I Hate Everyone, Except You

by Clinton Kelly

  And as calmly as one might ask a dinner companion to pass the salt, Ellen said, “Lick my shoe.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” Her face was expressionless except for her lips, which had shifted slightly off-center. “Lick. My. Shoe.”

  John pushed his chair back from the table, noisily because the metal chair was on the concrete sidewalk. He lowered himself down on his knees and, I assume, licked Ellen’s stiletto. He returned back to a seated position, still sweaty. He had a strange look on his face, like he was thinking about something that happened a long time ago.

  “The bottom,” Ellen said.

  “Oh, God,” I said, barely audibly, so that it sounded more like Uh Guh.

  And down John went once again. Ellen smiled at me across the table as if to say, Can you believe I get paid for this? When he came back up to a seated position, I wanted so much to tell John to run to the bar and swish some Scotch around his mouth then haul ass to the nearest hospital and beg for a tetanus shot. But I didn’t, because I was having a sort of out-of-body experience. I felt nauseated and like a third wheel, a third wheel on a boat, unnecessary and irrelevant. I paid the check and grabbed a cab as soon as I came to again.

  * * *

  When I stopped off at Leather Daddy’s table to drop the check, he snapped it from my hand, which was the last straw.

  “Look, buddy,” I said, a little louder than I had intended. “You may get to treat this guy like a cocker spaniel, but not me. Got it?”

  The cocker spaniel scowled at me, which really pissed me off because in my mind I was doing him a favor by helping him remember he was on a leash In a restaurant. L.D. pulled a credit card out of his wallet and held it out to me without glancing up. I took it from his hand and marched to the credit card imprinter. When I filled out the slip, I put a slash through the box marked TIP/MISC. I wanted to let the guy know I didn’t want his money, before he had the opportunity to stiff me.

  I placed it on the table for his signature with an emotionless “Have a nice night.” Neither of them responded; both were looking out the window. When they left I returned to the table with a tray to clear the remaining silverware and pick up the signed copy of the credit card slip. On a forty-five-dollar meal, they left me a twenty-dollar tip, in cash. In tiny block letters someone had written on the bill WOOF.

  “What do you think that means?” I asked Robert the bartender.

  “Daddy thinks you’re hot,” he said. “Maybe he’s got an extra leash lying around, with your name on it.”

  “Not my type,” I said.

  Because I ignored the table after dropping the credit card slip, I didn’t see who wrote WOOF on the twenty. I like to think Slave Boy grabbed the pen and wrote it as a message to me, but I still don’t know exactly what he was trying to communicate. My best guess: Woof, don’t worry about this cocker spaniel. He’s doing just fine.

  YOUR A PSYCHOPATH

  A university—at least I think it was a university—recently published a study about the correlation between psychopathy and the tendency to correct other people’s grammar. To be completely honest, I didn’t read the study; I heard a joke about it on NPR’s news quiz, Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! And I was scrubbing a roasting pan in the kitchen sink at the time, so I might really be screwing this up. But from what I gather, the type of person who might make a snarky remark about your dangling participle is also extremely likely to have a nightstand full of human femurs.

  Talk about shit you don’t want to know about yourself! Correcting grammar is one of my favorite pastimes. Damn, I thought, I’m a psycho and I’ve been completely unaware of it, all these years! That can happen, you know. I feel like I might have seen a Dateline episode about it. Like, maybe I’m living a double life, hosting TV shows, writing books, walking my dog, redecorating the guest bedroom, but then without warning my brain short-circuits and I go on a killing spree. I think an abstract floral pillow might be nice on this chaise. Boing! Must. Eat. Raw. Squirrels. I would ask Damon if I ever come home late at night in a fugue state covered in blood, but I don’t really want to know the answer.

