When he asks me to be more specific about the obvious.

"Henry, where are my keys?" I have two keys: house and car. They’re bound together in holy matrimony by the power of one keychain.

"The keys to….?"

"The titanium vault where we keep all the Nazi bodies and velvet satchels of rubies. The car, you fucking asshole."

When he’s vague when the question warrants specifics.

"What are you making?"

"Dinner."

"But what is it?"

"Food."

Word on the street is that the company provided all the employees with an array of St. Patrick’s Day cookies this morning. Night crew got gypped, as usual; however, there’s a picked-over tray on the kitchen with a sampling of greasy cheese slices, a clump of congealed jizz (maybe dip?) and three chunks of scary green cake stuff.

Instead, I ate some stale sugar free Girl Scout chocolate chip cookies that have been in my desk for three weeks.

There’s an opening for the evening shift and I’m frightened because whoever they hire will likely be sitting next to me since Collin got a different position here. Whoever it is, I hope they don’t stink of sewage and I hope they stock their desk with a large variety of delicious candies for me to savor at my leisure.

I currently am mostly blind so typing is turning out to be quite an Olympic feat for me. I feel sorry for the recipients of my emails tonight and for the corners I’ve been clipping with my shoulder as I stumble around the building. Lots of groping foreseen for tonight. More on that later.

I used to be obsessed with Bavarian stuff. I’m going to make that happen again.Hopefully whoever they hire will be Bavarian and maybe I can talk them into modeling their lederhosen for me.

We drove past our local amusement park — Kennywood — yesterday while out and about. Usually, seeing the hill of the Phantom’s Revenge jutting out from the park, appearing to touch the clouds, barely fazes me, but yesterday it kind of shocked me with a thrill. Maybe because it’s about to open in two months and I’m about over this whole snowy weather prison sentence. Soon, they’ll de-winterize the park: tarps will come off and gates will open, affording a new wave of teenage girls the opportunity to give blow jobs under the pavilions. (Hopefully, some bolt-tightening action will take place somewhere along the line too.)

In anticipation for a new season of giving Henry gray hairs at amusement parks, here’s my all-time favorite Kennywood entry.

June 17, 2007

What better way to honor my favorite motion-sensitive father than by orchestrating an afternoon at Pittsburgh’s little amusement park, Kennywood? I even paid for him. I know, try and wrap your head around that one. I know!

I allowed Janna to join us, so that I could have a riding partner while Henry played stroller chauffeur. Clearly I was having a lapse in judgment at the time I extended my invitation to her, because she’s a big crybaby when it comes to 75% of the park’s rides and she’s near-deaf so I have to activate my echo. I think that sometimes she just pretends to hear me, because she’ll smile and laugh, but her eyes are screaming, “Help us, help! We’re so confused! Did she make a joke or is she postulating seriously about Darfur? I don’t know! Just laugh anyway! OK!” My favorite is when she laughs and then moments later asks, “Wait—what?”

This strange phenomenon plagues my conversations with Henry, too, although I have strong evidence backing the fact that he’s just ignoring me.

When we came last year, Riley was too young to ride anything other than the boring, waste-of-fifteen minutes train ride, but this time he boasted the ability to advance on foot at a moderate pace, albeit changing direction more times than a pinball. I had the pleasure of escorting him on his inaugural ride, a watered down roller coaster that took all of five seconds to whir around a wavy track before the miserable employee pulled back the brake and asked us in his best Ben Stein impression if we wanted to ride again. I really didn’t because it was a lot jerkier than I imagined it would be and I bruise easy, but I didn’t want to infer any wrath of the inner city children behind me.

I kept a protective arm around Riley and watched his face the entire time: his expression never faltered. He was stoic, with his lips set in a straight, firm line; it was as if he only came on the ride based on a threat and he’d be damned if he was going to let any tears run loose.

After the second lap — which was shaky at best — Riley and I were the first to exit, putting me in charge of the daunting task of unlatching the exit gate. When it became clear that my attempts were going to continue to be feeble, the mom behind me reached over my shoulder and flipped the latch, saving us all. Thank god for moms like that; you know, the ones who can open things.

