This is supposed to be an illustration of Ed Kemper in my Serial Killer Coloring Book, but who does it REALLY look like?

Another striking similarity to note is that Ed had maintained his guise of innocence by befriending the police force and Henry is a HUGE popo sycophant.

“The frames of my glasses aren’t the same shape,” Henry argued futilely.

More red flags: Henry is quiet, mild-mannered, NONDESCRIPT, drives a WORK VAN. I think it’s time to start prying up the floorboards.

[Originally written in August 2005]

I was delivered a crushing blow this morning in the cemetery as I panted my way back to the car after an hour-long walk/jog amalgamation. (My jogging is something  like 2 parts Corky, 1 part wounded unicorn, garnished with a candied twist of poor eye sight.) It was a hot August day and my hair was dreadlocked with sweat, bugs and dirt, possibly blood, like you’d expect from someone who had just engaged in a spirited flee from Leatherface; this is how I exercise.

Vanity made me freeze as I rounded the edge of the mausoleum next to which I had parked, because not only did I spy my car (homestretch!) but also a suspicious rotund form hovering behind it.

Great, there’s my car, please don’t let this man talk to me. Please don’t let him talk, maybe he won’t see me, please, keep facing straight ahead, no eye contact, so close, so close, so—

All hope was lost as he turned toward me and furtively motioned me over. Trying not to scuff my feet, I grudgingly sidled up next to him.

“Look, two fawn and their mother,” he whispered to me as he pointed down the hill to the valley below.

Terrific, because I don’t see enough deer here in Western Pennsylvania. Still, I feigned interest and together we stood in silence for a few seconds longer. Would he be offended if I walked away? Do I say goodbye first? Small talk protocol is not my strong point.

And then he began talking about deer: what they eat, where they sleep, where they buy their Uggs. I didn’t want to talk about deer. I wanted to go home. Sweat was stinging my eyes at this point and my ankle hurt from when I ran into a slight ditch in the path (things like this wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t so preoccupied with whipping my head around every three seconds, looking out for ghosts and rapists, or the ghosts of rapists) and I could see the silver dome of my car over yonder, pointing and laughing at me.

I hope they don’t get hit by a car was my delightful addition to the conversation before I started to subtly back away. I told him to enjoy his morning to which he countered with, “Have a good walk.”

“Thanks,” I said as I walked the five feet to my car. Thanks? Why did I say thanks?! I was finished with my walk. Now I’m That Asshole who accepts underserved well-wishes.

Because I’m neurotic and as if that man actually cared what I did, I ignored my itchy trigger finger which was waiting impatiently to press down on the button to unlock my car door and I continued walking past it. I’d look like an idiot (to no one but myself) if I get in my car and leave after I just said thanks.

And that’s why, out of principle, I walked an extra fifteen minutes (not like I couldn’t use it, but still) uphill. All because I said “thanks.” As I looped up and around the path, I wondered maniacally about which direction the man had gone. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and the intensity was making me have to pee. What if I ran into him again? Should I turn around? If he was still standing by my car watching the deer by the time I get back…he’d probably think nothing of it. But try rationalizing that to me after I already the devastating finale penned in my head.

And so I kept walking until I reached a path which would have brought me back in the same direction I was headed pre-meeting with the deer watcher, when I noticed him one path below me, taking in the view of the pond. Perhaps he had shifted his awe onto the fish. Had this man maybe not ever seen real life animals before? And then I did this thing that I do where I start to imagine worst case scenarios and I started to feel horribly compassionate for him to the point where I was on the verge of tears. What if his wife was fucking his boss at the zoo and now he has nothing going for him but a stack of National Geographic magazines and memories of skinning buck in Uncle Herb’s storage unit?

Surely he can see me, I thought. If he sees me, he could very well start walking in my direction and we’d end up meeting up at the bottom before I’d have time to hit the next path. He’d maybe want to talk more about the deer, maybe he’d want to tell me how many deer he’s seen in his lifetime. Maybe he even keeps track in a little pocket notebook, and he’d whisk it out of his back pocket to show me the yellowed pages with tiny slashes for each deer sighting. What if he kills people and feeds them to the deer? Do deer eat meat? Maybe he eats the people for himself. Maybe he kills the deer too and then stuffs them with the murdered people and displays them all over his house.

I bet he has a lot of grandfather clocks.

Time stood still for what seemed like eternity. My perspiration had nothing to do with the heat and the laps at this point. This was pure, stinking liquid-fear seeping from my pores and sluicing down my temples.

So I kept walking further away from my car. My right contact lens, clinging onto my eye with its last few ounces of suction, hated me. But I had sacrifices to make in the name of small talk avoidance. (See also: murder; abduction; rape.)

I eventually made it back in the opposite direction and, right before the bend in the path which would show me my car, I quietly slipped behind the mausoleum wall and peeked around the corner. Clear.

For all I know, this man could have very well left the cemetery and gone to feed (deer to) the homeless before swinging by the hospital to read children books (about deer). Yet here I was, playing cloak-and-dagger with some stranger and he didn’t even know.

Maybe I should just get a tread mill.

FRANCIS! in the lefthand corner.

Even though I waited until the night before The Law Firm’s fall food party
to tell Henry that he has to make a batch of caramels he’s never made before, and even though we don’t have a candy thermometer or any of the ingredients he needed, and even though he was tired from working on little sleep and I couldn’t totally remember where I had seen the recipe, there he was in the kitchen at 9:30 on a Monday night, stirring away at a bubbling pot of stout-spiked caramels.

Anyway, these are beer pretzel caramels. When I think of fall, I think of Oktoberfest and even though I hate beer, I’m a glutton for some beer-flavored food.

