Not to go into the gory details, but let it suffice to say the local laundromat was my best friend upon returning home.
Rather than apologize for unleashing another future welfare recipient upon society, junior’s mom instead decided to try to talk with me to the best of her Cro-Magnon abilities.
“Your mom says you’re good at computers.”
“I’m OK,” I answered, thinking it best to stick to small words.
“I have a computer.”
“That’s nice.” (Let me guess, she uses it to smash small animals for dinner, or maybe her family keeps it on a pedestal in their cave so they can worship it like a god)
“Since I have a computer, does this mean I can use cyberspace?”
“HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW!? DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING AOL CD!?”
Well OK, maybe I just thought that last part.
I instead pretty much just shrugged and grunted (which was probably a soliloquy of Shakespearean proportions in the language of her people), concentrating instead on using my vastly more evolved brain to try to beam the message, ‘why don't you go find some shiny object in the middle of the street rather then talk to me,’ into her head. Sadly that didn’t work. I guess my telepathy needs practice. Maybe I should spend more time with Mom’s tarot cards.
Finally, this person decided that she had to be somewhere and excused herself and her spawnling...I couldn’t help but notice that she did so without bothering to even offer to pay for their meals. Yep, that was about what I figured. Oh well, it was a small price to pay. A few more minutes and I might have made the mistake of mentioning that the earth is round and being subsequently accused of witchcraft.
Interestingly enough, Mom must have been reading my earlier thoughts about tarot cards as she and her friend both pulled out decks. They then proceeded to spend the rest of lunch predicting the dire fates awaiting me. Sadly their predications all came true and the fates descended to smite me with their wrath.
In short, I got to pay the bill.
That was pretty much it. As I had mentioned, Mom was having renovations done to her place, so I wasn’t asked back.
Thus, the next day I boarded my plane for the flight back. This in of itself was an ordeal, due to what I like to call the sunglass mindfuck.
You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you about the trip back, since it technically doesn’t have to do with Mom or her degenerate friends. I disagree, though. She was the reason for the trip in the first place, thus she gets the blame for any misadventures along the way.
Oh right! You’re probably also wondering what a sunglass mindfuck is, right? It’s a little term I came up with a while back. It’s when an attractive woman sits herself close to you in a way that her head is pointing in your direction. The problem here is that she’ll be wearing tinted glasses, so you can never know if she’s looking at you, through you, or nowhere even close to you.
Such was the flight back. An attractive blond was seated in the next row over. Every time I looked up I saw that her head was panned in my direction. As you can probably guess, there were sunglasses in the equation so I couldn’t quite tell what was going on.
I personally think women do this on purpose. They know that, as a guy, I only have a couple of choices. I could try to be bold and stare back. But that would, in all probability, get me a slight head move (as if they were just noticing me) along with a, “What the fuck are you looking at, asshole!?” response. Or I could try to ignore them and just sit there uncomfortably while their eyes bored into my soul.
Yes, I know there are plenty of other things a person could do, but I’m a wuss. So at the end of the day it was a long plane ride of trying to look at everything other than her (no doubt to her twisted amusement) and then finally making a run for it, upon landing, so that I could escape from her medusa like gaze...maybe.
Either way, I still blame Mom.
February 2000
I missed the holiday visit due to work. Can’t say I was overly bummed by it. A nice quiet Christmas coupled with a good New Years party wasn’t exactly making me the poster boy for suffering.
But anyway, it had been a while, and since I hadn’t gotten any surprise news about being adopted in the meantime, it was time for another trip back east.
This wasn’t looking to be too much of a chore, regardless. The plan was to visit Mom on Saturday and then spend Sunday hanging out with some old high school friends. Outside of it being somewhat overcast, the trip to NJ was fairly uneventful, besides which it’s not like I had plans to go down to the beach in the middle of winter. The Polar Bear Club can keep that shit to themselves.
I arrived at Mom’s around noon, making me just in time to catch her in mid-rant to a visiting friend of hers. Seems asshole landlord was being more of an asshole than usual. As I have no love of said asshole, I wasn’t exactly about to come to his rescue as the voice of reason. Unfortunately, rather then come to what I assumed to be the obvious conclusion (he was acting like an asshole because he was...ready for it...an ASSHOLE!); Mom instead justified everything by the stars. He wasn’t such a bad guy, it was just that she was a Leo and he was a Capricorn and thus they were fated to constantly butt heads. OK whatever. One person’s asshole is another person’s...err...weirdness that makes absolutely no freaking sense. But what do I know?
Oh and yes, I am aware that I haven’t gone into too many details about why I think he’s such an asshole. Maybe one day I’ll write a separate diary devoted entirely to him. Needless to say, he is. Trust me on this point and let’s move on with our lives, OK.
Anyway, ranting aside, Mom was also in the middle of lunch preparation as well. In typically Mom fashion that involved enough food for three times the number of people present. Heh, one of these days I’m going to have to return home and proclaim that I’m fasting due to a recent conversion to some new religion. That’ll blow her mind. Anyway, since Mom has never been a big eater (at least when she’s footing the bill), the whole thing probably meant all the strays in the area would be feasting well tonight.
