Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  I told them how the doctors took off 80 percent of the right side of Jake’s skull and created a skin flap in his abdomen to place the bone just beneath.

  “Did he die? What happened? Where is he now?” The questions flew like a just-opened cage of butterflies.

  “Nobody really knew if he’d survive the surgery,” I said with a great rise and fall of the voice, like a musical concert. “But four hours later he woke up. His family was scared his wonderful wit and personality would be gone.

  “But old Jake opened up his eyes and took two fingers and tapped them on his head.”

  Ah, what a bunch of spellbound children. And no teacher to stop me from rattling on.

  “Abby Normal,” he said. I knew the kids wouldn’t get the reference to the movie Young Frankenstein , but they laughed anyway.

  Sometimes in hospitals dogs come in to visit patients, I told them. Well, crazy old Jake told the nurses, “If you see a dog running out of here with a skull in his mouth, you better find him ’cause he’s likely to bury it and won’t remember later where he put it. When they took out the staples from my head, I told them doctors, ‘Well now, how can I get any good radio stations if all my hardware is gone?’”

  More laughter. I was a hit. A propless wonder.

  “You guys want to know the kicker?”

  Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! they all shouted.

  “When the trick-or-treaters came around to the nursing home for Halloween, everyone wanted to knock on Jake’s door to see the man with the skull in his stomach.

  “Jake played it up big. He lifted his shirt and showed the kids the hard, round spot where a chunk of his head was prominently visible. He told them he’d prefer they knock on his skull than his door and he’d give them some candy.”

  “How is he now?” one sweet child wanted to know.

  “He’s great. He’s just hoping the hair will grow back on the bald part of his head. They put the skull back in place but there’s no hair. He told the nurses he was hoping to get some of it to grow back, kind of like a Chia Pet, you see.”

  “I saw a Chia Dick on the Internet,” the evil, trashy boy said.

  I scanned the room and saw no sign of the teacher. I walked up to his face, got half an inch from his eyeballs and said, “Because of your foul mouth, I’m quite certain that one day, you’ll have your own head festering somewhere in your gullet. You better shut that foul little mouth of yours up or next time I come here, I’m going to staple it or seal it permanently with my boiling-hot glue gun. Got that?”

  He said nothing.

  Career Day was over. I handed out my naughty bookmarks and they wanted my autograph. My giftless, prizeless talk was a hit. Funny thing is, I never heard back from the teacher or got any thank-you notes from the classes. Then, a few years later, perhaps her memory failing, that same sweet teacher invited me to come back.

  All I could think of was that the poor woman must be really desperate. Or maybe the firemen and blood-pressure cuffers couldn’t make it.

  For Sale on eBay: My Husband

  M y husband, Tidy Stu, has taken a hiatus from cleaning. He still alphabetizes and sizes the canned goods, Campbell’s on one side, Progresso on the other and so on and so forth; however, things are changing.

  And this time I didn’t have to drug him or poison his tea with a nice dose of Lexapro or Zoloft. He willingly gave up the Tilex and scrub brush that were as much a part of his wardrobe as T-shirts and baggy jeans were. Part of it had to do with being middle-aged and his back going out on him. Funny how men’s backs can suddenly blow and they still have the power to seek contortionist’s activity on the Sealy Extra Firms.

  The other reason he up and quit cleaning is the Internet, which, for all its worth, is nothing but seduction at the fingertips.

  Tidy’s gotten himself all cozy with the computer, like a lot of men out there who stay frozen to a screen. Mouse potatoes are what my writer friend calls them. Porn Poachers, says another cynical woman whose husband ran off with a hussy he “met” in one of the chat rooms, and he a preacher no less!

  Tidy Stu has not, thank the good and generous Lord, been going to FindObedientwives.com. or ComeSeeMyBigUns. com. Instead, he’s taken a fancy to playing Internet checkers, and he sits for hours at the screen yipping and verbally assaulting his opponents.

  “Ah, you big, dumb shit not seeing that easy move. Get ready to say good-bye, you puny-peckered checker boy!”

  “Please, Stuart. We have children with big ears. They hear every word you say. Remember when Lindsey was only three and called two people ‘assholes,’ then told those two old men, ‘I’m gonna bust yo ass,’ after you let her watch that Eddie Murphy movie seven times? Please, careful what you say in front of them.”

  I pictured 12-year-old kids somewhere in the world, being stomped by Tidy Stu, the reigning King of Internet Checkers, his filthy mouth floating from our screen doors on summer months and rising up the hill to the house where the Prayer People have godly and decent meetings every single night of the week, not just on Sundays and Wednesdays like Baptists. They line their cars along the street, night and day, for the sake of living a pure and decent life, and I’d hate to think they hear streams of “Fuck you, Checker Pecker!” echoing from our front door and right into the center of their prayer circles.

  One night as Stu sat at the computer cussing his opponents, I offered to prepare him a nice meal with a boudoir bonus if he’d skip Internet checkers. Since this addiction began, he has not budged for hours except to pee and open up a box of Cheez-It crackers or pour a bowl of Lucky Charms.

