HUMOR
Tallywacker Karma With Weiner VageenerLOS ANGELES 10 September 2008 |
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As a child, I remember being bored by most of my playmate options. I had fun with my brothers, so there wasn’t much need for outside interaction.
That changed when I met Gina. There was something different about Gina. I liked her immediately. She was quiet. She was timorous. She didn’t have strong opinions. Mostly, though, what I liked about her was that she was malleable. Being friends with Gina was like having a life-sized doll to whom I could shrewdly transfer guilt in sticky situations.
“Who cut a big hole in the hammock?”
“Gina did.”
“Who spilled chocolate milk on the carpet and then covered it up with my silk scarf?”
“Gina did.”
“Who wrote “ MOM SMELLS LIKE POOP” on the living room wall with brown permanent marker?”
“Gina did.”
“Gina, did you write “MOM SMELLS LIKE POOP” on the living room wall?”
“Yes, Mrs. Zion,” Gina would confess.
“Do you mean your mom smells like poop, or were you referring to me?”
Gina would look at me for help. I’d subtly nod over to my mom.
“I meant you, Mrs. Zion. You smell like poop,” Gina would say, utterly subjugated.
Worked every time.
The first time I went to Gina’s house, I was taken aback. It was nothing like mine. Her parents didn’t talk much. There wasn’t much art on the walls, and anything that was hanging was a landscape scene. My house was filled with bizarre paintings, many of the pieces sordid or violent in nature. Even perverted in nature. The landscape paintings on Gina’s walls didn’t have any aggressive connotations. They didn’t even have hidden genitals! They were landscapes, and that was it.
Their kitchen was filled with strange foods I’d never heard of. There were Kraft Singles, packages of Hamburger Helper, Rice-a-Roni, Fruit Roll-Ups, and more. My kitchen had wedges of brie, French cut rack of lamb, long grain brown rice and all natural fruit bars.
In Gina’s house, there was always the faint sound of football in the background, even when it wasn’t football season. Even when, I swear, the television wasn’t on. Like ghost football. Listening to the conversations held in Gina’s home was like witnessing the interactions of an alien life form. The first time I ate dinner at their house, we had hot dogs.
We didn’t eat hot dogs in my house.
“Bob called today,” her dad said.
“What did he have to say?” Her mother responded.
“Oh, this and that,” he answered.
This and that? What does it mean? I wondered.
“How’re Joan and Rick?” Gina’s mother asked.
She wants to know more? Why would she want to know more? I thought.
“Oh, they’re good,” he said.
“Joan and Rick are Gina’s cousins, Lenore. They’re about your age,” Gina’s mother told me while handing me a can of non-diet, full-sugar Coke.
What kind of people name their children Joan and Rick? They sound like middle-aged schlubs. Did they come out of the womb as accountants, with their calculators and fountain pens ready to go? I nodded to Gina’s mother and popped open my Coke. The elusive and sought-after red can…I would have to brag about this indulgence to my brothers when I got home.
“Yup,” Gina’s dad said,
“Yup,” Gina’s mom said.
“Yup,” Gina’s little brother said.
“Yup,” Gina said,
They all looked at me. I gulped my Coke:
“Yup?”
That satisfied them. There was no punching at the table, no name-calling, no cussing. There was no graphic talk of eye surgery, no filthy jokes about diarrhea and anal sex. It was Midwestern wholesome behavior in action, right before my very own eyes.
Gina didn’t have any older siblings. I had three of them, so I’d learned all about the bad words and what a penis was and what a vagina was, and how those two things could be used together. When my siblings and I would joke about wieners and balls, Gina was in the dark. After dinner at her house, it occurred to me that, given her lack of knowledge in those areas, she might not serve as a plausible scapegoat in the most problematic of situations. I took it upon myself to educate Gina.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Fuck,” Gina repeated.
“Ass.”
“Ass.”
“Cunt.”
“Cunt?”
“Very good. It’s a bad way of saying ‘mouth,’” I told her, sensing her confusion.
“Can you use it in a sentence?” Gina asked.