Sometimes it pays to have a Henry. It’s a good thing he was too busy paying attention in Home Ec to be a normal teenager collecting BJs under the bleachers or else I’d be fucked right now.

I’m totally going to tell everyone at work who doesn’t read my blog that I made them myself though. Weekend classes and lots of Food Network, along with keeping a Michelin Star chef hog-tied in my basement.

I’m skipping to the end even though other shit happened which I’ll get to later; chronology is so overrated anyway.

Andrea was still packing when I arrived at her luxurious Comfort Inn suite that late Monday morning.

“Do you need help?” I asked with a patented non-committal laziness to my voice. She said no and I cheered. I’m pretty sure she learned a long time ago that Erin Rachelle Kelly is the last person you’d want to ask for help.

After she checked out, she was quick to remind me of the real reason she flew to Pittsburgh in the first place: to dine at Chik Fil-A. Did you know that all they have at Chik Fil-A is chicken? Bizarre. Luckily, I was able to get waffle fries and some weird carrot raisin cole slaw shit which I thought I would hate but you’d be hardpressed not to find this shit at the reception to the wedding I’ll never have.

On the way back home, Henry sent me a pathetic text saying that he was locked out of the house. We pulled up and found him sitting on the front steps, staring intently at his phone and pulling off hearty bites of a soft pretzel. Even after I unlocked the door, he continued to sit there.

“He has Words with Friends on his phone,” Andrea reminded. “He doesn’t even need to go in the house.” We immediately left again for one last Starbucks run while she was here. As I was getting in the car, Andrea prompted me to be a good girlfriend and ask Henry if he wanted anything, which I did in a monotone sigh.

The look Henry flashed me in lieu of an answer made Andrea crack up, only because she’s not around to see him to do it EVERY HALF HOUR, this annoyed, “Don’t be stupid” smirk.

“He hates coffee,” I explained. “He thinks even the chocolate chip cookies have coffee in them.” The only thing Henry hates more than Starbucks is when we go to one that has a drive-thru and he has to stutter and stammer out my latte order to overly-perky voices chirping out through the speak

On the way back from Starbucks, I turned up the radio. “You might like this song,” I said.

“Let me guess—Jonny Craig?”

I was insulted! Besides, I think Emarosa (Jonny’s ex-band) only came on in the car a few dozen times the whole weekend she was here. That’s what I like to call “consideration.”

We had a little bit of time after that to hang out at my house. Even though I hate having my picture taken, there was no way I was letting her get on a plane without some kind of photographical evidence that we hung out in real life. First she took one on her phone but I my face had the girth of three footballs.

“We can’t use that one; I look like an Eskimo.”

This prompted Mama Evils to lecture me about racism. Really though, I can’t be expected to know this unless I see a PSA on MTV about Eskimos. Until then, they’re fair game.

I look like Popeye in this one, but it’s whatever.

Then the moment came where we had to take her to the airport. Chooch refused to get out of the car, and I could see him in the backseat all hunkered down and crying.

“Stupid geogaphy,” I said when she hugged me. WHY DID SHE HAVE TO COME HERE?! I mean, goodbyes are hard enough, but when you’re saying it to someone who lives clear across the country and you don’t know when you’ll be able to see them again, it’s like being finger-fucked in the heart by Freddy Kreuger.

The whole way to work, I whined about how sad I was. When I got to work, Wendy came around the corner and, knowing that we had just dropped Andrea off at the airport, she looked all Eeyore-ish too. The only upside was that I got to blather on to everyone about how fantastic the weekend was.

***

That night, I was sitting with Chooch on the couch. Suddenly, he looked at me and wailed, “I can’t even remember how Andrea laughs!”

It was the saddest fucking thing.

I’d like to think that Andrea took home a wealth of knowledge from Pittsburgh; such as: its residents are condimentally adventurous, Steelers jerseys are pretty much a second skin, and riding in the car with Chooch and me in the backseat serves as really effective birth control. But on the bright side, she still texts me as much as she did before so I guess that means I didn’t completely annoy her!

We went to two birthday parties over the weekend: one for my friend Lauren’s 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, and one for Kara’s 2-year-old boy, Harland. My social quota is met for the rest of the year, or at least until next weekend when I have to do it all over again.

I feel like Henry and I got along pretty well the whole time, which means it must have been a pretty successful weekend.

[The final shots can be seen here]

In between Chooch’s extreme divo antics, we actually had a pretty good time at the Evans City Cemetery last Sunday, even though every ten minutes found me asking, “OMG are we going to get yelled at?” every time a random person would approach.

It always turned out to be a fellow zombie enthusiast though, some having traveled as far as New York and Tennessee. Wendy was about 4 seconds away from developing a Facebook friendship with one of the creepier of the graveyard tourists.

Zombie Guy Smiley

This is pretty much all Henry did the whole time: stood around with a stupid smirk on his face, playing Words with Friends and being of little assistance.

We dined on Burger King, post-boneyard romping. Andrea was intrigued by the “zesty sauce” I got with my onion rings, because the Burger Kings in California have apparently not caught on to this condiment craze.

She tried it and immediately deemed it “too zesty.” Maybe her palate is just “too pedestrian.”

Then we were treated to a long, obnoxious ride home because Chooch lost the magnet to his Drawing Thing pen back in the cemetery and had nothing to keep him busy but the sound of his whiny bitch-factory voice. Besides Andrea going back to California, that was probably the lowest point of the whole weekend for me.

