He’s A Nobody Day!

When your husband leaves the room to get more wet wipes, lean into your baby’s crib and whisper, “Don’t worry about him. He’s a nobody.”

Your husband will come in and say that he heard you. Explain that you just didn’t want your baby to think he was some kind of big shot just because he’s the tallest guy in the room.

“I’m not a nobody,” he’ll say.

Ask him if he’s famous. Ask him if he’s been given any awards recently. Ask him about the last time his name was a trending topic on a social media site. You’ll be out of breath by now, but if you can, ask him what would happen if he walked into a fancy a restaurant tonight and didn’t have a reservation.

“I read about this in the books. You’re claiming her. In the first few months parents can feel like they’re competing for the baby’s love.”

“I’m just telling my baby the truth.”

“I don’t want my child–”

“To know her father? These are all facts. If you want to hide your true self from your baby then why don’t you just leave us alone? I won’t have my baby raised by a duplicitous man.”

Your husband will walk out of the room, his head hanging low. When he does, lean into your baby’s crib and whisper, “See? Total zero.” Then pull out the past five year’s tax forms and read your husband’s total net gross income to your baby until the little angel falls asleep.

Happy He’s A Nobody Day!

Blame The Gangs Day!

If you’re having an affair and you get home from the affair-having too late to not arouse suspicion from your husband, tell him the street gangs held you up.

“They grabbed my purse and played keepaway,” tell him. “I had to jump up and down for a half hour trying to get it back while they laughed.”

“Damn gangs,” your husband will say.

“Then they made me pick which public building they were going to graffiti. I told them I didn’t want to, but they made me choose. So now, whenever I drive past the post office and see the graffiti on it, I have to know I had a hand in that.”

“I wish I could clean this world up for you,” your husband will say. “I want you to be able to live in a better world.”

“I can still smell their leather jackets,” say. “I’m going to take a shower.”

When you go into the bathroom you’ll find your husband’s secretary naked and hiding in the shower and your husband will run in and shout “Where’d she come from? A street gang must have put her there!"  You and your husband will laugh together and then amicably divorce.

Happy Blame The Gangs Day!

Your High School Boyfriend Is Dead Day!

The principal keeps calling your house, just to check up on you and let your mom know that you can take all the time you need.

Your teachers keep stopping by to drop off your homework, as well as some novels that aren’t a part of the curriculum but that they think might help you get through this.

Your little brother comes home every day with his backpack filled with notes from your friends, little crafts that other boys, breathing boys, have made for you in wood shop.

Ever since your high school boyfriend died, you’ve been able to stay up in your room listening to music and watching cable. Your blinds are drawn and no one makes you eat anything. The whole school, the whole town, is aware that this is your time to grieve.

“We all knew Ricky. He touched all of our lives. But no one understood him better than the girl who held his hand on the way to English class.” So began the local newspaper’s editorial on the morning after Ricky gasped his last and finally succumbed to the injuries sustained in the car crash. So began the shift of concern for Ricky to sympathy for you.

You’ve stayed in your room, for 22 hours out of ever day, sneaking out every night at one am to meet Henry in the woods behind the school. You don’t kiss, you don’t drink, you don’t do anything but sit next to each other in those dark woods and stare at the tree branches lit up by the moon. Henry was Ricky’s best friend. He’s the only one who knows what a relief it is that Ricky is finally gone.

“He shone too bright,” Henry said to you on the first night you met him in the woods. “I was grateful that he chose me as his friend. I hated him for how grateful I was.”

“I knew I could never be anybody but Ricky’s girlfriend,” you told Henry.

“And I was Ricky’s best friend. My entire high school existence was nothing more than an orbit around Ricky.”

You get sick of Henry’s complaining. At least no one cares about Ricky’s best friend. At least he’s not expected to spend the rest of his senior year in mourning. He doesn’t have to play the part of widow at 17. You’ll tell him that tonight.

“Let’s go then,” he’ll say. “Let’s run away.”

“What’ll we do?”

Henry will shrug. “We’ll get jobs. We’ll go and work somewhere where they never heard of Ricky.”

Henry will rise and give you a hand to pull you up. You’ll go to your house first to get a bag of clothes and food, then to Henry’s. Then you’ll disappear forever, and everyone from your high school will hate you forever. You were supposed to be there for them. All year, until graduation day, you were supposed to let them know that Ricky will live on in the girl who would never feel better again.

