by Linda Keenan
Upton, taking his break sitting in the store’s blood-pressure testing stall, was asked for his impression of Gotlieb. “Fat? She thinks she’s fat? In my day, Terry’d be called a ‘tall drink of water.’ I think she has a fine figure. Don’t know where she gets ‘fat’ from. She’s the most beautiful Jew I’ve ever seen. But she’s a sad lady, too. Her values are a little cuckoo in the head. You know, when I talk to her, I always feel so much better about my own life. So I love it when she comes in.”
Gotlieb believes that the diversity in the store lends her an advantage no matter the looks of the other shoppers. “Even the best-looking Puerto Rican girl is no match for an average white lady like me. I’m coming out on top every time.” Gotlieb paused. “Except for J-Lo. But I don’t have to worry about seeing J-Lo at Wal-Mart, do I?”
Gotlieb marvels at the number of children some of the patrons of Wal-Mart have, and the impossibility that they are saving for the future. “Oh God, if these people don’t start saving, their kids will never have what I have. They’ll have to shop here. Not like me, just here for fun.”
Gotlieb particularly likes the pharmacy section, where she feels “the thinnest and the fittest.” Here, Gotlieb observes, “I see all these gigantic obese people with diabetes buying crap for ‘wound care’ and oh grosssssss. I am so lucky.”
Gotlieb uses the Wal-Mart pharmacy, not because it’s cheap, but because, as she puts it, “I don’t have those cunts from the Temple hanging over me seeing me pick up my Zoloft and Ativan.” Do her friends know she shops at Wal-Mart? “Are you out of your fucking mind? They’d think we were being foreclosed on. Or they’d bitch I was an ‘enemy of the people’ or something for shopping here. Well, unlike them, I actually know people of different colors and different backgrounds, like Fred, because I go to Wal-Mart.”
Gotlieb had never heard of the popular website Shoppers of Wal-Mart, where contributors surreptitiously photograph Wal-Mart shoppers for the amusement value. On this reporter’s iPad, Gotlieb began clicking through and laughing. “This is great! Oh my God, look at that,” referring to a photo of an overweight African-American woman’s loose back fat.
“I’ve totally seen that, like, a million times.” But her mood darkened when she arrived on a picture entitled “The Old & The Frizzy-full,” which showed Gotlieb on an especially bad hair day, slack-jawed, speaking to Fred Upton.
Gotlieb abruptly ended the interview and began walking out. A checkout girl said, “Terry, you haven’t paid yet.” Without turning around, Gotlieb thrust her hand behind her and said, “I don’t have to pay for anything here.” Upton said goodbye as Gotlieb left the store unchallenged, but got no response. “There goes my sunshine,” he said.
HomeSchooled Girl Excels in Competitive Spelling, Blow Jobs
Suburgatory, USA—A homeschooled girl excels in championship-level spelling and blow jobs, with both skills giving her local renown. “Thanks to my amazing parents, I have the confidence and commitment to excellence that I would have never had if I spent years as a slave to an educational system that creates kids who can’t think for themselves, who have no real love for learning, and know nothing about the life of the mind,” said sixteen-year-old Catherine Busby.
At a very young age, Busby says, she knew exactly what she wanted to accomplish. “Memorize words to win or at least place in the biggest contests and get on the news, and, separately, to get boys to like me. So I dug in, and dug in hard.”
“Did she ever!” said Paul Minnow, seventeen, one of Busby’s early boyfriends—a starter project in her quest to perfect and master her blow-job skills. “I can’t believe she dumped me. If I was her ‘training subject,’ I can’t even believe how good Catherine is now. Those guys seriously must faint.”
Another boy expressed his pride at her success at age fifteen, coming in third in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. “I mean, appoggiatura? Autochthonous? How does she know this shit? But I have to tell you, when she is up there and thinking really hard and then starts that slow spell, letter by letter, the excitement building and building, all I can think about is my cock in her mouth. Then when she gets it right? Oh my God, it’s explosive. Even her dumpy outfits turn me on now.”
