God Save the Sweet Potato Queens (13 page)
15
Guys Ain’t Girls
H
ardly a day goes by that I don’t hear about some activity that just has “guy” written all over it—no way it would ever even occur to a woman. For instance, I saw in the paper where someone was on a second-floor balcony. From that vantage point, the person was trying to show off his/her aim by throwing a watermelon from the balcony into a trash container, which was some distance away and on the ground. From the newspaper account, I gathered that he/she got so carried away with the fever of the moment that he/she did one of those things you see cartoon characters do all the time—you know, when they’re bowling and they drop the ball and hurl themselves bodily down the alley toward the pins. Yes, after a hot afternoon of melon tossing, I guess the competition got the best of him/her and he/she inadvertently flung himself/herself off the balcony—to his/her untimely and totally undignified death. Now, if you had to place a sizable wager on the gender of the deceased, what would you pick? Of course it was a guy. This is a typical guy activity and it is the equivalent, but somehow more socially acceptable form, of banging their actual dicks on the table—which is, of course, the heart of pretty much all guy-type competitions.
I have a boyfriend in Montgomery, Alabama, Gary Warren, and he told me that he plays in a golf tournament every year that starts with what amounts to a swearing-in ceremony: They all raise their right hands and say in unison, “I am a dickhead.” And then the games begin—golf, along with a fair amount of drinking (“drankin’,” as we are apt to call it) and the endless telling of lies. He said there is a bar in Daytona known as “The Original Dickheads,” where admission is sixty-four cents but they charge you a dollar—because they’re dickheads. I admit, I like the concept.
I read with interest and alarm the missive I received from a woman named Trish, who said that a number of years ago, she had actually been arrested in Caruthersville, Missouri, for saying “dickhead.” This seems harsh to me. It seems, at the time, that community had an ordinance against women using profanity. Trish didn’t relate to me the circumstances that caused her to use this epithet—like, for instance, whether she directed it at a policeman who had perhaps merely stopped her for a routine traffic citation? Or did she, in fact, just use the term within the confines of a private conversation, only to be hauled off by eavesdropping jack-booted language police? If you happen to be passing through Caruthersville, Missouri, please ask them what their current policy is on “dickhead.” It’s information we all need. If there really is an ordinance that applies only to women using profanity, well, then, we’re just gonna have to plan a road trip, now aren’t we? I just want to make sure that if it’s legal for
anybody
to say “dickhead,” it’s legal for us
all
to say “dickhead.”
One of the Queens, Tammy, and I recently had dinner with these two other people. (As it happened, the other two had penises.) Now, neither of the guys had anything resembling a romantic interest in either me or Tammy—which I know is hard to believe, but it’s true nonetheless. Just four buddies having dinner. Except that it was the first time the two men had met each other. What transpired was the most primitive, barbaric, and hilarious display Tammy and I had ever seen.
They did stuff early on—during drinks and what should have been pleasant before-dinner conversation among the four of
u
s—
that, had they been dogs, would have significantly involved trees. If there was any territory, figurative or literal, perceived by either of them, both rushed to mark it first and then, of course, last. At this point, however, Tammy and I were oblivious to the fact that we were in the middle of a full-fledged dogfight and we were just blathering away, trying to make small talk. It didn’t take us too long to figure out that we were actually the only two people talking to us; the two with peni were talking only to each other. Then we realized that they appeared to have grown taller and somehow puffier. They were sitting up very straight and were looking intently at each other while pretending to have polite conversation, although not with us. If they had been actual dogs, this would have been the phase where they circled each other, maybe a little light snarling here and there. If one of them said he rode a Harley, the other one rode a bigger one—bigger and faster and louder and it was very rare; they don’t even make it anymore, and they only made two of them to begin with, and the other one got sucked up in a tornado a long time ago. Oh yeah? Well, nobody actually said “Oh yeah?” but the air was rife with the implication of it. We would not have been at all surprised to hear their dialogue deteriorate to the four-year-old level of “I can fly if I want to, I just don’t want to.” “Huh! I don’t believe you can fly. Do it.” “No, I don’t want to. But I can if I want to.”
This went on and on until Tammy and I gave up all pretense that it wasn’t happening and started talking about it, right in front of them, across the table.
