Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  “I kind of got cornered by a house, fence and all the cars,” Brewster said. “Smokey was hysterical and his stomach hurt from the cheeseburger, I could tell. He was pretty upset the prize was the duck-billed platypus and not the zebra or pink flamingo because he just loves them there pink birds. He was on his hind legs with his front ones in the air, and I was having a time hanging on. I saw several guys get out and I thought we were both going to be shot.”

  Instead of taking a bullet, they took Brewster to jail, where he was fingerprinted, photographed and arrested for driving while impaired and failing to heed the blue lights and siren. Lt. Barnes hauled the tired but otherwise healthy horse to a safe place for a little R&R.

  “It was a very expensive night,” Brewster said. “It cost $90 to get out of jail, $100 for Smokey the horse, and $800 for a lawyer, who lost the case.”

  “Whatever happened to Ol’ Smokey?” I asked as he handed me a brown paper sack filled with tomatoes, a very neighborly thing to do, I might add. He explained that Barnes, being a good lawman, brought Smokey home a few days after the arrest.

  “He knew he was home,” Brewster said. “He started whinnying, and when we got him out of the trailer, I’ve never seen such a happy horse. He ran to the other horses, so glad to see them. He stood on his hind legs, going ‘Whee-oooo, Wheeooo’ and then ran around and cut a few flips. He’s the only horse I know that can do gymnastics better than some of them girls on the Olympics and a lot better than the one who’s now selling sanitary napkins on TV since her career is over.”

  I tried to form a mental picture of the horse but couldn’t see it.

  “My sweet Smokey laid down on his back, all four legs pawing the air. After he calmed down, I went and hugged his neck and gave him a new Beanie Baby and told him I was glad he was home. With those big eyes, he looked at me and I swear he said something very close to Meeeeee, tooooooo .”

  I left with my tomatoes and a pretty good story, thanked him, and it was a while before I heard from him again. Then, late one afternoon he called the newsroom breathless and seemingly sober. Of course with him, it’s always hard to tell.

  “Well, Susan,” he said, “I finally met my match and it weren’t no woman.”

  I knew to get a fresh blank screen and let him dictate his oral jewels. He was one heck of a storyteller, especially after sixteen beers. “I met my match in a shell,” he said. “Meanest snapping bastard of a turtle ever lived, and that reptile’s ass nearly took away the very thing I love most.”

  That would be one of two or three things. His horse, his claims to an 11-inch jibblybob or his Old Milwaukee beers.

  “If it weren’t for me,” he said, “that screaming lady and her carful of booger-faced children might have been killed. All them stupid idiots were out in the road trying to call that turtle out from under the car like it was some kind of damned pussycat.”

  I typed at the keyboard and he could tell I was taking notes. “You gonna write this up?

  “I might.”

  He seemed pleased. “I was driving down Milk Cove Road on the way to get me some refreshing beverages at the BP when I seen this lady and her young’uns flagging me down near the STOP sign. I was in my truck, took the screwdriver out of the ignition and was on my feet ready to help within seconds.

  “Like all the ladies,” Brewster said, “she ran toward me fast as she could. ‘What’s the matter, woman? You been shot?’ I asked, looking for blood and bruises.”

  “‘No…There’s…th…th…There’s a m-m-monster under my car,’ she says.

  “And I say, ‘No need to be getting all hysterical.’”

  He patted her on the shaking shoulder, probably wishing he could drop his hands lower.

  “Let me just have a quick look after I swallow the rest of my lunch.”

  “It appears to be some form of prehistoric dinosaur!” the woman screeched.

  Brewster had spring fever and knew this was his chance to show off a bit of blooming testosterone, all stored up from winter and undiluted. She wasn’t bad looking, especially after his morning six-pack and lunchtime 40-ouncer. Ditch the kids and she was good to go.

  He got back to telling the story, not talking until he heard my fingers clickety-clacking, him wanting it all written down for posterity.

  “I got out like Crocodile Dundee and caught the fucker by the tail,” he said. “I pulled and pulled. It was mad and gave me the evil red eye. I finally pulled it out from under her car and held it up like I was one of them big-fish-catching fellers. You know, you see them all pumped up and grinning on them piers? I held that killer turtle and them children scattered through the hills screaming and crying. That woman looked at me with pure lust in her eyes.

  “‘Listen up,’ I told her. ‘This here’s a mud turtle, a snapping turtle, and if they bite you they won’t let go until it thunders or until you beat on your grandma’s washpan.’”

  He also told them that such turtles were delicious and packed with seven different and succulent kinds of meat.

  “It may look like only one creature,” he said, still holding the 80-pounder by the spiny tail, “but it has all them varieties of meat on it. They got a bit of turkey, chicken, beef, lamb, fish…everything you’d want all under one shell. You just gotta make sure it don’t get your meat ’for you get his.”

  Brewster said his good-byes, tried to get the woman’s phone number, to no avail, and hoisted the seething and hissing turtle in the back of his truck, toting it home, where he immediately placed it in a huge garbage can and fed it canned salmon and rice.