Busby’s family members describe themselves as “neo-pagan” and believe they honor The Goddess by purchasing only secondhand clothing. Why didn’t they give their daughter a more traditional pagan name? “Oh, we were psycho yuppies in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Busby’s mother, Sophie, is very proud of her daughter’s spelling accomplishments, and has little problem with the fact that she has earned the nickname ”Blow Job Babe” by local boys. “First of all, I trust Catherine’s judgment without reservation. She spent years on my breast, and years more learning right at my knee. I’m convinced we gave her the security to express her deepest desire, coupled with the wisdom to do it responsibly and with integrity. Who am I to say that achievement in sexual ability is worthless? It’s a skill she can utilize and enjoy her whole life!”
While she seems equally skilled in both spelling and blow jobs, the spelling holds a more sentimental place in Busby’s heart.
Says current boyfriend Jonah Klein:
“I tried to get her to spell out one of her crazy words on me with her tongue, but she wouldn’t do it. She said ‘Spelling is sacred.’ I had to settle for ‘Heartbeat of America,’ where she squeezes me, like thump-thump.” Klein demonstrated a pulsing grip. “Thump-thump. Thump-thump. And that was fine, too, of course. I really respect her!”
So where did Busby learn all these techniques? “Oh God, the Christian homeschool girls of course,” referring to the kids she meets with regularly for homeschooling field trips and other enrichment activities. There is often tension between the neo-pagan and the Christian home-schoolers, but Busby made fast friends. “Oh, they’re lovely! And they are like blow-job ninjas. But, well, not to be mean, but their spelling is for shit.”
Dr. Drama
“When life hands you a problem, let’s make it more interesting!”
Dear Dr. Drama:
One of my best friends, I’ll call her “Meg,” is being emotionally abused by her husband, I’ll call him “Brad.” He berates her, controls her, and has made her a prisoner in her own home. She’s so under siege she can’t even imagine leaving. I’m desperate to find a solution and to force her to get help. I’m at my wit’s end!
—Hopeless in Suburgatory
Dear Hopeless:
In my many years of online training to become a clinical “psychologist,” while not slaving away in that awful call center, I learned the technical term for men like “Brad.” We old pros in the biz call them Asshole Dickwads. Now, Dr. Drama doesn’t want to be a Debbie Downer here, but the fact is research shows that the recovery rate for Asshole Dickwads is extremely low. You know what’s even lower? The chances that doormat “Meg,” living under siege with an untreatable Asshole Dickwad, will do something about it. So that leaves you, and if this is a hopeless situation, I always say, why don’t you have a little fun with it? Someone should!
I like to give clients action items to achieve their goals. So here goes: First, sabotage him at work. You wouldn’t believe how easy this is, I know firsthand! Find even one coworker and start feeding him shit about your Asshole Dickwad. In the age of social networking, we’ll have Asshole Dickwad the talk of Twitter before you know it.
Second, contact your friend’s dad. Just because “Meg” says, “He’ll kill Brad if he finds out what he’s doing!” Hey, that’s no skin off your back or hers. What do you care if Asshole Dickwad gets the shit beat out of him? I have four words for you: It’s about fucking time.
And finally, start rocking that passive aggression you always wanted to use, face-to-face, with Asshole Dickwad. Trust me, your beaten down friend can’t do it, so it’s up to you. Maybe you can demean his career choice: “Oh, I’ve heard that field is the least competitive of the fields you could have chosen, and there’s a lot less money, and your
peers are really not the brightest, but I’m sure the quality of life you have is so worth being in that really not-competitive field.” Or “Yes, the kids are a bit … large. But you must love that they’re so like you!” He will smile, but inside his rage will burn with the intensity of a thousand suns. Enjoy!
Mom Befriends, Infuriates
Mormon Missionaries
Suburgatory, USA—A local mother has based her entire social life around a pair of young missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but she has unwittingly alienated them with her ignorance.
“If she offers me Starbucks one more time, Oh. My. Heck.” said Buck Berkeley, age twenty, of Salt Lake City, Utah. Berkeley is spreading the message of the Book of Mormon with his companion or “comp,” Cason Mabry, twenty-two, of Harris Landing, Idaho, in what is known as “tracting,” or door-to-door proselytizing of selected suburban neighborhoods.
