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August 02, 2004
I Don't Even Like Tombstone Pizza
Nothing much happened this weekend. You know, except for the fact that I was taken to a cemetery to watch old movies.
How long does one have to spend time with me to know that I wouldn’t be interested in sitting on dead folks to enjoy some old school black and white cinema? I thought about it, and after a long conversation with myself on my drive home (I never made it into the actual cemetery), I decided this doesn’t make me a snob. I’ve done way snobbier things anyway.
So here’s the story.
He called me on Wednesday to say I shouldn’t make plans for Saturday. That he’s got a really good surprise for me. I already had plans for Saturday, but I knew that he had his heart set on this particular “surprise” activity so I moved some shit around. I’m so not the person that can say flat out no to people. I actually “overbook” myself socially all the time. Not that people are constantly tugging on all my limbs because I’m just so fucking fabulous. It’s just that in the world of bartenders/waiters/bar backs, when Saturday is a day off it’s a miracle. And that time off, if you are invited out with someone from this world, should be respected and honored as a time-sensitive, urgent kind of day. I just don’t see Saturdays as Saturdays. Days are just days to be filled with appointments, manicures, nervous breakdowns, avoided phone calls and too-big burritos. While nights are reserved for wondering what happened during the day. Is this a lack of fulfillment I’m feeling? But seriously, sorting my laundry in the hopes of doing it and cussing Blue Cross Blue Shield out are entirely achievements. No, I’m not paying for the removal of my old mercury filling. Of course it’s aesthetic, but also medically necessary. Can’t you feel the poison seeping from the mercury, lady?
Now, I hate surprises. Don’t surprise me. I won’t like it. I can almost guarantee I won’t like it. No one in my entire life, to this day, has managed to pull off a likeable surprise. I don’t get surprised with all expenses paid trips to Thailand. No pink diamonds. No lifetime supply of Claritin. I get surprised with dogs (can’t say I like them), Indian food (can’t say I eat it), tiny Mexican trinkets (would have preferred to actually go on the trip with you, dude). Where are the surprises that I like? We’re going to Hawaii! What do you mean this pink Cadillac is all mine!
So from Wednesday to a couple hours before the surprise event on Saturday, I called him repeatedly asking for details. He refused. On Saturday morning he called not to tell me what the surprise was but to ask if I liked sushi. “I can’t remember if you like sushi. Do you?” I said I did. Um, how do you forget whether or not I like sushi? I’m sushi lady. Sushi. It’s what’s for dinner. Of course I like sushi.
He asked me to drive to his neighborhood claiming he couldn’t pick me up because his car was “infested with ants.” I have a very expressive face, and luckily, he told me this over the phone. Ant infestation is really just off the chain. I wasn’t even embarrassed for myself or for him. Straight up sympathy. Have you ever dealt with ants? Just hella ants? It’s fucking terrible. I wouldn’t wish ant infestation on my worst enemy. Well, not just plain old harmless ants. I’d summons fire ants for my worst enemy.
So I get there. There’s no parking in his neighborhood. We drive several blocks from his house and park. While parked, he says, “Don’t leave anything showing in your car.” Now picture my face doing the stank “excuse me?” look. I’ve got an arsenal of looks. Why no one has cashed in on this sheer talent of mine, I don’t know. You mean to tell me this face couldn’t sell your Sears jeans? What about my butt? Can my butt sell the jeans? Did I ever tell you about how I didn’t book that Sears commercial, my first commercial audition ever? That it was between me and one other girl? That the commercial comes on all day every day on network television and my family calls to tell me they keep seeing it and that it’s not me. That my niece says, “Yeah auntie, you’re way cuter than her.” Thanks. That feels good coming from an eleven-year-old who’s obsessed with Hilary Duff. That my dad says I should go back to the audition people and say, “Shorty, my dad, is a premiere Sears customer. I think you meant to give me this job. If not, he threatens to close his Sears account, Gold card mind you, and you can’t have that. He spends upwards of $300 per visit…” And this is why I didn’t tell you and shouldn’t tell my family about auditions. In protest, Shorty no longer uses his Sears card. He prefers Home Depot anyway, he says, without a hint of sour grapes.