Happy Your High School Boyfriend Is Dead Day!

Onboarding Day!

Take him there on the confidentiality agreements. Use that pile of unread yet signed and dated promises to keep things hush hush as a cushion while you engage in three of the seven behaviors detailed in the employee conduct manual section 3C-12: “Inappropriate Relationships and Mediation Processes Preceding Disciplinary Action.”

He’ll have some questions when you’re both buttoning.

“What now?”

Now you’ll direct him to fingerprinting and set up a time for him to get his ID photo taken.

“No, you and me now.”

Tell him if he intends to blackmail you, his name will go out to every HR admin in the city. Tell him your kind sticks together. Tell him the HR network would never let one of their own take a fall for tappng a piece of ass during an onboarding.

“I wouldn’t,” he’ll say. “I just want to know, do you do this a lot? Or was I…”

This was your first. Something in his eyes flicked a switch inside you that made you want to be reckless, do something to burn your career to the ground, maybe send you home with a cardboard box and a confession to your husband. Would that switch have been flicked had you not been staring into those new hire eyes? No telling. More importantly, will the switch be flicked again when you bump into him in the copy room? No telling.

“I do it all the time,” tell him. “You’re just a file I have to alphabetize.”

The buttoning (the buttoning takes forever!) will be just about over. You’ll keep your eyes on your daughter’s photo, knowing he’s keeping his eyes on you. Staring at your daughter’s face, you feel only chaos.

“See you around the office,” he’ll say, pulling his suit jacket on.

“Welcome to the company,” tell him. Once he’s gone, find a band aid to cover the wound you just dug into your palm with your fingernail.

Happy Onboarding Day!

Get Away From The Window Sarah Day!

Get away from the window Sarah. You’re not in love you’re just unemployed and that boy down there on the sidewalk in the rain he’s never going to go back home if you keep giving him a face to moon up at.

Get away from the window Sarah. Girls are human like everybody else. Girls get those dark times, the ones that last two years and eight months, when they’re pretty sure that nothing better’s ever going to happen again. Boys like the one on the sidewalk, they prey on those moments. It’s all they have. They pout like puppies and try to convince you that love is supposed to happen between a pretty girl up in a window and whichever boy is willing to embarrass himself the most for her.

Get away from the window Sarah. You only have sixteen months left of this terrible week. Sink into alcohol or a cult or a job at a non-profit. Just don’t sink into a boy. Not until you find the boy who belongs up in the window, with you on the sidewalk, wondering what in God’s name you’re going to have to do, how cold that rain is going to get, before he finally decides he can’t do better and so condescends to buzz you in.

Just get away from the window Sarah. I promise there’s a boy out there who’s better, better than you.

Happy Get Away From The Window Sarah Day!

Fire Your Dance Boy Day!

The economy’s in the shitter so you can’t afford all your extra perks anymore. First and foremost is your Dance Boy. Give him the pink slip!

“Check out this new move,” your Dance Boy will say when you enter the 10,000 square foot studio you built exclusively for him. He’ll get up on his toes and spin once. It will be a really pedestrian move and he’ll kind of stumble at the end of it.

“That was great,” tell him. “But I have some bad news.”

“Wait,” he’ll say. “Check this out.”

Your Dance Boy will bob his head like he’s leaning up against a wall, absently grooving to a tune. It can barely even be called dancing.

“I need you to listen to me, Garret,” tell your Dance Boy. “I can’t afford you anymore.”

Your Dance Boy will grab a tee shirt and pull it on. Then he’ll find his underwear and pants, turning his back to you while he dresses.

“They’ll kill me out there you know,” he’ll say.

“You’ve never said who’s after you,” tell him. “After all these years, why won’t you tell me.”

Your Dance Boy will wave away your concern. “If you knew who they were they’d have to come for you too.”

He’ll ties his sneakers and start packing a back.

“You know I’d keep you forever if I could,” tell him. “But I just can’t afford to be so extravagant as to have a boy in the house who just lays around naked, occasionally getting up off the floor to groove a bit. Really, I thought you’d have learned some more steps by now.”

“I’ve been too worried!” he’ll say. “They could have come bursting through that door at any second.”