We let Riley conquer a ride that featured helicopters and flying saucers which circled around while rising and lowering for about thirteen thousand boring rotations. Every time his saucer would pass our stakeout at the fence, he’d purposely ignore us. He’d wave and acknowledge all the other parents, though. I’m so glad my fourteen-month-old son is already mastering the art of snubbing.

Some more here

He didn’t crack a smile on that one, either. Obviously, Kennywood is serious business for my son. He might as well have been riding the bus to work, that’s how much disdain was clouding his face.

We took him on some other rides too, but he was mainly just interested in trying to get himself kidnapped. Stranger danger, what now?

The air that day was heavy with humidity, the kind of weather that leaves a sebaceous film over your face. The kind of salty film that’s best served with some Italian bread. The kind of film that springs forth when you’re knocking back a few in the corner pub and a traveling banjo player comes in and sits at the bar next to you and he isn’t really that good-looking and kind of has a noxious, perma-stench of cabbage emanating from his pits and his tongue is coated with slime, but after your third whiskey he looks mildly inoffensive so you lure him out the back with a theoretical bone of “Hey, play that banjo for me out in the alley, you hot piece of asshole-love” and then you lock the back door after him and bludgeon him with your prosthetic leg and then fuck his dead body in a dumpster. You know, that kind of film?

What better way to hose down the oil slick and neutralize Janna’s body odor than by hopping in line for a water ride? The Log Jammer’s line looked nonthreatening in length, but we were deceived. We had the awesome luck of standing behind a guy who had his name tattooed on the back of his neck in a very effeminate script. Janna thought it said “Jocko,” I thought it said, “Fucko,” but it really said…Oh my God, I completely don’t give a fuck.

At one point, I had that sensation that I was about to be assassinated. You know? My eyes darted all though the surrounding trees and I hoarsely alerted Janna to the situation. Of course she didn’t hear me, making me repeat the sensitive information even louder. I don’t think she heard me correctly, because she cheerfully shouted, “Oh my god, you should totally be an assassin!”

Sure, that would be the perfect profession for me! I mean, if there was suddenly a high demand for obvious assassins. Can you imagine, me and all that grace I lack? “Heeheehee, there’s my target!” while my flip-flops would be slapping all over the place, alerting my target to my presence, even if they were semi-deaf like Janna. “Heeheehee, oh my God lining up my target inside these crosshairs makes me have to pee so bad! Ha ha ha!”

Yeah, Janna. Good one.

Oh boy, did Janna and I have quite the romantic journey in our log jammer. We hadn’t even gone down any hills yet and she was already asking me if I was wet. I have to admit, I was a little uncomfortable at the sexual connotations she was slinging.

“Are you wet yet? Did you get wet? Have you been caressed with the wetness?”

Jesus Christ, Janna! Yes, my skin is slightly lubricated after that last bend. Would you like to borrow some?

What the fuck?!

I had low expectations from the moment Kennywood’s turnstiles molested our pelvises, because Janna and Henry are both adamantly anti-spin. No thrill rides for them, it might aggravate their arthritis and make them paint backs of heads with their lunch.

But after the Log Jammer we came upon my favorite ride in Kennywood, the Aero360. All the other death traps can suck a fucking dick as far as I’m concerned. Especially the ones that think they’re hot shit, like that asshole that calls itself SwingShot. I took a few moments to pause and salivate, nearly genuflecting to really bring it home. Then I gave Janna some killer puppy dog eyes.

“No, Erin. Oh no, I already told you I won’t ride that!”

There were only six people in line. I could have spit on her. Then I looked up at the occupants currently enjoying being flung in the air like bean bags and took note that most of them were children. Children.

I used this as leverage.

“Janna, you douche, how the fuck are you going to be a teacher when you won’t even ride the same rides as your could-be students?” I dug my nails into the back part of her arm so she would see just how serious I really was.