After our fortuitous trip to the no-named junk store in Tarentum, we drove back to Pittsburgh to meet Wendy for lunch at Ritter’s. She ended up getting caught in traffic and after refilling our drinks for the third time, the waitress  asked, “Do you want me to bring out some crackers?” I think she mostly meant to keep Chooch satiated, but both of us desperately whined, “Yes!” like we were being groomed for Sally Struthers’ next commercial shoot. Chooch ended up turning the crackers into confetti and our waitress—who was young, yet maternal—helped pick it out of my hair. I really liked that lady.

I liked anyone who takes care of me.

(I really need to be taken care of, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.)

Everyone had changed their minds a dozen times by the time Wendy arrived, but I was pretty secure with my omelette selection.

Until Wendy pointed out the special (which I never look at because that seems like such an Older Person thing to do) which was an omelette stuffed with kale and black eyed peas.

For some reason, I was intrigued by this.

“Do I like black eyed peas?” I asked Henry, who said “I don’t know!” in that stupid squeaky voice he uses when he’s angry that I’m speaking to him.

I shouldn’t have ordered this for two reasons:

• I had to ask if I like a legume that one of my most hated pop groups is named after
• It didn’t have cheese in it

Never mind the fact that I apparently hate kale and never knew it.

My omelette was a plated shit stain. But for some reason I still ate most of it and bitched with every bite.

Andrea thought it was SO FUNNY that I hated my omelette (apparently I hate kale*, too) that she nearly tripped over herself trying to take a picture of my plate of slop. My homefries and wheat toast were good at least.

(*In high school, I dated a guy whose last name was Kail and my mom absolutely hated him, even threatened to send me to an all girls school. One time, we were at the grocery store and I saw a bundle? batch? collection? of kale and tried to make her buy it. She almost started crying. So I don’t think I’ve ever actually had kale because my mom had a pretty hefty boycott on it.)

This was totally Wendy’s fault that I hated my breakfast. (I have to blame someone and I don’t think I’ve ever blamed her for anything yet, so congratulations—it’s your turn, Wendy!) She was trying to have an adult conversation with Andrea but kept getting distracted by the exaggterated “4-year-old eating brussels sprouts for the first time” faces I was pulling from across the table. Henry just ignored it. He’s really good at ignoring it.

Meanwhile, Henry ordered BEEF TIPS. Seriously! He’s not even trying anymore to avoid succumbing to Old Manhood. I noticed that some sort of beets were available as a side and while the waitress was waiting for him to decide, I was loudly pleading with him to order the beets. He was so agitated but the waitress was laughing, which made me love her even more.

God, I want to try to find her on Facebook now. I think we’d be great friends. She looks like someone who would help me cross the street.

I really need someone to help me cross the street.

My fantastic morning purchase served as an intentional centerpiece.  Henry groaned, but Andrea encouraged it. This is why we’re friends. That and the fact that she’s like a crackerjack when it comes to getting Chooch and me to stop fighting. Maybe if Henry wasn’t so adverse to buying us shit, his stress levels would plummet.

Afterward, Wendy, Andrea and Henry all fought over the check while Chooch and I kicked back and dreww pictures on his Drawing Thing. We didn’t have any money anyway.

Then it was time to go down the street to my beloved Vanilla Pastry Studio so Andrea could finally taste the cupcakes that inspired the sex metaphor-laden review that wound up on my blog a few years ago. They are still my favorite cupcakes, although Kaitlin’s come close to dominating.

We stayed there to eat our cupcakes, and Chooch embarrassed me in front of the one and only Sugar Fairy (the owner and my cupcake idol), but then he really started being an asshole so Henry had to whisk him away. God only knows where they went; I’d suggest an alley where Henry beat him in private, but everyone knows that Chooch is the one beating us, so no one would believe me anyway.

It was early evening by then, and Andrea wanted to take a little nap (read: needed a break from Chooch and me squabbling like siblings) so we parted ways with Wendy and dropped Andrea off at her hotel after specifically telling her that roller skating started at 8 and I wanted to pick her up by 7:30. She “conveniently” slept “longer” than she “intended” so we were a little late getting there and I was like, “This is the kind of thing that gets Janna Mexican neck-tied by me, just so you know!”

But then she fell within 60 seconds of stepping onto the rink so that made up for her “accidental” tardiness. Apparently, some teenage girl laughed at her when she had her spill and I wish I would have known that because I’m always looking for a reason to mouth-off to teenagers. Especially at the roller rink.

But Andrea at least got to meet Roller DJ, and I think that was really all she wanted to do anyway. She rested safely on the bench for the rest of the time and even made a friend who just happened to be one of the ladies proficient at that crazy roller line dancing bullshit that I so badly want to learn. Andrea kept trying to get me to go out there and ask for help, and she was about one can of Aquanet away from acting just like a pageant mom. I think she was embarrassed that I wasn’t the best one out there.

Andrea’s favorite part was when a Lil Wayne song came on. She had just seen the video for it the night before at my house and quickly bought his entire discography on iTunes.

We ended up leaving an hour early. It was too “middle school dance” for me, and in between pre-teen slaloming, I found myself making quite a few enemies. (Most notably this 8 foot tall Waldo-looking motherfucker who snubbed me during Men Only skate when I tried to slap his hand. Andrea suggested that he was just a germ-phobe and I was like, “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DEFEND HIM!? WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON!?”) Anyway, we wound up at an Eat n Park, which was on Andrea’s list of places to dine in Pittsburgh. We were sitting near a booth of about 10 girls who MAYBE were high school freshmen. They were playing some truth or dare-type card game and we now know more about their sexual history than their combined gynecologists ever will. Andrea was shriveling up and next to tears; if she opens up a shelter for sexually-deviant teens, you’ll know why. And then she can have a booth at Warped Tour and I’ll be her “helper” who “passes out literature” in front of all the stages and in the back of all the tour buses.

