of pizza to my plate, it was somehow connected to the toppings on half of the pizza and they all slid off and onto my plate. I now had one tiny piece of pizza bread and an entire mountain of barbecue chicken and onions (plus my salad) covering my plate. Bill gasped as he saw what happened. “You have to put some of that back", he said in quiet but definite voice. “I know”, I replied, “but how?” “I don’t know, just figure it out, you can’t take all those toppings”, he continued. And he was right, I had to do something fast, because there was now a line of people behind us waiting to get to the pizzas.

I was desperate, so without thinking it through, I picked up the toppings and began to quickly reassemble the mutilated pie. “Don’t use your hands”, Bill said as I was trying to spread the glob of mozzarella cheese and chicken along the top. “Well, I don’t have any other choices” I whispered back, “it’s not like I’m frosting a cake”. After I did my best to hide my mishap, I knew one piece wouldn’t be enough, so I decided to take another piece from the other side of the box. This was a HUGE  mistake; this one was connected to every single topping on the entire pizza. By the time I was done, I had a plate overflowing with gross looking chicken and cheese and the rest of the pizza was left in a pathetic looking state, void of everything except a splatter of pale red sauce.

.

By now, the mob of angry people wanted to get their hands on the rest of the pizzas and I was holding up traffic so I panicked. All I could think of to do was close the lid and hope no one saw what happened and make Bill promise not to say anything.

I almost got away with it too; until Paul made his way into the dining room, holding up a bald slice of pizza announcing, “Look what someone did! They took all the toppings from my favorite pizza”.  And with that, other guests started chiming in about the mysterious pizza thief. I knew I was in trouble; I looked around the table and everyone had empty slices of pizza on their plates while mine was piled up to the ceiling.

I had no choice but to blame Bill. “It was me”, I announced, “but Bill encouraged it; he saw what I did and he didn’t stop me from taking it!” I could tell they weren’t buying it, so I decided to try and blame Paul “I knew you wouldn’t like it if I manhandled all the food, that would be gross, so I had no choice”. This didn’t go over very well either. “Fine”, I said in another desperate attempt of pointing blame, “it was the pizza guys fault. He probably drove so fast that all the toppings got all mixed up and made he made it impossible to take a normal piece”.

None of these excuses worked and my friends love me anyway, but I’m sure I won’t be invited over for pizza anytime soon.