The Bubs Interview: Question 1 - Finale

Our Nova Scotia Christmas. This is the first picture taken of CP + Poor George.

After the completion of our ill-fated card game, Michael and Timothy retired to their respective sleeping chambers on the second floor. Timothy went to his usual bedroom while Michael was in a large room with two full-size beds, one for him and one meant for me. George and I decided we weren't quite ready for bed yet, so we bade the other boys good-night and sat at the kitchen table a while longer. The rest of the house was just too damn cold.

George re-outfitted himself with the red Santa Claus hat that he wore while chopping wood outside, and moved closer to the stove to warm his hands.

"So you're a clarinetist, are you?" I said, shivering. The air seemed to grow ever more frigid by the second.

"Yep. And too bad I didn't bring one with me on this trip. I don't like to go too long without practicing; makes it easier to lose your lip."

"Yes, it is always tragic to lose one's lip. What kind of music are you working on?" I can never seem to resist a smart comment, especially where none is called for.

"My pianist and I are working up a recital of 19th century romance pieces. Some of it is really hard and requires a lot of fast tonguing."

"Fast tonguing?" Not being a wind player, I didn't know much about these things.

"Yes. Sometimes when you have fast sections you have to flick your tongue back and forth to play the different notes."

Hmm.

"Tongue flicking. Gee, you could really make the girls happy with that." I couldn't resist; it was just too easy.

"Well I can make the boys pretty happy too," George replied with a devilish grin.


Ha! I knew he liked me.


"Well, we'll just have to see about that," I answered, returning his play. Despite what he likes to tell everyone about how aggressive I was during our courtship, I maintain that it was George who started the whole dance.


****************************

After a bit, George announced he was ready to go to bed. I agreed that sounded like a good idea, and we exited the semi-frigid kitchen to retreat to our respective sleeping spaces, George's in the cozy living room next to the stove, and mine in the tundra that was the upstairs. I felt at least half of my face go numb as I made my way into the icy bedroom, and I momentarily feared for the health of my sleeping cousin who hadn't been feeling too well to begin with.

As I was fishing through my suitcase in the dark to feel for some warm sleeping clothes, I thought I was even beginning to lose sensation in my fingers. Enough was enough, I decided, and I marched back downstairs into the living room where George was busy stoking the wood stove's limp fire.

"How convenient for you that you'll be right next to the stove all night while the rest of us are up there freezing our butts off," I remarked.

"Well, would you rather sleep down here and feed the fire all night like I'm planning to do? How else do you think the house is going to get any heat at all?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, I would," I replied, sitting down on the tiny bed.

"Well you'll have to fight me for that spot, because I already called it."

"You already called it? That's very charming, George. The fact remains, however, that regardless of whatever school yard dibs game you think we're playing, I am not going back upstairs to sleep. It is too cold. I just moved back east from California and I'm not used to this kind of weather yet."

"Cry me a river." George started changing into his sleeping clothes while I remained on the bed.

I didn't really want to beg, but considering the circumstances I decided it wasn't necessarily beneath me.

"PLEASE don't make me go back upstairs. I will freeze to death. I'm serious. I could die up there, and then you'll have to blame yourself the rest of your days. I can't allow you to do that to yourself."

"I'll take my chances," he responded with not even a hint of sarcasm. "Good night, I'm going to sleep." George crawled right over me and got under the covers.

Silence for a few minutes.

"Get the light, would you?" George asked.

"I will. But I'm not going upstairs. I'm staying here with you."

"Whatever. Just close the damn light already. I'm exhausted."

"Ok." I turned out the light and changed into my sweatsuit. "You're going to have to move over," I said, lifting the covers.

"Move over where? Have you seen the size of this bed?" He laughed.

"I don't care. Anything will be better than sleeping alone in that cold room." I snuggled in next to George, who spontaneously wrapped his arms around my waist.




And that, Gentle Readers, is how it all began. It's also all you need to hear - although, for the record, nothing R-rated occurred until the end of the trip.



Which I won't be writing about.



So, Bubs, did we "meet cute?" I guess it's for you and my other Gentle Readers to decide.

Fun with Funerals

Mr. Social Zymurgy challenged me to list the songs I would like played at my funeral. I didn't know what to do with the question so I ignored it as any good cyberstalker would do. But after seeing other blog friends like Bubs and Dale rise to the challenge, I decided I am just as good as they are and am therefore entitled to share my funeral music choices with you, my Gentle Readers.

Mindy June and I were discussing this very topic recently after the funeral of her beloved father, may he rest in peace. Participating in funerals inevitably makes you think about your own, so with that in mind Mindy told me some of her last wishes. She wants to be cremated and then for all of her loved ones to take a portion of her ashes and sprinkle them somewhere they know would make her laugh - like over Ronald Reagan's grave and that sort of thing.


Brilliant idea, and I'd expect nothing less from her.


Whether or not I deserve the honor, I will nonetheless take partial credit for Melinda June's creative decisions with respect to her inevitable demise. This is because back when she and I were 20 year old college students, I decided it would be a good idea to make a list of the people who would attend my funeral if I died right then. I shared the list with Mindy, who was puzzled by it.

"What on earth would make you want to do this?" she asked.

"I think it's important to keep tabs on your life, and this is one way to do it," I replied. "If you can keep enough people around who would feel obligated to attend your funeral, you must be doing pretty well."

"So you're judging the happiness of your life by who will show up after you're dead?"

"Yes."

"Ok. Let me see it." Not being one to waste time asking a lot of unnecessary questions, Mindy rose to the challenge and started helping me refine my funeral attendee list.


"Why is Marla on here?"

"She's a friend of Jon's. I figured she'd go with him and his other friends."

"Yeah, but she hates you. She's still mad about that time you laughed at her sweater vest."

"I wasn't laughing at her sweater vest. I was laughing because KC threw up on you when you were wearing a sweater vest. They always make me laugh now."

"I know that, but she still thought you were laughing at her. She's not going." Marla's name was crossed off. "And why isn't Kirsten from down the hall on here?"

"I don't know - she's the type who would probably go to my wedding if she was invited and had a cute date, but I don't know if she'd get it together enough to make it to a funeral on time."

"You're right. So she'll go on the wedding list. Who is Leo?"


And so we spent the next several hours. Back then it felt like a wise time investment - you could never be too prepared, in my book. You know, that whole Boy-Scout-Motto thing.


Eventually I lost track of my funeral attendee list, which I'm sure has changed substantially over the past 20+ years anyway. But Mindy's recent decision about her own funeral did get me to thinking about mine.