“Tammy, dear, don’t look now, but I think we are in the epicenter of the biggest dick contest ever in the history of the world.”
“Yes, we are, aren’t we? I bet we could fall over face first in our dinner and they wouldn’t even pause, what do you think?”
“Well, let’s just see.” And then we sort of fell over on the table and lay there with our eyes bugged out and our tongues hanging out the sides of our mouths. No comment from the peni gallery whatsoever.
By and by, we sat back up. The contest continued unabated. Tammy and I wondered aloud whether shortly they would, in fact, whip out and commence table-banging. All of this “competition” somehow had to do with us, although, as I said, neither of them had any interest in either one of us. They just didn’t want the other one to have us, and so battle was unavoidable. It was completely insane—and totally masculine.
Not that the female equivalent is any more sane. If two girls were out for the same guy, though, they would at least be more appealing to the guys involved, because the guys would be getting touched and rubbed on a lot by the dueling girls. This makes guys very happy! They could not care less about the source of their good fortune—they just lap it up. Which brings to mind a related guy trait that my sister, Judy, first observed and we have found to be immutable:
There is no compliment you can pay to a guy that is too outlandish for him to believe.
Make a mental note of that one; it will serve you well—we promise.
Yes, Virginia, There Really Is an Anvil Shoot
But I digress. Before I distracted myself, I was discussing weird stuff that guys are wont to do. How about this one: Ever hear of an anvil shoot? Does anybody out there have any idea what one does at an anvil shoot? Does one shoot
at
the anvil?
From
the anvil? Or is the anvil the ammo? If so, how does one propel it, and toward what target?
The man who introduced us to the fine art of anvil shooting is Gene Mulloy, sole proprietor of the Acme Anvil Company in Laurel, Mississippi, exclusive purveyor of anvils to the World Anvil Shooting Society, if you please. So I asked Gene. When are anvil shoots held? Is it a year-round sport? Indoor or out? What does one wear if one is a participant, and what does the stylish spectator wear? We especially wanted to know if any anvil-shooting clothes with sequins were available and whether hats were involved—we have a fondness for hats.
Based on the name alone, the Sweet Potato Queens decided to make anvil shooting our official sport. We were quite taken with the whole idea, even though we had no information on it. We have always thought that information is highly overrated in the decision-making process. We prefer making as many decisions as possible based solely on whatever we feel like doing at that particular moment in time, and information slows this process, in our opinion.
Naturally, we wanted to have our own personal anvils for it. We had already been thinking of getting some anvils, because you just never know when some annoying person (read: guy) is gonna tear past you in a mad dash, unaware that he is rapidly approaching a two hundred-foot cliff. And if you only had your anvil handy, you could hand it to him, à la Road Runner, and speed his descent.
We needed to get our own anvils ASAP so we could start practicing up for the Big Shoot. But first we wanted to know how the sport works. We were hoping that it involves flinging one’s anvil at one’s target. And, if so, do we all have to use the same target or can we each select our own? And is the target secured or does it get to run around and we have to try to hit it on the fly? If we have to use the same target, it’s gonna be pretty dang hard to get a consensus—in fact, we’ve already had some heated discussion on the best targets. Besides the obligatory annoying guys, another top contender was any fat-armed, cig-puffing, whiskey-voiced woman yelling at her kids in the grocery store. A whole gaggle of politicos were in the running, too, of course.
So, we asked Gene, our anvil guru, are anvils one-size-fits-all? This matters much to us, since some of us are ver-r-r-r-ry tall and some of us are ver-r-r-r-ry short. We wanted our anvils customized. We were eager to schedule fittings right away, and of course, we wanted them delivered. If there was any sort of festival attached to the anvil shoot, we were volunteering to be the Queens of it. Well, actually, we were expecting to be the Queens of it—
demanding
would not be too strong a word. So Gene Mulloy, anvil aficionado, contacted me at once, begging us to come and Queen over his anvil shoot. He said that the last one they had in Laurel drew contestants “from all over.” Many luminaries had participated in the event—including the mayor of Farmington, Missouri. Gene could not quite believe that the Sweet Potato Queens “really exist,” but if they do, “do they come in one-size-fits-all”? I assured him that I and my Queens do, in fact, exist, although we do seem too good to be true. And as far as one-size-fits-all, it has been our experience that one Sweet Potato Queen is too much for any one mortal man. I encouraged him to recruit himself some helpers.