This is not true. I’m not really that mean to Janna. Not right off the bat, anyhow. I lured her into line by ensuring her that mothers had been known to take their infants for a trip on the good ol’ Aero360 so really, what did she have to be afraid of?

She took careful notes as we stood in line, even counting how many rotations the ride engaged in. I answered all her whiny, fear-scented questions with emphatic nos, even when I knew in my heart that I should be hyena-ing maniacal yess all up in her grill while spraying her with laughter-launched torrents of spit.

I saved all of my sinister and cruel needling for when we were already strapped securely into our seats and there was nowhere for her to take refuge. I really lucked out when a group of four older people sat in our section and showed interest in sharing my feast of Janna’s fear.

We screamed your standard caveats of Your harness is coming undone! and Did you hear those bolts shooting out?! along with things tailored more specifically to Janna, like Die, die, die you fucking ho-bag penguin dick-sucker, you fucking dumb ass ugly hooker fucker! and You smell like the used up, soggy, saliva-drenched reed from a clarinet played by a homeless Albanian with AIDs, you fucking whore-tits!

I’m not sure if she could hear any of that over top of her own funeral dirge, though.

My favorite part was when the ride was over and I bolted, while Janna took her good old time reacquainting her feet with terra firma and searching for her sunglasses in the loose items box. I found Henry and together we watched as Janna emerged from the gate. Her face started out lax, then tensed up a little in an expression of fear, then hardened as she figured out she had been purposely ditched and thought, “Hey, fuck this, where are they?”

Cue Henry with the lecturing. “Go and get her, don’t be so mean,” he said as he nudged my shoulder. Can I ever have fun? I mean, really.

After I fetched Janna, I insisted on reliving the experience as we were suspended limply and helplessly, upside down and like, a lot of feet from the ground.

“Wasn’t it invigorating? Like showering in a natural spring?” Janna vehemently disagreed, but maybe I should have mentioned the coconut-bikini. Sometimes, fruity-tits make all the difference in the world.

Then we rode some other things, stood around looking lost, I removed a tampon. You know, really Fun Stuff.

Finally, Janna had tired of having her intestines jostled and suggested that Henry and I take a gander together. I immediately tugged on his arm and ooh’d like an ape, while he simultaneously asked, “Is there a ride where I get to stab her with a knife?”

We opted on a roller coaster, the Thunder Bolt. It’s a good thing that the line was only about two minutes long, because I was floundering on the conversation tip. Henry was in one of those moods where he’d rather be refueling an air plane and killing pet ducks in Panama, and those are things that I sadly just can’t give him. So instead he had to listen to me prattle on about the employees’ water bottles that were propped up across the tracks and did he think they washed them out every night?

I guess the fact that I perpetually whined about how I wished I was there with Christina and not him didn’t really inspire him to contribute to the conversation.

Then it was our turn to ride and I was super concerned about the safety of his glasses, which he stuffed down his shirt like a bra-padder, and I don’t think he appreciated it at all. He was in such a big hurry to get off the ride that he ran right in to some innocent little girl and never even paused to ensure she didn’t skin a knee.

He got his pay back toward the end of the night when we were standing in line for this really stupid and boring car ride that I thought my son would enjoy but silly me, I keep forgetting that my kid only takes pleasure in things like socking me in the mouth and the opening theme of “Days of Our Lives.”

So there was this dumb bitch in front of us; she was, oh I don’t know, seven maybe? This ride demands that you must have a partner in order to make people like Janna remember how loserish they really are, and this particular girl was in a tizzy because her mom hadn’t joined her in line yet. Finally, she approached us (and after finally seeing her, I realized the delay was surely because she was underneath a pavilion, smoking the crack pipe) and the little girl asked Henry if it was OK for her mom to cut ahead of us. She even batted her eyes, which annoyed me. I hate girls that remind me of myself!

Initially, Henry said it was OK, but then he jokingly sneered, “What if I said no?” because he really knows how to charm the pants off the pre-teen set. The girl discarded her apple pie demeanor in favor of a haughty stance and wicked glare.

“I don’t think that would be a problem,” she hissed. I waited for her to launch Henry back against a tree with the sheer power of the hate radiating from her Village of the Damned eyes.

