It’s been awhile since our hearing impaired friend Manuel gave Henry a call, so I prompted him to do just that this morning. However, I am left disappointed as usual by the laziness of these IP Relay operators! They promise our deaf friends that yes, they will pass on these important messages to the chosen parties, BUT THEY ONLY READ WHAT THEY WANT TO. Today, Operator #RO900730F skipped most of the meat of Manuel’s message to Henry. You may have a skill for slick annunciation, RO900730F, but I’m on to you and your half-ass whoring ways.

Connecting…….
Registering…
Placing call…
Connected at May 1, 2011 11:35:33 AM
IP RELAY RO900730F
Special Instructions:Please leave a message if necessary
PLS HD DIALING
412 605 2143RING 1
2
3
4
5
(ANS MACH)
(recording to relay)

please leave message GA

(what message would you like to leave qq) GA

Henry, you left your email open last night at my house GA
and I saw the pictures. GA

(THK U REDIALING PLS HOLD)

if you really need to have strange men send you images of their genitalia GA

RING 1
2
3
4
5

then I suggest you find a new señor. I will be over later to retrieve my things GA

(ANS MACH)

please have my Justin Bieber shirt laundered and ready GA

(LEAVING MSG)

you can mail me my finger nail clippings GA
goodbye GA

(MSG LEFT)
(ANOTHER CALL QQ) GA

no thanks. I’m in mourning. GA
goodbye GA

Disconnected at May 1, 2011 11:39:02 AM

Now, listen to the recording and join me in my self-righteous court as Manuel pens a letter to the IP Relay company. We are appalled.

“Are you ever going to ask me?”

“Yeah,” Henry said, completely immune to my nuptial nagging by now.

“Do you even know when?” I prodded, arms crossed in petulance.

His affirmative answer seemed steeped in honesty, inspiring me to probe deeper.

“Is it going to be sometime in 2011?”

Henry said yes, and I screamed, “OMG ARE YOU GOING TO PROPOSE AT WARPED TOUR?”

He gave me a “don’t be stupid” smirk.

“But that would be so perfect,” I whined.

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “For YOU.”

Um, isn’t that the point?

Then I asked him if he planned on asking my dad for my hand (lol) but Henry reminded me that after we’ve lived together for ten years and spawned a child from our mutual hatred, my dad probably couldn’t care less either way.

Maybe by the time Henry finally puts a ring on it, Jonny Craig’s career will have collapsed upon itself faster than his veins and I can snag him to sing at our reception on the cheap.

The butterfly ring I’ve been wearing on my ring finger since I was 18 broke today. RING FINGER VACANCY! I’m going to hang up fliers everywhere.

Unless Henry wants to do something about it.

Personally, I think it’s a big fat motherfucking sign.

After I broke up with my boyfriend for Henry in 2001, one of the last things he said to me was, “Have fun drinking IC Light and listening to country music.

“

I’m assuming he was trying to insinuate that Henry is white trash, his only basis being that Henry is fourteen years older than me.

In these last ten years, I have not once brought an IC Light up to my lips (I’m a wino), and last I checked, there are no country bands playing at Warped Tour.

Nice try.

[It is not the opinion of this blog’s writer that the enjoyment of either of these things, separate or in tandem, makes the person partaking in such “white trash.”]

We were talking about George Benson the other day, Henry and I. Well, mostly just I was. I think I was making a painfully stretched comparison between a Dance Gavin Dance song and George Benson, and I’m sure it only made sense to my ear drums, as evidenced by the aghast look on Henry’s scruffy face.

“Seriously, this song could have been in Short Circuit 2,” I cried, pleading my case. And then, “George Benson always make me think of Joe (our ex-boss from the early 00’s).”

Henry snorted. Joe is a sore subject ’round these parts.

“I remember when he found out about us,” I said.

“He came into my office, shut the door and said, ‘Let’s have a little talk.’ I was sure I was getting fired.”

Henry and I did pretty good for awhile in the beginning, keeping our relationship as clandestine at work as a bi-racial love affair in the ’50s. Of course, I’d toe the line by making out with him in the break room. He’d always get so nervous and try unsuccessfully to push me away, but I’m too much of a harlot to get shooed away like some dung-caked horsefly.

I will never forget this one fateful night in October of 2001, Henry and I were on our way to a haunted house. At a red light, I sat in the passenger seat, holding Henry’s hand across the console, when I casually looked out the window. I made eye contact with the driver of the car next to us, and of course it would happen to be a co-worker, Jim.

Motherfucking Jim Landis.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and I flung Henry’s hand far away from me like it was the heroin-packed rectum of a corpse and a wagonful of DEA had sidled up next to me.