“Case, how many times have we told her about the coffee? Six times? She couldn’t give a scrud about our eternal damnation. I mean, has she ever heard of Wikipedia? It’s not that hard to figure out that we can’t even get near her gross coffee.”
Berkeley was referring to Kim Ballante, forty-one, the mom who first greeted the young men at her door two months ago. “Aren’t they just the cutest?” she said.
Ballante says she has learned much from the pair about the tenets and history of the Mormon faith, including a description of the angel that adherents believe visited church founder Joseph Smith in the late 1800s. “Moroni was the last Nephite prophet, whatever the hell that means, and then his angel wrote the Mormon Bible on golden plates?! Can you be-leeve this shit? Mo-RONE-eye. Buck said it’s spelled like moron with an ‘i.’”
Berkeley laughed when this was mentioned to him. “She had no clue I was calling her a moron. She just kept going ‘uh-huh, uh-huh,’ and ‘wow, that’s so interesting!’, which is all she says when we actually try to give her the Word of Wisdom. One day she kept calling Joseph Smith, Robert Smith. Remember that, comp?” Cason said, “Yeah, because she loves that old creepy band The Cure. Man she is so old.” Buck agreed. “So so SOOOO old.”
On this day, Ballante welcomed the boys in and said, “You’re just in time for ‘Hot Topics!’” referring to the topical portion of the show The View, which they frequently watch with her. “I thought they would like Elisabeth [Hasselbeck]. She’s all religious like them. But they don’t seem to like her. She wears a cross, and they don’t like crosses, these people. Like, like vampires or something, they are seriously scared of them.”
At the end of The View, Ballante said, “Ethan [Ballante’s two-year-old] is still sleeping! You know what that means … Appletini Time!” which apparently meant she would mix up some drinks for herself, even though the young men are forbidden to drink alcohol.
“Sex and the City,” Berkeley said quietly to Mabry when Ballante went to prepare her Appletinis. “Do you think she got Appletini Time from Sex and the City?” Mabry asked, “What’s Sex and the City again?” Berkeley said, “You know, that show from when we were, like, twelve, and those movies? Those trashy old bags running around New York drinking and having sad sex and all? The women in this town pretend it’s, like, real or something. It’s kinda tragic… . They just need real love from their husbands. What is wrong with these men?”
After Ballante consumed several drinks, she lost her inhibitions with the young men, whom she believed secretly found her attractive. “Come on, you know you want more than one wife. Admit it! I’d totally be a sister wife if I could have Bill Paxton! But not that creep from Sister Wives.” Ballante was referring to the polygamist husbands on the HBO show Big Love and the TLC program Sister Wives. She gets most of her knowledge about the Latter-Day Saints from the shows, and more recently from what she’s read about the Broadway send-up, Book of Mormon.
Berkeley, as the more senior missionary of the two, handled the polygamy question. “Ma’am, our Church disavowed polygamy more than a century ago. While there are some fringe groups who continue to practice polygamy, they do not represent the people or beliefs of our Church in any way, shape, or form. I will have one wife, and we will be together with our children forever.”
“Holy shit, you are so adorable,” Ballante said. “Alright, alright, alright. But you need to at least give me something,” Ballante said, leaning in closely to the young men, who were visibly apprehensive.
“Show me your magic underwear. We read this book in book club about crazy Mormons and they were talking about magic underwear.”
Mabry cleared his throat and said, “Ma’am, they are temple garments that we wear at all times to remind us of our sacred covenants. Other religions like Judaism also include special garments in their faith.”
“Jeez-us, you guys are all God and no fun. It’s gonna be a long long life for you two if you don’t loosen up. Trust me on this,” Ballante said.
After leaving the home for the day, Berkeley said, “You know, the thing that kills me the most is that she is so pathetic that she sits around day after day with a couple of twenty-year-olds and she thinks WE are the freaks.” Mabry nodded in agreement. Ballante confirmed this impression. “Yeah I love those boys, but of course they’re freaks. They’re Mormons knocking on doors! If that’s not a freak, I don’t know what is.”