“Your mother will be appalled by the words coming out of your cunt,” I offered.
“Got it,” Gina said, smiling with the pride of hard-earned comprehension.
Within a few weeks, Gina had a brand new vocabulary, and it was all thanks to my leadership. She did find the word “vagina” a bit tricky at first, stumbling and calling it a “puhg-eye-nuh,” but eventually she got the hang of it. When she had mastered the entire list, my brothers and I held a graduation ceremony for her in which we awarded her with a black belt (literally) and sanctioned for her the new moniker “Weiner Vageener” for use in the absence of leering adults. It was a proud day for us all.
I had another neighbor; the elderly, sweet, brownie-baking, tulip-planting, cheek-squeezing Mrs. Scribner. She used to invite us into her home and feed us fresh-from-the-oven oatmeal raisin cookies, much in the same way a naively compassionate woman would invite a certifiably insane rapist into her home in the middle of the night because it was raining outside. We’d sit at her kitchen table, downing one cookie after another, acting like angels, just waiting for her to need to use the bathroom. That never took long, of course, because old people have tiny bladders. Something about aging shrivels that whole system down so a tri-hourly trip to the bathroom is necessary for basic comfort. As soon as we heard the bathroom door close, we’d go run through her house. We’d take her little glass figurines of deer, her silverware, her doilies, the quilts, and we’d rearrange them. Just put ‘em somewhere else altogether. Just to confuse the poor old lady.
One day, Mrs. Scribner was outside with her little gardening gloves on. They had a daisy pattern, if I remember correctly, and they snapped at the wrist. She was digging in the garden, planting bulbs. She seemed to be completely at peace.
Tim, Gina, and I watched her from the swing set.
“We should mess with her,” Tim said.
“You’re right. We should,” I agreed.
“What should we do?” Tim asked.
“I don’t know, let me think,” I said.
“We could show her our paginas!” Gina suggested.
“For the last time, Gina, VAGINA, not PAGINA. But that’s not a bad idea,” I said.
“I don’t have a vagina,” Tim said.
“You could show her your tallywacker,” Gina said.
“It’s true, you could,” I said swelling with pride at Gina’s newly acquired vocabulary.
We got as close as we could to Mrs. Scribner, the three of us, standing in a row. She didn’t realize we were there, just hovering nearby diabolically. Then we looked at one another and nodded.
“HEY MRS. SCRIBNER!” We shouted, all at once.
Then we dropped our pants, and wiggled our little genitals at her. Tallywackers and paginas all over the place, sun shining on our privates like direct streams of light from God.
Mrs. Scribner dropped her gardening spade and covered her mouth. We laughed and laughed and laughed.
“That’s right! Cover your cunt, Mrs. Scribner!” I yelled.
“Cover your cunt! Cover your cunt!” Gina repeated, over and over again. In fact, she was still repeating it when her mother drove by and saw the three of us with our pants down and our genitals directed at a horrified Mrs. Scribner.
Gina was in big trouble. And Tim and I told our parents, truthfully this time, that it was Gina’s idea. Poor Weiner Vageener, she never saw it coming.
Though I did get her into big trouble a lot when we were in grade school, Gina still wanted to be friends with me in junior high. Shockingly, her parents allowed our continued contact. One summer day when we were eleven, she and I were walking to the pool in our bikinis, which were far from being filled out as we were both late developers. A big, obese, forty-something man in a tiny little car drove by us slowly.
“That was weird,” Gina said.
He sped forward, pulled into a driveway, and turned his car around so it was facing us. Then he drove back to us, even more slowly, while doing something that we couldn’t quite make out. As he got closer and closer, he sharply reclined his seat and lifted his enormous gut up to the window, eventually revealing his flaccid penis, which was flopped over his left leg.
“UUUGGHHHNNNNGGGHHH!” He moaned at us, making eye contact.
He waited for our reactions, and when he got what he was searching for, which must have been the look of pure anguish on our faces, he whipped his penis back between his legs and lowered his body back into his seat. Then he sped off.
Karma’s a bitch.
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