The light turned green and we sped away.

That Monday, I had to pull Jim aside and beg him not to tell. And especially since he was one of Joe’s Golden Boys, I was panicked and paranoid.

Joe eventually found out, albeit months later, which was where the absurd, but kind of cute I guess, Concerned Father chat stemmed from. It was the whole, “This man is much older than you and I don’t want to see you get hurt” spiel, which I guess I should have considered more seriously, on second thought. BECAUSE LOOK AT ME NOW.

“You know, our old landlord gave me the same talk, sat me right down in his office when I went up there and told him you were moving in with me,” I told Henry, remembering it with a certain fondness because that guy is dead now and he was such a great land lord. “I guess he wanted to make sure I had thought it through.”

“I wish someone would have had that talk with me,” Henry mumbled.

We were driving along peacefully, me talking a mile a minute about how excited I was to see Jonny Craig and Henry rolling his eyes accordingly, when it happened: Henry merged into the left lane in front of a black Lexus. This action was directly connected with the unleashing of a hornets nest into the Lexus owner’s asshole, which set off a murderous display of horn-honking and violently exaggerated swerving.

Henry was nowhere even close to cutting this guy off, and normally he would have let it go, but on this night he was already agitated. He was sick, going against his will to see five bands he hates, and now some rich bastard is having the nerve to spit testosterone balls at our meager Ford Focus.

So Henry started shouting (really lame and vanilla) insults back at this guy. With the windows down. It was embarrassing for me, because I like to think I’m pretty excelsior at the game of road rage. I felt like Henry took something away from me that night as he shat all over the art of vehicular war fare.

A few seconds later, the Lexus was passing us to the right. I swiveled in my seat to get a better view of the driver—who turned out to be a super old man—just as he raised the velvet curtain on his vulgar highway play.

He stretched out his mouth into a large, flapping “O” and then began pantomiming the most aggressive blow job I have ever seen, AND I HAVE SEEN A LOT OF BLOW JOBS. His eyes bulged out as if he was gagging himself on nothing but the sheer satisfaction of finally being provided with an opportunity to gesticulate something that he hasn’t had since that ‘Nam bullshit was going on.

Imagine there was an outtake from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure where someone gave Large Marge ecstasy and all she wanted to do was fellate fire hydrants.

That’s what it looked like. But you know, if Large Marge was your grandfather. Some little girl is probably sitting in his lap right now, completely unaware that her grandfather gesticulates lewdly to innocent drivers.

Go ahead, ask for that pony. But you should know that grandpa wants to lodge his weener in its mouth.

And while this old man’s mouth was practically being pried open with invisible speculum, his hand was pumping with such frenetic force—harder than the broads in the Shake Weight infomercials—like he was trying to paddle a canoe into his mouth. I don’t know how he wasn’t punching himself in the face. I really wanted to see him punch himself in the face.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. And I also couldn’t stop pointing and laughing. What else could I do? Feign cunnilingus? He probably would have wrecked.

We watched as he nearly took out two other cars in an attempt to merge into the right lane.

Henry was still swearing and saying things like, “HE’S PROBABLY ONE OF YOUR IDIOT LAWYERS!” (Because I own all of the lawyers at the Law Firm. And they’re obviously idiots for letting that happen.) This was making me laugh even harder, and my face was slick with giddy sweat tears.

“I bet he even took his dentures out for that!” I squealed through my crying giggles.

Henry made some agitated vocal-twist and bristled his moustache.

At a red light, Henry was checking his phone and saw one of my tweets about the debacle. “What’s the ‘universal sign of fellatio’?” he asked.

Are you fucking kidding me? This goddamn forty-five-year-old dumb ass was being serious. I had to act it out for him, which I guess isn’t too surprising because it is Henry after all, and we all know he hasn’t had much action of the adult variety in his life. Like, who would actually ever suggest something like that to him?

“Is that what he was doing? I didn’t even see.” He looked thoughtful for a second. “So, what…that guy wanted to blow me?” he asked, working out this difficult xxx Rubik’s Cube in his head.

Sure, that’s exactly it. He’s probably laying in a hospital bed right now, still thinking of blowing that big flanneled dick in the red Focus.

I predict Henry’s going to start cutting people off in traffic more often now.

Henry is sick now. And when Henry is sick, it’s all, “Just leave me alone! I need to rest!” and then he barricades himself in the bedroom and leaves the rest of us incompetent beings to stumble repeatedly into the wall like dying wind-up toys.

He came home from work early yesterday with preconceived notions of “resting,” but too bad I was having major blog issues (it was basically BROKEN-DOWN).