“Who?” ask him. “Ever since I found you running down that alley, you refused to tell me who was chasing you. If you’d just let me in, I could help keep you safe.”

Your Dance Boy will say, “Your obligation to me has ended. It was an honor to be your Dance Boy.”

You’ll grab him and stuff some hundred dollar bills into his pocket.

“Do you think that maybe you’re just making up these people chasing you?” ask him. “Do you think you’re just afraid of going out there and making a life on your own?”

Your Dance Boy will nod weakly. “Yeah, that’s probably it,” he’ll say. “I’ll be fine. Sorry you can’t afford me anymore.”

Your Dance Boy will hug you goodbye, then he’ll step out the door of his dance studio and immediately be shot in the top of the skull by a waiting sniper.

When you kneel beside him and scream no at the sky, focus your anger on the investment banks. They put you in the position of having to send your Dance Boy out to meet his assassin. The investment banks killed your Dance Boy. It’s not worth seeking vengeance or anything because how many people would you have to kill, really? But you could at least write an op-ed about it or something.

Happy Fire Your Dance Boy Day!

You Just Got Caught Fuckin’ Day!

Tonight is your anniversary and you and your husband are going to go to a hotel and have sex for the first time in five months. You’ve been terrified of having to have sex tonight. After so long, you worried that if the passion wasn’t there, it would confirm what you’ve been suspecting for over decade: that you married the wrong man.

You’ll be nervous while eating the room service dinner, both of you making chit-chat about work and the kids and the design of the hotel lobby. Each bite will feel like a turn of the arms on a countdown clock. As soon as you finish your dinner, you’ll have to rise from the table, kiss, then move to the bed. How on earth could that possibly happen?

“I had an affair in 2002,” your husband will say suddenly. “I’m sorry.”

It will feel like the room flipped through the air and sent you flying to the roof. You’ll be unsure of whether to scream, to throw a drink in his face, or what. Finally, you’ll settle on saying the following: “I had an affair in 2005.”

Your husband will ask, “Do you think about him a lot?”

Say, “No. I think about you a lot.”

You and your husband will rise from the table and move to the bed while kissing, you’ll move like water down a stream bed, fluid and perfect. In that bed, you’ll transform, you’ll know that a new wonderful stage of your marriage has begun. You won’t feel the passion you felt when you first met. You won’t feel the love you felt when you first married. You’ll feel something altogether new, and mature, and honest. You’ll feel like you and your husband possess a secret that could topple the world.

While he’s in inside of you, a panel will open in the ceiling and a TV monitor will drop from the ceiling. On the TV will be TV personality Larry Crowne. He’ll be standing in front of a studio audience and he’ll announce, “You two just got caught fuckin’!”

The door to your room will open and several dwarves will run into the room to present you with a check for $25,000. On the monitor, Larry will play back some of the footage of your sex act and the studio audience will laugh when they’re supposed to, and go awww when they’re supposed to. “Looks like you two really jumpstarted the old marriage engine tonight,"Larry will say. "Whatcha gonna do with all that money?”

You and your husband will say it at the same time. “We’ve always wanted to go to Paris!”

Happy You Just Got Caught Fuckin’ Day!

Let’s Pretend Mom And Dad Never Met Day!

Today you and your brother are going to pretend that your parents never met.

“That way we would never have been brothers and we would never have fallen for the same girl,” you’ll say.

“I fell for her first,” your brother will say. “12 years ago. I married her 8 years ago.”

“And then I fell for her three months ago,” you’ll say. “Yes, I know the dates. But if our parents never met, you and I would probably have never met either. We wouldn’t even have been in the same social circles. So we never would have come in contact with, and fallen for, the same girl. Right?”

Your brother will point out that if your parents had never met, neither of you would even exist.

“And we never would have fallen for the same girl!” you’ll say. “Then we definitely wouldn’t have! Right?”

Your brother will ask, “Do you love her?”

Don’t answer. Say, “I’d happily not ever have existed if it means that you and I wouldn’t be fighting over some girl. I’d prefer to be wiped from the universe’s memory than fight with you over what’s in our hearts.”

Your brother will ask, “Does she love you?”

Say, “Let’s just pretend. For the day. Let’s just pretend Mom and Dad never met.”

“Did she say she’s going to leave me for you?” your brother will ask.

Say yes.

Happy Let’s Pretend Mom And Dad Never Met Day!

