When you don't have a pole, a hula hoop will do

I'll get to the hula hoop girls in a minute.

We had a very busy weekend.

Saturday was our gay cafe. On tap for this month was a Halloween costume party. We spent all week getting things ready: decorations, food, and prizes.

This weekend was also the Virginia Garlic Festival, a two-day event we never miss. Not even our gay cafe could keep us away.

We went to the festival early Saturday. Our goal was to see all the vendors, pick up some good cheeses and spreads, taste the wines, and then be back at the cafe by 2 for last minute prep before doors open at 5.

On our way from the festival to the cafe, we got a panicked call from a minister in town. Months ago, two local Soulforce organizers booked Mary Lou Wallner for a week of appearances for what was supposed to be East Jesus' first gay-pride week. Long story short, gay pride week was canceled but the orgnizers forgot to tell Ms. Wallner. She showed up on Saturday expecting a week of speaking engagements, book signings, and film discussions. In a panic, the minister from the organizers' church called us to see if our gay cafe could host a movie and discussion with Wallner.

Lucky for them, our cafe hosts a film series, so we were set up and ready to go. Although we had shown Wallner's film a few months ago, we showed it again. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook word got out and people showed up. Our gay cafe saved the day.

People can't resist a costume party. They kept coming though the doors. It was the break-through night we'd hoped for. So many people came that I got worried we'd exceed fire-safety capacity. It was our biggest crowd ever.

We try to make the cafe fun for all ages. A lot of people like the board games (Loaded Questions is very popular right now). We set up our Wii which is really popular with kids. We also have "fidget baskets" on every table that are filled with fun stuff like play-dough, pipe-cleaners, puzzles, etc. Everyone plays with them. For this month we added glow sticks, rubbery sticky spiders, and flashlights that made spiders, ghosts and bat shapes where ever one shined them.

Want to make someone happy? Give them a glow stick. People love glow sticks. Two girls at the cafe made glow stick jewelry with pipe cleaners from the fidget baskets.

We awarded prize packages for costumes for scariest, funniest, most creative, best overall and best kid's costume.

Court and I were on our feet the whole time, refreshing the food and beverage tables, restocking the coffee, managing the voting for the costume contests, running the music, greeting everyone, promoting the cafe, directing people to the film series, etc.

We don't get a lot of help from the church. Only one person, Linda our 70-something church librarian, shows up to help with set up. And then there are Ben and Michelle, a young couple who aren't from our church but love the cafe and always come early to help. He's a student at Liberty University and the son of missionaries currently working in Jordan. Michelle is his wife.

The five of us take a church hall and turn in into a coffee house.

Doors close at 11 and generally Court and I are left with all of the clean up. Two people stayed to help, but only for an hour. We have to take a coffee house and turn it back into a church hall. The bigger the crowd, the bigger the clean-up. There was so much to do.

I about cried when I went back to clean up the kid's cafe. They had a wild party too.

The kids who took turns on the Wii had their own table. By the end of the night it was covered in crumpled up candy wrappers and empty pop cans. The kid's cafe was the same way, littered in wrappers and pop cans and plastered in every color of play-dough. We might as well have given them crack at the door for how wound up they were. They had a blast.

Our night was done at 3 am. We were both dead tired. It would have been so nice to sleep away our Sunday morning. That's our usual MO the day after a cafe. But we had to be back at the church early to empty the dishwasher, go to the service, and then attend an important committee meeting afterward. We were all the shit Sunday morning because word was out about how fun the costume party was. Plus everyone was buzzing about how the Unitarians saved the day for First Christian Church and their Mary Lou Wallner problem.

Sunday was our annual blessing of the animals service. A dog barfed near my foot. Pleasant.

We suffered through the committee meeting after church, hoping upon hope it would wrap up quickly so that we could get back to wine festival. We thought about cutting out early but didn't. Finally at 2, it was over and we were and headed out of East Jesus.

The plan for the festival was to get some wine, buy some food, and then park ourselves and our chairs at one of the live music venues. We had seen everything on Saturday, and were fine to just sit, sip wine, enjoy a cigar or two, and basically veg.

And that's what we did. It was perfect.

And then the best, most wonderful thing happened.

Three girls with hula hoops showed up, and for more than an hour they put on a show, slowly moving their hips at every turn of their hoops.

Oh. My. God.

I hope they were at least 18, but I have my doubts. My inner Humbert Humbert acted out yesterday. I turned my chair, poured another glass of wine, and I watched them, unashamed.

I got away with it because my wife, sitting next to me, was also leering at the undulating girls and their hips hoops.

It was the perfect way to unwind after the hard work of the cafe: a belly full of good festival food, a wine buzz, and girls with hula hoops.