I decided that George can plan whatever traditional funeral he wants for me, with all the attendant wailing and sobbing - the more dramatic the better, in my opinion. But I'm taking charge of the after-party. Here's how it will go:

My funeral after-party will be a piano bar sing-along, show tunes only. The kind that they do at Marie's Crisis - you get a bunch of show-tune obsessed queens and their friends to sing the entire book of a musical, one after the other. Drinking heavily all the while, of course.

I've already enlisted the future services of my not-cousin Marnie, a showbiz professional who runs her own theater. Marnie has been charged with renting out the space, hiring a pianist, making copies of the lyrics to all my favorite shows and gathering everyone together. When they get to "Annie" she'll have some pre-teen girls or drag queens or something act out "Hard Knock Life" with metal buckets and brushes and all that jazz. Of course, the rest of you will be welcome to join in at any time.


My funeral after-party is going to kick major ass. Be sure to keep being my friend so that you will receive an invitation.

Tammy Faye 1942-2007

Tammy Faye in one of her prettier moments

When Dale first told me that Tammy Faye was going to do a live interview on Larry King while she was very sick, I laughed and made some kind of joke about her clown makeup.

Today I decided to YouTube her and watch the interview, which as it turns out took place less than 24 hours before she died.


Oh my God, am I a mess.


Let's just say that if I wore Tammy Faye's flavor of eye makeup, I'd have black streaks a mile long down my entire face.


I've always considered myself a reasonably good judge of character. Although I'm sure it's mostly just an "opposites attract" kind of thing, I usually feel drawn to good people. I've never met Tammy Faye in person, but I've always kind of liked her - mainly because she comes across as so genuine. Satan himself would probably have grown tired of faking all that emotion over the years.

Now as every Gentle Reader of this blog surely knows, I derive a substantial amount of enjoyment in poking fun at Kristians (see the footnote to this post for a definition of that term.) But despite the fact that Tammy spent too much of her life in bed with the Kristians, namely her ex-husband Jim Bakker, I don't think she was much of one herself.

For one, she didn't hate fags and dykes nearly enough to be a Kristian. Even way back during her televangelist days in the 1980s, she asked her viewers to stop picking on the gays and urged people to start showing some sympathy and compassion. Tammy even hosted people with AIDS on the PTL show and encouraged Kristians to pray for the sick. ("Sick" as in having a physical disease, not "sick" in the Ted Haggard sense of the word.)

Further, Tammy later developed close friendships with several gay men and even co-hosted a TV talk show with one for a short while. When asked by one of Larry King's viewers why she had chosen to embrace gay people, she replied that they were the ones who showed her the most support during her lowest periods, and that she would always love them for it.

(Ok, so she didn't realize most of this "support" came from the throngs of drag queens and fashionistas out to mock her criminal sense of style. But that's all water under the bridge.)

In short, Tammy Faye was a nice lady. Yes, she was flawed. Yes, she got mixed up with the wrong people for much of her life. Yes, she made a lot of terrible mistakes, some of them bordering on the felonious. Yes, she could have done more to relieve suffering as a devout Christian might be wont to do. And yes, she seemingly acquired her make-up application skills directly from an overfed court jester.


But through it all, she was nice. And that has to count for something. A lot, if you ask me.


Even though Tammy Faye aligned herself with Kristians for too many years, I believe she was always a Christian because she concerned herself with such novel concepts as compassion, trust in the Lord, and the love of Christ. Those are the kinds of things Tammy Faye talked about when discussing her faith. Unlike too many of her Kristian cohorts, she searched for ways to practice her religion without obsessing over whose dick belongs where.

Just think what the world would be like if every Kristian decided to take Tammy Faye's approach while preaching the Gospel.


Rest in peace, Tammy Faye.

Gratuitous cat shots

CP Adopts an Actor

Our blogger pal Splotchy has requested that members of the greater blogging community each adopt an actor-in-need. I understand the term "actor-in-need" to be open to various interpretations. Perhaps your adoptee could be an unsung character actor whose role makes that classic cult movie, yet your actor still has to park cars and wait tables to make it by. Or perhaps....I don't know, make up your own examples because I don't really give a shit.

Coaster Punchman's World hereby officially adopts Kim Walker. Sure, Ms. Walker died of a brain tumor back in 2001, but that's no reason she should not enjoy an eternal resting place here at CPW, the Internet's warmest and most welcoming webspace. If we're lucky, she may even decide to haunt us.

I have been obsessed with Ms. Walker ever since her brilliant portrayal of the blond Heather Chandler in one of the 20th century's greatest cinematic works, Heathers.

Ms. Walker was responsible for the delivery of the film's greatest lines, forever burned into the brain of CP, to the delight and sometimes chagrin of all his cohorts:

Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?

Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast? First you ask if you can be red, knowing that I'm always red....

Come on Heather, let's have another look at today's lunch.

Monday morning, you're history. I'll tell everyone about tonight. Transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games.

I get you into a Remington party, and where is my thanks? It's all over the hallway carpet. I was paid in puke.

They all want me, as a friend or a fuck.

You wanted to be a member of the most powerful clique in school. If I wasn't already the head of it I'd want the same thing.

Grow up, Heather. Bulimia is so '87.

No one really knows whether Ms. Walker would have grown into a well rounded actress if she had not expired before her time. Regardless, we here at CPW will forever sing her praises for her outstanding performance in Heathers, and we will continue to scour late night television for reruns of her sundry other film and TV appearances.

Rest in peace, Heather. I mean Kim.

The Bubs Interview: Question 1 Part 5

Poor George + Karen Black = Love

As we concluded the tour of Timothy's Nova Scotia seaside cottage, Michael and I put our bags in two of the upstairs bedrooms and returned downstairs to start unpacking the general provisions we had brought: pounds of fresh coffee beans, gallons of wine and liquor, gourmet cheeses, boxes and boxes of various dry goods and some fresh produce. Timothy, being a self employed artist, did not have unlimited means with which to purchase some of the higher ticket items that would be harder to obtain in the province's outer regions. His eyes bulged at the splendor we laid out before him.

"I will make dinner," Timothy offered as he rummaged through the display, selecting a few boxes of whole grain pasta and some organic crushed tomatoes.

"That sounds great!" I replied. "It's been a while since I've had a chance to cook a nice meal, what with school and all. Anyone object if I take charge of Christmas dinner? I would love to roast a turkey in that stove!" I didn't know the first thing about roasting anything in a wood burning stove, but I was in the mood for an adventure.

"Sounds good to me!" Timothy said.

"Me too!" George chimed in, although in a slight "this I have got to see!" kind of way. I didn't yet understand the full array of George's cooking skills, which is a good thing because, if I had, I might not have been so eager with my offer.