Digging Under The Girls Locker Room Day!

You and Felix are digging into the ground underneath the girls locker room so that you can drill a hole into the floor and look up at the girls as they undress.

“Why couldn’t we have dug under the girls locker room at school?” Felix will ask when he hits another layer of rock. “We don’t even know what kind of girls are members of this Crunch gym location.”

“Keep digging,” you tell Felix.

After digging for three weeks straight, Felix will start to go mad (the two of you have been living down there, sharing the air and sleeping standing up in that dirty four foot wide hole). He’ll decide that you’re going to cheat him out of his share of the treasure he discovered (his shovel hit a chest containing approximately $3.2 billion in emeralds. You explained that since the shovel he was digging with came from your dad’s garage, where your dad placed it after spending the 14 bucks for it at Ace Hardware, he has to split the treasure with you). Felix will confront you with bloody intent.

“Rrrrrghhaglllmmmmph,” he’ll say. His speech will have devolved considerably.

“No one’s cheatin’ nobody,” you’ll say. Then you’ll drive your hammer against the chisel aimed at the ceiling up above, and a beam of light will shine down upon you from the crack you just made.

“Felix,” you’ll say. “We done it!”

You’ll pin your good eye up against the crack to watch a woman in a sports bra and danskins remove a large bandage from the leaky blister on her foot.

“The promised land,” you’ll say.

Felix will drive his shovel into your neck, killing you instantly. The treasure his and his alone, he’ll stay down there with it in the dark hole to make sure no one tries to trick him out of it again. Fourteen days later, Felix will die.

When some of the fine ladies of Crunch Gym alert a trainer to the smell, Crunch Gym will dig into the ground and find you, Felix, and the emeralds. Since the treasure was buried under a Crunch Gym, the Crunch Gym company will claim the treasure and use the $3.2 billion to replace some treadmills.

Happy Digging Under The Girls Locker Room Day!

This Is Their Black Vietnam Day!

Your students are going to embark on their uprising today. They’ll start burning their homework in a giant bonfire, then they’ll strip down to their waists and dance around the fire, occasionally stopping to perform sex acts on each other predesignated by the colors of the bracelets on their wrists.

“I always thought those bracelets were going to be the downfall of this generation,” you’ll say to the other teachers locked in the teachers lounge with you.

“I thought it was the video games. Especially that one called Murder The Adults. Sick,” another teacher will say.

“I thought it was the attention deficit disorder drugs,” the janitor will add.

“Jersey Shore. It was Jersey Shore and Four Loko and the fathers all leaving them behind,” the divorced school nurse will say.

“Quiet!” the school Principal will shout. “Let them tear it up. Our kids are finally reacting to their world, instead of shrugging their shoulders at it. This is their moment. This is their Black Vietnam.”

The Principal will then open the door to the lounge, run into the hall and shout, “Exact your vibrant vengeance upon me, kids! I am authority!!!”

The kids will launch themselves upon the principal and tear wads of his skin off in their teeth. One of the teachers will manage to get the door shut and locked.

Many of you will be crying quietly, until one teacher pipes up with a question.

“Why black Vietnam?”

No one will have an answer right away.

“Maybe he means like the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement rolled into one?” someone will suggest.

Some of you will nod.

“How old was Principal Watkins? 39?”

Yes, he was 39. So he pretty much knew very little about Vietnam. And he probably knew even less about Black Vietnam, whatever that is.

“Could he have meant the Rodney King riots?” someone will ask. “He lived in LA for a little while. He told me that once. Did they ever call the riots that?”

No. They never called the riots that. You’ll have another 36 hours of being locked in that lounge together before the police quell the student uprising, so it’s suggested you spend that time taking a vote on whether or not to amend the Principal’s last words before you’re asked on the morning news what they were. Maybe change them to something like “Those are my kids out there. I’m going to go reason with them.” Anything but the Black Vietnam thing. What the hell was that?

Happy This Is Their Black Vietnam Day!

You’re Going To Marry Her Day!

You got that after-school job making sandwiches at Fanta’s Deli. You’re bringing in almost a hundred bucks a week now, and it’s only going to go up from there. Time to tell Diana your plans.

“I’m going to marry you Diana,” tell her. “I’m going to save up my money and as soon as I can afford the proper wedding for you, we’re going to get married.

