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By Misti & Steven Ryniak Submitted by Misti Date: 2003 Jan 23 Comment on this Work [[2003.01.23.10.31.23872]] |
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Last night was our best date night ever, as far back as I can remember. Chris thinks it's because I talked to my mom for awhile on the phone. My mom always cheers me up. I think another contributing factor was the furry black hat I was wearing. I love that hat. We started our evening off with a trip to Title Wave. We hadn't been there in awhile. Right away I noticed a bunch of "Dallas" videos in the movie section. I oohed and ahhed over them and this attentive clerk told me he'd make me a good deal on them. He said if I didn't buy them he was going to just get rid of them. Chris was dubious. He doesn't like to be reminded of Texas. I picked out four of the videos and the clerk told me he'd sell me the entire set of eleven videos for twenty bucks. So I got the whole set because he was cute and persuasive and I love to hate J.R. Ewing. Chris ranted a bit but then he apologized later on when he saw how thrilled I was about my purchase.I also got two little paperbacks at the checkout..."How to Speak Alaskan" and "Dear Alice." Last night I read "Dear Alice" in bed while Chris was watching "Remains of the Day" in the den. I was howling with laughter. Chris walked in and said,"You little nut. You're going to wake the lesbians." The lesbians live below us. I said,"Please let me read some of these to you! They are hilarious!" The cover of the book says,"Rejected letters to Advice Columns From Completely Insane Idiots." When I bought the book I thought they were real letters. They're not. They're pretend...I think and hope they're pretend, at least, because they truly are insane. Here are some of my favorites: Dear Alice, We bought my cat Gungi about twelve pounds of catnip for his two-year birthday, and now he's turned into a total stoner. That's all he does all day is eat catnip, lick the catnip, or smoke the catnip in these fat cat blunts that we roll for him. Then he walks around in a mellow daze for the rest of the day, dozing in and out of consciousness. He's started wearing a rastafarian hat all the time, he's grown a goatee and dreadlocks, and he sleeps about twenty-two hours a day. And the only music he listens to now is Bob Marley, Phish and Cypress Hill. Me and my roommates are getting concerned about his catnip use, especially after last Monday, when we came home from a lacrosse game and he was sprawled out on the sofa with his water bong, eating all our caramel popcorn and watching Half-Baked for the thirty-fourth time. Should we enroll him in some drug rehab program or something? S.I. Albuquerqe, NM Dear Alice, Last year I went to the zoo, and I went on one of those guided tours with my wife and kids. I will never, ever ever ever go again. Things were going fine until we got to the giraffe yard. One of the giraffes was lying down on the ground and wasn't moving, and had blood coming out of its ear. One of the kids yelled,"Hey, that giraffe is dead!" Well, all the kids, including mine, started crying and screaming for about twenty minutes. The guide said he was just sleeping, but we all knew the damn thing was dead. Then, at the monkey cage, things got worse. As soon as we approached it, I noticed the gate door was unlatched and half open. I pointed it out to the guide, but he said not to worry, that the keepers were probably just feeding them. Well, the whole time the guide was talking about the monkeys to the group, there was this one, angry looking monkey standing by the door, eyeballing me. I didn't like him at all. He started pissing on me and my kids from inside the cage, but the guide said that was "normal." Then as soon as we all turned to leave, that fucking monkey ran out the door, jumped on my back and clawed the Alabama fuck out of me. It took three men to get him off me, and I spent four days in the hospital. I'm trying to sue the zoo, but goddamn that monkey. Angry, Tuscaloosa, AL Dear Alice, About a month ago, my husband and I signed up to become a "host" family for a foreign exchange student. We requested a student from Spain, since my husband and I are both fluent in Spanish. The host service, however, sent us a 98 year-old Turkish woman named "Agdessa" instead. She's on a respirator and is totally blind, and she speaks absolutely no English. Since we don't have an extra bedroom, she's been sleeping in my eighteen year-old son Jeffrey's room on the floor in her Army surplus sleeping bag. About two weeks ago, her and my son started dating heavily. Jeffrey denies it and claims they're just "close friends," but they go out to the movies and dinner every night of the week. Me and my husband are disgusted, especially after he bought her an assortment of vulgar lingerie from Victoria's Secret, and even some leather bondage underwear. Then I was shocked last week when I came home from work early, and caught Jeffrey "teabagging" her on the kitchen floor. A few days after that, I came home early from work again, and Agdessa had on a strap-on dildo, and Jeffrey was "taking it in the ass" on the living room sofa. Me and my husband have moved Agdessa's sleeping quarters to the attic, but no matter how much we protest, they won't stop seeing each other. We don't really want to throw either one of them out of the house, but we just don't know what else to do. C.E. Portland, ME (Steven Ryniak is the actual author) Okay, I'll stop now. I guess I have a sick sense of humor. I was laughing so hard I hurt. Chris was a little perplexed, but glad to see me laughing instead of crying. From Title Wave we went to Page One Too to find Bitch by Elizabeth Wurtzel. I found the first-edition paperback that has the rare photo on the cover. Chris says they pulled it and replaced it with a less controversial photo. Elizabeth Wurtzel is sitting in a chair topless (you can't see everything, just the undercurve of her left breast), flipping off the camera. Her middle finger is the "I" in BITCH, all caps. I also got Radical Sanity, so now I have all four of her books. Yesssss. I want to send her a letter and my Bless Her Heart collage. Then we went to Fuddrucker's for food. This whole time I was wearing my black furry hat. I didn't want to take it off because I liked hiding my hellacious hair. Well, we walked into the place and I felt all these eyes on me. I noticed straight away that I was the only person wearing a hat, save for the employees who were wearing caps. I said,"We live in a conservative city. If we were in San Francisco or L.A. I would blend