Score three for Tom in the George Camp of Coolness: I had already grabbed a check in a restaurant AND introduced him to America's most hilarious author; and now I was offering to cook a major dinner. Nothing annoys George more than people who claim they are "afraid" to cook for him, so I'm glad I didn't yet know I had reason to be concerned.

************************

Timothy prepared us a casual dinner of salad and pasta which we all enjoyed. After the dishes were done I said "would anyone like to play a game? I raided George's collection and brought a few things. How about Mille Bornes?"

"Mille Bornes? Why did you bring that? We really shouldn't be playing Mille Bornes. It's an awful, hateful game," Michael replied.

I was confused by Michael's characterization, as I had played Mille Bornes as a kid and had never thought anything of it. It's a Parker Brothers rummy-style card game which is set up as a road race. You play in teams, and the first team to finish the race by obtaining 700 km worth of cards wins. You also try to delay your opponents by giving them flat tires and making them run out of gas and that sort of thing.

"Puncturing people's tires and causing accidents is not my idea of a fun time. You can count me out," Michael declared.

"But we need four people or we can't play. Come on Michael, it will be fun!" George implored.

"Yeah, come on Michael. You can be my partner!" I added.

Reluctantly, Michael agreed. But little did I know what I had gotten us all into.

Almost as soon as I laid down my first card, Michael started objecting to whatever "strategy" he perceived me to have. "Oh look, he's throwing away mileage again. I have NO idea what he's doing - he is NOT playing well at all. Would one of you please trade partners?" Reminded me of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo playing bridge.

Things got worse as the game progressed and the accidents and flat tires started happening. George, in his increasingly impish manner, seemed to acquire every flat tire and accident card in the deck, and played them against us until I thought Michael would scream himself hoarse. "VERY FUNNY, George! Do you have to LAUGH at us every time you do that????" I was getting concerned about Michael's serious take on this "game."

Worse yet for Michael were the Coup Fourré cards, which you could play as a trump when someone tried to make you have an accident. As soon as they play the accident card, you yell "Coup Fourré!" while you lay down the card, countering the accident and causing your opponent to lose his turn.

As fate would have it, George got every Coup Fourré in the deck. And he didn't hesitate to throw them down with great aplomb, usually with an obnoxious fake stutter for added dramatic effect: "Oh, look, look what I have! C-C-C-C-C COUP-COUP-COUP-Fourré!" He nearly squealed with delight as the veins popped out of Michael's forehead.

By the third or fourth "C-C-C-Coup Fourré!" from George, Michael started shouting "KNOCK IF OFF, GEORGE! YOU ARE BEING COMPLETELY OBNOXIOUS! It's bad enough that I've got Lucy Ricardo for a partner; I don't need you rubbing my face in my own SHIT!!!"

"Calm down, Michael, it's only a game!" I said.

"Yes, it's a game! An evil, horrible, hateful game! I told you we shouldn't have played this!"

He was being so unreasonable and such a spoil sport that George and I couldn't help but giggle, although we both tried to stifle it. Later on in a calmer moment I approached Michael about his inappropriate competitive attitude with the card game, and in his defense he admitted it was an unreasonable trait he had picked up from his parents as a small child.

I suggested he refrain from engaging in any and all future recreational competitive activities, and he agreed it might be a good idea.

"But I don't need to remind you that you practically forced me into the game, do I?" Michael added.

"Well, I did encourage you to join us, but that was before I realized you weren't my cousin after all. You're like the secret love child of Joan Crawford and Attila the Hun."

"No, he's more like the little spear-guy from Trilogy of Terror!" George chimed in.

I nearly collapsed laughing at his mention of this 1975 Karen Black classic movie-of-the-week. For your enjoyment, here is a ten-second clip of the spear-guy:

Now it was my turn to be impressed. This George character was something else, I decided.

The Bubs Interview: Question 1 Part 4

Site of our rustic Nova Scotia Christmas

Needless to say, when I woke up the next morning I was still crabby about Michael's verbal thrashing the night before. I felt somewhat trapped because I really didn't want to address my problem with Michael in front of George, or worse yet, do anything that would cause Michael to launch a new attack. Having temporarily forgotten how emotionally evolved I am, I bristled when Michael greeted me with a warm smile.

"Good morning," I replied curtly.

"How did you sleep?" Complicated question. The truth was that I didn't sleep well at all because I was so angry. However, since I had already been unable to sleep because of the high emotions, I was simultaneously able to enjoy the sound of George's loud snoring during a large portion of the night. In my temporary emotionally unevolved state, I took the easy way out and blamed my poor night of rest on George.

"I couldn't sleep through all that fucking snorning," I announced, as if randomly acting like a bitch was going to solve anything.

I still feel bad that I said that, especially since it was not George's fault that I couldn't sleep that night. Worse yet, as I found out years later, is the fact that George actually overheard me say it. And not being one to pass up the opportunity for a good guilt trip, he still finds occasions to bring it up to this day.

"Oh, that's terrible," Michael replied. "Why don't you reserve a separate room for the trip back so that you can sleep better," he suggested, genuinely trying to be helpful.

"Whatever," I grumbled as I collected my belongings and headed out to the car.

When Michael and George were ready, we went back to the diner for breakfast. Not surprisingly, it was a fairly quiet meal during which I remained mostly silent. I'm sure George was thinking I was just one of those crabby morning characters, the kind that grunts and barks out orders until an appropriate level of caffeination is reached.

After we were done eating, George retreated to the restroom again while Michael and I went out to the car. As he sat down in the driver's seat, Michael started to make some kind of joke about not knowing how to operate the automatic door-unlock button. I decided enough was enough. I looked him right in the face and spoke my mind.

"I did not appreciate the way you spoke to me last night. You owe me an apology."

"You're right," he replied. "I'm sorry."

"You were out of control."

"Yes, I'm sure I was. And you would know more than most people how to spot that kind of behavior," he added, obviously referring to various members of my somewhat colorful immediate family.

"Yes, I would. And you were."

"Again, I'm sorry." I appreciated that Michael just laid his apology out there without trying to blame his behavior on the fact that he'd been feeling sickly most of the trip.

"Ok." As Michael started up the car I decided things were going to be all right.


*****************************************************

We rode a ferry from St. John to Digby, Nova Scotia, and we sat in the cafeteria drinking coffee and chatting during the most of the three hour crossing. The weather was wonderful outside - only a slight wintery chill through the early December morning sunshine, and the waters were still and calm. Good thing, as I'm known in some circles for my occasional short yet violent bouts of seasickness.