“Get down here and fix this!” I yelled up to him. “You can rest when you’re done.” And I said it in such a way that sent ice-cold claws grating down his back, so even though he acted all haughty when he stomped down the stairs, it was obvious that his manhood was cowering underneath his feverish flesh.

It’s sort of better now, back to its original jacked-up state, at least. My blog, not Henry. Last I bothered to check, he was still a suffering mess of chills and aches.

He better get stoked though, because tonight is the Dance Gavin Dance show, which I had scheduled off work for two months in advance. He was nasally complaining about this yesterday, because not only is he sick, but he absolutely abhors Dance Gavin Dance.

“This is so unfair how you do this to me,” he bitched in a way that immediately lopped two inches off his dick measurement.

“I’m going to wait until you’re sick and then make you go see someone you hate.”

“Go ahead,” I taunted, knowing this threat will never come to fruition because it involves spending money which Henry doesn’t enjoy doing unless it’s on bottles of Mountain Dew, computer parts and socks.

“Katy Perry!” he yelled, practically clapping his hands in delight. “I’m making you go see Katy Perry.

Front row seats.”

I couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of this. Erin Rachelle Kelly at a Katy Perry “concert.”

“That’s fine,” I played along. “I’ll start a fight and get kicked out.”

“Ooh, Katy Perry and PINK!” Henry went on, dreaming up some stupid scenario in his stupid head. “A night of positivity.” (I’m constantly ranting about how I hate Pink because she’s so fucking positive. Just what women need, more anthems.)

My luck, they’ll probably be on tour together this summer and Henry will win tickets from whatever pathetic radio station he guiltily listens to when I’m not in the car with him.

I was contacted through the mail last year by some ratings company asking me to fill out a short survey. Included in the envelope was a dollar, and apparently that’s enough to buy me off because I filled it out with zeal and sent it back the same day.

A week later, they sent me a thank you letter and a ten dollar bill. Now I can feed my child! I thought happily, hugging the crisp bill to my chest.

This happened again a few weeks ago, except instead of a survey to send back, it was conducted via phone. It only took about five minutes, and they sent me another ten dollar bill for my time.

Two weeks ago, another letter came from them but there was no money in it so I didn’t read it. However, Henry did and he informed me that I was selected to go to the next level in the world of media ratings. There was a pamphlet inside, explaining that there would be small cash awards at the end of each month, with a $50 bonus at the end of 90 months. Also, every weekend, I’d be entered in their sweepstakes. Henry only cared about this because in the literature it said that any household member ages 6 and up could participate and he was dying to be part of something great, I guess. He’s always trying so hard to keep up with me.

So he kept hounding me to call them and opt in for the both of us.

Now we have to wear these fucking pager-things on our person at all times, except while we’re sleeping. It picks up TV and radio signals (and probably bowel movements, too) and the longer we wear them, the more points we rack up which will determine if we’re eligible to be entered in the sweepstakes at the end of each week. The lady I spoke with asked what names I wanted on the devices, and it took every last ounce of my maturity to say “Henry” and not “Lola Sausagesucker” or “Peddy Filer.” He really owes me for that. It was a pretty big deal.

“We should just watch porn for two years straight. Really fuck with them,” I suggested to Henry, who gave me no argument on that one.

Henry and I rack up points while the device is off the charger. Of course this means I’m in heated competition with Henry. The problem is that he gets up for work around 3:30am so he clearly is wearing his device way longer than me, and the points reflect this. I’m really stressing myself out over it. I even goes as far as to throw myself at him in an intimate embrace, distracting him long enough for my hand to slip down to his pocket and unclip his device.

The other morning, I even forced myself to get up at the same time as him so I could take my own device off the charger and go back to bed with it.

AND HE STILL ACCUMULATED MORE POINTS THAN ME.

I only wore it to work once, on that first day. (It came with another $10, holla! Henry got $10 too though so now he thinks he’s a part of the club or something.) I felt so conspicuous though, like a drug dealer from the ’90s, so I eventually took it off and clipped it the side of my purse. Two days ago, I forgot to take it off when I got there and still had it clipped to my waistband, which made my shirt jut out as though I was pregnant with a pack of cigarettes. Keepin’ it classy as always. I caught it within my first hour at work, at least, and tossed it into my purse while muttering.

Meanwhile, Henry wears his with pride, like he WANTS people to notice it and think he’s an outdated weed-slinger. And he still has so many more points than me! I can’t stand it! It’s literally all I think about. I even cried about it the other day and screamed, “I QUIT!” which made Henry laugh and tell me I was sad. It’s easy to laugh when you’re WINNING.

