When my brother Corey was a baby, he’d sit at my grandparent’s kitchen table and smile and coo and wave in the direction of the top of this china cabinet. It was unsettling, initially, watching him babble on to something that appeared imaginary to us.

Sometimes he would forget about his invisible friend long enough to turn his attention back to his Gerber spread, only to abruptly look up and wave excitedly minutes later, as though whomever his dining partner was had suddenly yelled, “Yo kid, remember me?”

Corey still always sits facing that cabinet, but when anyone asks him if he still sees his old childhood friend up there, he just laughs that infuriating apathetic teenager laugh and goes back to eating. Like we’re so stupid for asking.

Every time I take Chooch to my grandma’s house, I half expect him to do the same–OK, I pray that he’ll do the same; maybe extend a handful of pretzels up to the kitchen ceiling as a friendly offering to the house ghost. So far, Chooch’s attention has not been grabbed.

Clearly I birthed a dud.

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Operation:Pig Mask didn’t achieve quite the level of trauma that I had strived for, and daydreamed about on my ride in yesterday.

At approximately 8:30PM, I spied Kim entering the women’s room, so I bolted back to my desk and grabbed my delightful mask. I opted to stand vigil directly on the other side of the door, so that as soon as she exited, we’d be nose to snout.

I heard the toilet flush and I adjusted the mask. I was having a  very difficult time breathing in it and the sneaky anticipation had my pee threatening to escape in giggly droplets; I had to keep squatting.

I heard the water running as Kim washed her hands, and I heard the automatic paper towel dispensing as it churned out for her. I had to keep shifting from one foot to the other and my heart hurt from how difficult it was to breathe beneath all that heavy plastic.

It seemed to take forever before she finally pulled back the door and we locked eyes. She didn’t cry or scream or emit Turkish expletives like I had hoped, but she did take a giant step back and her facial muscles seemed taut with fear. Or maybe it was just confusion. After a few moments, her hand flew up to her chest and I took that as my signal to rip off the mask and it felt so good to have cool air hit my face. That mask is a real fucker.

We laughed for awhile, but it wasn’t climactic enough to make a scrap book for the grandkids, and eventually the laughter trickled down into amused intakes of air and we just went back to work.

Today, Kim acted faux-mad at me, but that charade was soon forgotten when I charred a bag of popcorn a little while ago and she became For Real-mad at me.

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Or: Where We Learn that Ryan went to France and REALLY LIKES John Waters

Oh Game Night, how I’ve missed you. It had been nearly a year since the last one and that was just no good. Henry spent all day on Saturday cleaning and preparing delicious party dips and Janna came early to slop together some cheesy fondue. Ryan said it was too salty and that when he was in France and had fondue, they didn’t use vegetables as dunking apparatus, but rather bread (which Janna brought but had not yet found time to cut, furthering her voyage toward a psyche break). He also questioned my mothering skills and nearly assaulted me because I had a Blondie song on my play list when evidently Blondie, like John Waters, is So Obscure that he just couldn’t fathom why someone so dull and ordinary like me would know who that is. Let alone enjoy it. And he said I was really terrible at Scattergories.

He’s lucky I was showing a little restraint in front of Collin–an Erin newbie–else we’d have been dining on Ryan roast for the next few nights.

At least he didn’t fuck up the Catchphrase groove this time around.

Janna’s fondue was made with gruyere, which Janna practiced pronouncing in the car on the way to my house, and swiss cheese and liberal amounts of wine and something else in a bottle.

I’ll eat anything made from cheese and Janna was kind of like a hero to me for making it.

This particular Game Night was notable because every single person who RSVPd in the affirmative actually showed up, and those who put a “plus one” brought their plus ones. This is deemed a miracle in the party planning world. Someone slaughter me a pig, we’s gonna celebrate.

