44 Chapters About 4 Men: A Memoir (13 page)

Then, her hand shot out in my direction.

Mommy, no!

Only, instead of smacking me in the mouth (which she’d probably decided against due to the fact that she was paying twenty-one percent interest on all the braces I had up in there) or ripping out the few chunks of hair that I hadn’t already shaved off, she simply reached past the trembling heap of bones and studs in her passenger seat and opened the glove box. I watched through splayed fingers as her hand disappeared under a pile of miscellaneous bullshit for just a moment and emerged holding not a Glock, but a mundane-looking Altoids tin.

Still not trusting her (There could have been anything in that tin—a rusty old razor blade, a few tablespoons of anthrax, half a dozen live scorpions…), I remained tightly balled, ready to yank the door open and tuck and roll to freedom at any minute.

Driving with one eye on me, one knee on the steering wheel, and both hands firmly wrapped around the Altoids tin as if it held the antidote to her daughter’s idiocy, my mother pried open the lid. I held my breath as she reached inside, then let it out in a huff of relief when I saw what she’d stashed in there. My long-suffering mother pulled out one pristinely rolled joint and a tiny pink lighter.

God bless her.

She puffed in silence the rest of the way home, which took for-fucking-ever with her driving ten miles under the speed limit and stopping at every yellow light, yield sign, and shiny object along the way. When we
finally
pulled into the driveway, her nerves appeared to have been restored to Woodstock levels of tranquility, whereas mine had been utterly
annihilated
.

Just as I was about to open my door and sprint to safety, my mom took a deep, self-composing breath, pinned me with a glassy-eyed stare, and slurred, “Pumpkin, you
know
that man’s been to prison. He looks like an ex-con.”

Truer words had never been spoken.

Dear Journal,

Ding-Dong had had three stupid tattoos when we started dating, three imbecilic tattoos that I’d learned to at least pretend to ignore. He had four when we finally broke up. (And by “broke up” I mean, I just stopped answering the phone when he called. Literally. Ding-Dong was so stoned and low-functioning and car-less that I was able to break up with him by attrition. Incredible.) That fourth tattoo was the straw that broke the Camel Light, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Ding-Dong never grew his hair back out after that mortifying night. And just as I was getting used to the baldness, he had to go and get his septum pierced a few weeks later. Suddenly, my Billy Idol look-alike
man
friend looked more like the offspring of a bull cow and Dr. Evil’s hairless cat, Mr. Bigglesworth. That is, if Mr. Bigglesworth also had a burgeoning beer gut and three unfinished tattoos, including one of a penis piloting his brain.

But somehow, the crazier Ding-Dong’s appearance got, the crazier Knight became with jealousy, so I let it ride.

In hindsight, I think Knight was just incensed that I had stooped to dating an underemployed, substance-abusing, dim-witted, cranially tattooed has-been, but whatever. If being with Ding-Dong got Knight’s dander up, then he was a keeper in my book.

Plus, I really liked him—in the way that you liked your fun older cousin. He was cool, he could buy me cigarettes and alcohol, he was overprotective, he called me adorable little pet names, and he never got all smothery or intense. Again, because he was perma-stoned. But I also kept him around because he claimed to love me—a sentiment I never returned—and wanted to get a picture of me tattooed on his body.

Hell yes!

I knew it was wrong—allowing a man to get your likeness permanently carved into his skin, all the while knowing your relationship had about a six-month shelf life. But I didn’t really regard Ding-Dong as a real person with real feelings at the time—or now, to be honest. I might have had more of a conscience about it if he’d said he wanted to get my full name and Social Security number emblazoned across his forehead, but what he was going for was more of a Japanimation cartoon-style version of me, so I figured he could just pass it off as a generic slutty anime pixie if—when—we broke up.

See, Journal? I’m practically Mother Teresa.

For weeks, Ding-Dong had me drawing sketches for him. It was so exciting! He pored over every detail. I’d never seen him so interested in anything, and never,
ever
had he maintained a thought longer than the length of a standard
Girls Gone Wild
commercial. I must have drawn him twenty-five designs. He wanted sad clown BB, sugar skull BB, Bettie Paige BB, bionic angel BB, and even gutter-punk BB brandishing a pair of brass knuckles and a baseball bat. I couldn’t wait to see which one he picked! My fragile little teenage ego was soaring. This man loved me
and
my art enough to put both of them on his body forever.

Holy shit!

Ding-Dong was actually working at the time (I know, right?) at some auto body shop a good half an hour from his house, so more often than not, I would wind up being his ride home because…no car. (How a guy with no car gets a job working on cars is still beyond me.) I would come home from school, anxiously pick at my dinner, lie to my parents about where I was going, and then dash back out the door to go take his sorry ass home.

Then, one day, when I called Ding-Dong to see if he needed me to pick him up from work (Actually, I probably paged him because there was no way that motherfucker had a phone.), he snickered and told me I could come get him from the Terminus City tattoo parlor instead.

Oh my God! He’s doing it! He’s actually doing it!

My heart and my Mustang seemed to defy gravity as I sped over to Terminus City. It was like Christmas morning! I was giddy and impatient and effervescent. This is why I loved spending time with Ding-Dong. He was just so dumb and carefree and fun.