Of course we got stuck behind the whole gaggle of them when we were got up to pay. One of the girls dropped the entire stack of cards and another walked by and purposely kicked at them, sending them sliding all over the floor. It reminded me so much of the type of friendship Janna and I have, that my heart got all warm.

Andrea was beyond obsessed with them at this point and even talked to Colby the cashier about them.

“Do you know them?” she asked. And then we had to listen to him bore us with details of which ones he knows and how he knows them.

It was about 11:30 when we got back to Andrea’s hotel room. I’m surprised she let me come back at all; I figured she had a long night of praying the rosary for the Eat n Park girls.

We drank champagne and I “accidentally” smoked some of her cigarettes. (I can’t be around Camels. They were my absolute jam back in the day.) We talked about absolutely everything from depressing shit to my friend who wanted to “bang” me at the cannon memorial down the street from my house and when his wife got pregnant, he texted me: “We’re having a baby. :(” so now Andrea adds a “baby” behind every frowny face she texts me as an homage to our night of champagne-fueled conversation.

The next thing I knew, I was rolling in my house after 4:00 AM to find Henry methodically in his underwear, mopping up cat pee. He didn’t seemed too alarmed that I was just coming home.

“It’s like being married again,” he mumbled.

It was kismet that we ended up having to go out to Tarentum, PA that Saturday.

“This place looks familiar. Have I been here before?” I innocently asked Henry.

When he said yes, it was all angry-sounding.

I thought it was just because he was annoyed to be driving us out there, but then I later realized that it was a town where some dude who tried to steal me from Henry lived. No wonder Henry was so put-out.

After spending some time in Blackburn’s Pharmacy taking pictures of the cabinet full of old fashioned apothecary relics and getting asked constantly if we wanted to tour the showroom full of toilet seat raisers and walkers, we found Henry and Chooch emerging from some mysterious, dusty store with no name.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“Stuff you’ll hate,” Henry murmured, tugging at his blue-collar while struggling to think of a word to play on Words With Friends.

Wanting to be my own judge, I shouldered past him and entered this horrible variety store that stank of hoarder’s perspiration, moldy newspapers and a flea market in a thunderstorm on a humid July morning.

“Told you,” Henry sighed behind me.  But Chooch and Andrea had already been engulfed by the store’s innards, so I inhaled deeply (and immediately regretted it) and followed them into the bowels of the store, snagging myself on the old, rusty store shelves and praying that I didn’t wind up with tetanus. (I never realized that “anus” is in “tetanus.” I will now be thinking of that all day. And possibly drawing pictures.)

And then Andrea found a table of horribly tacky shoes in nauseating shades of orange and yellow, manufactured specifically for women to wear when visiting their men in the Joliet slammer.

I thought for sure Andrea would gravitate toward these jaundiced disco stripper boots, but she surprised me by snatching up a pair of Pee Wee shoes for nurses.

“You’re not really buying those, are you?” I asked, full of disapproval.

“Um, yeah!” she said. “They’re only $10!”

I don’t know, you guys; I feel like she got ripped off. They’re so stupid! Still, I was so worried she was going to forget to take them back to California with her. One less dumb pair of shoes in Pennsylvania!

I’m sad I didn’t see anyone wearing this when I was in Tennessee. I had “Baby, Baby” stuck in my head for at least an hour after touching this.

Chooch and Andrea went off on their own and god only knows where Henry was — looking through bins of 1968 cookbooks and garden tools, probably — and that’s when it happened. I was walking down a cluttered aisle, half expecting that junk lady-troll from Labyrinth to come popping out with a handful of marbles and empty Spam tins for sale, when an image struck me in my periphery.

“Oh how cute,” I thought to myself.

“A picture frame company that’s actually using intentionally funny stock photos!” I snatched one out of the cardboard box they were stashed in all haphazardly, and that’s when I realized that it was not actually a man dressed as a young girl on the day of her dance recital, but actually a young girl dressed as herself on the day of her dance recital.

Almost immediately, I found myself futilely fending off pee drops. I ran around the store, kicking up 85 year old dust and the stench of mothballs in my wake, until I found Chooch and Andrea.

“LOOK AT THIS,” I panted. “I’m getting it.”

And because they’re assholes like me, they both immediately laughed and gave my sweet find a giant thumbs up.

I ran back to look at the price and was shocked to find that it was only $1 (ONE DOLLAR).

For this gem? A buck? What a steal!

I ran past the giant collection of machetes and found Henry near the register, ready to buy a bottle of Mountain Dew.

“Here, you need to buy this, too,” I said all breathlessly, thrusting the boxed frame into Henry’s belly.

He looked at it and smirked. “You’re not serious,” he said in his Father Tone.

Of course he wouldn’t think it was funny. He doesn’t “get” things like this.

It was only supposed to be $1, remember, but the cashier charged him $2. He got all crotchety about this but I hissed, “Pay the broad, it’s worth it!”

***

I couldn’t wait to display it with pride on my desk that Monday, right in front of my kid’s picture and beautifully flanking my fangirl photo of Jonny Craig. I laughed every time someone would tentatively ask, “So…who’s that in the picture?” clearly wondering what side of my family bears Hispanic Amy Winehouse doppelgangers.

Most of my co-workers jumped on my wagon and a mutual appreciation for the awkward dancer was born. Of course there were a few people who said, “I don’t get it…” They can just go sit on a curb somewhere with Henry, drinking Mountain Dew and being boring and humorless.