Game Night was slated to begin at 7, because I’m an idiot and didn’t consider the fact that Chooch would still be up, therefore rendering any game-playing impossible. So I pretended like I intended it that way and made a big production of telling everyone it was the Pre-Game Social. I’m apparently fixated on socials lately. Janna watched her fondue pot like a scorned woman trying to catch her husband fucking the nanny. “No one’s eating my fondue,” she’d whimper occasionally. I assured her it only seemed that way because she made enough for a fucking wedding reception. Stupid bitch.

Bill and Collin from work both came, and Bill brought his wife Natasha. I haven’t hung out with anyone I work with prior to this, so I was worried that they would think I was weird, but Henry pointed out that they probably already knew as much. I mean, they read this after all. Just so everyone knows, I obliterated Collin at both Catchphrase and Scattergories because he’s a sissy little bitch full of talk. I didn’t get to talk to Natasha much, which saddened me because Bill has told me a lot about her and I can tell she’s really cool. Hopefully, she wasn’t too put-off by my obnoxiousness and will come around again.

I got drunk.

My LJ pal Rhonda came with her roller derby friend Mel and it took me about forty-five minutes to be able to speak to her without stifling giggles because I was faux-stalking her and writing about it in my LJ and here and she read it. Let this be a cautionary tale for all of you aspiring stalkers out there: Sometimes stalking bites back. I still think she’s totally awesome and she brought this haunted house board game that I desperately wanted to play but we had too many people and those other losers didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it so she stuffed it back under her seat.

I inwardly pouted about that for awhile. I hope she did too. And I hope she liked me.

I finally got to meet Kara’s boyfriend Chris who is completely fantastic and a real delight to play Catchphrase with. Kara brought a tub of pre-made cheesecake filling with a box of Teddy Grams for dipping, and everyone marveled over that for awhile. Janna was jealous that the store-bought cheesecake fluff was trumping her expensively homemade fondue. She forgot about it later when, for no reason, I punched her arm hard enough to make Ike Turner blush.

Brenna brought her friend Liz, whom I had heard (and read) a lot about. (I wish she would have brought her sex tape!) She was really cool and welcome into my house anyday, even if she is the cousin of some girl I used to play tennis with in high school who went on to cause me some dramafied problems.

Janna and I were on opposing teams, for which I was glad. I wrote that down in my diary so I’ll remember to give thanks for that next Thanksgiving. During one of her turns, she only had a chance to blurt out, “She’s a singer. Screechy in the 90s!” before the buzzer ran off and my team had a chance to steal. I screamed, “Mariah Carey!” and because my body is molded from Awesome Molecules, we won the point. Oh, and the game. Like, three times in a row. It was nearly as historical as last year, when all Henry said was, “Singer” and I hysterically yelled, “Carly Simon!”

And it was Carly Simon. Awesome who? What?

Ryan got “Pink Flamingos” as his Catchphrase word (oh, yay) and was so shocked when some actually guessed it. Um, my GRANDMA knows that movie. He ran around being obnoxious about that for awhile, so I went outside and had a cigarette.

I was so happy, reveling in all the winning, when I overheard Kara say she’s moving to DC next month. I was so horrified that I had to make her repeat it. “No, you dumb bitch!” I cried. I felt so betrayed. Everyone else was congratulating her and didn’t seem to really care, because it’s only Kara after all, and maybe it was all the Woodchuck raping my emotions, but I really felt like I could have died right then. She swore that she’ll be back often to visit, but that’s what they all say.

We’ll always have Phipps, Kara. And the Eat n Park waitress who looked like Gerard Way.

You’re still a dumb bitch, though.

Bill made a delicious cake which was borne from a barrel of bourbon. And it was slathered liberally with a creamy frosting also drenched in bourbon. I fed some to my child, because I’m an irresponsible asshole of a mother. I hope Bill doesn’t know that I only invited him for his baked goods.

My little bro Corey arrived late and had to eat his slice of cake with a spatula because there were no forks left and I wasn’t in dish-washing mode.

