The human body is like a cold: you shouldn’t share it with your friends. Unless you’re playing Strip Monopoly.
Strip Monopoly is a lot like regular Monopoly, except that when you go to jail, mortgage a property, or can’t pay someone, you take a piece of clothing off—stopping at the skivvies. If you get down to your underwear, you’re out. The major difference between Monopolies is that “Let’s play Strip Monopoly” is the dumbest thing I’ve ever said, while “Let’s play Monopoly” is the 2nd dumbest thing I’ve ever said.
It’s a dangerous game, and not one I intend to lose. The other players, Joe, Hadeel and Mel are good friends of mine—which is why it’s essential that none of them see my disgusting near-naked body.
Let me paint you a picture. I’ve got one cracked toenail that grows in so gnarled that it cuts holes in socks. I’m one of those people who wears socks to bed, because even I don’t want to see that thing. On top of that, my upper body is 80% acne scars. From the shoulder down, I’m covered in the desecrated corpses of pustules so putrid, that a teenaged Charles Bukowski—prostrate on some pimple-popping doctor’s operating table—would look at them and say “Ew”.
My body wasn’t meant to be seen by human eyes. So I stack the odds. I mean, the layers.
You’re a cheater! True. You should be ashamed of yourself! I am. That’s the point. You’re ruining the game! If any game deserves to be corrupted, it’s Monopoly. It’s a friendship-killing lesson in how to steam-roll competition with luck and money.
Everyone is weirdly game to play. ¾ of us are so boisterous as to be borderline exhibitionists, but you’d think it’d be weird to get mostly-naked in front of each other. But everyone is cool about it. Except me. I’m wearing four socks.
It’s a bad choice. It’s overwhelmingly hot. Joe ends up being late, so I sit in Mel’s apartment— next to her snake’s heat lamp—wearing 11 articles of clothing, praying for death.
Joe arrives before death. We start the game.
Somewhere around the fourth turn, I start feeling woozy. Mel hands me the dice and I think: I have three properties. Does that make it my third turn? No, wait. Fourth? Have I rolled yet? Shit. Uhhh. Oh, God. Is this what heat-stroke feels like?
I don’t want to win, I just don’t want to take my clothes off. I’m trying to avoid the naked truth. When I fall into a heat-delirium, all my Monopoly skills evaporate along with the moisture in my body. I start buying useless property all over the board.
“Take it as a compliment that you’re not good at Monopoly…[it means] you have a heart,” Joe says. But he says it right after winning fifty fake dollars at a beauty contest, so I figure he’s superficial.
I remove a sock to reveal I’m wearing another sock underneath.
“We’re not going skiing! We’re playing Monopoly!” Joe shouts.
“In 30-degree weather!” Mel adds.
My strategy goes bust. I turn into a public target once I’m discovered. They’re now trying to get me naked.
Or so I think. Hadeel lands on free-parking and gets to tell someone to take something off—a rule we invented five minutes into the game. She tells Joe to take his pants off. He does, and all Hadeel can say in response is “I may have made a big mistake.”
Joe decides this is an apt time to tell us that “[As a baby] I was in a textbook…they thought I had a huge dick…in high school, I had a nickname, LBP [Large Baby Penis]. My mother’s big joke is that “You grew into it”.”
Mel lands on Free Parking and shoots me a look. Before we got together to play the game, I told Hadeel and Joe that Mel was more attractive than the three of us combined. Upon arriving at Mel’s apartment, Hadeel shurgged her shoulders and said “You weren’t kidding”.
I play to Mel’s vanity. I try to beg her with sweaty, sopping compliments about how beautiful she is so she’ll change her mind. It doesn’t work. The sock has to come off.
I prepare to lose all my friends. I remove the sock.
Nothing. No shocked gasps. I half-shout “This doesn’t freak you out? This isn’t horrifying? It’s disgusting!”
Mel shrugs. “I went to school to be an esthetician. I’ve seen way worse.”
I should probably feel relieved. Instead, I’m kinda disappointed.
