Suburgatory (4 page)

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Bar Mitzvahs by Shiksas!
You can take the girl away from the goys, but you can't take the goy out of the girl. Embrace it, shiksas! And of course, mazel tov to your wonderful bar mitzvah boy and his loving, attentive, totally faithful, moral, and stone-cold sober Jewish dad.

Town's Sole Goth Couple
Wins Over Hearts, Minds

Suburgatory, USA—The only teenage goth couple in town, once considered an oddity or even a menace, has won over local citizens with the intensity of their devotion to each other and their lifestyle.

“Boy, that's a lot of velvet. They're like one tangled up unit—oh my God! Look, you can't see their feet! It's like they're floating. Floating weirdo Siamese twins,” said postwoman Julie Serra. She had just delivered mail to resident Frieda Graber. “I didn't even know there still
were
goths. I remember way back, that guy with the black hair from that gloomy rock band but then when I saw he got fat, I thought, Well,
that's over.
You can't love food and hate life, right? Hypocrite. But these kids, I think they're for real.”

The couple, who go by the names “Thanatos” and “Sylvrefyre,” first came to be known at Wagner High School by their refusal to separate during the school day.

“These two were a couple of losers before they found each other. They were sad plus scary, to be totally honest. Like, maybe not Columbine scary, but . . . you know, like small- to medium-size time bombs. And now look at 'em.”

Principal Gary Briscoe gestured to the couple, who were sitting silently on the basketball court, tracing invisible tear lines down each other's faces. “Seriously, have you ever seen love like that? So yeah, I made some accommodations for them. I let them stay together and let 'em out of gym. Violates their ‘beliefs' or whatever. And look what they gave me!”

He fumbled under paperwork and produced an ornate pendant. “They told me it's . . . where's that Amazon slip . . . here it is . . . It's a . . . ‘Vladeptus Black Rose Gothic Pendant,' a ‘stealthy bat who guards the rose noir, whose perfume reeks of death.' $14.95, on sale. Not bad. Now, I thought that was really thoughtful of them.”

“I bet the sex is out-of-this-world great, too,” the principal said quietly, apparently not realizing he was on the record. “Wait, do goths have sex?”

Parents who thought it was a phase that would end with the school year changed their minds during the summer heat. “I saw them walking all the way to Dunkin' Donuts . . . in August. All cloaked up and crazy and all. I mean, a goth in August? That's commitment,” said Seena Murray. “It's a little sad because I remember Ashley—sorry I mean
Sylvrefyre
—when she was little and she was so pretty. I can still see that face, though, no matter how much of that insane makeup she puts on.”

The couple tries to speak as little as possible, but did issue a written statement: “We are thankful that the doomed, beautiful, and terrible people of this town have embraced us, and in return, we will honor their life essence long after their corpses begin their spectacular, eternal rot.”

The one citizen
not
won over by Thanatos and Sylvrefyre is thirty-five-year-old Gina Hartnett, a former goth herself, who serves the couple at Dunkin' Donuts. “Oh, please. I hated life before those brats were even born,” said Hartnett. “They'll be at one of those fancy weirdo colleges like [nearby] Hampshire College before you know it.” Hartnett traded her goth getup for a Dunkin' Donuts uniform several years ago, after running out of tuition money for Green Valley Community College when her father was incarcerated for meth production. “You want to really understand the excruciatingly awful pain of being alive? Spend eight hours making Coolattas. And go home with donut smell that won't wash off. Try that for a few weeks, posers.”

“Funny Racist Lady” Enchants Prominent Black Townsman

Suburgatory, USA—A woman couldn't contain her racist statements when encountering a black dad in town today, but rather than finding her offensive, the dad found her to be delightfully funny.

Kellie Alda is a kindhearted and irrepressible mother of two who is so disturbed by racism that when she actually interacts with a person of another race—which is rare in this community—she can't stop herself from injecting her darkest racial preoccupations into the conversation.

She first saw Deshaun Watson and his daughter Amahlia while standing next to them at the annual marathon.

“Oh hi! Good morning!” she said, holding the hands of her twins, Peter and Emma.

“So . . . What's a black guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked, laughing nervously.

Watson stared at her quizzically. “Just showing my daughter the marathon.”

Five-year-old Peter looked up at Watson very gravely and said, “Are you a jigaboo?”

Alda's hand went to her mouth. “Oh my God! Peter! How mortifying, I'm so so sorry. I've been trying to teach Peter and Emma about the history and legacy of racism, which is a hugely important issue to me, so I was telling him all the nasty names for brown people that they should never use: sambos, coons, coloreds, negroes, blackies, jigaboos, jungle bunny, macaca, and you know, the big one, the N-one.”

“Yeah, Peter, you might want to forget those other words and just stick with ‘black,'” said Watson.

After a few moments, Alda leaned over and said, “I hope seeing this doesn't bother you.”