When the ferry had reached its destination, we got into the car for the final leg of our journey: a two hour car ride from Digby to our friend Timothy's house on the southwest coast of the province. We enjoyed the rustic beauty of the drive through the western half of Nova Scotia. "It looks like Wisconsin," I stated repeatedly, without adding that any rustic place with a lot of coniferous trees reminds me of Wisconsin.

"Yeah, well remember, we're not headed into any lap of luxury. Timothy's house is pretty spartan," Michael reminded us.

"Sounds like fun," George and I both replied. After a while we arrived at Timothy's house, a charming fisherman-style cottage right on the water. The white paint was peeling in most places and some of the shrubbery looked like it could use a good pruning, but otherwise the house looked fine.

Greeting us warmly, Timothy ushered us inside with our bags and provisions. The first room we entered was the kitchen, a large open square with the four walls painted various colors and an oblong table alongside a set of frosty windows. In the corner nearest the table sat a cast iron wood burning stove.

"The whole place is heated by wood," Timothy noted. "I've got one stove here and one in the front room. The heat travels upstairs to the bedrooms through these ducts in the ceiling." He pointed to the kitchen ceiling "duct" above the stove, which was really just a large open hole into the room upstairs.

"I hope he doesn't have any toddlers crawling around up there," I thought, summoning every inch of my willpower not to start in with the charred baby jokes, which I figured would never be appropriate before cocktail hour anyway. Timothy directed us into the next room, a small living area furnished with another wood stove, an armchair, a non-functioning old fashioned parlor organ, and a tiny bed in the corner nearest the stove. A large woodpile sat just opposite the bed on the facing wall.

"This stove heats this room and the two front bedrooms," Timothy noted. "That bed used to belong to one of my friend's kids. He outgrew it by the time he turned 10, so I moved it in here as a daybed and an extra sleeping space for when I have a lot of company." I could see what he meant; the bed couldn't have been more than 20 inches wide.

"I'll sleep there!" George announced. "That way I can get up in the night and feed the stove so that the rest of you can stay warm." How magnanimous of him, I thought, especially considering that it would also probably be the warmest spot in the house. We were heading into late afternoon; the sunlight had grown dim, and I sensed a distinct chill in the air as if winter were preparing to beat down on us right through the walls of Timothy's rustic seaside cottage.

It was definitely going to be a cozy Christmas.

Katelah meemish redux

The charmingly talented Katie Schwartz is at it with the memes again. I like these random ones, so hell, I'll play. Here's eight random things about me for the enjoyment of my Gentle Readers. Enjoy the gawker slowdown.

1. I've always hated the word "balls" in reference to the male anatomy. I find that word to be incredibly vulgar. I don't know why.

2. Not a big fan of nipples either- the word or the real things, male or female. I assume this is because I wasn't breast fed. Oh, and if you touch mine, you die. I mean it.

3. I got fired from a job for drinking. It was only a summer job while I was in college, but I like to lead with that first sentence because it makes a bigger impact.

4. I was a goody-two-shoes namby-pants sometimes as a kid. One time when I was about 11 a kid rode up to me on his bike when I was out in front of my house. He stopped and said "Hi, do you know anyone who would like to fuck? Or do you know anyone who would like to buy pot?" I freaked out, said "I can't talk to you!" and ran into the house. I tried to tell my mom what happened but got hung up trying to explain what the kid had said without actually saying "fuck" to my mom. She kept trying to decipher what I was talking about until I gave up and went to my room.

5. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and become convinced I'm going to die soon, and I start to freak out about it, wondering if it's a premonition. But I think it's only because I've been surrounded by so much death the past few years.

6. I have a theory that there is no middle ground on black licorice for 99.9% of the population. People either love it or hate it.

7. I secretly hate everyone who has ever interviewed me and then not offered me a job, but I don't feel the same way about those who have turned me down romantically.

8. The first time I was dumped as an adult sent me into such a tailspin of depression that I feared for my own life. I sought professional help and cleared out all sorts of crazy though, so it ended up being a good thing. Then the next time I got dumped I expected it to happen again but it didn't, which was proof to myself that I had healed sufficiently.

Please play, Gentle Readers. Post your eight things and remember to make them dirty.

The Bubs Interview: Question 1 Part 3

After breakfast we jumped back into the car to resume our long journey to Canada.

Having just completed my first semester of law school, I was eager as a bee to read a few books for sheer pleasure instead of having to slog through a lot of really boring texts. I opened my knapsack in the back seat and examined a few of my choices: Geek Love, a book Mindy gave me which chronicles the lives of a circus freak family (a must read for you, Bubs, if you haven't already); The Shipping News, which takes place in Newfoundland, but which I figured was close enough to Nova Scotia to suit the ambiance; and David Sedaris's anthology Barrel Fever which, because it contains the story of "The Santaland Diaries," is a customary holiday read for me.

"Would you guys like me to read aloud The Santaland Diaries as is my annual holiday tradition?" I asked.

"What is that?" they both replied.

"A story by David Sedaris. You've never heard of it?"

They both replied that they had not. So, I opened up my dog-eared volume of Sedaris's short essays and started in on his highly amusing tale of his experiences working as a Christmas elf at Macy's. I began to read aloud. "Working as an elf in Macy's SantaLand means being at the center of the excitement...."

George and Michael positively howled as I made my way through this hilarious story of Sedaris's elfly trials and tribulations which include everything from dealing with pox covered children, to enduring the abuse of an African-American mother who complained that the black Santa wasn't black enough, to assisting a little girl without a nose.

"Oh my god, that was hysterical!" George exclaimed when I was done. "You read that so well - you must have practiced it for years!"

"No, but I have heard him read it aloud many times on NPR. I can't believe you've done without it at Christmastime for so long," I replied. I think George smiled broadly for the remainder of our vacation.


*******************************

It was a long trip that day as we drove all the way to Saint John, New Brunswick, where we found a roadside motel room to sleep in for the night. We unloaded our essentials and went in search of dinner.

"Do you think they have poutine in New Brunswick?"

"What is poutine?" George asked.

"You've never had a poutine?" I replied incredulously. "You're in for a real treat. It's basically a mound of french fries covered in gravy and then smothered under melted cheese. It's a Canadian specialty, or at least in Quebec. It's fabulous."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Michael said. He wasn't feeling well for most of the trip, which made him more than slightly cantankerous a lot of the time.

"Well, it sounds, um, interesting," George said, trying to be diplomatic.

The menu of the diner where we settled in for dinner sadly did not feature poutine, although they did have some other Canadian delicacy involving fried meat which I tried but was not impressed with. We were all tired anyway.

After dinner George got up to use the restroom, while Michael and I went out to warm up the car. Michael sat down behind the wheel and I went over to the passenger's side. My door was locked.