Every time I feel sad or stressed at work, I look over my shoulder and laugh all over again. I’m so glad Andrea was here to experience this wonder with me. Andrea and her stupid shoes.

I can’t even remember when exactly I met Andrea now that I think about it. When you text with someone everyday, it just seems weird to think about there being a time when you didn’t. But I know it was 2008 and we met on the Etsy’s Dark Side member forum. She found my blog and started commenting, and if you don’t know by now that the fastest way to my heart is by acknowledging my blog (and presenting me with a fine array of cupcakes), then we probably just weren’t meant to be friends.

It also didn’t hurt that her Etsy oeurve was full of bloodied Barbie dioramas, hair fascinators with toy revolvers in the middle and jewelry featuring hacked-off limbs. And with Chooch being such a pint-sized aficionado of the undead, he quickly became a fan of hers too. (It probably helped that she started spoiling him right off the bat. When she found out he was going through a Ben Franklin phase when he was 3, she made him a zombie Ben plush. Who does that!? Creative geniuses, that’s who.)

Then it just got to the point where we texted every day and it eventually occurred to me that after Henry, she was often the first person I was going to when anything would happen to me, good or bad.

The one glaring problem is that she’s in California and I’m in Pennsylvania. “Stupid geography” had become kind of our catch phrase since we were always having to miss everything each other did.

But then one night in August, I was sitting at work when she texted: “So I’m thinking about coming out there for a visit;” I almost died. And then a bunch of my co-workers almost died too because her My Pretty Zombie eye shadow has become quite the sensation at The Law Firm. When Andrea settled on a date, Wendy even canceled a tentative trip to visit a friend to ensure she’d be in town to meet the brains behind the cosmetic crack. Andrea is kind of a big deal ’round these parts.

Somehow I managed to pick her up last Friday morning from the airport without folly. We went straight to the hotel so she could check in (she schmoozed Stanley at the front desk and wound up with Comfort Inn’s version of a honeymoon suite) and give me all of my presents.

Because she is, after all, the goth Mary Poppins.

She got stuff for Chooch too, but also Henry, so now he thinks he’s like part of the club or something.

***

After introducing her to my cats, it was time to take her downtown to The Law Firm. We walked the several blocks to the trolley stop, where I proceeded to spaz out about the fare. (I never know if I have the right amount!) Within 5 seconds, Andrea confirmed that we were OK. Then she took the cash from me because I had clammy Waiting For the Trolley palms and she was afraid I was going to fuck up the crispness and make the bills unable to be accepted by the fare machine.

(I think she said something about me being adorable at that moment, but that sentiment only lasts so long. None of my other friends think I’m adorable, ever. And that’s just a shame.)

That happened to me once in May, you know. I couldn’t get my $1 bill sucked into the machine and the trolley driver freaked out and screamed, “OF COURSE IT’S ACTING UP AGAIN! THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT MACHINE! JUST GO SIT DOWN! I GUESS EVERYONE JUST RIDES FOR FREE TODAY!”

Meanwhile, everyone who got on after me had no problem with it. I sat all hunkered down and sheepish in my seat the whole way to work, where I then proceeded to make everyone feel sorry for me.

“Aw, you got yelled at? What an asshole! You poor thing,” everyone said. (Shit, this memory might be from the delusional side of my brain, but now I can’t remember.) Anyway, when I went home that night, I gave Henry the dollar back and he was all, “Um, what did you do, put this through the washer? No wonder it wouldn’t go in the machine.”

I’m pretty sure it was my sweaty, nervous mitts that got it in that state, though.

Andrea was nice (see also: smart) enough to insert the fare for both of us, alleviating so much of my anxiety.

SO MUCH of it.

And thank god the lady sitting in front of us let us know we were at the last stop, because I completely stopped paying attention since I had a shiny new toy-person in the seat next to me. Every other minute, I was back to being stunned that we were actually hanging out in real life.

The next huge obstacle in our journey was that we had to cross the street, which is always scary. (When Henry drives me to work, I never have to cross the street. It’s super safe.) I managed to get her to the 10th floor of The Law Firm unscathed, but then she got mobbed a few minutes later by eyeshadow addicts; a plummet down the elevator shaft might have seemed preferable by then.

Seriously, Andrea is a rock star at The Law Firm.

“Did you make that bracelet?” Barb asked me after I introduced her to Andrea.

“Uh, yeah,” I answered in this snotty, indignant tone that I know Henry for one really relishes. “I’ve worn it here before, but I guess that was back when I wasn’t cool enough for you to notice me.”

This inspired Barb to go on a tirade about how awesome I am. She is like putty in my hands. PUTTY.

And then Wendy rounded the corner and I was really impressed at the restraint she showed; she had really dialed it back a ton.

(Andrea still seemed alarmed that this was Wendy toned down. She’s just a very excitable person!)

After spending about 25 minutes watching Andrea be overwhelmed by attention, we went to Olive or Twist for some midday drinks. (Amazing that I even got us there considering I just blindly follow everyone else when we go out for late shift happy hour; I’m a navigational dunce when it comes to downtown.) I absolutely had eaten nothing all day but some licorice that Andrea shook into my cupped hands while waiting for the trolley but I ordered a lavender lemonade martini at the bartender’s suggestion. Who am I to turn down lavender? Plus, the bartender was practically fellating the drink menu while describing the drink to me. Andrea had the audacity to inquire about their champagne selection, which did not exist, so the bartender got a little snippy with her, illustrating her feelings by pouring way more martini in my glass than Andrea’s.

I openly gloated about this and the fact that my drink was way prettier than Andrea’s ugly pear concoction. She seemed to take it in stride, hopefully because she knows I’m mercilessly cruel to the ones I like the most.