All right, we’re parked. I had recently just acquired the most free CDs one could acquire in three minutes. I was let loose inside a music publishing office. It was like putting me in a wind tunnel of money and telling me I have exactly three minutes to collect as much as I could. I took a Michael McDonald CD just because it was there. I took shit I don’t even like. Will I ever hear the entire Christina Millian CD? No, but I like the fact that I can play Dip It Low twice and then throw the CD with reckless abandon in the backseat. He told me to put my CDs in the trunk. Okay. Sometimes you park in a shady hood and leaving even just an umbrella out is an invitation for theft.
So we walk. And walk. And walk.
My eczema kicks in. I have to pause every couple cracks in the sidewalk to scratch my calf. Scratch my inner thigh. Oh fuck, back of the knee is kicking in. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Not the underside of my foot! Please God, why do you do this to me?
Finally, I see a long line ahead of us. That’s nice. A summer food drive for the homeless. Looks like they’re providing blankets and everything. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! We have just arrived at the surprise.
Surprise!
You, Melissa Howard, have just won one night under the stars at the cemetery! With this prize, you’ll receive one prime seat on the ground because we don’t have a blanket. Once seated, you’ll enjoy sushi and cinema. Lean back on that tombstone and enjoy the ride as we show silent classic films. Which film you ask? Nobody knows. Haven’t heard of it.
We get to the line, and I say, “Um, are we going into the graveyard?”
He says we are. Smile from ear to ear. I hear a bunch of words now. Streaming from his mouth are the words awesome, amazing, fucking cool. I beg to mother fucking differ. The entire time that he’s singing the cemetery praises, I’m looking past the 3,569 people that are ahead of us in line. They too are under the impression that this is the shit. Immediately, I feel regret as I will be missing the encore presentation (fancy for re-run) of Amazing Race.
Suddenly, being the friendly person that he is, we’re in a conversation with the people behind us. They squeal in delight as they discuss the great Mediterranean food they’ve brought. They’ve got blankets, marijuana, picnic baskets and shit. The lady looks at me, sensing that I am not all that interested, and says, “Ah, you’re Filipino too right!”
I say, “Yes, how’d you know?”
“I’m Filipino. We can sense our kind…”
Well, I am a good Filipino spotter and she didn’t look Filipino at all. She looked kinda like Cher’s half sister. Different dads. Same sense of style.
She goes, “Oh come on. This will be so much fun. When you were little, did you make the trip to the graveyard and have a picnic once a year with your relatives that have passed? Come on, you’re Filipino.”
Okay, why does this always happen to me? I get involved in this Americanized shame every time I talk to an older Filipino person. Do you speak Tagalog? No. One strike. Have you been to Goldilocks yet? No. Two strikes. You don’t have a picnic on your relatives’ gravesites? No. Filipino or not though, that’s not that interesting to me. Sorry Ate Glo, sorry mom, sorry Banjo, sorry Rufina, sorry Maribel. I don’t mean to shame you all. I just don’t get it when it comes to dead shit. I have superstitions and shit. I don’t want to go to the graveyard. Period.
So we get to the front of the line. Most times, when I get to the front of a line, I’m excited. This time, hmmm, not so much. The lady says, “Twenty dollars please.”
TWENTY DOLLARS!
Being the one who’s invited to this here shindig, I don’t reach down in my purse. Mother fucker, you better call Tyrone. He looks at me and says, “Fuck, I forgot my wallet.”