"Unlock the door please," I said.

"I'm trying to. I think it's stuck," he replied. I couldn't see what he was doing because it was very dark outside.

"Did you press the automatic 'unlock' button? I think it is supposed to unlock all four doors at once."

"YES I PRESSED 'UNLOCK'! WHAT AM I, SOME KIND OF FUCKING MORON? JESUS CHRIST!" He totally lit into me. "GOD DAMNIT, DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW HOW TO UNLOCK A FUCKING CAR DOOR?" He was literally screaming.

I was stunned. I knew Michael could be a crabby pants and that he wasn't feeling well, but this went well beyond the limit of acceptable behavior. Once the door finally opened I got into the back seat and just bit my tongue. I wasn't sure how to respond to his sudden upbraiding, as if there were any appropriate response at all, and besides, I saw George approaching and I didn't want to get into any kind of discussion in front of him.

Instead, I did the only reasonable thing which was to take out my passive-aggressive card and remain as silent as possible for the rest of the evening. When we got back to the motel, I promptly unpacked my sleeping attire, brushed my teeth and got into one of the three beds.

"Are you going to sleep now?" Michael and George both asked me.

"Yes, but you two can stay up and do whatever you want. You won't bother me." I closed my eyes and turned my back to them. I was majorly pissed.

The two of them sat up for a while and chatted. To add insult to injury, Michael just acted as normal as pie, as if he hadn't twenty minutes prior verbally abused me without so much as a whisper of an apology afterward. I felt it was going to be a long, long trip, and I dreaded whatever was to follow.

Haiku from Poor George

After reading the first installment of the Bubs Interview, Poor George composed the following haiku:

Cutie at the door

The Frango Mints tossed aside

Never forgiven.

The Bubs Interview: Question 1 Part 2

After an unreasonable delay, we now continue where we left off a few weeks ago.

*************

After dinner I offered to help with the dishes, but George graciously refused my request. Thank God, because I didn't really want to do them anyway. Instead, Johnny told me to come with him into the sitting room again.

"Here, I give you Lucky Money, one from me and one from my wife. It for good luck." He handed me two small red envelopes, each containing a dollar bill. The Chinese usually hand them out to their friends and family during Chinese New Year, but sometimes at other times of the year too, such as when a new friend visits your house for the first time. I thought it was really sweet.

"I tired now. You go downstairs."

I thanked Johnny and Mama Gin for the hospitality once again, and went down to talk to my cousin, who was packing for our big road trip which was to start early the next morning.


**************************************************

We arose at the crack of dawn and loaded George's car with provisions to take up to Nova Scotia, where we would be spending Christmas with my cousin's friend Timothy, who had a house on the shore. Michael had warned me the house was quite "rustic," and that we needed to bring a lot of stuff, most notably warm clothing. I was really looking forward to it - it all sounded so charming.

When we were all packed, we got into George's large Pontiac Grand Am and set off.

"Wow, a New Yorker who has a car and drives," I noted.

"Well, he just learned to drive a few months ago. This is his first car. We'll have to keep a close eye on him," Michael replied. It turns out that Michael was quite serious about that part. He henpecked and back-seat drove on George the entire trip, to a level of obnoxiousness that would have gotten him bludgeoned to death if he'd tried it on me. Admirably, George had the patience of a saint with him and rarely gave any response at all.

Somewhere in Connecticut we stopped at a roadside diner for a spot of breakfast. When the check arrived, I took it and said "I will buy breakfast. It looks like you guys have already bought a lot of provisions for us." I was referring to the many bags of groceries and dry goods we had loaded into the car earlier that morning.

George smiled. Little did I know about the Asian propensity for check grabbing; often if you dine with a Chinese, they will tackle you to the ground before letting you pick up the check. Which can be quite annoying at times because you know that a lot of it is all a show. They don't really want to pay all the time; they just want to appear as if they do. And if you don't make some sort of effort to fight them back for the check, they get annoyed eventually. Not that we Midwesterners don't have our own little passive-aggressive etiquette games, but still. We tend not to be big check grabbers.

George didn't fight me for the check, yet I had no idea that simply picking up a breakfast tab would make such a good impression on him. Finally, I had done something right, even if I didn't know it yet.

Mojo missing

Hello again Gentle Readers,

Just another note to say I'm still here. But my writing mojo has taken a short vacation, so y'all are just going to have to wait for my Poor George sequel, as well as the rest of the Bubs interview.

Min's dad is still hanging on, though it looks like we're getting closer to a resolution. I'm glad he has all his family around him.

My job as a Strategic Sales Executive is sucking the very life force out of me. The other day I made yet another brilliant career move by telling our vice president, in front of all my colleagues, "I can't do anything about these ridiculous numbers so I simply decided I wouldn't worry about them." Those kinds of comments are usually reserved for the independently wealthy who wouldn't care if they were fired. The room went silent for a few moments, and then the VP said "well it's good that you choose something to focus on and then do it." Of course, he may not be aware that what I focus on most is chronicling the annoying things my sales reps do and say to me.

After my Chicago meetings I stopped in on my parents for approximately 20 hours, and realized I had not seen them since our disastrous vacation last summer. My, how time flies when you're dysfunctional.

Love,
CP

Still here

Gentle Readers,
Thank you for checking in via comments and emails. I promise I will resume my wildly entertaining stories very soon. Have been doing a lot of travel for work and personal reasons.

Please send your best wishes to Melinda June as she tends to her father during his last days of a long illness.

CP

New Project

There is a sad phenomenon in life where certain parents, who are otherwise perfectly normal people, choose one child from their nest and decide to abuse him or her horribly, even while being regular old parents to all the other kids. I read a few autobiographical books written by Dave Pelzer, who suffered such abuse from his mother, and boy is it a sad story. Not to mention gawker slowdown in the extreme.

I've been thinking about this lately for some odd reason. In the end I decided that since I have no kids and no plans to get any, and since I couldn't possibly bring myself to be mean to a cat, that I would have to unleash the abusive side of my personality on a fellow blogger instead of a child.

Therefore, one day soon I will choose a regular visitor to CPW and start to run roughshod over him or her like there's no tomorrow, while being sweet as pie to everyone else.

Who's in? Would you like to be the recipient of my irrational and unprovoked wrath? Let me know in the comments, and we'll see if we can't get started.

The Bubs Interview: Part One

Chicagoland cop and freak fetishist Bubs has turned the tables on me after my award-winning interview with him last month. As is the custom these latter days, Bubs provided me five interview questions. Today we start with Question Number One.