  There must be additional indicators of a psychopathic personality beyond grammar. Things that complex are never black or white. You notice that a friend writes to in a text message when it’s obvious she meant to write too and before you know it you’re craving fava beans and a nice Chianti? I just don’t believe it! I majored in psychology for an entire semester my freshman year at Boston College, so I feel pretty qualified to determine who is and isn’t a psychopath. For example, in my opinion, you’re a psychopath if:

  a) you correct the grammar of people you actually like or love, and

  b) you do so in front of others.

  Allow me to provide an example from my own life. My dad, Mike, seems to enjoy using the phrase “not for nothing.” He might say during Christmas dinner something along the lines of, “Not for nothing, but I noticed your car is leaking oil. You should probably have that checked out.” Do I scream, “Double negative! Double negative! Dad used a double negative!” Of course not. That would be psychotic. And also, my dad just doesn’t give a crap about perfect grammar. I’ve noticed that if I use the word whom in my parents’ house, he’ll make an excuse to go fix something in the basement.

  “You know, Dad, there’s this facialist in Manhattan with whom I have the best rapport. She’s a doll. The next time you and Mom come in for a visit, we should all go get facials together! It’ll be a scream.”

  “That sounds fun, Clint. Aw, man, I just remembered that two weeks ago I smelled gas coming out of the . . . uh . . . out of the foundation. I’m gonna go check that out. Wanna help?”

  “Yeah, no. I thought I’d make some crepes. Where do you keep the hazelnut flour these days?”

  “You’d have to ask your mother. Terri!” (Runs down basement steps.)

  The grammar I correct is mostly in my own head. If you and I strike up a conversation at a cocktail party, will I notice if your subject is singular and your verb is plural? Of course. But I won’t mention it, at least not to your face. I’ll just tell all my friends that, to maintain their own high social standing, they should avoid being seen with you in public. A psychopath, on the other hand, would tell you, right then and there, “In the sentence, The bouquet of flowers he sent me are lovely, the subject, bouquet, is singular and therefore takes the singular verb is, despite the fact that there are multiple flowers in said bouquet. The bouquet is lovely. See the difference?” And then he’d shove a shiv in your liver while reaching for another canapé.

  I’m glad we talked this out because I’m feeling much better about myself. Whew, I’m not a psycho! Yay! There is an exception, though, to my self-imposed not-in-public rule: complete strangers who have decided to tell me via social media just how much I suck at life.

  Because I make my living on TV, certain members of the population find it socially acceptable to spew vitriol in my general direction online. And before I go any further, I must say that 99.99 percent of all the comments I receive on social media are either positive or extremely positive, which is amazing. The only public figures with higher favorability percentages than mine are Betty White and that little kid who got high on nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office. So, I’m truly grateful that the vast majority of people who choose to communicate with me are respectful and polite, but as Mike would say, not for nothing, that teeny sliver of a minority can be really fucking annoying.

  And no, my feelings aren’t easily hurt or anything. (Spend thirteen years in the television industry, and you too can develop the thick layer of emotional callouses necessary for a successful career!) If you don’t like my sense of humor, I don’t care. If you don’t like my clothes, I don’t care. If you don’t like my sexuality, I don’t care. If it makes you feel better about yourself to tell me I’m a worthless sack of crap, knock yourself out. But I’d prefer you do it using your real name, with your actual photo, and in impeccable En
glish. Which never happens.

  For example, I received this message on Facebook from a woman named Irene with two friends and a cat avatar:

  Your always talking about drinking on the chew. I hope you get fired because your a alkahalic and a idiot.

  To which I replied:

  Dear Madam,

  Thank you for your lovely note. Please allow me to address your two main points forthwith.

  The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism suggests that men not exceed four drinks per day or a total of fourteen per week. Most weeks I consume less than half that amount. Nevertheless, I appreciate your implied concern.

  If your hopes and dreams include me being fired from my job, I encourage you to share them with the executives at ABC/Disney. For best results, you may want to include in your correspondence reasons for my termination other than your belief that I am “a idiot.”