And then I wanted ice cream and Henry foiled my plan, which made the walk back to the car a very long, embittered one. Now I know how Jesus felt. I’ll never forget how my beloved Aero360 looked on the cusp on our departure, all lit up against the mauve sky, like Kennywood’s own little whore house on the Sunset Strip.

Later that night, Henry recounted all the gay ass homemade t-shirts he saw various men wearing. You know, the sort that boasts — in an array of cracked puffy paint — how many apples they have on the tree, or flowers in the garden, and hooray for fathers, let the world never run dry of them. Sorry Henry, I didn’t have enough time, what with working full time, nurturing our son, and you know, updating all five billion of my blogs. Maybe next year I’ll darn you some socks.

Last week, I bought a box of some deliciously exotic-sounding coconut pudding/custard bullshit in the foreign food aisle at Giant Eagle. It’s called tembleque, I think.  I spent the better part of a week asking Henry, "Did you make it yet? That coconut bullshit, did you make it? Are you gonna? When?"

This morning, he was out doing some electrical work for his BFF Randy (read: he was hoping to lose his asshole innocence but Randy is a homophobe for real). When the Henry is away, the Erin will play…with things she knows nothing about.

The directions seemed simple: they were divided into two steps. Simple. It doesn’t take long to get to two, I thought.

A few minutes ago, I withdrew the bright pink cereal bowl I chose for the mold. The contents were runny and sloshed around the edges with little movement from me.

"It didn’t WORK," I cried from the kitchen.

"Maybe the bowl is too big?" Henry attempted to hypothesize. "Maybe pour into several smaller —" but I was already leaving the kitchen, hands thrown overhead.

Moments later, as I was sitting in the living room reading a book, he asked, "How long did you let this boil?" I didn’t like how he was standing at the foot of my chaise, mouth all contorted into a familiar expression — the one right before he unleashes the smug sneer of triumph that I know all too well.

I shrugged. "I don’t know…I didn’t know I had to boil it. I had it in the sauce pan but I just mixed it and then poured."

Henry shook his head. "What is with you and directions? You throw them aside and just do. Did you even read the box? I know you know how to read."

"So it’s ruined?" To be honest, I had kind of been over it since an hour after I stowed it in the fridge, because it was taking so long to set. I didn’t consider the possibility that it was my fault; I imagined it was just a very high maintenance dessert packaged in a modest box. Like myself.

"You could probably freeze it," Henry suggested, but I was already thinking about the box of flan that I bought at the same time as the coconut fuck-up.

It’s still in the kitchen, stewing all non-perishably in its package, daring  me.

I visited my friend Jess today. For years, she had the distinction of being my friend’s step-daughter, but now that friend is no longer a part of either of our lives, and Jess now has the distinction of simply being my friend.

She’s nearly 21-years-old now, a far cry from the 11-year-old I drugged with Nyquil while baby-sitting. She’s also seven months pregnant, and unhappily so.

Today I told her she needed to have photos taken. "You’ll end up regretting it later if you don’t," I offered sagely. "I know I did." (But for what it’s worth, I also had about three and a half more chins than she does.) She was reluctant at first, but when she realized I probably wasn’t going to stop asking, she sighed and let me have at it.

I wish she knew how beautiful she really is!

Read more

Since the year 2001, my sole purpose in life has been to ridicule Henry as much as possible, and in ways he never could have fathomed, on the Internet and off.

This involves looting through his belongings; eavesdropping on phone calls; creating fake blogs, MySpace profiles and personal ads in his name; giggling every time he talks to other men; and A LOT of help from my side kick, Photoshop.
 

But sometimes, Henry makes it too easy. Like today, when he was looking through all his shit that I made him keep in the garage and not in my house, and came back into the house cradling his Air Force year book.

"Holy fucking shit, give me that!" I cried, snatching it from his meat fists. "Please tell me you’re in here!" He watched impatiently as I flipped frantically through the pages, gagging on the fumes of 1983.