“God help me if I ever win one of the sweepstakes,” Henry nervously laughed. “You’d probably kill me.”

Competition is pretty much what I excel at in life. I have little other talent.

I’m going to start wearing this thing on my person again and telling people it’s my organ transplant pager.

Get some sympathy out of this gig, you know?

Hello. I’m reposting this oldie from LiveJournal to remind Henry that, while I may currently have a crush on his old ass, THINGS CAN CHANGE. He could still LOSE ME.

I do crush easily, after all. (Seriously, I’m juggling about three of them right now. One of them might be yours.)

***

At Least It Wasn’t Chucky

October 2007

Last night, Henry and I kicked off the 2007 haunted house season with a VIP treatment at Castle Blood. I’ve been patronizing this haunt for quite literally the past twelve years of my life, so when Henry came home one day and bragged about his company scoring a promotional partnership with them for the season, I exalted on high. He got stacks and stacks of free passes out of the deal, too, which is fantastic because it regularly costs . This is why I’m always broke after October.

Henry embarrassed me by wearing his Freek Energy Drink t-shirt and managed to succeed in juxtaposing himself with all of the giant Freek ads every chance he got while we stood in line. An employee dressed as a mad scientist came over and slyly said, “Are you the man who dropped 100 cases of love on us?” and Henry puffed out his chest so everyone could see the logo and then the scientist gave him handfuls of Freek swag which made Henry happy.

“Wow! No one ever gave me the tattoos and magnets before!!” he exclaimed. He even wound up with two Freek highlighters by the end of the night. Congratulations! You just got a bunch of shit that you could have gotten from your office.

Then Henry rained free passes on the people in line with us and acted all ass-wounded when one of the little girls didn’t reciprocate by acting like he was Santa. That mustache freaks kids out, I keep telling him. Then the guy who runs the place came over and told the ticket guy to only send us in with the three people in front of us so that we could have a pleasant experience, sans the screaming obnoxious brats who polluted the line behind us. I was smug. Thanks for wearing your Freek shirt after all, Henry.

(You’re still a loser, though.)

I know you all think this post is going to be about how I loved/hated the haunted house or how Henry’s weener ended up in a wall-cranny or how I found the perfect coffin to be buried in, but really this is about the most intense and pure and real human connection I have ever (never?) had.

A guy walked past me as I stood in line. He was short; in his twenties; looked apathetic, like he’d rather be at a Magic tourney. Trailing closely behind him in a cacophonous bubble were two young kids whom he seemed unable to shake. My initial guess was that they were his siblings and he was forced into bringing them there. I didn’t think anything of him after that. A few minutes later, I glanced to my left and saw him again, but this time he was stationed behind his AUTOGRAPH BOOTH BECAUSE OMG IT WAS ANDY FROM “CHILD’S PLAY”!!! No wonder why he looked like he was forced to be there!

And because:

a) I was bored
b) I was standing in line and bored
c) I was with Henry standing in line and bored
d) I have ridiculous crush criteria;

it was only natural for my heart to swell with that intense love that your typical Ed Gein probably felt as he stood above the body of the attractive barfly he snuffed earlier that day and just realized how fabulous her hide would look as a lampshade. I buried my head in Henry’s armpit and squealed as Alex (that’s his real name in case you assholes didn’t know) approached the children behind us and did card tricks for them.

“Oh my god he’s so cute! Oh my god I can’t handle it! Oh my god he’s so close to us right now!” I broke up with Henry a few times so I could run off into the sunset with Alex;  Henry pretended to be good natured about it. Probably because being there was like a business meeting for him and he had to maintain his facade of phony sleazeball salesman.

He did, however, push me off the curb once.

Alex’s autograph booth was set up right next to Castle Blood’s exit. When we came out, there was a teenage girl getting him to sign a photo. She bounced from foot to foot like she was running through tires and talked in a quick high-pitched voice fueled by star lust. “Oh my god I can’t wait to tell my friends! You have to understand, no one ever comes to our town!” (Bealesville, Castle Blood’s locale, is about an hour outside of Pittsburgh and there’s  honestly nothing to do there.) Alex smiled and pushed the photo back to her.

I didn’t want it to be my turn! I wasn’t ready! I tried to get Henry to do it for me, but he shouldered me toward the table.

I made a brilliant first impression.

“Hi can I have your autograph?”
“The colored photos are $15. Black and white are $10.”
“Shit, my money’s in the car. BRB.”

I probably wouldn’t have been back. I’m a tightwad. BUT! As I made to walk away, Alex stopped me.

“So, is it any good in there?” he asked, nodding toward the castle with his REALLY CUTE HEAD.

