Departments
Editor's Note: Cultural Taboo
By Steve Lange
The women were all good friends, the guys not so much, and it was one of those relationship moments—Meeting The Friends Of The Girlfriend—that you don’t place that much importance on at the time.
But it’s just below Meeting The Parents; just above Whether Her Cat Likes You. Whether it snuggles in your lap, purring and purring and “Oh my goodness Sir Meowington III absolutely adores you when you scratch his little neck!” Or whether Sir Meowington III urinates all over your pantlegs before defecating in your shoes.
Then one of the women upped the ante: “Let’s go back to my apartment and play board games! Let’s have a Couples Game Night!”
We played Taboo, the word-guessing party game by Hasbro in which one partner draws a card that lists a word or phrase, say “purring”—and this is an actual example I just pulled from the game—that you need your teammate to guess. But here’s the catch: the card lists five taboo words that you cannot use in your clues—here it’s “cat,” “meow,” “furry,” “kitten,” “sound.”
So, you, as the giver, would be yelling clues like “What Sir Meowington III does!” And your teammate would be yelling out answers like “Plays with his yarn ball!” “Scrunches up his wittle nose!” “No! Wait! Defecates in your shoes!”
One of the opposing team members sits next to you with an electronic buzzer in case you use one of the taboo words. For each turn, you try to get as many correct answers as you can before the little hourglass timer runs out (in about a minute).
Jack and Lisa were up first. Neither of them really wanted to play—they had been snuggling and whispering all night, and the game would probably just get in the way of their lustfulness. Turns out it didn’t. Hasbro’s Taboo—billed as “the game of unspeakable fun”—simply became their game of unspeakable passions.
Jack and Lisa sat on the floor facing each other and Jack gave clues like “A part of your body that might get sore and need someone, maybe me, to massage it for a long, long time.”
“Ooooohhh. Is it the shoulder and neck area?” she whispered throatily. She was leaning in so close to Jack’s face—their mouths just inches apart—that I was afraid she could see his card.
“No,” he said. “Lower. Much lower.”
She was yelling “Ooooohhh, my thighs! Please say the answer is thighs!” That sort of thing. These were not the words on the cards. They were playing a completely different game.
My then-girlfriend/now-wife Lindy and I were up next, and took a commanding lead with our instant rapport. When I gave clues like “A genius in spikes” and “My third favorite band” and she correctly answered “Ty Cobb” and “The Cure,” I knew we had a shot to make it.
I will call the final couple Ron and Stacie, mostly because those are their real names and there’s no chance in hell they’ll see this. Stacie, shy and meek, was the first-round giver. Ron, ever-competetive, was irritated from the start. “Time is running, Stacie,” he said. “Say something.”
The first clue out of her mouth was one of the taboo words, and, when I pushed the button on the buzzer, it was as if it were somehow directly connected to her central nervous system. She flinched. Her face contorted in pain. Her card hand started twitching. I wondered, for a split second if, instead of a small plastic buzzer powered by two double-A batteries, the Taboo people had accidentally packaged a Taser in the box.
For Stacie’s next card, same thing. Taboo word. Buzzer. Involuntary twitching. “Hellloooo! Stacie,” Ron was saying. “You need to give me clues that don’t get BUZZED!”
By card three I was making a gentle buzzing sound with my mouth whenever she used a taboo word. “WE’RE GETTING KILLED HERE!” Ron was yelling. By card five—and Stacie may have been crying at that point, I think we all were—Ron stormed off into the kitchen for another beer, apparently to deaden the pain in your head that comes with losing in Taboo.
And so it went for a few more rounds. Jack and Lisa ended up disappearing during a break, and never came back. As a couple, they lasted six wild and crazy months. Ron and Stacie ended up in one of those whispery arguments in the kitchen. They lasted for one torturous year.
Anyway, Lindy and I won, like 100 to 70.