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Serious Misunderstanding Part 2
by Noel Clarkson
.... Ready
for the irony of my whole life: The
Creator made me cute, with big boobs and protruding
nipples, and has it gotten me a soul mate? Has
it gotten me a new car? Has it even gotten me
to a third date in the last six years? N.O.
All it’s done is made Pam buy me “Nipple
Guards” for my birthday. For my birthday!
.... And the optimist
hidden way down deep in an un-excavate-able
area of my soul whines, “Hey-wait-a-minute-Pamster,
I may need those nipples. I might actually have
a minuscule, appallingly tiny chance of falling
in love with a male human. Someone who smells
good and who can cope. Just because you haven’t
and I haven’t, and you were mad for a
whole summer about your handyman asking me out
and the fact that I went after you told me you
thought he was cute. And no one we know is exactly
happy with her partner, and I’m secretly
pleased the gorgeous married Norwegian venture
capitalist still stalks my cell phone, and we
sit here and get drunk and talk about how sometimes
you see a man at Safeway and his nose looks
like a penis, and suddenly all the men around
you-the ones checking you out, or the ones squeezing
avocados-all have incredibly unattractive penis
noses, why, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t
procreate and spread the genes around, if I
really wanted to make that happen.”
.... I should just
start writing to prisoners. My friend Teresa
writes poems to a man in a correctional facility
three times a week. Teresa claims he wrote a
few bad checks, spent a month in jail, was released,
and then neglected to keep the parole board
apprised of his change of address-thus landing
out at Deer Pass for an entire year. Teresa
knew this guy in high school and apparently
still feels a burn for him. But Lonny, the jailbird,
called her and said prison nazis are keeping
last week’s letters from him, because
they claim she did not affix sufficient postage.
And Teresa is outraged and sad and thinks it’s
a big scam -a prisoner shakedown. Because why
would the United States Postal Service deliver
the letters? She has a point. That gave me an
idea and I called up T. from a pay phone and
I whispered to her voicemail:
.... “Yo
Ho-Bag! Dis is Irma, I’s the postal inspection
officer at Deer Pass Correctional Facility.
Yeah, I gots your letters, Gonzales Bitch. I
gots all one-two-three of ‘dem, and Lonny
boy ain’t gettin’ dem crazy poemmms,
‘cause he’s mah meat-got it? Shoot,
girl if you cain’t EVEN fin’ a man
on ‘da whol’ dang outsite whirlt,
than that is jus’ plain S.A.D. and I feel
sorry fer yer Mexican ass.
.... (Shut
yo’ hole, I be on the phone, I give you
yo’ damn love stamp when I done, Numba’
Seven-Seven-Two, and the price just went on
up to fortee-five cent. You hear me? Sit yo’
ass down befo’ you go to solitareee.)
.... But
I tell you sumpin,’ Gonzales, you send
me an ounce of koka-kola and some thong underwear
- size twenny-four, and a case of Virginia Slims
menthol-hard pack, and mebbe Lonny gets hisself
a poemmm, see? You ‘tink about it, Ho.
‘Tink about it good and long and hard.”
.... Then I said
“Ho” again into the phone, and hung-up.
.... Yeah, sure,
I could be destined to walk Planet E. with my
own true self. Mom claims it’s because
I’m “intimidating.” (And this
does not come out as a compliment.) And my friends
say only losers date on the Internet. And my
sister Marie in L.A. says go to a five-thousand
dollar matchmaker, which is easy for Ms. Vice
President of a movie studio to say. And my other
sister, Jill, lives in South America and she’s
too busy sending walkie-talkie messages to the
embassy in code to spend much time worrying
about my love life. Can you believe our government
hands out names to federal employees like “Goldilocks.”
But, of course, the Marines reserve “Papa
Bear” for themselves - typical. I’ve
been patted down at more embassies around the
world than most people would ever admit to.
I was even mistaken for some kind of illicit
person once in Istanbul when I was with my sister
and a baby.
.... Question:
do I look like a fuckin’ terrorist? I’m
blonde-a good percentage of the year. I am just
the ne’er-do-well little sister who travels
around the world to visit big sister, but can’t
afford very good birthday gifts. Really, that’s
all I am. You know what? This is it: I get misinterpreted
a lot.
.... In the last
twelve years I have lived in seven different
locations. I am a roamer; a Sagittarius. I admit
it’s no doubt absurd to expect a lasting
relationship when one decides to up and move,
all the time. But I do it anyway. I have lived
in: Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle, London, England,
Poland, Oakland again, and, Oh My God, Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. And for reasons that now elude me,
I currently dwell in a small seafaring town
on the tip of the American West Coast, a.k.a.
“The Ends of the Earth.”
.... A famous British
explorer arrived in these parts and had the
audacity to start naming everything in sight:
mountain peaks, islands; even cities in Canada.
The explorer dubbed this outpost “Point
Trefethen,” after his good buddy back
home, the Marquis of Trefethen. Personally,
I think money changed hands, and, voila, the
Marquis got his piece of the New World. Well,
the joke’s on the Marquis, that’s
all I can say.
.... So here we
all are, an odd cluster of Caucasian Americans
living on traditional Indian land, forever slapped
with an uptight British tattoo like “Trefethen.”
Let’s fast forward to 1850, when homesteaders,
merchants, gold-seekers, bankers and other shanghai-ers
dropped anchor here in alarming numbers. The
white boys took one look at the Clallam Indian
chief, Chetzemoka, and re-name him the more
easily pronounced “Duke of York.”
They dubbed his one wife-the sour-puss one-
as “Queen Victoria” but his other
wife (apparently none too distinguished-looking)
was merely referred to as “Jenny.”
.... Point Trefethen
abruptly stalled after 1900 rolled around. Ships
started bypassing this wild trading post to
head for the suddenly trendy and more convenient
port of “Seattle.” Sure, you can
find a sandwich, or an Easter bunny doorstop
in the brick buildings which still stand in
dilapidated splendor along the waterfront. But
Point Trefethen officially became a ghost town
a long time ago. And-believe-you-me-the whole
place has only gotten weirder since.
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