Afterward, we sat around outside on eyeball chairs and heckled a tour group on Segways. There was one lady who was frantically calling out, “Can’t stop! Can’t stop!” I was disappointed when someone who apparently had flipped their operating manual saved her with their wisdom; I kind of (read: really) wanted to see her crash into the side of a building. They seemed to be taking some sort of stretching break, which made me wonder if it’s really that strenuous to maneuver on a Segway. Is limbering up really necessary? I don’t want to fully hate on these people unless I know for sure, so maybe I should put one of those stupid helmets on and become a Segway nerd for an hour.

I mean, I could stand to learn some shit about the city in which I’ve lived for 32 years yet know nothing about.

Henry and Chooch picked us up down there because I’m too stupid to figure out how transfer tickets work. Andrea was going to teach me, and also find out from Wendy how I can get a monthly pass, but then quickly realized that if I know too much, Henry might make me use that knowledge and officially resign as my work jitney.

***

We had dinner that night at Blue Flame, which was one of the few places that Andrea was adamant about going to since I have written about how special it is to me. This pleased me greatly. When I was friends with Jessy, Blue Flame was a really good halfway point for us to meet, but she’d always be like, “Babe, please. I really hate that restaurant.” Because it wasn’t a chain, you see. And every time she would say that, it was like she was ripping straight from my teeth a grilled cheese wrapped in my Pappap’s photo and curb stomping it.

“This is great,” Andrea said when we sat down in a corner booth. And then after dissecting and reassembling the breakfast menu like she was about to be quizzed on a Japanese game show, she wound up ordering some stuffed chicken thing and potato pancakes, which she then sent a picture of to her husband to taunt him. He was apparently very jealous.

Chooch was still riding high on his excitement that Andrea was here and was showing off and acting out accordingly. (Occasionally he’ll say things like, “Am I ever going to see Andrea?” and “I wish Andrea could come to my birthday party” and then he makes me show him a map so he can remember just how far away we are from her. It’s really sad.) Blue Flame never gets a dinner crowd, but there were still several people in our section who would periodically turn and gape at the hellion in the corner and his parents who had long ago relinquished any parental control. Henry finally reached his limit and drug Chooch out to the parking lot to cool off. The last thing Chooch said before disappearing out the door was, “I want my foooooood——-” Just the way it came out, all cartoonish and desperate, like he was falling off a cliff when he said it, made us lose it. Andrea had been up for like, 24 hours by this point, so she REALLY lost it. And I was just so happy to finally be hanging out with someone who laughed until they cried, that it made the whole situation even funnier to me.

They eventually came back in and Chooch kept instigating. He reminds me so much of someone sometimes, the way he knows just how to get under Henry’s skin like his antics are a scalpel, but I just can’t place it. He was making Andrea laugh so hard that she thought she was going to have to go outside. Again, I felt relieved to finally be hanging out with another laughing idiot, but then she kept blaming it on delirium. I think she’s lying though; she’s just as chuckle-abusing as I am.

Either that or those were real, fat “WTF am I doing here in Pittsburgh with these assholes?” tears.

The waitress never brought us a box, so I wrapped Chooch’s leftover grilled cheese and my potato pancakes all haphazardly in several napkins, bunched it up in a ball, and then went up to pay the bill with my hobo luggage. On the way up there, we past a table of old ladies who were ordering. The one lady asked for a side of beets and when the waitress said they were out, she loudly whined, “Aw, no beets?!” What a small victory for the self-esteem of beets.

We both started laughing all over again and Andrea totally ditched me so I had to stand there, paying the bill and laughing alone.

On the way home, Chooch’s dream of browsing the Halloween store with Andrea finally came true and Henry told me I’m fat. I’m sure other things happened during the hour we spent in that store, but that’s all that stands out to me right now. Later that night, Henry sat alone with his nose pressed against his phone, playing Words With Friends while Andrea mindlessly stared at music videos on MTV Hits and I taught her about all the things she’s (not) missing with pop music. Then I made her watch FRANCIS! eat a cricket and she was like, “OMG is this seriously all he does, just sits there?” but I took that as jealousy from not having her own Pacman frog. She probably already bought her own since she’s been back in California. Why else would she have been asking me all these questions, such as, “Where are they from?” which might actually have been the only question she asked. And then she got to experience in person and for the 7895th time that day my patented “I dunno” mumble, which I sometimes pair with a half-shrug.

“Maybe like South America?” I guessed.

Henry smirked. “Probably some breeder’s basement.”

And then Marcy’s daughter Willie peed on Andrea’s purse (which was thankfully vinyl).

Welcome to Pittsburgh!

I’m working backwards here, but I couldn’t wait any longer to post these. This definitely turned out to be my favorite cemetery photo shoot ever.

Chooch could have stood to be more cooperative (children! ugh), but it was overall a really fun day. Wendy even came out to spectate and then wound up a victim. Meanwhile, Henry leaned against the car for most of the time, playing Words With Friends and being annoyed.

It was awesome!

[Majority of the makeup effects were achieved using My Pretty Zombie cosmetics. Look for the limited edition Zombify set coming soon!]

My friend Andrea (of My Pretty Zombie fame!) has been in Pittsburgh since Friday morning & the amount of fodder I have to blog about is staggering. (Who knew beets alone could be so funny?)

Oh my god, she brought us so many toys and presents, totally spoiling us and even made sure I didn’t die when I took her downtown on the trolley to meet my Law Firm friends. She’s like a goth Mary Poppins.

Today we’re going to the Evans City Cemetery (the official Night of the Living Dead graveyard) to take some zombie pics. An aficionado of the undead can’t come to the Zombie Capital of the World and NOT stomp around that boneyard. I would definitely seal my fate as the worst tour guide (and friend) in the universe if I didn’t take her there.