  “Hon, don’t you think you’d like a nice, home-cooked supper and something a little extra later on after the kids are asleep?”

  “Extra? We’re down to twice a season and dropping. I’m almost desperate enough to find the dog rather fetching,” he said, not turning his head or blinking an eye. He held that mouse for dear life and clicked all over the checkerboard-patterned computer screen.

  “Ah, what a big, fat asshole,” he said, turning to face me. “I whipped him and, look, he’s quitting. What a limp wimp.”

  This habit of my husband’s could mean another round of medications in his tea, only he won’t take beverages I serve anymore after discovering the Zoloft incident a couple of years ago when I was trying to lower his libido and cleaning obsessions by offering him a delicious serotonin reuptake-inhibiting elixir.

  I’m often eating lunches with Ma Ferguson, my precious friend whose marriage ceremony I had to finish when her reverend’s colostomy bag exploded and he handed me the Bible, while someone called 911.

  Ma and I get together regularly and complain about not being loved enough, not nearly as adored as we deserve and treated worse than our dogs that at least get watered, fed and petted daily.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look beat. Do you need a Darvocet?”

  “This is how I always look,” I said. “Aged and…well…”

  “Well, what?” Ma asked. “You can tell me. Is it work? Are they still trying to make you cover all those Lions Club pancake breakfasts? Is that one woman still always threatening you’re next to be fired?”

  I let my head fall back, as if I had no neck. “Yeah, but there’s nothing I can do about her. My new mantra is this: ‘If one door closes and slams the shit out of your big toe, another will open and offer you a pedicure.’ That’s why I don’t care what she does to me anymore. What
’s dental insurance? A medical plan? A 401(k), retirement and a pension plan compared to the freedom of government cheese and WIC?”

  “They don’t give out government cheese anymore,” Ma said. “And WIC is only for women who are pregnant.”

  I threw my loose head to my knees and wouldn’t look up.

  “What’s wrong, honey? I haven’t seen you like this since you thought Stuart was cheating with that woman who ate her baby’s placenta.”

  “Oh, mercy. No. Nothing like that,” I said, and started laughing until the tears pooled. “She took that placenta to the apothecary and had him make vitamin tablets and cooked the rest for her husband in the freakin’ Crock-Pot. This is nothing like that. It’s just that Stuart has a bit of a problem that’s cutting into his time cleaning, earning a living and even using the bathroom. It wouldn’t surprise me if he bought a catheter and some Depends.”

  Ma Ferguson, right before she bursts into laughter, always wears a mask of concern that’s sheer as a bride’s veil. Any minute she’ll fall over in fits of hysterics.

  “He’s got an addiction, Ma.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. We can do an intervention or call—”

  “No, it’s not drugs. It’s…it’s…” I couldn’t stop laughing. “Don’t you laugh, OK?”

  She pulled me up from the floor and onto her brown leather sofa. “You know I would never laugh at a serious problem.”

  Before I could get the words out I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to tell her the story. I fell from the couch again and rolled around on the floor, grabbing my stomach and bottom in case I peed or my uterus fell out. After a good five long minutes of whooping it up, I finally grew composed enough to tell the story. Meanwhile, I looked up to see Ma sprinkling holy water around the room and could feel drops wetting me like tears. She must have thought the Devil had entered my soul.

  “Hon, he’s got him a big problem,” I said.

  And Ma Ferguson patted my shoulders, then held one hand, the other working the sign of the cross.

  “It’s OK. Tell me. We can go in the laundry room and pray afterward and you’ll feel so much better.”

  I pictured all her Virgin Marys and Jesuses next to the washer/dryer units and started laughing all over again. “Ma, it’s not like that. He’s addicted to playing checkers online and cussing out his opponents, and he can’t stop, not even for sex, so you know it’s a disorder.

  “He goes on there for hours, yelling at the people he plays with and types in the meanest things to them. He calls them the Sons of Bitches and Shitheads of the Checkers World. He told one poor kid who was beating him, ‘Until your pecker hits the three-inch mark don’t even join in when you see my name on the game.’ It’s awful, really.”

  The sound of Stu’s addiction when said aloud was so crazy we both doubled over howling. “He doesn’t even beg for the booger anymore,” I said, referring to his vulgar sex advances and pet name for my underused and cobwebbed possum.

  She fanned herself with a Burger King bag. “That’s a shame. Internet checkers. I never knew there was such a thing. Where does he find people to play?”

  “Apparently there’s a whole subculture of nerds, intellects, drunks or plain old unhappily married men and adolescents who sit around a checkerboard hollering at their computer screens and cussing each other out for kicks.”

  Ma Ferguson couldn’t catch her breath. She was in hysterics, fanning and falling over, eyes all watery and wobbling.

  “It could be worse,” she said, snorting and coughing up what sounded like esophagus parts.

  “Yeah, I guess he could be hooking up with those lonely, desperate women who are out there waiting to wreck marriages with their red lace teddies and lies. At least he’s doing something in full view of everyone.”