The bulk of the crowd left around 11, leaving Henry, Janna, Ryan, Corey, Collin and I with the prime opportunity to play Scattergories. It should be made known publicly somewhere that I’m a Scattergories Supremacist. You know how when someone gets a DUI, a public blurb goes in the paper? Something like that so that everyone in my community (and soon the world) will know how impossible I am to defeat. Sure, people try to thumbs-down some of my answers, like Hyacinth Hallway as a road, but that’s because they’re sheltered and don’t know that I walked, nay — frolicked, down that very same road in Holland. After picking a bushel of tulips near a windmill. And smoking a fattie.

I won that game too, thanks to knowing that torpedo-touching is a hobby.

Then I had to go to work yesterday and I was kind of afraid that Bill and Collin would be all, “Ew, get away from us with your game cooties, you fucking freak” especially after I kicked Collin and hurled a box at him, but thankfully he doesn’t remember that part. (At least I didn’t hide his Hot Pockets.) They seemed to still like me. Or tolerate me, at least.

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So, it’s here! I’m freaking out! It came at a perfect time, because Henry was napping, so I shoved it over my fat head and crept up the bedroom to give him a nice little surprise. And by crept, I mean that I clambered up the steps on my hands and knees, pausing every other step to squeeze back pee.

I couldn’t stop laughing, and I tried ever so hard to muffle it, but I only ended up making the inside of the pig’s snout very warm and moist.

Anyway, Henry was not sent spiraling into the land of heart attacks, like I had hoped. He rolled his eyes and quietly begged, “Please don’t show that to Chooch” (who was also napping), before rolling back over and pulling the covers up to his chin.

But I’ll tell you who WILL be taking up residence in the land of heart attacks: My boss, Kim. Everyone got to leave early Thursday night and I thought I was the only one still packing up all of my stuff. (Seriously, I bring half of my house with me in my giant purse, and then it takes me five minutes to stow everything back in it at the end of the night.

) When I was finally ready, I went to round a corner, where Kim was hiding behind a wall like a child and lurched out at me. I dropped some stuff, that’s how startled I was. I startle very easily. So my plan is to stash the mask in my gigantor purse and wait until late tonight, when all the dayshifters have left and our department is left in silence. I’ll wait for Kim to go to the bathroom, and then I’ll hide behind the door.

I hope she cries.

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For the past week, I’ve been doing this really obnoxious thing where I brag about how awesome I am. Mostly this has been happening at work. Anytime I know the answer to something, trivial as it might be, I get all sore-winnerish and shout about how my innards are made of awesome.

"Did you just make coffee?"

"Uh, yes. Because I’m full of awesome."

I bet it’s really charming to be on the other side of that.

Tonight, I was telling Christina about how my son has been a little asshole lately. "He keeps grinding his teeth, and when I tell him to stop, he fixes his eyes on mine in a stubborn glare and does it harder," I complained.

"You know what they say," she schooled. "Your kids end up being two times what you are."

"So Chooch is double stuft with awesome?" I asked.

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Gumpopper, rummaging in purse: I can’t find my pack of gum.

Me: :)

Gumpopper: Oh never mind, here it go.

Me: :(

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Uncle Otis was a spry nine year old lad when Annie and her family moved to the neighborhood, on account of her daddy losing his job at the paper mill and was forced into the trade of candlestick making, naturally. Uncle Otis’ town was known all around, far and wide, as a thriving candle hub. So this made sense, you see?

Annie was in the grade below Uncle Otis and he would flick daisies at her during recess. She never noticed him, mainly because he was poor, but also because she liked black boys and Otis was, well, very pale. And had a small peepee.

Uncle Otis continued to pine for Annie, all the way through high school.