right in." Chris pointed out that you aren't supposed to wear hats indoors or some such shit. I refused to take it off. The girl who took our order looked at me strange, especially when I couldn't figure out which size burger to get because I don't know fractions. At first I ordered the 2/3 pounder. Then I noticed the price. I always get the cheapest burger so that's how I knew 2/3 was wrong. So I said,"I'm sorry, make that the 1/3 pounder." Chris said,"Is that the size you normally get? That's too big." He doesn't know fractions, either. I said,"Damn it, I don't know. Don't confuse me. You know I don't know my fractions." Then I said,"Uh, I want some fries, too. And a Corona." The girl said,"What?" I said,"A beer. A Corona." She said,"Can I see some ID?" I said,"Oh, no. I didn't bring it with me." So I didn't get a beer. I was beaming, though. I said to Chris,"Awesome. I guess I'll get a chocolate shake, instead." But no, he said they cost three bucks and that was too expensive and it would ruin my appetite. Do you see a theme here? Yes, I am married to a daddy figure. Which is odd, considering the fact that Chris was born in October of 72 and I came along just a few months later in February of 73. So we sat down at a table and got into a fidelity argument. Chris still doesn't trust me completely because of last summer. I said,"I wish I had fucked the guy. At least I would have gotten something out of this." I just bitterly resent the fact that I am still being crucified when nothing even HAPPENED. I just left a collect drunken message for later delivery on the dude's answering machine and sent him a belated (by several months) birthday package that included photos from one of our photo albums. I know emotional infidelity is just as bad, if not worse, as physical infidelity. But I am bitter because of the whole thing. If I think about it too much my head will explode. It really will. So I try not to dwell. We were going to see "Adaptation" at the big ass cinema but we came home and I talked to my mom on the phone instead. I said,"Mom, Chris says if I can get your permission I can start dabbling in recreational drugs like marijuana once a month. You know weed is milder than alcohol. When I was hanging out with Tiffiny in Dallas we shared two joints and she was on Ritalin and maybe cocaine and she drove just fine." I also told Mom how I carried a joint wrapped in toilet tissue in my pocket in the airport and the security thing started beeping and I was scared shitless. I told her that Chris and I shared it in our kitchen. Chris said,"I did NOT smoke it with you!" And I said,"He's lying! He's being Eddie Cleaver! He wants you to think he's all innocent!" Mom told me to stay away from drugs. I said,"You and Daddy used to share joints!" She said,"I have never smoked marijuana in my life." I said,"Well, that's why Daddy divorced you, then. You wouldn't party with him." We were just having fun. Then I told Mom how I felt guilty because when I got out of the hospital last summer Chris told me he had been converted and he had bought a King James Bible and found Christ in two of my abstract paintings in the bathroom. He had found Perfect Peace. I told Mom that I told Chris if he kept it up I would divorce him. She said,"Oh, Misti. That breaks my heart. You need to ask God for forgiveness. And you wonder why Chris dreamed of Otto and Otho the other night? I'm not sure but I think Otto and Otho were lost. They could have been crying out to Chris from the depths of hell." I howled with laughter and handed the phone to Chris. I was laughing too hard to talk. Then, since we had missed the movie, we searched for this grocery store Chris had found last week. We never found it. We found a Wal-Mart Supercenter we had never noticed before, though. I said,"Pull in! Now!" I was hyper with manic excitement. Chris said,"No, let's go get your magazines first." I had mentioned earlier on that I needed some new magazines. So we drove down Central and I said,"Let's go in there." The store is called Too Naughty. We walked in and I was just chatting away, still wearing my black furry hat. The clerk was a bald guy with a mustache who bore an uncanny resemblance to my stepdad, Joe. I just glanced at him and continued on my merry way, ignoring his resentful stare. I was laughing out loud at several of the items and magazines on display. I made a running commentary as Chris tried to keep me on a short leash. I said,"I don't want real. I want fantasy. I want airbrushing. I have real. I don't want to look at it." Chris likes the real magazines that show everything but I just like the topless, airbrushed ones. I had fun looking at different penises, too, but penis magazines don't do it for me. I love my husband's penis, of course. I have loved several penises in my time and have often wished for one of my own. But in the realm of fantasy, it's strictly female for me. I said,"Brian bought me one of those vibrators before but it was blue. It didn't do it for me. Oh, we need some lube, don't we?" It was deathly quiet in the store except for my loud voice. The clerk was burning holes in my back. I got a kick out of the whole thing. Chris found a pack of three magazines for $10.99. I said,"Oh, Playboy. Those other two look good, too. But can we afford this? That's too much money." Chris insisted that if I really liked it we should get it because it would be a good investment. So Chris paid for the magazines while I looked longingly at the different lubricants. In the car Chris said,"That guy looked just like Joe." I said,"I know! I was thinking the same thing!" I said,"That man was staring at me. Was I doing the wrong thing?" Chris said that I absolutely did the wrong thing. He said the man took his job very seriously and I was mocking his merchandise. Oh. I always do that. How can anyone not see the humor in plastic portable pussies and twelve-foot long purple plastic dongs? If someone can't see the humor in all that I can't help them. They are beyond reproach. But like religion and politics, porn is a sensitive subject. I wasn't being respectful. But shit, I had fun. In Wal-Mart I went a little bit crazy. I was tired of being stared at. I said,"We live in a conservative fucking city! I'm sick of people staring at me! You would think they'd never seen a hat before! Goddamn!" Chris said,"Lower your voice. You don't say swear words in public like that." This guy was staring at me as I chose a huge package of toilet paper. I guess I unwittingly provided his controversy/entertainment for the evening. I think I'll wear that hat again next Wednesday. I think it's magic, like Frosty the Snowman's. |