Bubs: I found several mentions of a character known as "Poor George" throughout the CPW archives, but I'm not sure when, exactly, he appeared in your life. Did you two, as they say in Hollywood, "meet cute"? Or is it just a boring story that you don't want to bother us with?

CP: Although he is certainly a character to speak of, Poor George is not simply a figment of our collective imagination as some of you may expect, but is in fact a real person who lives and breathes. Whether he is a bona fide child of Mama Gin or, as he claims, the long-lost heir to one noble Anastasia Beaverhausen is still a matter in dispute.

I don't know what it means to "meet cute," although I can tell you that PG and I were "properly introduced" by my cousin Michael - which is probably the first "proper" thing that whore has ever done in his life. Our heartwarming tale begins at Christmastime in 1997, shortly after I had moved to the East Coast to attend law school in Washington DC. Michael had invited me to come up to New York to go on a road trip with him and his friend George for the holidays. I graciously accepted.

After my last final exam at Georgetown, I rode up to New York on the train and stayed overnight with a former flame of mine, where we succumbed to temptation and rekindled our extremely stale romance just for that evening. What can I say; the cocktails at dinner were strong.

The next day I hung out in the East Village where my friend lived, did some sightseeing, and in the late afternoon took the subway out to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn where Michael's friend George lived. This was my first time in Brooklyn, and I enjoyed my walk from the subway to his house where I passed various groups of people speaking their thick Brooklynese: "Whaddya tawlkin 'bout?" and that sort of thing. Charming.

I approached the brownstone that George shared with his parents - he in one apartment and the parents in another. I had no idea which apartment was his, so I just picked a doorbell and rang it. A nice looking Chinese-American man opened the door.

"Hi, are you George?"

He looked at me kind of weird and then said "I think so."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know which bell was yours. I hope I didn't disturb your parents."

"It doesn't matter. God, you sure brought enough luggage," he said, referring to the two reasonably sized black bags at my side. "Come on in. I'll take one of these for you. Here, you carry the heavy one." He thrust my rolling suitcase at me and proceeded into the dark entryway.

"We have to go down these stairs. Watch yourself, some of them are a little tricky."

I saw what he was talking about as we started down the narrowest staircase I had ever seen. I almost fell forward three times due to the extreme downward slant of several of his steps.

"Nice place you have here," I said as we entered a long narrow room almost completely devoid of natural light. Probably because he had a 26 inch TV squarely blocking one of the only windows in the room.

"Take your shoes off. I just installed these tiles and I don't need you getting black streaks all over them."

"Ok." Reasonable enough request, although I might have simply suggested removing the shoes rather than throwing about thinly veiled pre-offense accusations. I opened one of my bags and extracted a nicely wrapped box, which only I knew contained delicious Frango Mints from Marshall Fields that my mother had sent me for Christmas.

"Here George, this is for you to thank you for your hospitality." He took the package, briefly glanced at it and tossed it down on top of the radiator.

"Thanks," he replied. "I'm busy making dinner for my father. You can come up to my parents' kitchen if you want." I complied, and followed George back upstairs.

We entered his parents' apartment and went into the kitchen where my cousin was sitting at a small round table with George's father, Johnny. George walked over to a large cooking stove with an enormous wok built right into it and resumed his dinner preparations.

"Georgie cook like me!" his father said proudly. "He don't cook like mother. She terrible. Everything he learn, because of me!" He cackled loudly, and I decided I liked Johnny immediately. He got up from his seat and said "come, you follow me, I show you my house."

He hobbled into a living room just off the apartment's kitchen. "This my wife, Georgie mother. Her name 'How Gin.'" He was referring to a diminutive woman sitting on the end of a crumpled futon sofa. She appeared to stare at a blank TV screen about five feet in front of her.

"Hello, my name is Tom. It's very nice to meet you." Mama Gin looked up slightly confused and limply accepted my outstretched hand.

"Where you mother and father?" she said.

"They're at home, in Chicago. I'm just here on vacation." She made no reply, and resumed staring into the blank screen.

Johnny ushered me back into a carpeted sitting room near the front of the house. "Here, I show you picture. Last year we celebrate, we marry fifty year." He opened a photo album containing pictures of an elaborate banquet with Mama Gin and himself seated at a large round table surrounded by ten other people and mounds of delicious looking food. Mama Gin had on makeup in the picture and looked somewhat normal. Boy was I in for a surprise.

"This restaurant, I know them well. I deliver food to them years ago. They do very good banquet for me." He continued to turn the pages, offering random comments to describe various photos.

"You know, I have cancer. Prostate cancer. But it no get me. I a survivor!" Johnny laughed again, beaming with enthusiasm and energy.

"Well I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad you have George here to help you with that."

"Right. Now, I rest. You go talk Georgie now."

I went back into the kitchen. George had gone back down to his apartment to get something, so I sat down at the table to talk to my cousin.

"Careful, don't spend too much time talking to his parents. They're really weird," Michael said.

"Weird how?"

"Just weird, you'll see. How was your trip?" George returned from downstairs. Michael and I continued talking to catch up, making an effort to include George in the conversation. I told them about finishing up my final exams, riding the train up to New York, writing all my Christmas cards on the train and about the amorous reunion with my old friend the night before. George snorted and remained silent.

When dinner was prepared, George called his parents into the kitchen to eat with us. Johnny appeared in the doorway, unaccompanied by Mama Gin. "Georgie mother no eat now. She eat later. She never like eat with people." He sat down with us.

George placed a small bowl of rice in front of each of us, and then at the center of the table a chicken and vegetable stir fry, a plate of sauteed leafy greens and a large poached ocean bass covered with ginger and scallion. My mouth watered at the mere sight.

George and Johnny carefully instructed Michael and me on the procedure for eating the fish, which consisted of reaching onto the serving plate with your chopsticks and using them to loosen the fleshy white meat before transferring it to your own bowl of rice.

"George, this is absolutely delicious!" I exclaimed, reveling in the strange and wonderful new flavors. "How on earth did you learn to make a fish like this?"

"I tell you, from me!" Johnny replied. "I have to teach him everything. Mother not cook." He giggled again before sucking an entire stalk of juicy greens into his mouth, barely assisted by his chopsticks. "Georgie cooking very good. He learn from me."

We proceeded through the remainder of George's wonderful meal. At one point I dropped one of my chopsticks on the floor, and picked it up to wipe it off. George grabbed both chopsticks from me and threw them into the sink. "You never replace just one chopstick, it's bad luck." He reached over into a drawer and handed me a fresh pair. "Here, and stop eating all the fish. Save some for the rest of us, please."

He was cute, but he sure had a mouth. He also didn't seem to care for me very much.



to be continued...

