by David Cross
Okay, let’s get to the good stuff, the reason we’re all here! The chance to sit in a room with someone who’s been on your television box because that’s so fascinating to the dull and uninspired. What!? I didn’t mean that. I don’t even know any of you. I’m sure that for the most part, at least half of you aren’t a bunch of boring, complacent, slightly overweight people haunted by the constant nagging of “what if”s and “should I have”s. Okay, okay, sit down. Please, I apologize … to God … for you. No! No, sorry. That was a stupid joke. I don’t even believe in God. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s been a long tour. I ran out of Zoloft back in Jacksonville. Plus I was just in Jacksonville. I am having some more Zoloft air-lifted in, so as soon as it gets here I’ll be okay. Just pretend I’m my own evil twin or something. Just until the Zoloft gets here and then we’ll be right as rain. At least I can take a pill and get better—you lot are stuck in your shitty uneventful lives unless one of you turns goth and decides to check out Portland or something. Oh my lord! Please forgive me. It’s been a very long day. I had to do three morning radio shows and FOX & Friends at the crack of dawn. Have you ever seen FOX and Friends? How? Why? These are grown-ups saying this nonsense! The inanity of that show is matched only by its meaninglessness. One of Amy Winehouse’s collapsed veins has more weight than that show.
All right, good. Now we’re back to something we can all agree on, the outrageous FOX & Friends. They honestly look like they truly believe what they are saying! Can you imagine getting drunk and hanging out with the three of them? I can. We’d have margs at the Yupplebee’s and I would drink them all under the table and then I’d probably find myself tying them up and burying them up to their necks in the middle of the projects in Detroit. That sounds fun, actually. Let me linger on that image for one sweet second. Mmmmm. Oh, that’s good. Woah! There’s Steve Douchey being shat upon by one of the neighborhood kids! Oh! Hahahaha! Mmmm, yeah … that’s the way I like it … like that. Yeah, get that spot over there … good. Mmmmmm, oh … I’m gonna cum. Don’t stop shitting … unh. Sputter. Snore.
Gay Canada
as written by Kenny Dupree Hester
YOU’VE PROBABLY READ ALL ABOUT THIS BY NOW, BUT ENOUGH time has passed that I feel like I want to tell my side of the story, so here goes. There are three things you should know about my Aunt Patricia (really my great aunt, but we just call her aunt): One, she is a devout, constantly churchgoing Baptist. Two, she is quiet, and even timid. And three, she hates the cold. That’s why it was so surprising last year when Aunt Patricia casually announced to our family and friends that she had sold all her belongings except for her three favorite Thomas Kincaid paintings (Summer’s Light Light, The House by the Stream with Horses Nearby It, and When an Angel Finds a Wallet) and gave all the money to a shady group in the woods who used it to purchase a number of semiautomatic weapons and a barn on a big plot of land in Upstate NY. This of course was met with confusion as not one of us could ever remember her making a joke, let alone laughing. Although my sister says she saw her laugh when an elderly man was running for a bus that pulled away without him right as he got up to the door. And I guess she did love watching Mama’s Family, she just never laughed at it.
It was clear she was being dramatic in the way she was parsing out the information. My mom knew enough to take her seriously but could do nothing but wait on the phone patiently for Aunt Patricia to fill in the blanks. Eventually she explained that she and a handful of members of her church group, “The Guardians of the Realm of Good,” in Henry, Georgia, were planning to move to New Harriden in New York state, a small rural town bordering Canada. There they would form the “New, New Minutemen” (as they referred to themselves), made up of various “intercessors” from other like-minded church groups across the country who would keep watch over America’s border and defend it from newly married Canadian homosexual couples who might be trying to sneak into the country to advance their homosexual agenda. They were very, very serious.
Aunt Patricia was known for being a bit “lost” when it came to matters both social and practical in her life. She was always searching for a clique to belong to. Whether it was something as small as a group of new friends she’d try to make through a sewing circle or book club or her unsuccessful attempt at a “Raisin of the Month” party she tried to get going. Sometimes it was something much more involved, like joining every church in a fifty-mile radius at once, she never seemed to either have enough friends to satisfy her or couldn’t maintain them as friends.