"In hell,” Diana will say.

Diana will spend the rest of her life sabotaging your finances to make sure you never have enough money to pay for the kind of wedding she deserves. She’ll call your places of business and submit anonymous complaints about your service. When you try to increase your savings by betting on the horses, she’ll sneak into the stables in the middle of the night and hobble the front-runner to offset the odds on the longshots.  When you manage to have enough money to invest, she’ll start dating the manager of your hedge fund and subtly influence him to divert all of the billions he manages into unimaginative start-ups with crappy prospectuses.

It’s not that she hates you. She just has a lot she wants to do with her life and she thinks having a husband would just be a needless distraction.

“Please,” you’ll say to her in about twenty-five years after she’s bankrupted you ten times over. “Just let me accumulate enough money so I can marry you. I’m so tired.”

“Never,” she’ll say. “If I spend every minute of my life trying to keep you from marrying me, at least I’ll die knowing I spent my life trying to pursue the life I wanted.”

“I’m going to find a way,” you’ll say. “One day you’ll be distracted. Grieving over a deceased parent perhaps. Or making arrangements for a cross-country move thanks to a new job. One day you’ll let your guard down and I’ll earn the approximately twenty-eight grand necessary to pay for the wedding that you deserve.”

“We’ll just see about that, motherfucker,” she’ll say. Then she’ll single-handedly bring about another recession, putting millions out of work, solely to empty your bank account so she’ll never have to say the words “I do” to you in front of 150 of her friends and family just before a gorgeous sit-down reception where everything is just perfect, down to the flowers in the centerpieces.

Happy You’re Going To Marry Her Day!

Presidential Book Of Secrets Day!

When you look inside the Presidential Book of Secrets, you’ll find out that the moon landing was faked, 9/11 was an inside job, JFK was assassinated by an experimental sex robot that became autonomous after being struck by lightning, 55% of the House of Representatives is populated by extra-terrestrials as per the treaty, Katrina never happened and neither did Live Aid, that sex robot who killed JFK is still out there and she wants to learn how to feel, Eric Stoltz has been dead for years but it’s imperative China believe he’s still alive, Barack Obama was born in an African restaurant in Hawaii called Taste Of Kenya, which is why all the confusion, and finally, you are the prettiest little thing in the whole wide country, which is a weird secret for the president to be briefed about but whatever.

Happy Presidential Book Of Secrets Day!

Be Tortured Day!

When you see a friend who still bothers to acknowledge you and they ask how things are going, start shaking your head and saying things like “Oh everything is so very difficult because I’m more sensitive than you and others.” Then spend ten minutes trying to explain a very common emotion (loneliness? fear?) as if you were the first one to ever feel it and you’re reporting back to the populace, who could never possibly understand. Your friend will probably begin to weep, just before cutting into his or her own skin in protest of a God that would be so cruel as to make you so much more sensitive than the rest of the planet that you are forced to curl up in a ball and lament your predicament while others are able to just get to work and finish something.

“Well I’d better get to work and finish something,” your friend will say. “Perhaps you should spend the day drinking heavily to ease the pain. You clearly deserve it.”

Thank your friend for understanding, and then go to the bar that opens in the morning and stare at yourself in the mirror behind the bottles. You really enjoy your own face.

Happy Be Tortured Day!

Blood Of Kevin Day!

Kevin, one of your altar boys, has been pricking his fingers and dripping his own blood into the wine you drink to represent the blood of Christ during mass. Confront the boy and ask him if he has any questions.

“I assume it’s a compulsion,” say to the boy. “I assume you can’t help yourself.”

The boy will nod. “I felt jealous. Like my own blood was being rejected. I felt like if any blood was going to be drunk during mass, I needed it to be mine. Not Jesus’s.”

Relate to him by telling the story about how when you were a teenage altar boy you started shaving chunks of fat from your thighs, baking them into wafers and mixing them in with the communion for people to eat.

“Did you ever get caught?”

Nod. Tell him you felt shamed to the core, and that you don’t want to make your altar boy feel the same.

“But I can’t let you continue to trick me and my parishioners into drinking your blood.”

Kevin will ask, “But what am I supposed to do? I have all this glorious mead flowing through my veins. I need it inside somebody!”