"Gimme that," he said in frustration, opening the book to the page I wanted.

Running my finger down the page, I quickly found his name. I started to laugh really hard. Really, really hard. But then I stopped and said, in shock, "Dude. You kind of weren’t too gay-looking then." He rolled his eyes. "No seriously, now I wish you still looked like that. Aw, why did I have to get the stupid-looking version of you?" I’m not used to seeing Henry without his molester-stache.

Maybe I would like him more if he wore that hat all the time. I bet meals would taste better if cooked with him underneath his service hat.  Maybe I would show him some respect if his dome was capped with this prestigious relic.

That’s funny.

Maybe I would like him more if he was monochromatic.

As I’m hysterically typing this, he walked past and asked, "Does this really require an entire entry?" Does my universe center around laughing at his expense? Does an orphan slurp porridge? Does Michael Jackson grab crotches? Does auto-asphyxiation feel good?

No, really — I’m asking.

There was a candid, too! Of all the luck.

 At least this tells me that Chooch should hopefully get a good twenty years of cuteness in before his looks are shot to Hell.

If you’re looking for the most convenient way to be served my pointless word-sludge, you can subscribe here and a polite little email will alert you every time I desecrate the Internet. Just in case you didn’t know.

In the span of two months, I get to see five bands that rank on my Top 10 Faves list. It finally started to sink in today and even though I have a ceiling that leaks every time someone showers, a molar in dire need of a crown that I can’t quite afford just now, a job that your average monkey could perform (and probably better too), and a gay ass boyfriend who refuses to wash my coffee mugs on the rare (like, Haley’s Comet-rare) occasion that he actually dips his fat hands into the sink yet expects me to scrub his skillets sullied with meat residue ensnared inside a witch’s brew of thick and coagulated grease, I can’t help but be in a really great mood.

Granted, three of these shows will find me with Henry as my chaperone. ("Hurr hurr, that girl came with her dad!" is what I imagine all the cool kids say when I shamefully slink inside the venue with Henry trailing ten paces behind me.) My favorite "Old Dude at the Show" moment was in 2002 when Henry and I went to Buffalo, NY for Edgefest. He was a newbie to these radio festivals, and probably hadn’t been to a concert since the 1980s when he pushed some broad over a railing at the Judas Priest show because he couldn’t see over her. In my mind, when I think of Henry in the glory years of youth, he’s always wearing a bitchin’ Foot Locker t-shirt and pushing up his over-sized tinted eyeglasses with one stubby finger, his newly mustachioed lips curling into a predatory leer as he ogles a bunch of big-breasted bimbos in shredded stone-washed jeans and mile-high curled bangs, hot pink Wet n Wild polish chipping from their fingernails. (I always try to trick him into telling me that story so I can get better details, but then he realizes that my intention is to ridicule him, so he catches himself.) Sugarcult was playing on one of the smaller stages, and I grabbed Henry’s hand, leading him close to the front, but not so far up that we were crushed against the security gate. I didn’t think he’d be able to handle being that close. Sugarcult starts playing, kids go crazy. Everyone’s having a good time and Henry actually looks like he could possibly be enjoying himself. Suddenly, a young boy, maybe around fifteen, slams into Henry’s side. Henry thinks this is some sort of personal attack on him, that maybe next this kid is going to seek out Henry’s car and pour sugar in the gas tank. So he reacts by violently shoving the kid back into the crowd. I gave him a scolding look and hissed, "Dude, that kid is like, 4 compared to your 67. You trying to go to jail?"

"It was a reflex! That kid shoved me!" Henry whined. I started wondering what kind of pussy tattle-taler he must have been in school.

Ever since then, and one other occasion when Henry shouldered some teenager for standing too close to him in line before a Mindless Self Indulgence show, Henry has been pretty well-behaved, We just don’t stand so close to the stage anymore.

2008 is really shaping up to be The Really Rad Year that I’ve been patiently waiting for. And by patiently, I mean kicking holes in walls and threatening to kill myself and/or others but mainly just Henry every other day for the past four years.

