Games are best avoided
ACOUPLE goes to an isolated lake house in Maine for a romantic weekend away from it all. They want to save their marriage, rekindle their sex lives in idyllic surroundings. Tra-la-la. But when I tell you that the new Netflix film Gerald’s Game is based on a Stephen King novel you’ll know to be very afraid.
The clue is in the word “isolated”. Gerald, the husband, spices things up by handcuffing his wife to the bed. So far so suburban sex game. And it would all be fine and dandy except that within seconds Gerald drops dead and Mrs Gerald is left handcuffed, alone and miles from anywhere.
All very unfortunate but history tells us that sex games have a habit of going wrong. Going “too far” is the nature of these things.
Look at poor old Brian Lord. He was at a dinner party in Gloucestershire last year where they started playing “games” once they were all tanked up. He is obviously a clever man, a GCHQ intelligence boss. But the silly fellow put his hand on some woman’s knee and ended up in court, done for assault, and ordered to pay the owner of the knee £100.
Said his defence lawyer of the incident: “This was during the course of party games. They were sexualised party games such as ‘Did you ever..?’, ‘Have you ever..?’ that sort of thing.” This is the trouble with sexualised party games you see, knowing for sure whether someone is being playful or not.
In fact party games of any description have a habit of going wrong. Games have rules and rules are made to be broken. There are few things more likely to chill your blood than a children’s birthday party teetering on the brink of Lord Of The Flies-style anarchy as a game of pin the tail on the donkey unravels. Or when the “dead lions” insist on getting up and running around or when the toddler who gets the parcel in pass-the-parcel hangs on to it like grim death even when The Wheels On The Bus cranks up again.
Memories of these brushes with catastrophe ought to put any sane person off party games for ever. But no. As adults we persevere with games of charades and sardines and other horrors. In a murder mystery a party game is always a prelude to slaughter. The lights go on, the laughter dies, there’s a scream of terror and the vicar is found bludgeoned to death in the library wearing a paper hat from a Christmas cracker.
The nights are drawing in and we’re approaching the party season when, unfortunately, games will be played. My advice is to make your excuses and leave. Before the handcuffs come out.