ught him.
I've caught him.
He's too goddamned scared to make a move and I don't blame him, because he's my boyfriend and I caught him, just now, packing up all of his crap into a piece-of-shit hippie van because he's running off to Seattle to follow his dream, which is growing pot, smoking it, and learning to play Neil Young's ?Old Man? on an acoustic guitar in order to perform it as a birthday gift for his dad, a man he has never met.
He is running away.
With HER.
Turn to the right, there she is, standing behind the van, trying to hide from me; it's Dog Girl, his ex-girlfriend, dressed in a tremendous gauze dress and with matching cornrow hair.
?She made the curtains,? he mutters, still looking at the sidewalk.
?WHAT?? I said, shaking my head.
?She made the curtains,? he repeats. "For the van. She sold her car and bought the van.?
For a moment, I'm confused and I wonder about what I'm supposed to do with this. Am I supposed to fight, and kick and scream, am I supposed to oppose it? I have no idea, and I don't do anything. I just walk away.
?Don't you want to hit me?? he calls out.
?Don't you want to yell at me, tell me you hate me?? he yells to me.
I just shake my head, and keep walking.
?It's not you!? he shouts one last time. "It's me!?
That's enough to make me stop dead in my tracks.
?Really?? I ask as I spin around. "Are you sure it's you? Because that would make my day, just knowing that it was YOU and NOT ME, especially after I just caught you in the middle of an escape attempt. Is it you? Is it really you, Ben??
?Well, I guess it's me a little bit,? he stammers as Dog Girl peeks an eye out from behind the purple curtains as one of her hair ornaments chimes. "But, well, if you really want to know, I'd say that yeah, it's mostly you.?
?Mostly me?? I reply. "It's mostly me that's forced you into this scene from Children of the Cornrow? God, it looks like Stevie Wonder and Bo Derek jumped you in an alley and gang-braided you!?
He stands quiet for a moment, thinking, then nods his head.
?Actually, it's pretty much all you,? he adds with a sigh. "I don't think it's me at all. No, no, it's you. All you. It's not me, because the feeling that I'm getting in my chakras is that it's definitely you.?
As if I needed confirmation. I've seen that play It's Not You, It's Me before, and as a matter of fact, I've played the lead in that scenario since before I had boobs.
My role is ?Super Idiot Girl,? the kind of female who searches out the most alluring sociopath to date, who never learns that if you see a tornado coming, especially one that works in a record store and displays no other ambition outside of making mixed tapes from bootleg Grateful Dead shows, duck under the nearest table until the roar passes.
It all started in fifth grade, when my mother bought me a box of valentines from Kmart. I searched out the perfect Holly Hobbie valentine, a little farmer boy in overalls...
)
The author of the New York Times bestseller The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club tackles her biggest challenge yet: grown-up life. In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air-conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony. From her mother's grade-school warning to avoid kids in tie-dyed shirts because their hippie parents spent their food money on drugs and art supplies; to her night-before-the-wedding panic over whether her religion is the one where you step on the glass; to her unfortunate overpreparation for the mandatory drug-screening urine test at work; to her audition as a Playboy centerfold as research for a newspaper story, Autobiography of a Fat Bride has the same zits-and-all candor and outrageous humor that made Idiot Girls an instant cult phenomenon. In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie contemplates family, home improvement, and the horrible tyrannies of cosmetic saleswomen. She finds that life doesn't necessarily get any easier as you get older. But it does get funnier.