Mrs. Lowmuff

Through junior high I attended school with a bunch of smarties. My theory is that I, being borderline retarded, was thrown in with the purportedly intelligent kids in hope that some of their brains might rub off on me.

One of our resulting privileges from the "smart" label was that we were always a year ahead of everyone else in math. For example, whereas most people took algebra in ninth grade, we took it in eighth.

My eighth grade algebra teacher, Mrs. Lowmuff, was a sadist. She had her reasons for being a total bitch to us, most notably because she had suffered severe back injuries in a car crash which left her crabbier than hell most days. Understandable. Yet not easy for those trying to learn through the hazy mist of her wrath.

Some days were worse than others for Mrs. Lowmuff. One time we suffered her pain along with her for several weeks in a row, when every day she would hobble up to her desk, sit down and say something like "don't any of you dare start with me today. The first stupid question I hear, you'll be out of here so fast your head will spin."

Then she would tell us she was in too much pain to stand up to write on the chalkboard, and would proceed to do so while seated and facing the class, reaching up over her head to scratch out her notes. The result would invariably be a series of unintelligible scribbles that no one dared question. Remember, this was back in the good old days when teachers still received a modicum of respect and cooperation from their pupils.

One time Mrs. Lowmuff attempted to teach us an entire two-week unit in this lovely style. At the end of each unit we were given a written exam, and lo and behold, the ENTIRE CLASS failed this particular test. I'll never forget the verbal thrashing we received from Mrs. Lowmuff when she handed back the papers.

"You all make me sick. From the results of this test one would doubt any of you even know what algebra is. Thanks to you lazy kids, I'm going to have to spend two weeks of my life re-teaching this entire unit. You'll all be lucky even to try to pass the exam I'm going to have to give you at the end of the school year. Good luck, fools. Now let's get started, and if you don't understand something you had damn well better open your mouths."

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. I also admired how she avoided any personal culpability in our failing.

On less heated occasions, Mrs. Lowmuff seemed to take particular pleasure in tormenting me. More than once she made public reference to my particular lack of ability in her chosen field of academia, and whenever she called on me she would say things like "Thomas, please read aloud for the class the first paragraph on page 87. You can read, can't you? At least I've heard rumors to that extent."

One time I lent a book on cat intelligence to my favorite teacher, Mrs. S. One day Mrs. S. said "Tom, I hope you don't mind, but I was reading your book in the teacher's lounge, and Mrs. Lowmuff asked if she could borrow it. I gave it to her; is that ok?"

Of course I wasn't going to begrudge my beloved Mrs. S. anything, but part of my soul died knowing I was going to have to make any extra contact with Mrs. Lowmuff.

Several weeks later I approached Mrs. Lowmuff to ask if she had my book.

"What book?" she replied, her raspy voice free of warmth.

"It's a book on testing your cat for intelligence. Mrs. S. said she lent it to you."

"Oh, that. Yes, I have it."

"Have you finished reading it?"

"Yes, it was very cute."

"If you're finished, may I have it back?"

"Yes."

"Ok." I waited. Mrs. Lowmuff just sat there, no movement, no reply.

"I'm sorry, but do you have the book with you?"

"Yes, it's right here in my desk drawer."

"Great. Can I have it?"

"Yes." She smirked and made no attempt to retrieve my book.

"Ok." I paused. "Please?"

"Yes." Still nothing but a grin. At least she was looking more pleased for a change.

Utterly confused, I slowly got up and returned to my seat.

I'm telling you, there was something wrong with this woman, and I suspect it went beyond her back pain.



Several weeks later I decided to try again. I approached her and asked if she still had the book in her desk.

"Yes, it's still here."

"Well, can I have it?"

"Yes."

I was beyond knowing what to do.

"Well, I've been up here twice to ask for the book. You tell me you have it right here, but you don't seem to want to give it to me."

"That's not true. You can have it."

"Ok."

Nothing.

"When can I have it?"

"That depends. When do you want it?"

"How about right now?"

"Ok." She opened the drawer and handed me the book. "Thomas, you need to learn to communicate more clearly. How was I supposed to know WHEN you wanted the book? You never told me when you wanted it until right now."

???

Maybe she had a point, but still. When I walk up to a food service counter, I guess I'm supposed to say "I'd like a burger, fries and a large Coke - RIGHT NOW, please." I never got the memo explaining that a time frame on expectations must be clearly established upon every possible human interaction.


At the end of the school year we had to pass a final exam in algebra in order to proceed directly to geometry during our freshman year of high school. I studied my ass off for that test; no way in hell did I want to go through beginning algebra a second time.

Mrs. Lowmuff was required to have a private conference with each student to deliver the test score and explain why or why not each student would graduate to the next level. This is what she told me:

"Thomas, you have surprised me. You passed this exam with flying colors. I had serious doubts about you, and even wondered at times what you were doing in this class. You don't always seem to have a lot going on upstairs. But apparently, you have learned something in my class, unless of course you cheated. Congratulations."


I'm genuinely sorry for all the physical pain she suffered, and actually I admire the creative ways she found to take it out on her students.

Nonetheless, what a bitch!

Of deep analysis, art and rhubarb pie

I don't know what it is about some of my blogger friends like Dale, Old Lady and Megan, but all three of them frequently write things that remind me of topics I need to post about myself.

Megan recently shared some of her students' artwork which reminded me of my old friend Mariane.

Mariane is a fabulous lady I met at a party and became friends with a number of years ago. At the time we met she was about 90 years old and in perfect health, except for being almost totally deaf from old age. Other than that she wasn't even on any medication.

Mariane is a Jewish-German Holocaust survivor who moved to New York in the early 1950s, where she still has the same apartment on Riverside Drive. Her rent is currently in the neighborhood of $300, and I once proposed marriage to her in a shameless attempt to get my hands on that rent-controlled lease. She just giggled, not realizing I was completely serious.

On the day we met we were discussing general subjects when she began telling me about her former career.

"I vorked vith cheeldren," she said.

"What did you do with the children?!!!" I shouted.

"Vaaat?"

"The children!!!! What did you do with the children?!!!!"


(Ok, you get the effect of the deafness....basically everything had to be screamed and repeated multiple times.)


"I deed art zerapy vith zem," Mariane replied.

"Art therapy? What is that exactly?"

"Ven zees cheeldren vere hafing problems, I vould meke zem draw me a peecture. Zen I vould know vat vaz zer problems."

"Oh, that sounds interesting."

"Yes, eet vas very revealing. I vould alvays start vith hafing zem draw a peecture of zemselves so zat I vould know ekzactly who zey vere."

"Wow, that sounds kind of scary. Does it actually work?" I asked.