So why do Mabry and Berkeley keep going back if they feel both offended and hopeless at their chances of getting Ballante baptized? “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because I’m-With-Stupid?” Berkeley said, gesturing to Mabry. “Case, like an idiot, let it slip to our Zone Lord [the mission supervisor] that this woman loved us and now they are convinced they have a golden.” “Golden,” they say, refers to an easy conversion target.
Mabry added: “I don’t even want her at this point even though we look like rock stars if we get her dunked [baptized]. I don’t give a fudge about her or her soul—but if she becomes LDS and has a celestial marriage, then that poor guy she’s married to and that kid she totally, completely ignores, are going to be stuck with her for all Eternities.”
Ice Cream Man Assaulted
Because He’s the Ice Cream Man,
“Not Because He’s Muslim”
Suburgatory, USA—The dads who admit to the harassment and second-degree assault last month of Egyptian-born ice cream man Suleiman Rahman insist they did not attack Rahman because of his faith, but because he’s the ice cream man. They also say he is a “possible perv,” a “rolling extortionist,” and a “kiddie-poison pusher.” But they claim they have no problem whatsoever that Rahman is a Muslim, and argue this incident, which involved pushing and yelling, does not fit the definition of a federal hate crime.
“That’s straight-up slander!” said Mark Watson, one of the accused parents. “We aggressively suggested the ice cream man leave the school parking lot last month because we are fed up with him and all the problems he causes, following families all over town, ruining every nice event!”
Janet Maroney said Rahman’s truck arrives just as the kids begin playing soccer, making it impossible to keep the kids on the field and forcing parents to bring cash to every game. “I feel like every time I see that stick-up truck headed for me, I can kiss five bucks goodbye unless I want an epic meltdown. Then if a friend forgets her cash, I say buh-bye to ten bucks.”
Jodi Keyes wishes she could say no when the ice cream man arrives but doesn’t want to look like a “joy-sucking cheapskate” or one of those “granola moms.” Peggy Davies is proud to call herself a “granola mom” and even she can’t resist buying her kids what she calls the “frozen death on a stick” with “neon gumball eyes.” “Yes, I’m granola, but I hate a tantrum just like the rest of you,” Davies said.
Others alluded to what they see as a corruption of this classically American institution. Some who asked to remain anonymous thought Rahman was “a Gypsy or something” and mourned the days when ice cream trucks were manned by “wholesome teenagers” and not “old possible pervs who don’t even li
ve in town.” One wondered, “Does he sleep in there?”
Parent Roger Jackson asked, “Have you heard that toy piano tune his truck plays? It will seriously haunt your soul. It’s like Satan on four wheels.” And these feelings have nothing to do with the fact that he’s a Muslim? “I said Satan, not Osama, didn’t you hear me?”
So what does Rahman say about the incident? “In 2002 I was held for three months by the Egyptian secret police. You think these homosexual-looking men scare me?” After some cajoling, Rahman admitted that he didn’t think town residents hated him because he’s a Muslim, even though his lawyer is pursuing a hate crime charge. “I don’t think they even knew what I was before this happened. I think they just thought I was the poor brown stranger taking their money and annoying them with my tempting and delicious ice cream. They blame me because they can’t say no to their spoiled-rotten children. So no, I don’t really think they hate me because I’m Muslim. But I couldn’t really blame them if they did. Because I definitely hate them because they’re American.”
Wolf Blitzer—
Live From the Lactation Room
Suburgatory, USA—This is Wolf Blitzer. And you’re in … the Lactation Room. We have a situation developing in the Lactation Room at the Unum Provident office building today, as two mothers battle over their degree of virtue and commitment to pumping breast milk for their babies.
Jill Branson is trying to convince Susan Markle to “tough it out,” “don’t be a quitter,” and “remember all the troubles formula-fed babies have,” as Susan struggles to produce enough breast milk. For those of you unfamiliar with the process—as I was before I discovered this oasis of feminine splendor—working mothers use electric pumps and then store their breast milk for their babies to drink later. We go to the fight playing out live.