Before being newly re-re-baptized in “The Guardians of the Realm of Good,” Aunt Patricia was a member of “The Church of the Good Deed,” which she joined after leaving “The Shield of the Wrath of Christ,” an offshoot of “The Church of Christ and Friends,” which had split from “The Church of the All-Powerful Redeemer” in 1982 over its use of the phrase “befouled menstrual blood of the filthier half.” That had been included in a screed written by Delmont Ralston, the church’s personable leader, who was killed in 1985 when he tried to eat a lightning bolt. Before she started to attend all of these different churches, Aunt Patricia was involved in our local neighborhood theater group, helping to stage inoffensive musicals like Parrump! Oh Boy! What Fun! and The Great Missouri Whistle Days Discovery. We didn’t really spend too much time with her, as my mom clearly had nothing in common with her and, in fact, felt she was a near constant source of annoyance with her corrections and holier-than-thou attitude. That was okay with my sisters and me, as none of us particularly liked her, either.
I remember one Christmas, she gave all of us Confederate scrip, which is worthless unless you have a working time machine. Another time she gave the three of us kids compost, lecturing us on the “divine sanctity which has been granted in the compost through the gift of God and emanates from within, purifying all who touch it.” Like I said before, she wasn’t any fun. She didn’t even approve of water-skiing, saying once that it was “an activity that could only be sanctioned by Satan himself.” Aunt Patricia was married to my Great-Uncle Abraham, who I don’t remember too much about, since he died when I was young. I do remember he smoked a pipe and had jackets with patches on the elbows that smelled like old mustard and that he had gross, hairy ears. Really hairy, though, not just a little bit, but like, all hair. It made me think that ear hair must have hurt because otherwise he’d just cut it off. Then, when I got older and learned that it didn’t hurt, it actually made me a little sick to my stomach every time I’d think of him after that.
On the day we found out, my sisters, Abby and Jenny, and I were out back in the woods lazily playing some kind of freeze-tag game in which the rules were being made up and changed as we went along. My mom came outside with the phone in her hands. She seemed upset and yelled to us with the kind of tone she only used for bad news or when she had one of her stomachaches but didn’t want to show it. Without even waiting for a response, Mom yelled at us to all come inside. My sister Abby started whining about how we just got out there and we were in the middle of the game, and Mom yelled at Abby to get inside NOW and went back in, letting the screen door slam shut (which she HATED whenever we did it) behind her. Abby started again with her whining: “But, Mom, you said . . .” I hit Abby in the head with a crabapple and told her to shut up. When she said she was gonna tell on me I said “Go right ahead. Mom hates you right now for crying when she told you to get inside. She’ll probably give me a dessert reward ’cause I made you quit.” That shut her up, and she tromped into the kitchen behind me.
“Hey, guys, sit down at the table.”
We could all sense bad news was coming.
“Your Aunt Patricia passed on last night.” There was silence from all of us. I felt like I should say something out of a vague sense of respect, even though I didn’t care and I knew my sisters didn’t care, either. And I suspected that Mom didn’t, either, but maybe this was one of those grown-up things where God just makes you somehow magically care when you have to.
“
Oh,” I said and tried to look sad. “How did she die? Was it peaceful?”
My mom opened the freezer and took out some ice pops.
“She was involved in a shoot-out with some FDA agents and was shot in the head and chest over a dozen times.” That seemed funny to me, and I laughed, and my mom shot me an annoyed but understanding look, like someone who was in on the joke but didn’t want the other people in the room to know.
“Does everyone want ice pops?”
My two sisters raised their hands, and Jenny asked what my mom meant.