Ask him, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

The boy will say yes, and you’ll coach him on the proper way to ask a partner if she might be into blood-play without scaring her off. Don’t tell him to quickly laugh it off as if he was joking when it seems she might be disturbed by his question. He needs to take this seriously, and he needs those who matter to him to take it seriously as well, or it’ll just get more out of control.

“What if she says no,” he’ll ask. “Am I just supposed to open up a Kool Aid stand on my street corner and surreptitiously drip my blood into the pitchers?”

Tell him yes. “I don’t care what happens at a Kool Aid stand. When people buy from a Kool Aid stand they know they’re taking a risk. People come to my mass, they expect Jesus’s blood. Not some awkward pubescent punk’s doesn’t know when and how to express his sexual identity. Keep it out of my mass.”

The lights will go down and the movie will be about to start (you and your altar boy are seeing “Blue Valentine”) so hush up and let your guidance sink in. He’ll be the better for it.

Happy Blood Of Kevin Day!

Wear The Dress To Tonight’s Town Council Meeting Day!

When you walk into the meeting a hush will fall over the crowd. The only sound in the room will be your high heels stepping toward the microphone, save for a few groans and the occasional pant of someone trying to catch his breath.

At the microphone you’ll read your statement. It will be brilliantly worded, despite the fact that it could just as well be a succession of fart noises for all it will matter. For everyone there with you in that room tonight, your words will only serve as the reason for you to expand your bosom with air and release.

But you’ll speak your heart. You’ll tell them you respect the fact that they think yearbooks are devilish in that they promote pride and vanity, sins in the eyes of God. You’ll tell them how proud you have been of your son for fighting them tooth and nail to get a yearbook for his graduating class, because he didn’t leave his old school district with its top-ranked yearbook committee just to end up in this podunk town and be told he’ll never be able to put a caption underneath a poorly framed photo of a bad haircut again.

“I’m thinking of his transcripts,” you’ll say, making sure to shift your balance and send your left hip jutting out just so. “And I want to put this to a vote right now.”

You promised yourself you’d never again wear the dress. It has too much power. It’s sent too many men to their ruin. It even once forced you to pack your bags in the middle of the night when you spotted a caravan of angry wives coming over the hill, their headlights blazing like firey torches in the hands of an uncontrollable mob. No, the dress is too much and the best thing would be for it to be destroyed.

But is it wrong to wear the dress in an effort to help your son?

“All in favor of allowing yearbooks into our school, raise your hands.”

The council will suddenly look frightened.

“What do you want us to do?” the council president will ask. “We don’t want to make you unhappy. We don’t want to make you leave.”

Tell them, “Raise your hands.”

The entire council will raise their hands.

“Now say that it’s unanimous and that a yearbook committee will be established in the school as of Monday morning.”

The council president will do as you command. You’ll thank them and announce that you have to go. They’ll protest, a few of them crying, but they’ll be silent as they watch you leave.

You’ll leave a note next to your son’s pillow telling him that by the time he wakes up. you’ll be gone, and that he’s going to have to go and live with his aunt across town.

“Make the best yearbook any high school’s ever seen,” write to him. Then get in your car and start driving. When word gets around town about your dress and the power it has, and the lives it took when several of the council members strangled themselves with their own ties not long after you left the council meeting, the town’s wives will come for you.

“Just like every other stronghold of small-town America,” you’ll say to yourself, watching horizon of closed minds recede in your rear view mirror. This time was really the last time. This time you really are going to destroy that dress.

Or you’ll at least pack it away into storage. No reason to throw away a perfectly good dress after all, is there?

Happy Wear The Dress To Tonight’s Town Council Meeting Day!

Sit Down With Lance Day!

No one ever sits with Lance, the divorcee who comes to the coffee shop every day to rearrange the photos of his ex-wife for the scrapbook he’s putting together in hopes of winning her back. Do him a favor and go ask him some questions.

When you first take your seat Lance will look at you and say, “What.”

Tell him you just wanted to share some time with him, find out his story.

“I’m trying to get my wife back. That’s my story. You’re either going to help me by going away or you’re going to ruin everything by distracting me with your horseshit questions.”

Ask him if he really thinks a book full of pictures of his ex-wife will win her back.

“You got any better ideas?”

Move on, tell him. Open yourself up to new experiences.

“New experience. Like what, sex with you? That’ll be the day.”