(OK, so I guess the year of Chooch’s birth was a Pretty Good Year. What was that, 2006? Who can keep track anymore?)

Two weekends ago, I was at the Quaker Cemetery. Outside of the meeting house, there was this moat made of broken glass shards. Clear glass, amber glass, green glass — it all looked so sparkly and I had an "Ooooh, pretty colorssss" moment, forgetting all about the demons camping out behind me in the decrepit stone meeting house.

For awhile, constructing my own pretty jagged glass moat around the front of my own house seemed like a really brilliant idea. But then I remembered that glass can sometimes be dangerous.

I guess this picture will have to suffice, until the day I live in a house without a small child. Then I’ll have my moat and you all can come wade in it.

"What are you looking at?" I asked when I noticed my mom casting an excessive series of glances into the rear view mirror. I asked her again when she didn’t respond.

"Nothing," she said flippantly, but her eyes went right back to the mirror. I twisted in the passenger seat, squinting out the back window to see what sort of exciting scene had her attention so tightly bound. The light turned green; as the Explorer began to accelerate, I noticed that a man was crossing the street behind us. He looked around my mom’s age and his head was wrapped snugly in a black and gold bandanna.

I snickered. "Oh my God, you were totally checking out that guy crossing the street behind us. That’s what you were looking at!" The thought of my mom preening in the rear view mirror at the sight of some sloppy stranger made me spit out my beverage.

"I was not," she denied haughtily. But it was too late, giddiness had set in and I was already construing a tale of dramatic (dis)proportions to be passed on for generations. Undaunted by the rest of my family’s failure to see the humor in the story, I couldn’t wait to tell everyone at school. I had a hard time sleeping that night, scenarios of their reactions playing out behind my eyes.

At school the next morning, I still wasn’t over the excitement. I tried to relay the scene to some of the kids in my eighth grade homeroom, but they seemed confused. The ones who knew me well enough knew to ignore me, but the others seemed like they really wanted to understand, like they desperately  needed to be in on the joke that had me crying with laughter.

Thinking a diagram of the situation would paint a better picture, I stood at the chalkboard and drew a crude version of my mom with heart-shaped pupils intently watching the man crossing the street.

"Is that supposed to be a pirate?" someone asked.

"No, just some dude in a bandanna," I explained.

"Looks like a pirate."

I brushed it off and tried unsuccessfully to re-tell the story using my chalky story board. I had to pause after every third word because laughter would start to strangle me.

"I don’t get why this is funny," someone interjected, annoyed.

"You’re a fucking sped." That came from Scott Ash. We would start dating a year later.

"Sit down, Erin," Mr. Rubinsack begged, paired with his standard temple-rub. Teachers did that a lot when dealing with me…? Mr. Rubinsack remains my favorite teacher of all time. He made me sit in the hall when I got on his nerves. (Not as often as you’d think.)

My friend Keri used to get especially annoyed when I would tell this story. She would assuage confusion by explaining, "Don’t bother trying to understand her. She’s a fucking idiot. It’s only funny to her, in her head."

It took me months to be able to keep a straight face when recounting it.

A year or so later, my mom picked Keri and me up from the mall. Sitting at a red light, I glanced out the window, and in a moment of sheer serendipity, I saw him. With his head swaddled in a taut bandanna, I saw the Man Who Crossed the Street, well, crossing the street. There he was, slowly schlepping along in his worn jacket and scruffy beard.

"Oh my God! Oh my God, look who it is!" I jabbed my finger excitedly out the window. "It’s—"

"Huh, it’s my step-father," Keri finished my sentence with detached ambivalence.

"——yeah. It’s your…..step-father. That’s exactly who it is, wow," I quickly covered. A wave of nausea pummeled over me. What an awkward, unexpected twist to a saga, a year in the making. I didn’t really hang out much at Keri’s house back then, and had only met her step-dad once, in passing. There was no way I would have made the connection.

After we dropped Keri off, I turned to my mom and exhaled melodramatically. "Wow, that was a close one, huh?" I let out a terse laugh.