So that’s what we’re doing today, after which she begrudgingly promised to go to a haunted house tonight because she knows I’ll cry otherwise.

This has been the funnest weekend ever! Chooch and I are going to cry when she leaves tomorrow. (Maybe Henry might too—she HAS taken a lot of heat off him this weekend.)

A giant cocknibbler, stomping out all of the fun at the amusement park.

Thursday morning, an Everfresh- and Rip It-logo emblazoned Henry spontaneously took me out for breakfast; this afforded me a chance to properly interview him about his FML Day (a/k/a Double Amusement Park OMG Epic Fun Day) with a spiral-bound notebook over a cup of coffee, like it’s 1945 and I work for Blue Collar Beverage Aficionados Weekly.

***

It all started when I found out that there is a small amusement park called DelGrosso’s about 2 hours away from Pittsburgh that has the Wacky Worm;  I’ve been dead set on going before the summer’s end. And then when I realized that it’s only a few miles away from Lakemont, my favorite petite amusement park, I started to devise a plan where I could go to both in one day. They’re both small enough that spending a full day at one could get pretty boring if you weren’t there for a company picnic, family reunion or  the scattering of body bag contents, plus they both have discounted admission in September: Lakemont is $5 if you go during the Altoona Arts and Crafts weekend (see also: a bunch of Republican propaganda and several wreaths beneath tents) and DelGrosso’s is $12.95 (free for all the Henrys in the world, i.e. non-riders!). The combined admission is still cheaper than most amusement parks but I still made a conscious effort to save some of our vacation money, unbeknownst to Henry. You see, I had it all worked out in that remedial mass of lobes and neurons that we’ll just generously call a brain.

Because I knew that he would pitch a financial fit as usual, most likely on the morning of. And he did, which caused me to cry.

Like a five-year-old. While our actual five-year-old was still asleep.

But I threatened to wake him up and fill him in on how his dick father was once again trying to rip the carpet of fun out from under our feet, and then Henry would have two crying five-year-olds on his hands.

Then I pulled out my wad of leftover Tennessee Fun Money and Henry suddenly changed his tune. So I had to text Janna back and tell her Never mind! We’re still going. And then Henry was all, “And tell her I didn’t call you a bitch!” because I told her he called me a bitch.

Like anyone would ever believe Henry had the balls to speak to me in such a degrading manner.

Anyway, it couldn’t have been too terribly bad of a day for Henry, considering he got to ride up there with just Chooch in the car since I rode with Janna and Laura, meaning that Henry didn’t have to listen to Dance Gavin Dance at all. (I didn’t get to listen to them either, though, or any music I like for that matter. Just a bunch of shit on Janna’s XM radio. I was scrolling through the menu and there was one point where Lady Gaga was on something like 8 stations at once. Sad times in the car. I eventually settled on Journey. Motherfucking JOURNEY. Which inspired Janna to sing. Countless ways this is terrible, but that is a rant for another time. Or for my private diary.)

Two hours and two weeping ear drums later, we arrived at DelGrosso’s, at the base of the Laurel Mountains. Because a week in the Smokies just wasn’t enough.

***

In this picture, he’s thanking me for giving him food money after he spotted me eating a slice of pizza when I swore all I would eat all day was energy bars to save money. “Is that what energy bars look like here?” he texted me, so I guiltily slapped $2 in his hand so he could also have pizza.

Me: List some things you’d rather be doing than going to amusement parks.

Henry, with no hesitation: Sleeping. Getting a tooth filled.

[Not like he has many left.]

Me: How did it feel to have to ask me for money to buy food?

Henry: It was the worst, because you’re so stingy and you would have let us starve to death. [Whenever I say I’m starving to death, he’s quick to point out this isn’t true, yet he’s allowed to say it.] Basically we would have starved to death [that’s 2 times now] because you never want to eat until you find out I’m buying then all of a sudden you’re hungry.

[Now, I’m a little taken aback but this response. I’m stingy, but he’s the one who didn’t want to go because we’d have to “spend money.” Any kids reading this? This is what you have to look forward to when you get into a “grown up” relationship: Financial bickering. It’s the best. And then even sex goes downhill because all the things you want to try “cost too much money.” Anyway, the pizza was only $1.75 a slice. Eat up, orphan.]

I only gave him enough for one slice of plain pizza. However, he ordered pepperoni AND A DRINK, can you even imagine, so he had to turn his pockets inside out and slide a mound of coins across the counter.

Ordering food with A WOMAN’S MONEY. His SERVICE buddies would probably frown. Emasculation and all that.

Me: What’s your problem with the Wacky Worm?

Henry, sighing wearily: I don’t have a problem with it. I just choose not to ride it.

Me, unwilling to let the subject die: Because you don’t want people to see you having fun?

Henry, in a snippy, irritated fashion: It’s a kids ride.

Me, probing further: It’s because you’re afraid your Rip-It hat is going to blow off, mussing up your McNichol locks, isn’t it?

Henry, monotone & through clenched teeth: Yeah, that’s it exactly.

Me: What if there was a reunion for the people you were in the Service with, but it was on the Wacky Worm. Would you ride it then?

Henry, engrossed in his phone as usual and mumbling thoughtlessly: I don’t know. I guess.

[I’m sure there’s enough room on the seat for his donut, if it’s his hemorrhoids that’s keeping him off the Wacky Worm.]

I mean, this asshole was nearly Henry’s age and he seemed to be riding it unabashedly.

I imagine this is how googly he looked the first time he saw tits in person.