So I had an opportunity to get into my element and tell him about how fantastic it is and how I want to live there. He remarked about that as I walked away so I laughed along with him, but naturally I have no idea what he said.

On the way back to the car, I completely unraveled. “Oh my god did you see how cute he was? Oh my god, should I really go back? Oh my god, was I worse, better or the same as the girl in front of me?”

Henry told me I talk too much.

I went back after all and bought a black and white photo. I know, there’s little I won’t do for love. I made a big production of choosing between the TWO black and white photos, before settling on one with him and the director. “That’s my favorite one,” he said. “Cool,” I remarked, trying to keep my composure. I wanted to ask him to write “Your blog is the best” or “We made a really cute kid together!” but instead I stood there silently, gnawing on my bottom lip as he wrote “To Erin, Chucky did it!” Then we had a brief exchange about how he spelled my name right and he scoffed at the thought of people spelling it wrong and said, “But then it would be Aaron!” and I’ve always been attracted to people who even say the boy’s version differently than “Erin.” He is an amazing man.

He then asked me if I’m from Beallsville and I yelled, “No, Pittsburgh!” because God forbid he should think I’m a townie. I asked him where he’s from, and he said, “Jersey.” I should have asked him really awesome questions, like, “If you had to have one of your organs stolen, which one would it be?” (For me, it would be any of the ones that I’d die without. ANY of them. Take them all, fuckers. Or my skin. I seem to have a lot of that.) Or, “Where should we go to make this baby?” But instead I was all, “Yo-de-doh, how long are you here?” delivered atop of serving of insane giggles.

I really think though that the only thing preventing us from embroiling in the passionate act of porno-making was that damn table with his seven-year-old mug plastered all over it. He asked me if there’s anything to do around there and I should have said “Yes — me” but instead I rolled my eyes like a disinterested teenager and said, “Ha, no!” and he laughed but what if he was hoping I’d invite him down to the pier for a cock fight? (I’m not sure there are any piers in Bealesville, but if he wanted one, I’d have made Henry build one.)

So that was that. No swapping of spit, no crude genital introductions. Instead, we stuck with just saying goodbye to each other. I rushed back over to Henry, who was talking to the owner of Castle Blood a few feet away from my love, so I had the excruciating chore of remaining in his line of sight. I tugged on Henry’s arm. “Give me your cell phone!” I whispered, like one of those annoying children who have little regard for when their parents are in the middle of a conversation with another grown up. I had one whole friend I needed to call and relay this sorrowful tale of The One Who Got Away! Henry distractedly pulled out his phone, looked at it, then dropped it back in his pocket, too engrossed in his discussion to fully understand what I had asked. I growled like an angry teen.

On the way back to the car, I reiterated what went down. “I really think he liked me back because there was this REALLY STRONG eye contact. I mean, it was intense! But I was so sweaty though.” (It was 90 fucking degrees that day and some of the humidity lingered in the air that night, making the hallways of Castle Blood stuffy and moist.)

“Some guys like sweaty girls,” Henry said encouragingly.

I talked about it the whole way home.

“Can you believe I met him?? Oh my god, I love—-” I had to pause to refer to the autograph because I forgot his name. “–Alex Vincent so much! I really feel like it was the strongest connection I’ve ever forged with someone. Oh shit I should have given him my business card! I could have written ‘KIT’ on it!”

“KIT?” Henry asked.

“Uh, yeah. It means keep in touch. Maybe if people actually signed your yearbook, you’d know that.”

Then Henry changed the subject by ridiculing me for being the only person he knows who consistently leaves her business cards at home.

After the excitement of getting Alex’s autograph wore off, I morphed into full-blown stalker mode. “We’d have an awesome life together I bet. I’d call him and be like, ‘Hey Alex baby, what do you want me to bring home for dinner?'”

This caused Henry to laugh with aneurysm-triggering force. “Oh, that’s funny. You would never ask something like that! Maybe if it started with ‘Could you,’ ‘can you,’ ‘will you,’ it would be more believable.”

I’ll be back for you, Andy. I don’t feel like I got my $10’s worth.

I had a dream the other night that Henry had a tattoo on his right hand.

Outside of my slumber, I can’t seem to remember the details of the ink, but I know it started at his wrist and spilled out onto the top of his hand, a quilt of images with the focal point being a Lugosi-esque Dracula. Suddenly, Henry seemed very hot in my subconscious.

Then I woke up as reality coated my memory like slow-pouring honey from a bear-shaped bottle and remembered that I was dating the same old lame bastard with boring SERVICE tattoos on his biceps. (He is quick to point out that only one is from when he was in the SERVICE; the other two are still lame, though. Mostly because neither are the letters E R I N.)