Mom finished her rant, her friend excused herself to leave, and that left the two of us. It’s here that I make a mistake. Due to Mom’s somewhat liberal attitude towards her, mine, and everyone else’s social life, I typically make it a point to not say much. A typically question of “So are you seeing anyone?” is normally met by me with a negative answer as that tends to be safest for my overall sanity.
Instead, I made the mistake of telling her I was seeing this new girl named Karen.
“What happened to Sharon?” Mom asked.
Rather then give a truthful, “YOU happened to Sharon,” answer (which wouldn’t have been one-hundred percent untrue, things never were quite the same between us after that visit); I just told her it didn’t work out.
“Karen, Sharon...you doing some kind of Dr. Seuss thing?”
“Coincidence.”
“So have you bagged her yet?”
“What?” I blurted.
“So have you nailed her yet?” she asked in that same conversational tone, all while any last shreds of June Cleaver-ish mom-like images spontaneously combusted in my mind.
This isn’t the first time she’s done this. She had first done so while I was back in high school, except that time my girlfriend had been present. Needless to say, I had not nailed her and that conversation cemented that any hopes I might have had to the contrary were completely dashed. It’s for these reasons that I normally try to lead Mom to think that mine is the life of a monk (preferably a Shaolin monk as they’re kinda cool, but I digress). Apparently my joy at her earlier asshole landlord rant had disarmed the rational part of my mind and thus I had once again stumbled into this minefield.
“Mom, did it ever occur to you to ask maybe a more normal question?”
“Like what?”
“Is she a nice girl? What does she do for a living? Things like that.”
“Fine. Is she nice?”
“Yes.”
> “Good. Have you...”
“None of your business!” I said to stop her before she could get back on track.
“Christ, don’t be such a prude. I’m not embarrassed to talk about my sex life.”
“I KNOW!”
Sensing a rapidly approaching migraine, I quickly tried to steer the conversation towards anything else: the weather, the Mets, the color of her furniture...hmm, speaking of furniture. “Where’d all the clown stuff go?”
“What clown stuff?”
“All that clown crap. The place was practically overflowing with it. Last time I was here, it was pretty much the Ringling Brothers graveyard.”
“Oh that. I sold it all at a yard sale. It got old pretty fast.”
“So you pretty much just had it long enough to horrify my ex-girlfriend into a coma.”
“How was I supposed to know? What does it matter anyway, you said it didn’t work out.”
Before I could start to inform her, in big bullet points, as to exactly why it didn’t work out and what little part she played in all of that, I was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Joy of joys! As if the day wasn’t already causing my psyche to be reduced to a blistering pus-filled wound, it was Mr. Asshole Landlord at the door to no-doubt brighten things up.
He ignored me (which is just dandy in my book) and proceeded to tell Mom that the landscapers were here and would be working on the property for the rest of the day (In mid February?). This completely set Mom off again and she began ranting. How is she supposed to spend time with her dear son, whom she almost never sees, with a bunch of people running around making noise outside...blah blah blah? He complained right back about how it’s his property and he’ll do what he wants when he wants...blah blah blah. I didn’t give a flying shit about any of it. I’m not sure why either of them did. Unless his plans involved sending the contractors inside to harass us with hedge clippers, then I wasn’t really seeing the point of any of this. Guess I should have paid more attention to those horoscopes.
Disgusted by the whole thing, Mom insisted we take a walk away from all the noise (so far I hadn’t heard much of anything). And yes, I did mention it was still February. Unfortunately Mom’s idea of a walk was little more than a ruse to drag me a few blocks to the local 7-eleven to let me buy her a couple of packs of cigarettes (oh yeah, and spending a few minutes introducing me to the cashier for god knows what reason).
Smokes procured, Mom then told me that she didn’t want me to stay and endure the ruckus the landscapers were making (I still hadn’t heard them make a sound) and with that I was pretty much dismissed. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I didn’t make too much of a fuss. Instead I hopped into my rental car and drove away...thoughts of changing my last name to Smith weighing heavily on my mind.
April 2000
(Quick excerpt from a phone conversation I had with Mom)
“Oh and I just finished redecorating my bathroom.”
“Fascinating, Mom.”
“It’s all done up in a Disney theme.”
“OK. Not sure I’d want Cinderella staring up at me from the toilet, but whatever.”
“And I found the cutest Winnie the Pooh shower curtain.”
“That’s a little creepy,” I replied
“No it isn’t.”
“I wouldn’t want to use it.”
“My new boyfriend doesn’t have a problem with it.”
“Too much information, Mom.”
“When we’re in the shower together, he says it’s cute.”
“What part of too much information are you not getting?” Here I paused as I realized an opportunity to turn the tables a bit. “Besides, doesn’t it bother you both?”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“It would bother me.”
“Why?”
“Not sure I’d want to be in the shower with my girlfriend like that. Things are getting all hot and steamy and then I look up and see Pooh and Christopher Robbins staring at me with knowing grins on their faces.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“And don’t forget Tigger too! I’m sure he’s digging the action. That’s the wonderful thing about Tiggers!”