Me: Did you know I serendipitously snapped a picture of you smiling at Lakemont? It almost looks like you might be having fun. Which makes me wonder, what is your idea of a fun day?

Henry, in that squeaky “You’re Pushing Me to the Edge” voice that I absolutely can’t stand and makes him sound like a spoiled 7-year-old girl, I fucking swear that’s going to be the impetus to my leaving one day: I don’t know. A day spent with….Chooch. Sometimes you.

[I’m pretty sure that was a joke, or that he was only saying that because he wanted the rest of my pancakes.]

Me: Get serious. You’d probably want to go fishing off an oil rig with a boombox blasting Judas Priest, but only if you have ear plugs.

Henry, on edge and quickly retorting with a smugness: Yeah, probably.

Chooch, shit-talking on the go-carts because he knows his father is too much of a pussy to do it.

Me: Did you and Chooch talk about me at all on the way to DelGrosso’s?

Henry, acting like this was a dumb question: No! Not until we saw those wind turbines [on the hill] and I told Chooch that you’re scared of them. Then we laughed.

[This is not something to make jokes about. I’ve been scared of them ever since I saw the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm scene in  Mac and Me when I was a kid. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE CAPABLE OF.]

Henry refused to buy a ticket to ride the train, so he had to stand alone and stroke his…moustache.

Me: How sad were you that you couldn’t ride the train?

Henry: I wasn’t sad at all.

Me, determined to get to the bottom of it: What did you do while we were riding it?

Henry: I don’t know! [Thinks for a few seconds.] Watched some people throw a ball in hole.

[This means he watched porn on his phone.]

Me: When you were a kid, did you like going to amusement parks?

Henry: Yes.

Me: So what you’re saying is that at one time in your life, you were capable of having fun?

Henry, rubbing his beard: Yeah, right up until around 2001. [He started laughing as he watched me start to realize that we began dating in 2001.]

Me: Is there anything else you want to add?

Henry: No thanks. Let’s keep it mysterious.

There is nothing mysterious about the fact that he’s a dork loser who hates the sound of joyful laughter. (Mostly my joyful laughter.)

In case you ever wanted to know what Henry’s nostrils look like.

One of my co-workers called out to me from her office, “Do you like tomatoes?”

That’s a loaded question. I suppose I do like tomatoes, but only on certain occasions, in certain foods and sliced in certain ways.

But this was coming from a co-worker with whom I’m not very close; not wanting to engage her any further by revealing intimate details about my dietary habits, I settled for a simple, “Sure.”

And then there she was, standing before me with a carton of cherub tomatoes.

“Here, take one!” she said eagerly, arms extended like she was handing me a birthday gift. “It’s like an explosion of flavor in your mouth!”

Stunned, I stuck one tentative hand beyond the plastic covering of the carton and right smack into the warzone of small red torture devices.

Never do I just EAT A TOMATO. Oh, I know all about you fools who shake some salt on those motherfuckers and eat ’em like a goddamn apple. But that’s not for me. Put it on a grilled cheese, for sure, but someone gives me a whole entire tomato and it’s getting chucked for fun.

What a Normal Person Might Do:

• Politely decline.
• Pretend to have gum in their mouth.
• Puncture their breast implant and run.

What Erin Does:

• Accept the challenge.

I felt backed into a wall by then, anyway. My hand was already instinctively in the carton (actually, by this point, it was stuck in the carton; have you seen the gargantuan rings I wear?) so this was definitely the point of no return; and she was standing there all excited and wide-eyed, waiting to become Tomato Bros with me. I was willing to tell her what she wanted to hear just to make her go away.

It was the size of a fig, the one I withdrew. Instead of biting it, I sighed heavily and popped the whole thing into my fake-smiling mouth.

My molars squished into it and sent guts of the tomato gushing through my mouth; the wet, gelatinous texture made my sad tongue curl back in terror. This was definitely not a good time for my taste buds, or my gag reflex for that matter. I’ve had an easier time getting through reluctant, obligated blow jobs.

That’s about when the tang of bile began to slowly crawl up my throat like a geriatric geyser. I was still chewing and smiling while she stood there expectedly, praying that she doesn’t notice I’m dry heaving with zipped lips. And then of course, a veritable reel of disgusting images played out inside my mind, because why wouldn’t I want to think about:

• snakes engulfing writhing rodents,
• Snooki’s kooka engulfing writhing rodents,
• Sarah Palin as President, and
• Grandma Cleavage modeling her new Irish Snuggie,

while I’m hosting what I can only describe as Satan’s sour semen on the bed of my tongue.

The short version: It was yucky, you guys. :(

My body was trying to reject it into my cupped palms but she just wouldn’t walk away.

Someone else walked by and she turned to offer them their own cherub (who tossed it into his mouth like he’s some Huck Finn motherfucker, I might add; I might also add that his name is MITCH, the worst Facebook friend in the whole world, and you know why I can add that? Because HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THIS EXISTS BECAUSE HE NEVER CHECKS IN WITH HIS STUPID FACEBOOK FRIENDS.), affording me a few seconds to openly cringe and emulate the No Bueno! grimace a baby makes when being force-fed organic mashed peas. I definitely didn’t want to swallow, so I tucked it behind my teeth, under my tongue, if I could have dripped it down into my bra, I would have; and then I choked out a strained, “It’s really good, thanks!” Like it would have killed her if I told her the truth, as if she grew this bitch in her own goddamn garden from seeds extracted from her loins. And then I couldn’t hold on to it any longer—I swallowed. I mean, it might as well have been a load of ejaculate so why the hell not?

“An explosion of flavor, right?!”

Yes, something like that.