So I’ve been hounding him about it ever since. I feel that since he wouldn’t concede to the Great Labret-Piercing Demands of 2002, he could at the very least slap his hand under the needle for me.

“It would make you seem so much more hard core!

” I reasoned. Then I realized that would imply he is already hard core, so I quickly said it again, erasing the “much more.”

I also pointed out, “And you would look less dad-like at Warped Tour.”

He just laughs, the kind without mirth.

“You could at the very least get my initial on your RING FINGER,” I suggested, not very sweetly. (We’re in the throes of a new campaign around these parts of My House, Pioneer Avenue;  it’s called Project Propose or Peace Out 2011. Step One was posting his cell phone number on Facebook and having people text him. You can imagine how effective that was.)

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbled. That means YES!

***

Today, we were in the car when a biker growled by on a motorcycle.

Henry, feeling emasculated in his Ford Focus, sneered, “Who rides a motorcycle when it’s like, one degree outside?”

I considered this for half a second before answering with complete certainty, “Someone with a hand tattoo.”

He didn’t laugh. Not even the kind devoid of mirth.

I don’t know why Henry lets me do the things I do to him, but I do know that the fact that he does keeps me interested in him. Maybe he’s smarter than we think! He makes all my other boyfriends look like complete duds.

(I mean PAST! PAST boyfriends!)

I think the only thing I’ve commanded him to do that he flat out hasn’t is write a guest post. Clearly I haven’t hounded him enough. Maybe I can get him to write about how worried he was for me when I was stumbling blindly around a haunted school Saturday night.

Worried about his FLASHLIGHT, anyway.

This weekend, I’m going to see if he’ll let me castrate him.

And maybe I’ll get him something nice for Valentine’s Day. Like a day off.

Last night, I couldn’t stop laughing because Henry, with his glasses off and beanie pulled tight over his forehead, looked like if Bo Brady from Days of Our Lives was about to take the Fancy Face out for a fishing trip.  Of course, all Henry did was frown when I started shouting about how uncanny the resemblance was and how I’d like to be his Hope so we could go knock one back at good old Shenanigans.

(Best picture I have right now. Perhaps he’ll take his glasses off later tonight and let me have my way. WITH THE CAMERA. God.)

He just needs to tighten up his manscaping skills. He’s already got the “chasing around a spoiled, hyper, stubborn broad” part down to a science, and that’s pretty much 85% of being Bo Brady right there. I’m obsessed with this notion now, of modeling my blue collar boy-toy into something bigger and better, soap opera-caliber even. I’ve already Facebooked and tweeted about it, so you know it’s reached full-blown infatuation level.

I was still cracking up about it today, and felt a strong urge to YouTube that classic episode where Bo kidnaps Hope from the church on her wedding day to LARRY WELCH. (I’m sad that I remember this, considering I was four when it happened.)  I was watching it on my phone right before I took Chooch to school this morning and was laughing so hard, picturing Henry stealing a cop’s motorcycle (Henry LOVES COPS), that I had to frantically wipe away tears. Chooch of course was like, “What the fuck are you watching? That looks really dumb.” As does anything without cursing and nudity.

Now I’m really inspired to have someone propose to me just so I can see if that will dupe Henry into crashing the wedding and marrying me. Because god knows, bearing his child sure hasn’t.

Remember when color bars were all the rage? Me neither. But apparently they once were, at least on LiveJournal. I found one that I made when Henry was sick.

Sick Henry is Yuck

I started doing that work-at-home data entry bullshit that I was doing briefly last winter, after receiving an email out of the blue asking if I’m available for more work. I said yes because we’re going to the beach next summer so I thought maybe I could make some extra cash to help fund that, or at the very least pay for the quotation marks I’m getting tattooed on my fingers this month.

Five minutes after I logged in, I remembered just how boring 10-key is and started looking at things on the Internet.

Like color bars.

And now you’re caught up with my life.

On the night of Christmas Eve, we went to Henry’s sister’s house for some holiday hootenannies. We passed out gifts to all the kids and then Henry’s mom Judy asked, “Where are the spinach pies?”

Henry looked at me like I was going to tug them out of my g-string, but unfortunately I forgot to stuff them in there. It’s tough when my pimp doesn’t remind me to stow sundry down my pants like a human pantry. Besides, spinach pies were Henry’s duty, and he evidently failed. Judy seemed very sad about this.

Toward the end of the night, Henry was in the living room watching the kids play video games, while I sat in the kitchen drinking wine with Judy and Henry’s sister Kelly.

