God Save the Sweet Potato Queens (5 page)

6

Wishing Is Not a Felony

 
T
here has been much discussion—indeed, nationwide—since the publication of
SPQBOL,
on the subject of Men Who May Need Killing. First you’ve got your group that’s just all for it, literally, and for the slightest offense—a really bloodthirsty lot, this. Of course, we never meant it literally—even if a man’s behavior has been universally declared hideous beyond belief, even by his own mama. We will concede that, yes, indeed, he
may
need killing and that, in fact, we might not even be real sorry if somebody did kill him, but we are 100 percent against actually setting out to do it our ownselves or even halfway suggesting that somebody else do it. The most important reason is the simple wrongness of it, of course. In addition, we would be in a whole big lot of trouble, and that would bring along a multitude of errands, which we are totally against at all times. To make the record clear, when we say a man needs killing, what we really mean is that he should be left
alive,
but alone. Southerners have a way of exaggerating. We do think it’s pretty funny to ridicule shameless men, but that right there brings out the politically correct whiners who insist on taking every little ole word with a big dose of literal; and, jeez, by the time you get through explaining to them that it’s just a joke (and after you explained it to them, they didn’t get it anyway), it’s not funny anymore. We do try to avoid any direct personal contact with this type of individual whenever possible.

I once went to school with a guy named Michael R. Warmington, and he would always introduce himself by the whole name, which I loved. He was one of the funniest people I have ever known. He used to crack me up whenever a friend of his announced he was generally pissed off at another individual: Michael R. Warmington, by way of establishing that he was completely and totally on your side, would say, with a completely straight face and a slight gasp beforehand, for emphasis, “I hate him. I hope he dies.” The first time I heard him say it, I cringed in horror: You just do not say such words in a Southern Bible Belt home. After the initial shock of actually hearing the words spoken, I was utterly delighted with them and from then on have used them my ownself in exactly the same way—with, I might add, exactly the same results. Nearly everyone who hears this assessment for the first time is stunned, perhaps a tad put off, but then perfectly delighted to be supported in their rightness to such a degree.

(Another thing Michael R. Warmington used to do was to quote poetry that he claimed was his own. One of his poems was a particular favorite of mine. He would draw himself up very tall and proper and looking straight ahead, like a third grader in a spelling bee, and say, “‘Feet’ by Michael R. Warmington,” and proceed to recite, “You need feet to stand up straight on, you need feet to kick your friends, you need feet to hang your socks on, and keep your legs from fraying at the ends.” It is one of my all-time favorite pieces of poetry, and whenever my daughter, BoPeep, has to memorize a poem for school, she always [foolishly] asks my opinion on what her selection should be; it is always the same: “Feet” by Michael R. Warmington. For some reason, she won’t ever do it. I think any teacher worth
anything
would have been as impressed with it as I. Yet she refuses. Sigh. Soon after I wrote this passage, I tracked down Michael R. Warmington; he lives not far from Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. Poetry paid off for you, aye, Mike? He was forced to confess that he didn’t actually write that poem; it came from an old episode of
The Dick Van Dyke Show
. He thought it just sounded better when followed by his own name. I had to agree.)

But I digress. My sister, Judy, and I passed a lively afternoon once at Guido’s, our very favorite restaurant and bar in Cozumel, Mexico, by listing aloud the names of all the people who needed killing. It started out on an intensely personal level, with those individuals who had wronged us grievously. As the drinks came and went, the list grew and grew to include quite a number of our fellow patrons at the bar, and then took on a universal scope to embrace low-level state employees, the occasional rude checkout woman at the grocery store, a few TV evangelists (some of the women of this ilk piss me off more than the men; you know the ones—they talk about Jesus like He was their high-school boyfriend), and assorted movie stars. One of us would throw out a name and the other would chime in with her own agreement. Then we would just laugh and laugh, as only two sisters, full of margaritas, can laugh.

Years later I found myself recounting this scenario to my boyfriend, Richard Pharr, who was entirely on board with the fun until I mentioned the name of Dale Evans. Richard is a big ole cowboy, and he was frankly stupefied at Miss Dale’s inclusion in such a list. “Dale?” he queried, not a little desperately. “You want to kill Dale Evans? Whatever for? Dale?” I hastened to explain that while Dale had never done a thing to me, personally, she had somehow managed to cross the line with Judy, and I just felt it was my sisterly duty to go along with it. He was off in his own world, haunted with questions like how could he be going out with a woman who wanted to kill Dale Evans? and so he really wasn’t hearing me or my explanations to the contrary—or that Judy didn’t really mean it, for crying out loud: It was just a joke, Richard. In his mind all joking stopped at the mention of Dale Evans’s name, she being holy and all that, to cowboys and the like. Again, as if in a trance, he repeated, “You would want to kill Dale Evans?”

My bucket of patience having run completely dry, I said, “Yeah, Richard, that’s what I’m really looking for in a man: I want a man who will bring me the head of Dale Evans.” Yessir, buddy, I’ll believe you love me only then. And so it came to be that we have a new standard by which to judge the seriousness of a relationship. Replacing the old—Has he taken you to meet his mama yet?—is the updated scale of devotion: Will he bring you the head of Dale Evans? Isn’t that what we’re all really looking for? A man so utterly devoted to our happiness that,
figuratively speaking only,
he would fetch us this grisly prize, if for some totally warped reason we actually wanted it? (Okay, for the record: It’s a
joke
. If you don’t get it, don’t laugh, but we don’t want any heads sent down here. We will not love you back.)