“Well, sweetheart,” my mom said as she sat down and gave out the ice pops. “Remember how Aunt Patricia moved up to that farm in New York, the one near the border with Canada? Where that nice man paid for that big, nineteen-hour Canadian fireworks display that Aunt Patricia told you about? And remember how she told us all before she went that she was going to do the Lord’s work and how even if something bad happened that she would get to go to Heaven where seventy white angels awaited her with baskets of apple fritters and hot cocoa?”
Jenny nodded and took her ice pop.
“Well, that’s what happened.”
“She’s with Jesus and the angels having cocoa?”
“That’s right, honey.”
“I wanna have hot cocoa with the angels!” Abby said.
“Me, too!” said Jenny quickly and even more emphatically. As if not saying so in time would disqualify her from going to Heaven.
“You can’t have cocoa with angels until you’re dead, stupid. You have to wait.” I looked to my mom to see if what I said and even what I was doing was the right thing. She had her back to us and was staring inside at the open freezer. After a bit she closed it and turned around. “Kenny’s right.” Then, in a surprise to all of us, she smiled and said those magic words: “Hey, who wants to go to Dairy Queen?” We all jumped up and yelled, “We do! We do!”
When we got to Dairy Queen, I ordered the Nut Buster Parfait which is the only thing I’ve ever gotten there. It’s my all-time favorite thing ever. We had just gotten our stuff and sat down when the TV that was on in the corner up by the ceiling had one of those “Breaking News” things with all the explosions and space-war sounds. There was a photo of Aunt Patricia that I hadn’t seen before. She was in an army uniform and she had a black eye. They were talking about all these people being killed up in NY and how she was from here and that’s why they were showing her picture. Mom gasped and stared silently and then, like she was shocked or something, started to quickly gather our desserts and us and told us to get into the car. But I pretended I left my free Pirates of the Carribean figurine I got with the sundae on the seat and went back inside to listen. The news lady called the church that she was with a terrorist group and said that they were kidnapping gays who went to Canada to get gay married there and “unmarrying” them by force. They raised funds going across the border into Canada and buying up lots of prescription medicines, which were a lot cheaper up there, and then selling them online back in NY for five times as much money. That’s how they afforded all their guns and things. Plus the guns were super cheap at the Wal-Mart where they lived. I guess one of the gays had escaped and told the police about it, and that’s when they had the shoot-out.
Pretty soon my mom figured out what I was doing and came in really angry. I lied and told her I just remembered it was in the car, but she saw right through that. She told me we’d talk when we got home. We drove home in silence except for Abby singing a song under her breath about all the things she saw out her window. When we got back home, Mom put on the TV for Jenny and Abby to watch and took me by the hand down into the basement. She did the “shhh” thing where you put your finger to your lips meaning “Don’t say anything.” She went to the window sill at the far end near the boiler and stood on her tippy-toes and felt around on the upper ledge of it. She finally got a key from on top and, without waiting for me, walked around to where the lawn mower and all the garden equipment was. She moved it all over to one side, and I realized for the first time ever that there was a small door there. It had a rusty old lock on it. I never even knew there was a door there!! She unlocked it, again did the “shhhh” thing, and opened it up. It smelled like raw pancake batter. I mean it wasn’t that, but that’s what it smelled like. My mom closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then sort of flung herself in. I tried to
END PART ONE ( idrinkforareason.com/gaycanadapartII)
You’ll Never Guess!!!