Henry walked through the kitchen at one point to grab some food and I made an off-hand remark about how I’ve been trying to get him to dress a little better, and they both said they had noticed and thought he looked nice. Once he left the room though, the atmosphere got very heavy and Judy leaned in and, with her face drawn into a grave expression, murmured, “You know the reason why my son doesn’t dress nice, right?”

Because he got the domestic piece of the gay gene and not the sense of style slice?, I wanted to say. Instead, I shook my head and said, “No, why?”

“Oh, that girl he dated after the Service!” Judy exclaimed, hand on her chest.

I gave her a blank look.

“You don’t know about that girl he was going with?” she asked, clearly astonished that Henry left that chapter out when divulging his life story to me after a night of cheap drinks and bad karaoke at McCoy’s.

I looked over to Kelly for some help, expecting for her to chime in and say that their mom was losing her mind—which typically is Kelly’s role in these conversations, to say that Mom is batshit crazy—but she too had gone all somber.

“No, I guess I don’t know about her,” I said, wondering what the story was since Henry has told me some Pretty Big Secrets in our time together.

“She was awful!” Kelly spat, looking completely repulsed. “I don’t know what he ever saw in her!”

“He met her at Jack’s, right when he got out of the Service,” Judy regaled. “They were always together, going out drinking. Oh, when he found out she was gay, he didn’t come out of his room for three months.”

RECORD SCRATCH. My ears were practically fluttering off my head, this unbelievably moist wad of gossip sending them into overdrive.

HENRY HAD A GAY GIRLFRIEND? Oh, how rich.

At this point, I was pretty sure Judy was trying not to cry. But the more I let it sink in, the less it seemed like a verified Henry Story to me, so I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I kept trying to imagine him, fetus-curved on a twin bed in a mostly non-descript bedroom that maybe had one lone Dukes of Hazard poster on a wall, hugging a pillow into his chest and sobbing because some broad left him for the vag, while the whole family convened out in the hall on suicide watch, fruity tones of Air Supply wafting out from under his door like so many homosexual farts. These images didn’t come as easily as maybe you’d like to think. But I really, truly wanted this story to be legit. More than anything, that would have been the best Christmas present ever.

“What are you talking about?” Blake asked, who was sitting with us at the table messing around with his new camera. I didn’t even think he had been listening.

“Nothing!” Judy snapped, waving him off. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“I hated her,” Kelly continued in hushed tones, after making certain that Blake wasn’t listening. “Chrissy, I think that was her name.” Henry’s mom nodded in recognition. “Yeah, she was always telling him what to do. What to wear. Where to go. She was so controlling. I was like, ‘Why are you letting this girl control you?’ I couldn’t ever understand it.”

Just as I was thinking this broad sounded an awful lot like me, Henry walked into the kitchen. Judy made lip-zipping gestures and acted all awkward and suspicious. I locked eyes with Henry, smirked, and shook my head.

“What?” he asked, stopping in his tracks.

“Nothing!” his mom shouted. We waited for him to grab another handful of chips and leave.

“Don’t tell him I’m telling you this!” Judy pleaded. “He was so upset when this happened. If he hasn’t told you, it’s probably because it’s too painful for him to talk about.”

Henry texted me just then: “What is my mom telling you?”

I replied: “Oh, we’ll be talking later. I can’t believe you’ve been withholding from me.”

Judy wasn’t done.

“I’ve never seen my son so upset!” she continued, face still pulled taut in that expression of utter seriousness. “They didn’t date for long but she really hurt him. He hasn’t bothered dressing nice since her. I guess she ruined him, I don’t know.” By this point, I was chewing on my inner cheeks, trying not to laugh. I just didn’t buy it. It didn’t seem like something he would purposely omit from his oral history, but you better believe I was thinking of all the ways I could use this to fuck with him.

***

A few minutes later, I was in Kelly’s living room, sitting alone on the couch with Henry.

“So I just heard a terribly devastating story about you,” I baited.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Henry mumbled, not taking his eyes off the Wii game he was playing.

I started to sprinkle out little hints but he honestly kept saying he didn’t know what I was talking about.

“So you mean to tell me you never dated some broad who wound up being gay, plunging you into a downward spiral that left you house-bound for three months?”

“What are you talking about?!” he asked, looking at me for the first time. I filled him in on what his mom and sister told me. They told me not to, but it was too good! I had to chide him, at least a little.

“That girl?! I never dated her! She was just my drinking buddy.” I asked him what her name was, as a test, and he said he couldn’t even remember. I could tell he wasn’t lying.

“Oh, yeah. Chrissy,” he repeated absently after I told him. “Where the hell did my mom get that story from?” he asked mostly to himself.

According to Henry, he used to “loaf” (that’s what old people say instead of “hanging out,” you know) with her and some gay guy named Kenny.