Ask him why sex with you is so impossible to imagine.

“I can imagine it, sure. I can also imagine killing myself right after. Here’s how that’ll go down. We’ll have sex, Patty will find out and decide that I don’t care about her anymore, all my efforts of the last 14 years will be lost all because you tricked me inside of you. Suicide is next, because yeah, that’s what happens when the only thing you ever wanted slips away.”

Ask him why Patty left.

“Why do they always leave?”

He was doing too much cocaine? Ask that.

“Bingo! She wins the jackpot.”

Tell him that 14 years seems like too long to hope for a second chance.

“Look, you’re very pretty, and I don’t expect you to give me any other advice except to move on. But I don’t care. I’m going after my ex-wife. You can chase a career goal or kids or some kind of big sailboat trip or whatever. You fill your three or four decades before death with whatever activities you want. I’m going to fill mine by making the perfect scrapbook in order to win my ex-wife back. The world doesn’t give a shit about either of us so let’s do whatever we want.”

Just then Patty will sprint into the coffee shop, stop at Lance’s table and say, “It’s never going to happen.” Then she’ll steal his unfinished scrapbook, sprint outside and toss it into a passing trash truck before running away.

Lance will take out a shoebox full of photos and a new empty scrapbook.

“She does that. I got duplicates,” he’ll say.

Leave Lance alone to start over on his Pattybook. You should really be more focused on your big sailboat trip or whatever.

Happy Sit Down With Lance Day!

It Ends Day!

Today the world ends when some aliens from outer space accidentally fire a weapon near our solar system and it detonates, causing an explosion big enough to wipe out several galaxies. Just before the blink of hot white kills you and everything else, you’ll be at City Hall with your pregnant girlfriend, reciting the words the judge is telling you to recite in order to be considered officially married by the city. You’ll be scared, wondering whether you’re making the right decision, whether the rest of your life is going to deliver what you hope. Then you’ll look down at the baby in your girlfriend’s stomach and you’ll think, “I’m going to make this world great for you little sweetie. The world won’t be perfect, but perfection is what I’m going to demand of it.” The judge will tell you to kiss the bride. You’ll be married and she’ll have to pee. You’ll take the opportunity to pee as well, and you’ll think, “The first urination as a married man! Let’s see if it feels different.” You’ll watch your new wife disappear into her rest room, then you’ll put your hand on the doorknob of the men’s room. As you turn the knob, white, some heat, an escape of breath from your longs, and gone. Everything gone with no evidence that anything was ever there. It’s over.

Happy It Ends Day!

The Kids Who Want To Make Their Mom Come Day!

You and your sisters and brothers have all returned home for Dad’s funeral, and tonight you’re all going to stay up late with your mom, drinking and reminiscing, and your mom will let on that your father never gave her an orgasm.

“Nope,” she’ll say. “Just wasn’t in the cards I guess.”

After lots of questions, you’ll learn that not only did your father never give your mom an orgasm, but she never gave herself one either.

“Never occurred to me I guess,” she’ll say. “I decided long ago that I wanted my first orgasm to be given to me by someone else. I even cheated on your dad some to try and find the right man to give it to me.”

No matter how many men your mom had sex with, she just couldn’t find that exactly right guy with that exactly right touch. So she gave up.

“By now I figure screw it,” she’ll say. “I’m gonna die soon so why bother try what ain’t gonna happen. Oh did I tell you kids I only have six months to live?”

You and your sisters and brothers will pow-wow, and after you take a vote on it, you’ll agree to go out and find a man to have sex with your mom until she climaxes. After placing several ads on several websites, you’ll narrow the pool down to fifteen guys. One by one they’ll go in and have sex with your mom, and when that doesn’t work out, you’ll invite all fifteen back to do her all at once. She’ll tell you that was fun, but still, no dice.

“Guess this thing’s shot,” your mom will say, referring to her clitoris.

You’ll send your mom to a sex therapist, where after one breakthrough session she’ll remember the time she came the closest to coming.

“We were out in the barn, me and Tommy Braddock, one of the stable boys my papa hired. He knew just what to do and with how much pressure, and I swear he had me on the ropes, but then we heard Papa’s shotgun. Papa was standing in the barn door and he chased Tommy off. I never saw him again.”