"What was?" my mom asked, not sounding like she really cared much for an answer.

"That Keri’s step-dad is the Man Who Crossed the Street." Did I have to spell it out for her? I scoffed inwardly.

"The who?" My mom sounded impatient. This was a normal tone for her. I actually had to re-tell the story from that fateful afternoon a year before. She looked at me blankly.

It was my turn to be impatient. "You know, the guy I was obsessed with, like, forever?" She rolled her eyes.

For weeks, I couldn’t make eye contact with Keri. How was I supposed to  tell her that I learned the identity of this man who I had clutched so snuggly against my heart for so long? This man that I had sketched pictures of, laughed about, wrote stories about, all this time it had been her step-father. Her step-father who she despised. I was so afraid that if she knew, she would be angry. Maybe she would find herself adverse to crossing streets, or looking at pictures drawn on chalkboards, or worst of all maybe she would run away to a home that wasn’t inhabited by the Step-Father Who Crossed the Street. Maybe she would start boozing it up with men who didn’t wear bandannas and didn’t resemble pirates when people tried to draw pictures of them.

I finally told her, years later. The air was heavy with tension that night, and I broached the subject with extreme caution and hesitation. She kept slicing through my nervous silences with aggravated sighs. "What?" she would prompt, churning her hands in a "speed-it-up" motion.

"Your step-dad Ron is the Man Who Crossed the Street"! I blurted out, wishing I had a shot of tequila to nurse my heart-rate back to normal.

She laughed. "That’s it?" she asked. "Why were you so afraid to tell me that? I thought you were pregnant or something."

An anti-climactic ending to such a cherished chapter of my life.

I wrote this story two years later when I going through a really awkward poetry phase. It would probably sound best if read above a jarring beat of a bongo.

THE MAN WHO CROSSED THE STREET

(A true story)

Once, many long years ago (two to be exact)

There was a woman in her car with her daughter at a red light.

It seemed to be an average, ordinary day.

Until the man crossed the street.

The woman quickly glanced at her reflection in the mirror

Making sure she looked alright.

Cuz [sic] the man was walking right behind her car.

It was love at first sight, the daughter could tell.

The woman blushed and denied it all.

But that short moment changed their lives forever.

The man who crossed the street will always be in their hearts.

 

Eventually, he quit being known to me as The Man Who Crossed the Street, becoming instead The Man Who Gets Me Served in Bars When I’m Underage.

Not surprising, the nightly cleaning team here at my job is a real motley crew. I try to avoid the supervisor at all costs — she sits in her office with her fake beehive hairdo, scraping her lethal fake nails along the desk and berating whichever cleaner forgot to refill the paper towels in the upstairs bathroom. (Never does she reprimend any of them for raiding vacant cubicles of candy though. Oh wait, that’s me.)

Her wingman is this rotund piece of sloppy shit with flapping jowls and tinted glasses. He usually rides in with her, otherwise I bet he’d be driving an unmarked kidnapping van. He swears loudly in a voice that makes him sound mildly retarded. Or drunk. He looks like he could be the villain on a cartoon.

I bet he smokes cigars.

I can’t stand him. He makes me feel molested. He makes me feel like he crawled into my window last night and touch my boobies while talking to me in babytalk and is remembering it every time he looks at me.

Last night, I was on my way back inside from a short break. I was forced to pass by him, but felt relieved because a security guard and another cleaning person were with him.

I thought I was safe. I began to slip through the door, when he started shouting in his disgusting voice that hacks up perversion on everything within earshot.

"IT SUCKS REAL GOOD!" he barked. "IT SUCKS REAL GOOD!"

Horrifed, I did what any other person would do, and turned around to see if he was forcing someone’s mouth upon his yuckystick.

We locked eyes.

"The SWEEPER! I was talking about the SWEEPER!" he laughed. At that moment, I vowed to never have sex again.

One of my favorite cemeteries, the Homewood Cemetery. Henry and I used to go for walks here together regularly, but then as he continued to age, his endurance slackened and I would end up going alone. This is the only cemetery I walk in that has never, on some occasion, made my body shake with that biting sensation that someone’s behind me, something’s watching me, bodies are rising from the earth. Maybe because there’re always people at this one, groundsmen and mourners and visitors fulfilling obligations.