Even after Johnny Maplebitch gave her genital warts, his heart still pitter-pattered down Lovelorn Lane. Even after, at age sixteen, Annie was impregnated by a salesman shilling Swiss Army knives and gained fifty pounds that she couldn’t shake, Uncle Otis would still feel a horde of butterflies molesting his insides at the mere mention of her name. Even after Annie joined a religious mountain top cult and was brainwashed into sewing up her vagina, Otis yearned to be the one to rip out the stitches.

At age eighteen, Uncle Otis was offered the job of a lifetime, joining a carnival caravan as a gum-wrapper sweeper. In his mind, he would let himself be engulfed in this job, saving each and every penny and dime, until he had a nest egg large enough to return to town, scoop up Annie, and deposit her into their new house, which even would have its very own colored television, and a pinwheel near the front stoop.

But you know how these love sagas pan out: Some shit always has to go down. Someone dies, someone cheats, someone gets caught masturbating with a candlestick, because Lord knows there’s more than the candle pourers can keep up with so what else are you going to do with it? Give it a wig and call it daughter?

I’m not too clear on the details, as I’m sure pertinent facts have gotten lost in translation through generations, but from what I’m told, the salesman caught wind of Uncle Otis’ great American dream and sent an anonymous telegraph stating that Annie had been murdered by the town meat cutter, after being confused for a bovine.

Uncle Otis snapped, just completely went ape shit all around the camp site. He ripped suckers straight from the mouths of conjoined twins, urinated in the cotton candy maker, fucked a chicken or two; he was destroyed, sanity annihilated. The carnival director was forced to serve him his walking papers, because the dwarves were starting to cry.

Otis binged on moonshine while trying in vain to fight off chimeras of Annie, frolicking through the junkyard next to the campsite. He’d squint and rub his eyes, probably give his face a few sharp slaps, as you would too if you thought you were seeing the ghost of your one true love. She would eventually fade away just as fast as she had appeared.

It didn’t stop, though, no matter how much booze Otis would gulp. He couldn’t take it anymore; it was too torturous.

So late one night, after all the lanterns had been snuffed around the camp, Otis sneaked back in and rummaged through the prop chest, tossing bowling pins and barbed hula hoops over his shoulder, until he finally unearthed what he was seeking.

Making a hasty sign of the cross, Otis closed his eyes tight and swallowed the sword. This was tragic because Annie had not actually been murdered, contrary to Otis’ belief. Salesman lied to keep Otis at bay!

So my friend God was like Aw, hell nah and made Otis into a vampire, because if he hadn’t, then all the other suicide-by-sword-swallowing vampires would cry foul and God would have another revolt on his hands, like the time when that big-chested broad had half of her back flesh torn off by a zombie and God was all, “Aw, she’s too pretty to be a zombie” and instead turned her into a fairy princess. Shit like this doesn’t sit well with some residents of the afterlife. But you probably know that.

[Reposted from LiveJournal, because I can.]

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This week, I’ve been working four 10-hour shifts because the system will be down on Friday, which means no work. The only way we were allowed to come in early today was by agreeing to make an appearance at the social. It wouldn’t have been so bad if everyone from evening shift was there, but only Bob and I were retarded enough to come in early and eat shitty hors d’oeurves. The night crew is treated like pariahs when immersed with the dayshifters, especially when our pack is broken up.

Bob wasn’t there when I arrived, and I desperately wanted to get it over with so I got Bill, who’s on the dayshift now, to go up with me. Tina promised she would too but then copped out at the last minute–asshole. Bill had already been up there once and therefore knew of the horrors in store for me. He tried to warn me that it was really crowded up there in the cafeteria, but the prospect of being buffeted in a field of holiday cookies helped me soldier on. Unfortunately, my hunt for cookies was kiboshed by a battlefield of gabby dayshift employees stuffed into a small and overheated cafeteria. I think I whimpered, “I’m going to cry,” three times to Bill. I’m not a social person. Perhaps in a group of three, I am. But I hate walking into a crowd, especially one that’s all loud and a’titter and blocking all of the spreads.