The good old FORGOT MY WALLET trick. Being the G that I am, this has happened to me before and I deal with it in an unlikely way. No, I do not put my nose in the air, roll my eyes, snap my neck left, right and then in a circle, wave a finger or storm off. I, instead, do the opposite. I graciously pay. I never discuss and lastly, I fade. Take one good look at your past. It’s not that I think a female paying for shit is terrible. I will gladly pay my way. I will gladly pay his way if I like. I’ve done this before. For a whole year, once. Who was I? Some kind of insecure young girl with no self-esteem in desperate need for any form of affection even if it came in the form of negativity? Oh yes, that’s who I was. These days, I just prefer that he pays if he invited me. I mean, first I have to go to graveyard. Surprise! And now I must pay for my own misery. Um, no thanks.
I do, as I just said I didn’t or wouldn’t, reach down in my purse. I have seven crumpled up dollars. He looks devastated. I sense an almost what-the-fuck-you-don’t-have-twenty-dollars vibe. Now would be a perfect time for me to get stank, but I don’t. He tells the lady he didn’t know there was a charge. I don’t know why this is a first impulse. Claiming not to know something is the worst thing you can do when in a pinch. You don’t show up at the Barney’s register with the whole set of Louis Vuitton and go, “I didn’t know it costs money…” If anything, you lie. “I was told this was free,” but even then, that’s a pretty wack excuse. Remember, 3,569 people before us have paid. We watched them do it. Hello?
So, he tells me to stand there at the front of line, holding our spot as this event actually sells out (fucking LA) and wait for him to run to the ATM. But remember, he has to run to his house first to fetch the forgotten wallet and then drive the ant car to the bank. No. I will do no such thing. Stand here? No. He looks at me like I’m an asshole. No. I’m not standing here. Absolutely not. At the cemetery, money-less, holding a bag of old sushi. No. Sorry. You can’t make me.
I proceed to follow him up the street. Suddenly, I’m holding the bag of shit. And oddly enough, I’m feeling a twinge of, well, bad. Wait. Why the fuck should I feel bad? I didn’t create the DATE AT THE CEMETERY THAT IS GOING HORRIBLY AWRY. Fuck this shit. I scour my brain. AHA! Code Red. Fuck, Coral’s out of town. And hold up, why the fuck am I carrying this shit? Saying the F word is very helpful in times like this. It’s an entirely underrated form of therapy. Fuckity fuck fuck, man, fuck.
I call my friend Spriteboy. Even though he’s in New York, I tell him to stay by the phone. The two of us together? Crafty. Put it on vibrate if you must. I’m in a cemetery. Shit is getting crazy. Just stay by the phone. He fell asleep. Cancer survivors, I swear.
I rely on myself now. Beyonce is so right. Hypocritical because she HAS Jay-Z all day, but right nonetheless. Not everybody can say they have a bazillionaire genius best rapper alive for a boyfriend, you know. Me? Just me, myself and that I character. I need to be my own best friend.
Myself is pretty slow with the resolutions.
I actually get in the ant car. He claims they are all gone. I have an ant bite on my arm to prove that is a lie. We get on the road.
“Oh fuck!” he says. He again forgot his wallet. My reply: Are you fucking stoned? Killing your brain cells, son, killing your brain cells.
Finally, myself comes strong with the ideas.
“You know what? I don’t think I’m going to make it back to the cemetery. I’ve got the thing with the thing in the morning and these things are very important. You know things and stuff.”
He says, “Aw really?”
Yes, really dude.
He takes me to my car. I hop out. Pop the trunk to retrieve my CDs that I had to hide and say goodbye.
An hour later, he calls me. I pick up. He says it’s the best time ever. He’s clearly never discovered Nerd Rope or Star Magazine or Lifetime movies featuring Tori Spelling or even a yo-yo.
The next day I visit him at his garage sale. I never said I was unforgiving. Hmm, well, he was selling a white denim jacket that he once wore. I should re-evaluate my code of values. But you know what? Sometimes the strangest people become your closest friends. Is that Wrangler though?
Posted by melissah at August 2, 2004 04:05 PM