  “I’d go out and talk to it now and then,” he said. “I could tell it was listening, too, ’cause it’d look at me with those soulful eyes, them ancient eyes that have seen millions of years on this here Earth. It would open its mouth trying to talk, but I told it, ‘Shhhh. You ain’t gotta say nothing. Not unless you a damn woman.’”

  The next day, after a twelve-pack and Cheetos, he called a bunch of his friends, who came by to see his new plaything and pose for photographs. “I used to catch all kinds of turtles when I was younger,” he said, tossing the snapper a few Cheetos. “We’d write our names on their backs with fingernail polish. Thata way we could find the same turtles every year and see how much they’d grown.”

  On day two of his snapping turtle’s captivity, the merriment went flat and the newness sank like a day-old balloon. With the turtle still in the trash can and sending him menacing glances, Brewster reckoned he’d best set it free. He called a few friends over again to take final photos of their last days as a team—him and Snapper. As he lifted the minibeast from the trash can and was grinning for the camera, the aggressive reptile did the unthinkable.

  “I was holding it up by the tail and it whipped around its head, bigger than a fist and, quicker than a flash of lightning, it opened its giant jaws and grabbed hold of me right in the crotch,” Brewster said, then started laughing. “I hollered like a man on fire, but it wouldn’t let go. I beat on its back and it would just clamp down harder. It was hanging there and I was looking for anything to hit it with. It had me crushed in its jaws and I knew I’d never get to pole dance in Jamaica again if I didn’t act fast. I poured my beer all over it and it finally took a few swigs and let go, then tore off through the woods like a jackrabbit. It ran just like a tipsy baby dinosaur.”

  While Brewster says he’s a little sore and won’t be chasing women for a couple of weeks, he’s thankful he was wearing jeans. “I was wearing my 501 Levi’s and the only thing that saved my…er…stallion was my zipper.
I wouldn’t have had nothing left of my Caped Crusader. It’d be in some incinerator and I’d have a wooden dick or one of those prosthetic metal claw dicks, if anything at all. Thank God for that zipper. I’m fixin’ to call the Levi’s company and ask if I can do a commercial for them jeans like Crocodile Dundee did for all them cars and whatnot.”

  I thought about this carefully.

  “You know, while you’re at it, you should also call the Budweiser people and see if you wouldn’t make a perfect Super Bowl commercial with your beers and riding your stallion up to a drive-thru window. You could have a Bud in one hand and a Big Mac in the other.”

  He got all excited and I hung up and wondered if I should tell his turtle story or not. A few years later, we moved off the mountain and I haven’t seen him since.

  People tell me he’s still kicking, drinking, waiting on spring and home-grown tomatoes, and some girl to come along and admire his chivalry—be it on horseback or hauling mauling reptiles.

  Wherever he is or whatever he’s doing, I’m certain there’s an interesting story waiting to emerge. All it will take is a case of cheap beer and a lady’s smile.

  Give Me a Tag and I’ll Give You My Uterus

  I f someone gave me a choice of a trip to the DMV or the gynecologist—boy, what a toss-up.

  At the DMV, also known as the Department of Motor Vehicles, or, in my mind, the Den of Madness and Venom, the poor and underpaid workers don’t give out tags and other legal must-haves unless you have more documents than can be stashed in a four-drawer filing cabinet.

  Used to be a driver’s license and insurance card would do it. Now, you best come in with a steamer trunk full of everything from proof of life to promises of organ donation.

  I stood in line for an hour, my hands shaking and feet perspiring, knowing it would take me three to four trips to get legal on the roads, and this was just my first try. I thought about how much less nervous I was hours earlier, seeing a brand-new gynecologist whose nurse gave me a paper gown made out of that cheap toweling—probably Marcal or Scott—and ask me to “strip down to skin and grin.” At least, I thought, she has a sense of humor.

  Maybe the doctor would, too.

  Seemed like I was waiting an hour in that scritchety-scratchey giant picnic napkin that covers nothing like the linen gowns they give pregnant women. You remember those beautiful pink robelike garments those with fetuses are given before the doctor examines their hooches?

  Well, for a regular-old puss peep, you aren’t going to get the linen treatment. You get the paper napkin, and thus I lay there naked and rustling in that paper towel for at least thirty minutes, sweating, and thinking, I’ll bet my freshly washed region has suddenly begun to lose its freshness. Even though on gyno days, I spend the morning cleaning my body cavities as if I was walking naked through a high-powered car wash or that within an hour I’d be in a car wreck and the ER staff would first remove my undies.

  This insecurity about our private bidness, the things “down there,” is due to all those sick TV commercials that make women feel like their va-gee-gees are festering crotch mackerels. I’m sure some men turn gay when they are around 12 and the commercials come on TV about feminine odors and sprays. I say if you smell that bad, get thee to the Squeal & Wheel Car Wash down on Tunnel Road and don’t bring the car.

  On gyno days, I always choose underwear that are A-grade, but not thongs—except for that oft-mentioned nightmarish occasion when I had no choice but to wear one during my daughter’s birth, which my mother has yet to forget or forgive.