When I shoved open the tattoo parlor door, I used so much force that the little silver bell above it swung all the way up into the drop-tile ceiling, sending a chunk of plaster flying. The guy behind the desk casually arched his pierced eyebrows and gazed over at the ripped red vinyl cushion of one of the cheap aluminum waiting area chairs where the dislodged piece of ceiling now rested.

“You lookin’ for the dude with the pecker on his head?”

I beamed and bounced and nodded.

Captain Cheerful shoved a black-tipped thumb adorned with a heavy silver ring, not unlike the ones dangling from every convex place on his face, in the direction of an open door behind him. “He’s back there.”

The tattoo parlor looked like it was probably once a tanning salon. It consisted of a front lobby that bottlenecked into a long hallway with doors lining both sides. As I galloped down the hallway, I saw that only one door was open, and there was a god-awful buzzing sound coming out of it.

Bingo!

I burst into the tiny room and found a shirtless Ding-Dong lounging in what looked like a semi-reclined dentist’s chair, placid as a Hindu cow, while a hulking man sitting on his left side stabbed him repeatedly with tiny, buzzing, needles.

I remember thinking that Ding-Dong was a colossal badass for not even flinching when, in reality, he had probably just taken a fistful of Vicodin and washed it down with a bottle of Listerine.

He gave me a slow, sleepy-eyed smile and announced, “There’s my pretty Lady,” as he unfolded his arms and waited for my hug.

I tried to dial down the gusto to match the somber, humming, Zen-like atmosphere in that little space. After tiptoe-prancing over to Ding-Dong’s right side to give him a quick, obligatory hug, I wriggled loose and gingerly slinked around to the other side of his chair where a serious (and seriously scary-looking) tattoo artist was stooped between me and what I came to see.

Out of my way, asshole!

Having to stifle my excitement was making me feel like a human tea kettle—quiet and calm on the outside but liable to erupt into steaming screams of hysterics at any minute. I was dying to find out which one of my drawings had made the final cut. Trying hard not to disturb the orc, I finally shimmied my way to a place where I could see over the scowling creature’s shoulder, and there, staring back at me with big sad eyes, practically covering half of Ding-Dong’s upper arm, was…

Eeyore.

Mother. Fucking. Eeyore.

The depressed donkey from
Winnie-the-Pooh
, little pink bow on his ass and all, was gazing up at me from the very spot where my own face should have been—no
,
shouldn’t
have been.
No part of me ever belonged on this man, especially not
for
ever.

Eeyore took a bullet for me that day, Journal. And he looked absolutely miserable about it.

I glared at Ding-Dong, who was totally oblivious to my fury.

He just smiled stupidly and slurred at me, “It’s Eeyore. You know, ’cause people call me Eeyore ’cause I talk all slow like,
Muh tail…fell awf…agaaaain
.”

That was it. I was done.

I don’t know how Ding-Dong got home that night, but I do know that, in my haste to get out of there, I put at least one more hole in that already crumbling ceiling.

Eeyore?
Eeyore??

Goddamn, that man had shitty taste in tattoos!

Dear Journal,

I wrote a haiku today. I think I’ll call it “BB Suffers.”

Today, you told me

You rub Baby’s feet at night.

Not
my
feet, Ken? Why??

So, this afternoon, while I was holding the baby, I noticed that she kept doing this weird thing where she’d contort her leg into an awful-looking position just so that she could stick her foot into the palm of my hand.

When I brought it to Ken’s attention, he nonchalantly explained, “She just wants you to rub her foot. I rub her fee…”

Ken’s mouth snapped shut as a wave of regret and fear washed over his beautiful face. He’d just fucked up. He knew it, and I knew it.

My eyebrows shot up, and I pulled my mouth into a homicidal pucker.
You do what now?

Hesitating for a fraction of a second, Ken decided that he’d better try to smooth over his little admission, lest he be castrated.

“I-I just rub her feet sometimes, at night, when it’s my turn to put her to bed, so now”—clearing his throat—“she always sticks her foot in my hand when I-I’m reading to her.”

Let me tell you something, Journal. This motherfucker makes a point of never touching my feet, like he
prides
himself on having never touched my feet, and they’re really cute feet! It’s not like they’re all hairy and man-sized and riddled with bunions and hammertoes. They’re tiny and pedicured, and all ten digits point in the right direction. One of them even has a cute little freckle and everything! Regardless of the amount of buffing and bedazzling that my feet have undergone, if I so much as graze Ken with my one of them while we’re on the couch, he will get up and move to the other couch.

Why, you ask?

Because, in his words, “Feet are gross.”

Are they? Are they, Ken? Evidently, you don’t think the baby’s feet are gross, and she gets shit on them at least once a week when I’m changing her diaper and I don’t move the poopy one out of the way fast enough. And she’s always putting them in her mouth. She’s not a cat, Ken. Licking herself does not make her cleaner than me. Quite the opposite. In fact, if anyone in this house has gross feet, it’s the fucking baby!

So, it would appear that Ken doesn’t have a “problem with feet” after all. I’d be willing to wager that he doesn’t even have a problem with
my
feet. (I mean, how could he? They’re fucking adorable.)

I think what Ken actually has a problem with is doing something,
anything
, that I want him to do. In the world of psychology, we call that oppositional defiant disorder. In this marriage, however, I just chalk it up to reason #983 why Ken is an asshole.