  Because you have been so kind as to share your opinion of me directly with me, cutting out any middleman, I hope you will allow me to return the favor. Granted, I know less about you than you may about me, but what little I do know is rather telling. Mostly, I am aware that the public education system in your state has failed you miserably, and for that I am sorry, not just for you, but for our country as a whole. Because you seem to have been denied English class after the fifth grade, I am happy to provide you with some of the highlights:

  Your is a possessive pronoun. That is, it indicates that someone or something belongs to you. For example, one might refer to your cat figurine collection, your bedsores, or your belief that Tom Selleck can hear your heart’s lustful cries for him.

  You’re is a contraction of the words you and are. For example, instead of writing You are apparently unaware of any software that might correct blatant spelling errors. To adopt a more conversational tone, I can write, You’re apparently unaware . . . You get the idea, I hope.

  Proper nouns, such as the titles of TV shows, are always capitalized. Words beginning with a vowel receive the article an. And there is no k in the words alcohol or alcoholic. There is, however, a k in Alka-Seltzer. Speaking of which, I need some. Wow, do I have the mother of hangovers today! Remind me never to mix tequila, bath salts, and Venezuelan hookers ever again.

  Until our electronic paths cross again, I wish you peace.

  Sincerely,

  Clinton

  SALAD DAYS

  For a couple of years, I was a spokesman for a brand of prepackaged salads—combinations of the more popular lettuces, sometimes including a smattering of shredded carrots, all conveniently washed and cellophane-wrapped for the health-conscious man or woman on the go! The gig paid pretty well, and I liked the work: developing salad recipes, posing for a few photos while holding salad, and being interviewed by journalists about, yes, salad. Easy, if typical, spokesman stuff. To mix things up a bit, I tried to convince the salad marketing team to think outside the plastic bag and sponsor a contest I could host called the Great American Toss Off, during which hundreds, maybe thousands, of really gorgeous people could slather themselves in ranch dressing and frolic in a giant swimming pool filled with arugula. I would watch that all damn day, I said, but they didn’t bite.

  Instead, the company held a more straightforward contest: Tell us why YOU love salad and you could win a trip for two to Napa Valley! While there, the winners would go wine tasting, take a cooking course at the Culinary Institute of America, and receive a styling lesson from me.

  About a week before I was supposed to fly out to California, I called my endorsements agent at the time, Jason, to confirm some of the details of the trip, specifically the expectations surrounding this “styling lesson.” I had assumed it was the “How to Dress Your Body Type” speech I had given dozens of times across the country.

  “Not quite,” Jason said. “They want you to talk about styling your salad.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I answered.

  “You know, how to make your salad look pretty.”

  It took me slightly longer than usual to process the words that had just come out of his mouth. “That’s ridiculous. How long am I supposed to talk about this?”

  “You’re contracted for two hours.”

  There are things I can drone on about ad nauseam, but decorating lettuce is not one of them. “Two hours? You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “You make salad look pretty by putting it on a nice plate and sprinkling some . . . I don’t know . . . chopped pecans on top. Now, how long did it take me to say that? Three seconds, max? What am I going to do for the other one hour, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-seven seconds?”

  Eventually Jason calmed me down, by basically lying through his teeth. “They’ll be so glad you’re there,” he said. “You can talk about whatever you want, salad, clothes, decorating. Just talk and smile. Get your picture taken. Then cash the check.”

  I’ll be honest; that part about the check made me feel a lot better about the whole situation.

  When I arrived at the culinary institute on the Sunday morning of the grand-prize weekend, the contest winners and their guests were watching a chef cook a pork loin. So I took the opportunity to ask the organizer to clarify my role. After the demo, she said, the winners were going to create their own salads, using the prepackaged blends (of course), and I would help them with their plating, because each salad would be professionally photographed.