“Seeing a marathon?” asked Watson.

Alda said, “Well, maybe I'm just really sensitive to race, but it's like a white power rally to me. There's a few black people being chased by an army of white people. I mean, I know it's a marathon and all but doesn't it look a little weird to you? Like they're out to run down and lynch those poor Kenyans? Not that these Kenyans are poor. I'm sure they are rich in Kenya—I've seen them running on National Geographic—I mean—oh my God—I mean, on ESPN. They don't wear shoes, but it's by choice—better for running I guess! It's not that they can't afford it, hahahaha.”

Alda never asked Watson what he did for a living, because, “I would just never want to ask a black gentleman what he does for a living. I mean, you don't want to make them uncomfortable if they aren't working, or doing something, you know, well you know,
something else.
This guy did seem kind of like a Mr. Mom. Which is great because, you know, black guys aren't always so great on the dad thing let's be honest. . . . What a fine man.”

Later on, she saw Watson again at the park with Amahlia. Their familiar greeting attracted the interest of other park-goers. “Those moms are whispering and trying to hide their pointing! How disgusting, how utterly disgusting,” said Alda, convinced the other park-goers were racists. “A white mom and a black dad can't talk to each other without thinking about, you know, interracial porn? No, even worse, I bet they are thinking about Civil War slave porn, which is the sickest thing I've ever seen. It was so dirty and wrong and I just can't ever get it out of my head . . . and that slave's upper body, wow, just wow. . .”

Watson beamed at her in sheer amazement. “Wanna come back to my house? We're going to get takeout,” he said.

“Gee, well, hmmmm,” Alda thought. “Of course!” She whispered to this reporter, “How could I say ‘No'? He'd think I was scared of him, but I wasn't, of course!”

As she put the address in her car's GPS, the system began guiding her away from the park and her own relatively modest neighborhood, and slowly but surely the houses got bigger and bigger until they pulled up at a gated house–complex of no less than twenty-thousand square feet, in the exclusive Westgate community.

“Oh wait,” Alda said. “Is this guy a manny [male nanny]? But the kid is black, too. Could she be an adopted child of a white family? How many white families choose black babies . . . not that many . . . isn't that awful? What horrible people there are in this world. Wait, could his bosses be . . . gay men? Hmmm.”

But as Alda walked in, she slowly passed through a hallway lined with dozens of pictures of Watson in his NFL uniform, a picture here with Bill Clinton, there with Bono and Nelson Mandela. “Ohhhh. So that's why the people in the park were looking at us? Not because you're black but because you're famous?” Alda said.

“Well, probably a little of both,” said Watson.

By this reporter's count, Alda had said a dozen moderate to appallingly racist things. Did it bother Watson?

“No! She cracks me up. Though not sure about my wife. Kellie's the first person in town who's even said the word ‘black' to me. She just says what the rest of them are thinking and you can tell she's a sweetheart. Nicest racist white lady I've met in a long long time. Who clearly doesn't know shit about football, but that's gonna change. She's getting season tickets.”

Mom Gives Up Pubic Hair for Lent

Suburgatory, USA—An area mom is giving up pubic hair for Lent and can't understand why others don't see this as perhaps the most appropriate choice to honor the suffering and death of the Lord Savior Jesus Christ.

“I mean, I've never done it, but my husband just mentioned it to me offhand. I know it will involve the flaying of my most sensitive flesh and then very itchy stubble and ingrown hairs. Now if that suffering doesn't bring me closer to knowing what Christ went through on the cross, well, I don't know what will,” said Polly Tanner.

When Tanner told her “small group” of Women of the Word at church of her decision, most seemed stunned and suggested other possibilities such as giving up Starbucks or gossip. “Ha! Not giving up that last one!” Tanner winked. “I really pushed back on them and said [husband] James fully supported my decision. In fact, James even said this to me, ‘I would love you even more than I do now, if I saw how much strength you had in giving up pubic hair to honor Christ.'”

Regina Clark, known as the most cynical of the church group, said, “Riiiight. Your husband wasn't actually
pushing
you toward this idea?”

Tanner said, “Of course not! I've heard ladies take it all off and I've thought about doing it and giving up my pubic hair in the past few years. But this year, I really felt God nudge me on my shoulder.”

Clark said, “You know I love you, Poll, but you're gonna get a ‘nudge' the likes of which you will
not
believe, and it's
not
on your shoulder.”

Tanner replied, “Yeah and isn't that horrific pain what Lent's all about?”

As she made her way to the appointment, Tanner talked about how she has always liked to take good care of herself to honor her Creator, whether it was through maintaining her hair, nails, or teeth. She thought the time had come to add her pudendum to the list.

“It's disgusting down there, to be totally honest. Like a hairy smelly swamp monster,” Tanner said.

Doesn't God accept her this way?