(silence on the other end)
“Might even get Eeyore to crack a smile for a change.”
“I see what you mean. Maybe I’ll just take it down for now and think about it for a bit.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me, Mom.”
So I guess I can win one on occasion.
July 2000
The church missed a major opportunity this weekend. I’ve been a recovering Catholic for some years now, but if things had played out a certain way, I’d be down on my knees praying and a screaming hallelujah to the heavens right now.
They didn’t, though, so I’m not. I gave God his chance, but since he didn’t follow-up I guess it’s on with my heretical ways.
I was on the phone with Mom trying to catch up on things, but at the same time also doing my best to dodge any questions about my social life. I was keeping things fairly vague, mostly responding to questions with “fine” or “not much”. I don’t even remember what most of the questions were at this point. All I know is that sometimes the best answers are unhelpful non-answers. Usually I can steer the conversation away from myself in these cases and back to harmless topics like how was the rest of the family etc etc.
Not so today. My non-committal grunts apparently went unheeded and I was snapped back to reality by Mom on the verge of going off on a story of epically horrific proportions.”
“You know, I was once asked to be in a threesome,” she said
Every fiber of my being screamed suddenly screamed OH NO in silent unison.
“I said no of course, because I wasn't into it (Yes! End of topic!), at least not that way (Oh no! She’s not stopping!). I have no desire to be with a man and another woman. Not really into that whole lesbian thing. But I’ll tell you what, one of my biggest fantasies has always been...
It’s here that I sent out whatever prayers I have left in me to the heavens. God, if you’re really there, I mentally prayed, I swear I will renounce my ways and be there front and center in church every Sunday if you will only not let her finish this sentence. Seriously! A lightning bolt to the phone lines would be good right about now.
Mom continued, undeterred by lightning or common sense, “...to be railed by two men at the same time.”
*whimper* It’s gonna be a real cold day in Hell before I drop anything in a collection plate again, was all I could think, lest other thoughts invade my mind and drive all sanity away permanently.
Thanksgiving 2000
It was once again visiting time. Lucky you, dear reader! I decided to include this story to show you that normalcy doesn’t just avoid my Mom. It seems to avoid my whole family. Apparently we all pissed it off in previous lives.
Originally this chapter almost didn’t happen. They were predicting bad storms in Jersey for the holiday. Had that panned out, I was going to cancel and stay where I was. Luckily for me, though, my flight didn’t get cancelled and the weather held...at least long enough for me to get to Newark and hop into a car. Then, as you can probably guess, when I was too far along to turn back, it all came down from the skies in one big shitstorm.
Anyway, I eventually made it to Mom’s place none too worse or wet for the experience. She immediately assaulted me with questions about what’s new, who was I seeing, etc etc. This, despite being asked the exact same questions just a day prior via the phone (and artfully dodging most of them, I might add, especially the dating ones).
Lest ye think me completely heartless, I did throw her a few bones so to speak. I had copies of several new photos for her. Additionally, I also gave her a copy of a little one-act play I had written and produced for a local theater out west. This last one was probably (and by that I mean definitely as you’ll soon see) a mistake on my part, but I was proud of having actually written somethi
ng that didn’t (I assumed) suck and also having it actually acted out on stage. Sure there were maybe two-dozen people in the audience, but hey gotta start somewhere, right? So as they say, pride before a fall and all that.
The plan was supposed to be a typical quiet Thanksgiving dinner with Mom. However, I quickly began to suspect something was amiss as I noticed no table settings or any hint of cooking food.
“Put your coat back on. We’re leaving now,” Mom said, confirming my suspicions.
“We are?”
“Yes. I told your grandparents we’d be over by two.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you we were eating with the rest of the family?”
“No.”
“Well we are. There now I’ve told you.”
I don’t have anything against my grandparents or cousins; however, I hate last minute changes of plans. If I had known I might have dressed a little nicer, maybe grabbed a bottle of wine to bring, or something. Instead, I was just going to show up looking like some dirtbag from the streets come to leech off of their holiday hospitality...well at least in my mind I was.
So instead of relaxing, I was instead playing chauffeur on an hour long trek up to beautiful and scenic South Amboy. In all honesty, I wasn’t too bummed by any of this. As I said, I have nothing against the rest of my family. In fact, I quite enjoyed hearing my grandfather’s old war stories. Even the least of his stories was preferable to Mom’s ‘wait till I tell you about what my boyfriend and I were doing last night’ tales by about ten-thousand percent. About the only real annoyance, outside of a lack of preparedness on my part, was the fact that Mom could have easily gotten a lift from one of the other family members and saved me over two hours on the road if she had bothered to plan things out. Lest you think I’ve being overly harsh, let me just point out that the vast majority of our trip up north consisted of me being shushed when a good song came on (I was forced to listen to the oldies channel) or having my driving criticized. Hmm, I wonder if there are any laws against dumping moms off in the middle of the parkway. What!? Just speculating, that’s all.
The Poptart Manifesto Page 10