"Vait just von meenute," she said as she began rifling through a desk in our host's study. She found a pad of paper and a pencil, which she shoved at me assertively. "Draw me a peecture of yourself," she said.



Now this made me nervous. I have always been a terrible drawer, barely able to make a straight line let alone render a likeness of anything remotely resembling anything in the natural world. Plus, I was terrified that my drawing would somehow reveal the darkest side of my personality, a place the wisest among you know better than to visit more than once.

But I decided I was up for the challenge. I sat myself in a chair in the corner of the room and set to work, carefully drawing a picture of the man I envisioned myself to be. I took special care to make myself look as happy and well adjusted as my borderline-retarded hands would allow. I made sure to draw a big goofy smile on my face, and did my best to make my eyes sparkle. All that happy face kind of stuff.

After about twenty minutes I handed the pad back to Mariane. "Be kind to me please. I'm really bad at drawing," I implored. But she probably didn't even hear me as she had already begun studying my picture in earnest.

About five minutes later Mariane, without looking up from the pad, made her first pronouncement:



"Deesgusted vith life."



I literally felt the hope drain out of my face; so much for my happy-Tom cartoon rendering. I became defensive immediately.



"Disgusted with life?! What do you mean 'disgusted with life'?! I'm not disgusted, I'm happy! I'm content! I have a good life!! How could you say that about me?!!" I was really quite bothered.



"Meking a compromise."



She only half mutterd this second pronouncement as she continued to study my drawing. I felt a small bout of hysteria begin to rise in my chest.



"Compromise?! What does that mean?!! I don't know what you mean by 'compromise'!" I was yelling so that she could hear me, but as I was also clearly upset, people started to poke their heads into the room to see what was going on. "

"And I still don't understand this 'disgusted' business!! What is it about my drawing that would make you say such a terrible thing?!!"



She finally looked up from the pad and peered at me critically above her reading glasses.



"Do you hafe flat feet?"



At which point our host entered the room to break up our little private party and to call us to the dinner table. This was probably for the best, considering my growing agitation.



I tried to question Mariane later about her analysis of my drawing, but she either couldn't hear me or decided we had discussed it enough. It could be that she didn't want to upset me further, but my preferred theory is that she cast aside her doubts about me once she tasted the homemade rhubarb crisp I had brought to the party for dessert. Not to brag or anything, but in my mind a good piece of sweet rhubarb pie is medicine enough to cure most of the world's ills. And I have a certain way with the rhubarb.

So let's just leave it that Mariane felt my love of life shine through my rhubarb pie. At least I hope that's what she was thinking as she wolfed down two full servings before picking up the plate to lick it clean.

All the same, I don't believe I have attempted to draw anything since that day. So much for my art therapy.

Jerry says:

If I weren't in Hell right now, I'd be reading
Coaster Punchman's World!

Declaration of the CP: Word Verification

I hereby proclaim that everyone should remove Word Verification from their blog comments section. I am over it.

Love,
CP

A poll for my Gentle Readers

I was recently slumming over at Write Procrastinator's blog, joyfully cringing as I read about his experience with some of life's more awkward moments.

Write's heartwarming tale reminds me that I need to take a poll of my Gentle Readers. The following actually happened to me and my friend Martha, and it's imperative I find out which of us should be more offended.

My senior year in college I studied abroad during the first semester, so there was a mad scramble to find housing for my spring semester back on campus. I ended up in a dorm room in a cool old building on campus widely known for its ample supply of drugs. Lucky me, I wound up as a roommate to one of the dorm's dealers. On one level it was convenient, but on many other levels it was highly annoying; visitors traipsing through at all hours and that sort of thing.

Although I found him repugnant, my friend Martha was one of those gals who dug the bad boys, so of course she took an immediate shine to my roommate, Roland. At first Roland and I didn't have much to say to each other, so he didn't really know who my friends were. Which was nice for Martha because it enabled her to stalk him.

One day Roland came back to the room and said "I swear to God there is a woman following me around campus" and proceeded to share an elaborate tale of how he took all these winding paths to see if she would lose him - and she didn't. A few days after that, Martha dropped by our room for a few minutes when we were both there, and when she left Roland said "my God, that's my stalker! You know her? She's hot!"

Well, I thought, this will be very interesting.

We lived together in that dorm room for the next five months, and while I couldn't stand a lot of his drugged out friends, he and I actually got on quite nicely. Even started to hang out a little bit toward the middle of the semester, at which point I decided to facilitate relations between him and Martha.

One night I organized an outing to the town's only bar and made sure that both Roland and Martha would be there. I kept finding ways to include the two of them in any conversation I was having, and by the end of the night they were getting quite chummy. I made plans to sleep over in another friend's room.

The two of them carried on in some fashion for a month or so, although it never grew serious. They were just having a good time, an endeavor I wholeheartedly supported.

********************

Flash forward. About a year later, Martha and I had graduated and were both living in Minneapolis where we still hung out together a lot. One day she and I made a trek down to St. Olaf for some reason that I can't remember right now.

We were walking around campus, and decided to stop in the student center for a refreshment. Lo and behold, who did we run into but our old friend Roland!

"Roland!" we both exclaimed. "Hi!!! How have you been? What's going on? Are you graduating soon?!!!"

"Hi..." he said rather tentatively. "Yeah.... things are going fine.....how are you guys, um......?"

Martha and I looked at each other, looked at Roland and then back at each other.



He didn't remember us. Neither one of us. He lived with me for five months, and fucked her for a month, yet had no idea who we were.



"Roland, remember me? Your old roommate?" I said.

"OOOOOH, yeah, that's right, in Ytterboe, right? I know I know your name....."

"Tom."

"YEAH, TOM! Hey bud, how's it going? What have you been up to?"

"And I'm sure you remember this lovely young woman," I said. I wasn't going to make this easy for him.

"Oh yeah, it's.... it's... M......M something......"

"Martha," she replied, flatly.

"Yeah, Martha baby! How you doing, girl?"

"Fine. It was very nice to run into you. Tom, we do need to get back on the road now."

"Ok. See you Roland." We turned to leave.


Martha was fuming. While I was not fuming, I did find it a bit insulting that I slept in a bed next to him and talked to him every day for five months straight, only one year prior - and he had no idea who I was.

Martha thought that was nothing compared to the fact that she had sex with him at least a dozen times and he had no idea who she was.

We then debated at length as to who should be more offended. Most of my girlfriends started off saying she should be, but when I laid out the facts (five months of day-to-day vs. one month of passion) they were on the fence.



So the question is now put to you, Gentle Readers. Who should be more offended here? CP or Martha?