We’re still faced with this dilemma of how to emphasize to any and everyone precisely to what enormous extent some person—usually male—has transgressed against us. We hit on the idea of maiming. Instead of saying the loathsome, repulsive, insufferable dope needs killing, we could maybe just say he is a Man Who Should Be Maimed. Perhaps that would sound more palatable to the fainthearted. We’ve done some test-marketing on the idea, and it has been met with great approval. A vast majority of you out there are willing to embrace the maiming theory. (For you literal ones, this is a joke, too.) Still, a few holdouts couldn’t even bear to hear about maiming. We suggested that they get from here and leave us be with our laughter, but then we took it (somewhat) to heart—we like a challenge anyway—and determined to explore further ways of expressing our extreme displeasure that would not offend any person on earth, with the notable exception of our intended pseudo-victim.

We consulted on this matter with one of our Bobs. This particular Bob is actually quite well-known—many of the more literate of you out there would instantly recognize his name, and he is also real smart and speaks a whole bunch of languages. We implored him to talk to us of maiming. He responded quickly, as he always does to our slightest request, and this is why he will never appear on any of our lists, except for the Promise. “Ah, yes,
maim,
” Bob said, thoughtfully. “Wonderful word, that. In Spanish, of course, it is
mutilado,
but since that was used most extensively during the Inquisition, it has a sort of Old World feel to it—pincers, hot tongs, racks, et al. So you might want to use the more colloquial
mortuato en vive,
causing a deathlike feeling among the living, which was perfected by General Pinochet and now has a broader household use.” Were we delighted, or what? Meeting with such success with that offering prompted Bob to come back with even more (thereby moving himself even higher on the Promise list concurrently). “Among other alternatives are
cucarachas en casa privata,
putting cockroaches in your personal home, which generally means getting under the skin in a man’s very tender areas. Or perhaps even better,
blasta firmata, uno billiard, dos pelata,
one strike, hitting both the pool cue and two balls, which, for modesty’s sake, I cannot explain.” We figured it out our ownselves! Some might think Bob would be afraid to risk the ire of his fellow man-types by sharing such information with us, the woman-types, but when the dust settles, the truth is, Bob would a whole lot rather have us happy than a bunch of guys. Told you he was real smart.

I had the most moving letter from a woman named Peggy, who wrote, “I am a forty-eight-year-old white woman who recently ran away from home for a weekend in an attempt to reach a meeting of the minds—via my unexpected absence and numerous credit card transactions on my husband’s American Express.” Right here Peggy has demonstrated a wonderful alternative to killing and even maiming: That would be the oft-overlooked method of “grudge shopping,” also known as revenge spending and fuck-you-buddy charging. A blow to the wallet can be every bit as effective an attention-grabber as a whop upside the head with a good-sized stick—plus, you get some new stuff out of the deal.

But, you ask, what’s to be done when
they
have been spending
our
money—is there any way for us to avoid wanting to kill them? We shouldn’t have to address this, because it should never, ever happen; however, sadly, it does and with alarming frequency. Let us learn from this true-life story submitted by one of the Divas, and don’t be frightened; it has a happy ending. The Diva had devoted five years of her life to grooming a guy, teaching him how to be the greatest lover ever, persisting until he even found the G-spot, for crying out loud. Her ministrations to him continued and included regular visits to him in federal prison, where he spent a year for his botched attempt at bank fraud, losing fifty-thousand-some-odd dollars of hers in the process. There’s more: She furnished his house, bought his clothes, and took him on fabulous vacations—even paid for his kids’ birthday parties.

I am reading her letter and trying to figure out what exactly she was getting out of this deal when I get down to the part where he started to “need space.” Now, in my experience, it is pretty hard to crowd somebody when you live a few hundred miles apart, which was the case with our Diva and her scumbag. Of course, “needing space” was just a euphemism for “wanting to have sex with someone else,” as is so often the case. Getting people to agree to give you your space is a good deal easier than firing them with enthusiasm for your branching out sexually. The Diva was plunged into the deepest depths of the despair pool by his defection. Here she’d spent all this time and tons of real money on this guy, wishing and hoping and somehow believing that one fine day soon, he would turn into a decent human being; everything would be perfect, and they would go away together and live in a meadow. We’ve seen this a million times, done it ourselves at least half a million. This is known as believing in Permanent Potential: This person would be perfect if only . . . and could be in the blink of an eye with scarcely any effort on his part. But it will never happen, even if you wait forever and he lives to be a hundred and four.

What happened in real life was that he married the other woman with whom he’d been “having space,” and after a while, the Diva got to feeling better and emerged with her self-esteem unscathed and, even more important, well aware of how good-looking she is. And so it came to pass that she was out of town, minding her own business, when she rounded a corner and ran slap-dab, full-frontal, into a seedy-looking, middle-aged guy with a stringy ponytail and a holey T-shirt. Of course, it was
him
. She, on the other hand, was looking her very best, which was extremely good. It was plain to see he wouldn’t have to fight for his space with anybody in the foreseeable future—everyone would certainly give him a wide berth. This was even better than having had him maimed and/or killed: She had just left him alone and he went off and got icky! Don’t you just love a happy ending?