“Oh my god, so you were dating BOTH of them?” I gasped obnoxiously.

“NO! They were just my drinking bud—-SHUT UP!”

The most I could get out of Henry, who is playing the Bad Memory card, is that she was “mannish and had short hair.”

I let it go for awhile, but in the car after we left I filled Blake in and together we rode him like a down-trodden mule all the way home.

“Nothing sexual was going on!” Henry swore.

“Hahaha, Henry said ‘sexual’!” And Blake and I cracked up even harder.

I asked him what ever happened to Chrissy, and all Henry could muster was that he “thinks” she moved to Florida.

“Yeah, you know that because you creep her Facebook profile on the daily,” I needled away.

“I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER HER LAST NAME!” Henry cried, the heat of the situation making him tug at his collar.

***

Today, we were in the car when I noticed that the skin beneath Henry’s bottom lip was bulging, like he was pushing his tongue down in front of his bottom teeth.

“Did you used to dip when you were dating Chrissy?” I asked.

“What? No. Why? AND I NEVER DATED HER!” He quickly tacked on to the sentence.

“Because I’ve never seen you do that with your bottom lip before, thought maybe all this talk of Chrissy was bringing back some old tics.”

“I’m going to kill my mom and sister,” he mumbled.

Maybe they were just that mad over the spinach pies.

If it were up to me, we wouldn’t have gotten a Christmas tree. It’s just not a big deal for me and the only reason we even had one last year was because my mom took us out and bought it for us. I’m cheap; I’d rather use that money to buy gifts. (Read: drugs. Read also: drugs as gifts.)

But then I remembered Chooch and realized I need to consider him. Especially when he’s been acting all perplexed over where Santa is going to put his presents if we didn’t have a tree.

So the three of us finally went out to some roadside tree lot near our house on Sunday, where some fucking gross Christmas spirit penetrated my heart and I went from not caring about a tree to desperately needing to find the most majestic one imaginable, preferably equipped with a nest of fornicating Keebler elves.

Before I was even all the way out of the car, I was instantly ensorcelled by the young guy who approached us with his offer to help us find the perfect tree.

“I’m in love with this guy,” I whispered to Henry, who was quick to point out that this charming lad was essentially just being a salesman and this treatment was definitely not as special as I wanted to believe, and why couldn’t I see the strobing Christmas light-strung dollar signs in his eyes?

I guess when you’ve been fucked over by as many prostitutes and wives as Henry, skepticism is the only hat that feels right on your head.

Eventually, Henry tossed his say in the situation up in the air, watched it blow away on a cloud of pussy-whipped emasculation, and then proceeded to make passive aggressive comments about my choice of frosted fir.

Perhaps if he didn’t want to get saddled with one of the most expensive trees left on the lot, he may want to refrain from saying things like:

• “It’s up to you”
• “Whatever you want”
• “I left my balls in the Service”

The tree guys, after securing our new over-sized cat toy on the roof of our car, asked if Chooch wanted to help them sell trees for the rest of the day. I wanted to let them take him, so badly.

Once we got home, Henry sent me off to the attic with explicit instructions to return with the tree base, only the tree base, but by the time I got up there, I forgot what he wanted and just brought down the ornaments. I let Henry do everything else in an effort to help him grow some length back to his weener.

“I had these put away all nice and neat last year, then some ASSHOLE had to pull them out and take pictures of herself with them.

”

It took Henry a good twenty minutes to detangle the lights while I sat on the couch and did important things like play on my phone and watch the NHL Network. Chooch was a lot of help, I’m sure Henry will agree.

“Stop with the fucking pictures,” Henry yelled. “I’m not taking any,” I swore, as I partook in an uploading frenzy on Facebook.

As magnificent as last year’s Liberatree was, we all mutually agreed to 86 the tinsel and opted for some gold garland and purple beads instead. It’s not as flashy, only half as gaudy, and definitely needs more garland, but I present to you the Mediocritree:

When I told Henry the tree’s name, he looked at me dumbly (not uncommon).

“Because last year it was the Liberatree,” I reminded him, in a snide teenagery tone

“It was?”

“Oh my god, don’t you read my blog?” I yelled. I know he doesn’t!

Chooch and I fought for the entire hour it took to hang ornaments. Someone tell him you can’t put four ornaments on one goddamn bough. TELL HIM. Ew, it’s like Chinese water torture for my OCD. This kid is like the little brother that I’m much too old for. He knows every button to push.

I’ll admit, it’s nice having a live tree usurping our living room once again. Even if I can’t put down any presents without living in fear of the fucking cats pissing on them.