My throat felt constricted and I lost the ability to speak more than the same word over and over. My vision blurred and I momentarily lost sight of my mission.

My shepherd Bill directed me to a table with vegetables and several variations of bruschetta, but then I remembered that I just wanted cookies. “Cookies?” I asked. So he showed me a table that had a punch bowl and one lone picked-over platter occupied by several cookies. I thought he was kidding when he said it was all that was left, but his eyes did not lie.

Apparently, my intense distaste for public interaction rendered my hearing powerless, leaving Bill to have one-sided conversations.

I grabbed two sad oatmeal cranberry cookies (wtf? but they were good), one for me and one for my boss Kim who had to miss the social because of school, and Bill and I retreated back downstairs where they keep us processors locked away.

Fifteen minutes later, Bob came over and asked, “Hey, you ready to go up there now?” and I was like, “Jesus Christ dude, I waited for you but you were late.” Erin don’t wait for no homies. But then I felt bad because he’s still kind of new and he swore he was stuck in traffic. So I groaned and then went back up with him. I waited for him to ladle some festive punch into a styrofoam cup and then hoped we could leave.

“This punch is good,” he said. I agreed and added that it was fizzy, as well.

“Maybe we should stay, just for a little while,” Bob said. So we stood awkwardly off to the side, in semi-silence, not knowing anyone else up there. I saw an IT guy that replaced my mouse, and I’m oddly attracted to him even though he has a slight scent of hoppy aftershave.

“So, fishing, huh?” Bob’s going fishing this week. “Is it the kind where you cut the hole in ice?” I asked, trying to be social. So he talked about fishing for awhile and then we got bottles of complimentary foot lotion (wtf?) and left.

Socials can suck a dick.

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There’s a poinsettia on my desk. What am I supposed to do with that?

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“I love the smell of the dirt road after a fresh spring rain.

”

“I love the smell of the asphalt in front of my mansion after a fresh spring rain.”

Pilar and Caspar had been friends for eighteen years. In their youth, they sat together on the bus to and from school and talked about baseball and goat milking. They pulled the hair of the girls they liked and drank chocolate milk from straws. Caspar always finished his carton first, slamming it down on the cafeteria table in a loud crush of championship, and then ran off to French kiss the girls whose names were scrawled across Pilar’s notebook.

“I love the smell of steamed asparagus,” Pilar said, giving a little grunt as he peddled his bike up a slight grade.

“I love the smell of my urine after I eat asparagus,” Caspar challenged, peddling just a few revolutions faster.

In tenth grade, Caspar convinced Pilar to steal tampons from Greta’s knapsack. When Greta bled through her white knickers later that day, Pilar collapsed under the weight of his guilt and turned himself in. He was suspended for a day and was forced to clean the sweat from Olaf’s desk seat. Olaf was the fattest boy in school. He liked to wear short denim cut offs.

“I love the smell of my puppy’s feet. It smells of buttered popcorn,” Pilar smiled as he glided his bike to a halt at the ice cream shack.

“I love the smell of the cold hard cash in my hand after my puppy wins a race. It smells of win,” Caspar said, reaching the bike rack seconds before Pilar.

Planning for college, Caspar convinced Pilar to be his roommate, making him promises of parties and girls and infinite bottles of rufies supplied by Caspar’s cousin Jake, who worked in a factory making fly strips as a front. But every time Caspar returned from class, he was greeted by a sock dangling from the door knob.

By the third week of fall semester, he ended up moving back home and commuting.

“I love the smell of my office after my desk has been Pledged,” said Pilar, squinting at the colorful ice cream menu.

“I love the smell of my office after my Swedish masseuse has rubbed me down with the finest essential oils,” said Caspar, after ordering before Pilar.