  Never wear Cor D-grade lingerie to the gyno because, chances are, when you wad up your clothes and place them on the chair, they’ll fall to the ground and the nurse will tell everyone in the office how hideous they were. Same goes for bras. It’s best to wear a good one, not the kind I have where the underwires poke through the material.

  A crazy nurse friend of mine told me, “We don’t want the women to think we’re staring at their Coochie Snorchers so we kind of gaze around the room and often our eyes fall on their undergarments wadded up in a chair or on the floor. It’s flat-out scary what some of them dare to wear. Nasty, girl. Pure-T nasty.”

  I knew this was what happened in some doctors’ offices, so that is why one should always go for broke and wear the good stuff on Pap smear, Anal Jab, Drape-’n-Scrape days.

  When this brand-new doctor finally came in to examine me, he didn’t even bother to start off with a warm-up question…such as, “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” No, sirree. He just dove right in, so to speak. “How’s your health been? Anything unusual? Any pain with intercourse?”

  Intercourse! Now that’s a word for you. Why do they all say intercourse? It’s as gross as calling my love contraption a VAGINA. Intercourse could mean a number of things ranging from communication to talking and disclosing information.

  I was lying upside down as he cranked the chair so my possum was getting closer and closer to his bifocaled eyeballs. Hard to answer questions when one’s vagomatic is rising and legs are spreading.

  “Pain with what, did you say?”

  “Intercourse. Sexual intercourse.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to press my knees together so he couldn’t see my snorchie cooter or whatever that nurse friend of mine calls it. “I don’t have that. I’d much rather just blow the man’s whistle from time to time. Doesn’t take near as long and frees me up for all my shows like Grey’s Anatomy and American Idol .”

  I felt really PMSy and have been begging a doctor in another practice to yank out my uterus for years, but she said there’s nothing but trouble ahead if she did such a thing, and my mama, of course, had to agree and say what she always says, “You’ll grow a beard and a bumper crop of testicles…maybe a starter penis, too.”

  She thinks whiskers and a deep voice will lead the way to the rudimentary penis should I have my lady parts tossed in the incinerator, where I’m convinced they belong and I’m hoping this doctor will agree.

  “I’ve had four periods in six weeks,” I say, trying to let him know things have gone to seed. He said nothing. “That’s a lot of money for Tampax I could be spending on alphahydroxy creams with grapeseed extract, you hear?”

  He continued with his exam as I lay there wondering how to tell him I needed the surgery.

  “How often would you say you are enjoying relations with your husband?” the doctor asked again as I suddenly felt his fingers dive in for the kill.

  “Ouch! Don’t you think you could have at least bought me a drink first?” I asked, trying to be funny. He did NOT laugh, just poked harder, probably noticing dust bunnies, cobwebs and a few brown recluses. I hear they like dark, undisturbed places.

  “Sex? Are you referring to sex when you say ‘relations’ and ‘intercourse’?”

  “Yes, that is the terminology we use here.”

  “I entertain him on occasion, but, truth is, it hurts. Painful it is, indeed. It hurts especially on the nights he forgets to thank me for the fine dinner I made or the days when all he does is grouch and complain. And that, my dear doctor, is why the man isn’t getting any. You know what ‘getting any’ means?”

  “I assume it—”

  “That’s right. He isn’t enjoying this fine source of intercourse. No nookie. No hump-de-dump. No—”

  He shut me up with the noise of instrument preparation and was silent for a while, then said he was going to insert this and that and
hoped it was warm because they sure try hard to heat things up a bit before going spelunking. He didn’t say spelunking, of course, because he had the wit of a nit, which is the egg of a louse, which would be singular for lice.

  “There are new products and creams, even hormones that will help increase your—”

  “No thanks. Once a year is fine. Christmas wouldn’t be as special without our annual Sealy celebration. We’re just at that age and stage in a marriage.”

  The doctor was silent and probing. Then the most embarrassing thing of all happened, just when I thought I’d escaped it. He must have used his digging and scraping of cervical walls as think time, rolling my name around in his head, finding it familiar and wondering where he’d heard it. I’ve been around for twenty years in this town writing several columns a week. I knew it was coming. It always does while their heads are halfway in the birth canal fighting spiders, fallen bladders and whatnots.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be the Susan Reinhardt who writes those stories in the paper, would you?”

  Oh, no. What does one do? Admit that, yes, as you are viewing my cornucopia of feminine charms and noticing it hasn’t been waxed or groomed for summer activity, I am indeed the writer at the paper. Or I could say, “No, but I know her. She’s really nice and lots of fun.”

  “You look just like that woman in the paper.” His head was still in my hoo-ha. Great, my face looks like a Coochie Snorcher.

  “WHAT!!!!!” I screamed as his index finger the size of a bratwurst enters my virgin Arschlach (anus) and I cannot help the evil that froths from my mouth.

  “I sure hope THIS isn’t the picture you’re referring to,” I said, trying to cross my legs so he’d get the idea, though, in truth, it might be better looking than the one the paper is currently running.