When your mom relays the story to you, you’ll know you have no choice but to track down Tommy Braddock and bring him to her. Luckily, he’ll still be alive and he’ll remember that time just as well as your Mom.

“Wow,” Tommy will say. “That’d be amazing to finish where we started. It’ll be like we started having sex when we were kids, and we never finished until we were seniors. It’ll be as if we’ve been having sex our whole lives.”

You’ll fly Tommy back to your Mom’s house and send him into her room. You’ll close the door on them just as you catch sight of Tommy kissing your mom, then you and your siblings will listen at the door to what will sound like a raucous marathon of love-making. Lots of shouting, lots of headboard banging, lots of instances of people taking the Lord’s name in vain.

When you reenter the room you’ll find Tommy dead, your mother’s bedsheets wrapped around his neck.

“He tried to kill me,” she’ll say. “He came back her for revenge. He told me that getting fired as a stable boy sent his family into poverty and ruined his life, and then he tried to crack my skull against this headboard.”

Eventually your mother turned the tables, got a length of bedsheet around Tommy’s neck and choked the life out of him.

“And guess what?” your mom will say, smiling.

“Did you?” you’ll ask.

“It was magnificent,” your mom will say. “Just as Tommy released his death rattle I felt a current of pure synaptic ecstasy spasm through every inch of my body, head to toe. I felt it burrow into my marrow then explode outward again. All this time I’ve been chasing the perfect sexual partner, when I had no idea that all I had to do to finally have an orgasm was murder a man with my bare hands.”

Your mom will pull you and all your siblings into a hug. Her tears will soak the tops of your heads. Then she’ll tell you to take Tommy out back and bury him. She’ll watch from her chair by the window while you dig. When you finally have him buried, you’ll come back upstairs to find your mom still in her chair, her eyes closed, a peaceful smile on her face. She’ll still be warm, having perhaps just passed a few minutes prior.

That smile will tell you she died happy, not because she finally had an orgasm, but because she raised such good kids that they would go to such trouble to give her one.

Happy The Kids Who Want To Make Their Mom Come Day!

The Tree Voices Day!

The trees have been whispering stuff to you while you lay awake in bed. With every gust of wind through the branches, you can hear their eerie declarations.

“Give more TV shows a chaaaaaance,” they whisper. “You’re tooooo quick to juuuuudge things harshly. It’s like yooooooouuu want to beeeee the firrrrst to own your opiiiiiinion and it’s coooosting you the opportunity to enjoy some really great shoooooooooows. Liiiiiiike with that one. You know. The one with the cop. It’s a goooooood show. Soliiiiiid. But yoooooooou just were so exciiiiited to dislike it before all your friends. You’re going to miiiiiiiss out on some really gooooood TV if you keeeeep this up.”

You’ll do that thing where you fall asleep for a bit, the kind of light sleep where you wake up after fifteen minutes and you aren’t sure if you slept or not. Then the voices will pipe up again.

“Whiiiiiite Collar. That’s the one. It was killing meeeeee, but I remembered.”

You’ll wait for more, but the trees just wanted to tell you that they remembered the name of that show you gave up on. It’s White Collar and you think it blows.

Happy The Tree Voices Day!

Eight Dad Fistfight Day!

Today eight neighborhood dads are going to head out into the middle of the cul de sac to smash some face and finally find out which Dad is the motherfucker who can beat up the other seven dads living on your gated street. Weapons are encouraged, which didn’t used to be the way. All you kids and Moms are going to go out to root your dads on and talk shit to the other kids and moms. Your Dad will get knocked out fourth, and you and your mom will drag him back up the hill to your house where you’ll tend to his wounds. When you open his shirt you’ll be shocked to find a gaping wound gushing way too much blood.

“I wanted to win for you,” he’ll say. “I let myself get cut and I’ll miss you both so much.”

After his funeral you’ll have to move from the cul de sac because you don’t have a father to protect you anymore. When a Dad dies on your street, the other homeowners give a 24 hour headstart before they bust through your doors to steal and rape and burn your home to the ground. Before the fight your Dad rented a u-haul for just this contingency (all the dads rent u-hauls in case they die in the fistfight). Get the truck filled and make tracks to a studio apartment on the other side of town, where moms and daughters can live peacefully without a father on the premises for the price of a moderate tax paid in cash at the sheriff’s.

Happy Eight Dad Fistfight Day!