Oh, and he sent me a video of an actual anvil shoot. Even after watching it, I could hardly believe that grown-up people (men, of course) actually thought of this and followed through with it. I mean, if this isn’t a guy thing, nothing is and nothing ever will be. Who else but a bunch of guys would go out in the middle of a field, lugging with them not one, but two, anvils weighing at least one hundred pounds apiece, a couple of pounds of gunpowder, and a fuse, with the sole purpose of watching it blow up? Seriously. They dig a hole and put one anvil down in it, put the gunpowder and fuse on top, put the other anvil on top of that, light the fuse, and run like hell. They are just wild to see how high it will go and how big a crater it will leave in the ground. I suppose they are also mildly interested in dodging the shot anvil as it crashes to the ground. I mean, really, can you picture a bunch of women pulling this kind of stunt? We would find it worth the trouble only if we could attach an annoying guy to the thing, or at the very least, his personal belongings.
It Happens Once a Year
Now here’s a girl thing we find hilarious beyond words, which guys would not get at all. I know this bunch of women who have been attending the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, every August since they were born. One of the things Neshoba County is noted for is red dirt: There is plenty of it and it is plenty red. Children are driven mad by this dirt and are compelled to roll in it, seeking to embed as much of it as possible into all their body parts and into every fiber of their clothing. The fair lasts a week, and so for real fair people—the ones who live out there in the cabins for the duration—laundry rears its ugly head about midweek. Even if you have taken every stitch of clothes your children own, water balloons and red dirt will make short work of anything resembling clean clothes. This means their mothers have to load up all the red dirt–laden clothes and haul them out to the car and drive all the way into town to the laundromat and sit there while the clothes wash and dry. This is not as exciting as it sounds.
And so it was that one group of women fell to making laundry day into their own exclusive “women only” party away from the fair and children. In keeping with the Sweet Potato Queens’ closely held belief in the vital importance of the ability to make one’s own fun no matter what, we heartily commend these resourceful women for this plan.
They skip out of the fair early on laundry day before that big lunch for all those people has to be prepared. They always take with them lots of wonderful salty things, like Fritos (surely the best salty food in the world), multiple pitchers of margaritas, and, of course, the laundry. Then they all pile up in the laundromat and take over. After the first round of margaritas, all the regulars give up and decide to come back later when the coast is clear of loud, potentially dangerous women.
One year after the margaritas got to flowing, it appeared to the group that one of their number had, in the group’s opinion, a little too much gray hair for her own good. When they mentioned this to her, she seemed unmoved, and they felt pretty sure from her reaction that she wasn’t going to do a thing about it. Well, the more they thought about it, the more unacceptable her hair became, until—well, until they just had to take matters into their own little hands. A whole bunch of them ganged up on her and subdued her—tied her up with her own dirty laundry, no less. One of them staggered over—well, maybe she wasn’t staggering yet—to the drugstore, where she purchased a box of Lady Clairol in a lovely shade of brown. This was either a stroke of luck or a random act of kindness because the intended victim’s natural shade, pre-gray, was a lovely shade of brown. And yes, with their good friend tied up these inebriated women dyed her hair in the middle of a Philadelphia, Mississippi, laundromat in broad daylight on a Wednesday afternoon in August.
They had not really thought this project through, though, because they hadn’t allowed for the fact that her hair would need to be rinsed (or as we like to say in the South, “reenched off”), and it was going to need it pretty soon. So they all piled into a car—the victim was no longer tied up, but she did have a bunch of Lady Clairol cooking on her head—and went to a nearby neighborhood and knocked on doors until somebody answered who would let them rinse her head off. That’s what I like about the South. You can go up to the doors of virtual strangers and convince them, in less time than it takes for the dye on your hair to make a sinister turn, to let you in to use their shower. It makes a pretty strong statement about the sense of community, in my opinion. To say nothing of putting the finishing touches on another great day at the laundromat.
