wine and cheap perfume

Tonight I celebrated Thanksgiving with most but not all of my family in a yet-to-be-renovated restaurant in Chelsea. Nestled between an ex-con with a tidy Afro and my drunk grandma, it was an odd yet pleasant way to spend the holiday. It had been a while since my uncle had hosted a Thanksgiving dinner, but the apartment that he lives in with his body-builder fiancee was not large enough to accomodate our motley crew. In three weeks he will open up a new cupcake and burger joint, and in the meanwhile, its vacant space, crammed with plaster, stray wires, and unfinished floors, served as our dining room. Usually my uncle's schizophrenic and mildly autistic best friend from childhood, Ritchie, comes to dinner, but he had food poisoning and I was told he wouldn't be joining us. I was sad to hear it, because I love eclectic groups of people, and the more the merrier. Fortunately, I was not disappointed. Upon arrival, not only was I immediately handed a bottle of my new favorite (albeit epically uncool) kind of beer--"pumpkin ale", but I was also introduced to Dwayne, a medium-sized black man in a ribbed turtleneck. Dwayne was celebrating his recent release from jail. After serving twenty-eight years for attempted murder, he was finally out, and had wandered into the place a few days prior looking for work. The restaurant, as I mentioned, is not open yet, so a job wasn't readily available. Instead, my uncle invited him to Thanksgiving, which is where he came. He sat next to me and quietly ate an enormous mound of mashed potatoes, and nothing else.
"I'm a vegetarian," he explained, re-folding his paper napkin after using it to dab at the corners of his mouth. My cousin told me that as soon as he arrived, for no apparent reason, he had raced into the bathroom and cleaned it. So at dinner, when we were all talking about things that we were thankful for, Dwayne mentioned that he was thankful to be there with us.
"Next time you don't have to clean the bathroom," my grandmother informed him generously.
"But grandma!" I protested. "He has to earn his keep!"
Everyone at the table knew I was kidding. Everyone, that is, besides my bleeding-heart grandma. With her hyper-vocal habit of frequently advertising her boundless capacity for acceptance, she contrarily ends up seeming like a closeted bigot.
"Katie!" she exclaimed. "He does not! We are happy to have him here!"
Rolling my eyes, I took another swig of my gay-soccer-mom beer and ate a yam. Then I tried some of the pie that I made yesterday, and it sucked cause it was raw. However, everyone at the table pretended to like it, besides Dwayne, who refused a piece. He said it was "too cold out to eat pie."
All things considered, it was a good night. Dwayne and I went on to chat extensively about weightlifting (something I know nothing about), and I learned that he can bench-press three hundred and fifteen pounds. That impressed me. I wish the Post had set me up on a date with him instead. He was a far better conversationalist than John, and is probably much stronger as well.