The mausoleum is terrifying though, I take it back. I’ve peed in the bathroom a few times and sometimes the idea of running out with urine streaming down my thighs seems like the better alternative to taking the extra step to wipe. I just get caught up with that Go! Go! Go! Run for your life! subconscious warning, like I’m watching myself in a horror movie. Never go in the mausoleum to piss,  you idiot!

This photo makes me think of spring, like I want to put on a floppy hat and lay out on one of the graves. But then I remember that when I took this photo, it was below twenty degrees and I forgot to bring gloves; within ten minutes of exiting the car, my fingers were so cold that it looked like ten hot dogs were dripping from my hands, so I guess instead of picnics and floppy hats, I was probably thinking about parkas and bonfires, as in roasting my fingers in one.

Now just envision someone crouching next to a tombstone, face all hidden behind a giraffe mask. April 12 and 13, baby.

I’m embarrassed, yet strangely delighted. I blame LiveJournal for teaching me all I know.

 Yesterday, I learned that if a person so desires, they can purchase polenta in flavored varieties. This special breed of polenta live in a special home with wonton wrappers and fresh herbs.

At the grocery store, I had a strong urge to double fist the polenta logs and squeeze.

I suppressed the desire.

Supposedly, we were at the store to pick up the ingredients for that amazing blueberry banana polenta orgasm I found a recipe for last week, but all of sudden, we’re standing by the root vegetables, and Henry says that it’s too expensive, the ingredients added together are too expensive. I’m like, "But the blueberries, they’re right over here and they look cheap. The only thing cheaper than these here blueberries is Janna standing on a corner." But he was firm in his decision, saying that he had a different meal plan in mind. I went to sit in the car, that’s where I realized that it’s not the cost of the ingredients, it’s Henry’s wavering doubt in himself, in his culinary prowess. Perhaps he needs to watch Alton Brown handle some polenta dildos, and then he’ll have more inspiration to dabble in the land of sweet polenta dishes.

Last night, in lieu of the blueberry seduction,  Henry stuck with his safe and savory expertise and made some sort of polenta pizza. I think that’s what he was aiming for, at least. Patties of polenta with diced tomatoes and a cap of crispy parmesan cheese. It was interesting. Didn’t taste much like pizza, though. Might have something to do with the corn meal.

I’m having leftovers tonight.

It’s looking like a "polenta" category might need to be created, because Henry is on a roll.

According to flickr, this is my most popular photo, with a total of 396 views. I was stalking this strange, muscular man a few years ago at Burger King, with Henry’s kids as my accomplices.

I’m not sure what makes this photo so popular, but I wish I could find a way to learn this man’s identity because I bet he would be flattered to know.

This was Henry on the way home that day, all sparkly-eyed and Cheshire-smiles after a lovely afternoon of antagonizing strangers with a camera. I think Henry typically felt left out when lumped in with me and his kids, because that’s when his unabashed doofness was most apparent.

He locked the car windows on us that day. Now his kids are too busy getting tattoos and going to metal shows to join me in heckling their father, but at least they’ve found new ways to continue the Great Gray Hair Count.

I don’t know why Henry looks so annoyed in that picture because I can attest with absolute clarity that this day was nowhere near as humiliating for him as the day the cable guys were at our house and his kids and I were sneaking pictures of Henry trying to talk cable with them and generally act like he was some sort of George Clooney in a bandanna. Like maybe they wouldn’t see through his facade and invite him out for a brewsky and some sausage. We sat in the dining room and giggled every time the one cable guy would bend over and his crack would smile out at us. Henry would turn around and hiss for us to knock it off, but that would make us act even more assholey. His one son, Blake, stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth and pretended to chug beer at one point, making Henry appear to be Father of the Millenium.

Hopefully when Chooch gets a little older, we can resurrect those golden days of watching gray hairs sprout from Henry’s scalp.