Pilar showed up at Caspar’s apartment three years ago, after finding out that his papa had been having an affair for two decades with Brenda, the bar maid from the inner city. Caspar listened to Pilar cry for a few minutes about how his entire childhood was built on a foundation of lies and infidelity. When Pilar was in the bathroom, vomiting up his heart ache, Caspar jogged to Pilar’s old childhood home to take advantage of the newly single woman’s vulnerability.

“I love the smell of pistachio ice cream,” Pilar happily divulged as he gave the dripping bulb of frozen confection a hearty lick.

“I love the smell of pistachio ice cream after I’ve fucked your wife.”

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“Henry didn’t cook for me again; I had to have frozen pizza.

”

“Well, that’s better than nothing. Last time he didn’t cook for you, you didn’t eat anything at all!” Kim laughed as she went to heat up her delicious home-cooked meal.

It took me longer to figure out how to turn the box into a pizza cooker than it took to actually cook the fucker. I was so angry and near-tears by the time I was done, and the muscles in my hands hurt from tearing perforations and folding over flaps.

Tonight, I was daydreaming about going to jail. Just to hang out, you know? (And no, not on conjugal visit day! OK, maybe.) Walk in with a magazine and read aloud some Hollywood gossip while inmates do push ups around me.

Once I murder Henry, I suppose I’ll have a whole lot of time to do that.

Eleanore said inmates smear shit on the walls.

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“The lady in front of me had trouble getting the blind down so I helped her. Then she asked me something but I have my Walkman on so I just said, ‘No’.

“

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All of my entries are fixed now, for those of you who were trying to go back and read the older stuff.

The html got all jacked up when Henry imported everything to WordPress, but I cleaned it up and all the pictures are back in the Super Gay Stories posts now.

Yesterday, I used my Holga for the first time, but now I can’t find anywhere local to develop the film and it’s driving me crazy. I want my pictures! I took a picture of some bikers outside of a bar and I want it.

Does anyone know where I can get a roll of 120 developed?

I found a place where I can send it out, but they wanted me to buy a minimum of 5 pre-paid mailers. Why do I feel like I’m going to need a side job to support my lame hobbies?

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Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pig mask and all of its possibilities, even beyond its role in the photo shoot. I kept imagining myself driving around town with it over my head, and staring out the window at people during red light downtime. I was laughing so hard in bed last night that it was disturbing Henry.

“Just go downstairs and buy it now, please! So I can finally get some sleep.”

So this morning, I bought it. I even wrote myself a gift note for it.

I think I managed to offend Eleanore at work Friday night. I was telling my boss Kim about the Christmas tree I’ve wanted to fashion ever since I was a spry sixteen-year-old.

“And then I’d take extra arms and legs and solder them to the mannequin, you know — for boughs.”

Kim’s eyes widened, and she asked me if I’d be making my own ornaments too. Eleanore was in the kitchen for this part, but she returned just as I was explaining what Homies are, and how I wanted to make dioramic ornaments using them.

Realizing that Homies are slightly racial and that perhaps Eleanore was getting annoyed, I blurted out, “But they’re not all black! There are Mexican ones, too!”

Crickets. The slight bubble-popping sound of Eleanore’s blood boiling.

Always spitting out one sentence too many, I finished digging my grave by saying that I wanted to make a crack house ornament and have some of the Homies loitering outside of it.

“Damn, girl. You’re taking this too far, now!

” Eleanore groaned. “Don’t you be teachin’ my baby^[1] about no crack house!”

Then Kim and Eleanore tried to come up with a word to describe me. Eleanore muttered, “We’d need a thesaurus for that.” I laughed. Many appropriate words popped into my head, like: sweetheart, genius, loveable, adorable, precious.

I spent most of the night searching for cheap mannequins online. Every time Kim turned around, she would catch a glimpse of a variety of eerie plastic models on my screen and shudder. “Would you stop looking at those! They’re freaking me out.”

I’m going to decorate my (future) Christmas tree while wearing my pig mask.

[1]: Eleanore calls Chooch and everyone else’s children “her babies.”

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