  “Do you have a nice selection of plates?” I asked. I had told my agent the marketing team should supply me with as many options as possible. Plates, theoretically, could go a long way in salad styling. “Maybe some pretty colors? I could show them how to mix and match patterns. Or create an interesting table with a combination of antique and modern pieces.”

  “All the plates are white,” she said.

  I took a deep breath through my nose, while nodding and smiling in hopes of disguising my blinding rage. “Okay. That’s cool,” I said. “I’m just curious if Jason had mentioned having a big selection to pull from.”

  “He did,” the organizer said, “but we decided that the plates should be white to really showcase the salads themselves. And we don’t want you to do the salad styling for the winners, we want you to inspire people to use the plate that best reflects their vision.”

  So, for two hours, I walked around an industrial kitchen, interrupting couples who were grilling shrimp or searing steaks or whisking vinaigrettes to suggest different white plates.

  “You know what would look amazing under that salad,” I said to a mother and daughter. “This plate because . . . it’s a triangle. And how often do you see that? Not often enough, if you ask me. Think about the significance. Earth, wind, fire. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It can symbolize whatever you want.”

  After an hour or so, I tried fanning the flames of not-so-friendly competition among the breeders. “See that couple over there?” I asked a late-thirties husband and wife from Michigan, whispering and nodding my head toward a couple of newlyweds from Florida. “They’re using a high-gloss oversized round. Big mistake. Huge. Who’s going to be looking at their salad when it’s on top of that gaudy thing? Ah, but this plate. It’s ivory with a matte finish and not too much rim. There’s no way this plate is going to steal your salad’s thunder.”

  They looked at me as one might have expected them to, like I was batshit.

  Two hours felt like a thousand days and nights. Basically, I was the Scheherazade of Salad, just making up nonsense to avoid not death, but a breach of contract lawsuit. I needed a drink, a massage, a pill. Pretty much anything to make this day go away. Luckily, my friend Lisa was awaiting my return in the very expensive hotel room where we were staying. Usually if there’s a companion airline ticket included in an appearance deal, and I’m traveling somewhere fun or beautiful, Damon will come with me. But he had recently entered the final stretch of writing his dissertation, so he asked if I would mind terribly if he sat this trip out. I didn’t mind at all. I was thrilled he was this close to finishing his doctora
l degree. It was hard to believe, but after eight years of his studying and researching, I might someday live in a home without twenty oversized textbooks and huge piles of psychology journals cluttering the dining room table. “Do what you need to do,” I told him, mimicking Ingrid Bergman’s Casablanca stare. “I’ll miss you, darling.”

  Lisa was thrilled to accompany me in Damon’s stead. She always is. Doesn’t matter where we’re headed. I once brought her with me to a mall in Milwaukee, and you would have thought she was strolling the Champs Élysées. “I’m just glad to get away from the trolls for a few days,” she said when I asked why she was skipping through the mall. “The little sons of bitches always want so much from me, like food and . . . well, food.” The trolls were her two teenage sons. She’d left them fifty bucks and her car keys on the kitchen counter with a note that said, “Good luck, fuckers. I’m out.”

  While I’d been degrading myself in the promotion of leafy greens, Lisa had been renting movies in our hotel suite and ordering room service. “I just watched an entire Japanese film—in Japanese. No subtitles. While eating a Kobe beef burger,” she said when I got back to the room. “This may just be the best day of my life.”

  I kicked off my shoes and picked at the cold fries on her plate.

  “How was your day, America’s Sweetheart?”

  “Stupid,” I said.

  “Well, let’s go do something. We could sit by the pool. Or get drunk. Or both.”

  All were perfectly agreeable suggestions, but I had been hoping to have a mud bath in a spa I liked a few miles up the road in Calistoga. I called to check their availability, and they were booked for the day. So I called two other spas. Still no luck. At the fourth spa, they had one appointment open, but there was a catch. I consulted with Lisa.

  “They only have one appointment,” I said, holding my hand over the microphone. “And it’s for couples.”