  “It beats his obsession with the canned goods and pasta boxes being in order from smallest to tallest, right?”

  “He still does that. This checkers thing…You know, he’s really good at it, too. He goes to the expert level and socks it to ’em.”

  Ma fetched a bag of chips and two O’Douls. “You know you have to be smart to play checkers,” she said, wiping streaks of mascara from her face. “You must be so proud.”

  I gave this some thought. She couldn’t possibly be serious, but you never knew with her because she said things that Jesus would say when overcome with her religion, which she practices daily and is never stingy with the holy water and knickknacks, though her husband, Pa Ferguson, often complains about her spending $60 a week on “those damned glass religious candles the Mexicans can’t live without.”

  “In my viewpoint,” I said, “checkers are like Wheel of For- tune and chess is like Jeopardy! Even the dummies like the Wheel and can win SUVs and Hawaiian vacations, but only smart people can get the answers right on Jeopardy! I never play it or watch it because it just confirms what I’ve always suspected.”

  She crunched her Lay’s and sipped her fake beer. “What’s that, honey?”

  “That I’ve always belonged in Special Needs classes.”

  Ma Ferguson told me not to worry and that this checkers addiction was just a passing fancy. One man’s obsession with his Porsche or secretary is another man’s Internet checkers.

  “Just think how easily entertained he’ll be in the nursing home,” Ma said. “When you get ready to put him in, he’ll be the best little resident. All neat and clean and alphabetizing the kitchen pantry, maybe even jumping for joy on Checkers Night.”

  “Yeah. I guess so. While the other geezers are pulling out their wilted pork swords and doing a number on them, Stu will be in the activity room playing checkers.”

  “That’s true. You oughta feel blessed, really,” she said, patting me again. “I know people who go from room to room in those rest homes and try to hump anything that breathes, whether they know them or not. It’s sad and I know they aren’t in their right minds, but must have memories of doing the old nasty ’cause there they go, pushing their wheelchairs up to beds and cracking bones just to climb in with some drooling stranger.”

  We fell down laughing all over again, and Ma closed her eyes, probably asking God for forgiveness, that dear woman.

  I gave this some thought, and she was right, as usual. I’d heard about my great-great-grandmother at 94 boinking the bootlegger still young enough to have the birth cheese on him.

  “I realize this is just a phase with Stu. It’ll pass and something else will take its place.”

  Ma held my hand. “Everything comes to an end,” she said. “Pa Ferguson stopped selling those paintings over the Internet and he got out of that pyramid thing he swore would make him a millionaire in ninety days.”

  Mercy, was she ever right. Tidy did, indeed, move on from checkers, but it was like Mama’s promises of drug progression: first beer, then liquor, then pot, then hard drugs, then prostitution, then death…”

  Stu’s next addiction is one shared by millions: eBay. Nearly everything we currently own has of late arrived FedEx. The doorbell is always ringing at my house.

  “Ma’am, your husband has another package. Sign, please.”

  “That’s the fourth one today,” I said, lugging in what must have been the third trumpet he’d won from eBay. He hunches at the computer when there are seconds left to bid and his fingers itch to be the top bidder as he pounces and types in his offer and typically wins and then starts up the cu
ssfests he used to have during Internet checkers.

  “You big dummy. Don’t you know how to bid, you old mother…”

  My son was listening. He’s an adolescent testing us and nearly killing us with his back talk.

  “Mother’s only half a word,” he said, laughing and walking away.

  I got so tired of this addiction that I did what most wives do when they can’t beat them. I joined him.

  I created my own eBay account to see what all I’d been missing. Oh, what a land of pure glory, people. Within two days of scanning and searching for everything from hot buys on Groovy Girls to recreational vehicles, even old school buses, I was hooked.

  Heed this warning from the novice and newest eBay addict: if you don’t know how to bid, don’t do it. The first couple of times I bid on something, I felt that giddy rush of a boozer in Vegas, rolling lucky sevens.

  I’d won a Groovy Girls bed for my daughter’s toy collection, saving all of 50 cents, but once shipping was figured in, I’d lost $4.95. Seems once a person wins a bid, her hands get hot and the fever strikes. I was now beginning to understand my husband’s addiction as I sat at the keyboard and clicked in a bid for a microdermabrasion cloth, guaranteed to reduce all signs of aging and make me as pretty as Christie Brinkley or Angelina Jolie.

  For $9.95 I could have poreless, flawless skin. Three days later, the FedEx man brought my prize to the door and I began scrubbing away, polishing age spots with the magic blue facial rag.

  When that thrill ended, I decided to go for the chemical peels. At a reputable doctor’s office, such peels can run between $100 and $500. But on eBay, I could buy enough acids to melt the skin off a rhino’s hide for about $19.95. That was the equivalent of some twenty peels, worth thousands of dollars. One must be careful it’s of a certain chemical grade or severe damage could occur, such as loss of entire face, blindness, death and dismemberment.