HOLY SHIT! GUESS WHAT? REMEMBER BEFORE AT THE BEGINNING of the book when I was imagining that I would be invited to all these wonderful author parties? Well, I’ve just been invited to attend a party this weekend! No shit! It’s at the mid-summer home of Charmin Killington (of the Willowbrook Killingtons). It sounds exactly like one of those “literary” parties I was fantasizing about earlier. Wow. Now I will get to see firsthand what it’s like and not have to rely on my adorably jaded speculations. And I of course will write about it. In fact, it should follow this sentence directly:
Yes!!! I’m here! I arrived by Phillipino butler arms to the house after taking the griffin-pulled hansom cab from the outer moat. This house is fucking HUGE! The pool house’s pool toy’s storage room’s wine cellar is easily as big as the apartment I grew up in. I was greeted by one of the Puerto Rican eunuchs stationed around the entrance. He sang a song of fierce bidding wars as he dropped gilded lilies at my feet. I felt at once self-conscience and oddly liberated. “This is my new life,” I thought. “I like it.” I involuntarily started to imagine how others saw me. I would vacillate from Dickensian street urchin with a smudge of soot and rotten lettuce around my mouth wearing week-old newsiepapers for shoes, to your basic Ivy League nerd who has benefited from a scholarship that your great uncle, the mustard baron, established. A severe-looking waitress passed by carrying flutes of champagne with small black pearls floating on top. In a deft mix of balance and classlessness, I took two, shooting one down and handing it back. With my mouth closed, I motioned for the waitress to stay and parted my lips to reveal the pearl between my front teeth. I bent slightly and said, “A beautiful black pearl, for a beautiful black pearl,” although because I couldn’t really close my lips all the way it came out more as, “A uteful lack earl or a uteful lack earl.” “What?” She coquettishly replied. “A uteful lack earl or a . . .” I lightly spit the pearl onto her tray. “A beautiful black pearl for a beautiful black pearl, is what I was saying.” She looked at me with what some might mistake as violent contempt but what I could clearly see was lustful frustration. “I’m not black,” she said as she masterfully “pretended” to walk away while walking away. I was in!! Newly imbued with confidence, I swaggered over to a table of dandies and rifled through one of the ladies’ purses. I took eighty dollars, making a point of showing that I was still leaving her with most of her money. So as not to appear impolite, I sat down. “Hi, I’m David Cross from television and now books. Well, a book. Singular.”
“Oh, yes. A humor book, right?”
“Well, let’s hope so. It’s supposed to be.”
“Well then, you should be at that table over there. That’s the humor table. This is Puppies and Fish.”
I looked around and realized that the entire party had been arranged so that each table represented a type of book. Seated at my table were Jeff Foxworthy, Dave Barry, Cathy Guisewite, Ann Coulter, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, amongst others. We were in between the “Yes, You Can, Goddammit!” table and the “Kids Are Nature’s Crybabies” table. I took the hat off of the gentleman to my left, put it on, and then doffed it to the table before giving it back to its rightful owner. “A thousand pardons.” I smiled and moseyed over to the humor table.
HOLY SHIT! Alert!!
I was obviously making all this up, but now I have some real news to report! So, as I’m sitting here writing (currently in my East Village apartment on break from shooting a movie—that’s right, you heard me, a MOVIE!) I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize
. I let the machine get it, and it’s from a woman named “Leslie Tietalbaum” (I’m guessing the spelling of her name) who works at a public relations firm here in NY. She left a message that I was invited to a charity event taking place upstairs at the Saks Fifth Avenue store in midtown. It’s in a little over three weeks from now. My invite is due to the book that I’m writing right this very second and you are reading (in the present and future!) right this very second. So there you go. Fiction gets replaced by nonfiction. Fantasy, by fact. I could waste some time conjecturing, seriously, what it will be like, but then you’d have to trust that I didn’t go back and rewrite it to make myself look impressively prescient. And I don’t believe that I have earned your trust yet. So I am going to stop right here and whatever follows this sentence will be my “reporting” on what (honestly) took place at the aforementioned charity thing.
OKAY! Just got back from the “Evening in Gold to Benefit the Evening in Silver Benefit.” It was pretty boring. Not the wealth of material I thought it would be. I would like to say that I just hung out in the bathroom and bonded with the men’s room attendant, an old black guy named Alistair, but that was too depressing to do. Plus it smelled a little like poo-poo and pee-pee in there. I met two reporters for Mother Jones who put a book out about the shadowy big businesses behind the push for ethanol development, but… why the fuck am I writing about all this? It was boring. Fuck writers’ parties. That’s the last one of those I’ll go to. Let’s get back to the good stuff—making fun of something Mary J. Blige said!!!!
