that are viable. Just let me have my basic unit ’cause come Christmastime my husband will be wanting it.”
She handed me a tag and let me go. The lady with ’rhoids and six kids was up next. Madame DMV eyeballed those children like prime rib on a buffet table. She must have been mentally tabulating all the potential organs from that one client.
“Want a tag?” I heard her whisper, going into the live-donor speech. “Sign the papers promising us parts such as a bile duct or portal vein, and it’s all yours.”
The woman rubbed her ass and gasped.
“Shhhh!” Madame DMV said. “If you are simply too attached to your portal vein, we’ll also take lung lobes and extra ears, healthy liver sections and other parts you don’t really need to live the good life.” She eyeballed the woman’s large and dragging boobs, seeing the dampened spots on her blouse. “We’ll take a wet nurse, too.”
The poor bedraggled, hemorrhoid-angst woman signed.
“Here’s your tag. Have a nice day.”
That night I went home exhausted and defeated and decided it would be one of those evenings where I’d just lie in the bed with a row of Ritz and channel surf—my mechanism for coping after a bad day. As soon as my Lifetime movie about a born-again teen bulimic cheerleader on crack ended, I flipped to an infomercial and nearly jumped out of my pajamas.
There before me was the most frightening hawker I’d ever seen.
THE JUICE MAN.
He sported tufts of white hair and eyebrows that looked like two bearded caterpillars pulled upward by an invisible string. He kept staring at me through the TV, grimacing and grinning, telling all of us that we were on our way to Coffin Central if we don’t snap up his juicer and start downing all those liquid, straight-from-the-plant vitamins.
The man was in sheer fruit-and-veggie heaven as he plunged whole carrots, beets, apples and anything he could find into his pulverizing juice machine. He’d take a sip and just literally have a happy fit. I’m quite certain the freak had an erection to match his eyebrows.
I may have been tired and my bottom still squishy…I may be facing a future with one lung and a missing cornea, but I swannee that man had a bulge in his pants. Could have been something he was planning on “juicing” later.
He kept yelling through the TV and I continued watching and listening, completely horrified to the point of fascination.
“Order the Juiceman and get a free bread machine!” he shouted.
I just don’t trust a man that high on juice. Even so, within twenty minutes, the Juice Man almost snagged me. He peered close to the camera and I felt the tug, the Visa whispering, “Come get me” from my purse. What juicing magnificence! What a pair of brows!
I could call and tell the ladies working the phones that I’d order one only if he’d throw in his eyebrows. I could use them to clean up under the toilet rims or the burners on the stove. They’d be perfect for digging down in the hollow valves of my son’s trumpet to get all the spit and crud out. I’d never have to buy another box of Brillo pads.
In the end I resisted, turned off the tube and decided to call it a day. First the gynecologist who said I looked just like my photo in the paper while his face was one inch from my cervix. Then the DMV lady who gave me a tag only after I signed over any and all body parts that wouldn’t kill me if excised.
Maybe I’ll go soak in the tub and eat a carton of Milk Duds. If the candy yanks out my teeth, I can always save the good molars for the DMV lady in order to be certain of getting a new tag next time it came due.
Hooking Up With David Sedaris
O ne day my fairy godmother arrived in the form of a publicist.
She waved her magic wand and set up a meeting with a famous writer I’ve long admired and loved and had naughty fantasies about. No matter that he’s gay.
I turned into Cinderella in a dress from the Goodwill on the day I met this literary genius the world knows as David Sedaris at a hotel, spending at least ninety minutes awed and enraptured. I couldn’t think a clear thought or form a complete sentence as I felt my dark hair turning platinum blonde and my IQ dropping from its normal 50-to-70 range to around 35 points.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I wanted to invite him to sit in my lap, the cute little thing that he was. Being a big girl, 5 feet, 8 inches on a flat-heeled day, he could have nestled against my motherly tummy and I could have petted his brilliant little head.
He looked at me expectantly. I knew what he was wanting. He was like most men and wanted to get in and get out, quickly. I wanted it to last. Foreplay, lots of foreplay, even if it was in the form of staring and saying nothing. So that’s what I did. It’s all I could do. Stare speechless for quite some time.
“Sooooo,” he said, and his famous and distinctive voice, one heard by millions on National Public Radio and his audio books, made my knees weak. It was that utterly unmatched blend of North Carolina, New York, European nasal delight. The man was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album. His voice was his meal ticket.
“Any questions?” he asked, probably wondering why I was sitting there in a trance.
Questions. Shit. I was supposed to think up some sharp and extraordinarily original questions. I’m a reporter, a columnist, a foolish woman who, upon seeing this man, went from my mid-40s to being 17 and acting as if I was staring at Peter Frampton.
I mumbled and felt my hands shaking as I took out a pen that turned out to be a tampon attached to a panty liner that had escaped its plastic shield. Shit. Shit. Shit. He raised his cute little eyebrows, lit a cigarette and allowed one of those completely charming half smiles as I switched for a better pen. This time, an eyebrow pencil.
Mercy, things were going poorly. I knew he must have thought, “Wow, they sent a real winner to my hotel this time.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Let’s see now…”
I was imagining we’d have intelligent conversation, exchange witticisms and then declare our soul mate status. Then reality hit. I’m married. He’s gay. This is not a match made in Heaven or a match by any means. This was simply a famous gay man I was in love with cerebrally. One who would NEVER love me back.
But in my wild fantasy he would tell me what I longed to hear beautiful or smart gay men say. “I will no longer ever want another man in my life. You have changed me forever. I’m as straight as plywood.”
Regardless, here he was, sitting directly across from me in a wrinkled shirt, shadowy stubble and that quirky face that reminds me of a gnome’s only cuter.
Now, getting this once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet him at a motel, which the high class call hotels, was the highlight of my year, considering I hadn’t given birth or done anything major in quite some time.
I wanted to enjoy cranial gymnastics with Sedaris, and then by the end of our interview, have him declare he was in love and that he’d have to drop poor Hugh, his boyfriend of one hundred years.
Of course at some point in a fantasy, one must face reality. Sedaris will never love me, and after our ninety minutes together I will probably
