From my many interactions with readers, it's quite clear that I'm a working-class hero.
"Let me buy you a drink, What's So Funny," they all say, often in unison or song. "You're a hell of a swell guy, goddamnit, and you put into words what I'm feeling. It makes me feel connected to you, man, like we have this bond."
In such situations I always do the same thing. I graciously accept the offer, order a bottle of Miller High Life, the champagne of beers, and sip it coolly for about thirty seconds while the sycophant in front of me babbles on about some nonsense, usually how much he's always wanted to write. Then, with the sort of split-second quickness typically seen only in ocelots or lynxes, I shatter the bottle on the bar and slice my fan across the neck.
"We don't have any fucking bond!" I scream over the writhing, bloody body. "You don't understand me and you never will!"
What I'm trying to say is, I'm no hero. I do things on a regular basis that appall even me. But at least I don't fuck McCain supporters.
Comedy Works South, Wende Curtis's new club, held its grand opening last week. In addition to not being a hero, I'm also a standup comic and a regular at the downtown Comedy Works — and so I and some of my comedy cohorts got invitations. We dressed as well as we could (clean jeans, button-up shirts), and then headed south to soak up the spanking-new swank atmosphere — as well as the benefits of an open bar. Over the course of the evening, I managed to drink 257 Stella Artois beers, six flutes of champagne, three vodka tonics and all the gasoline I could siphon out of cars in the parking lot.
I was lit.
And then the cougar appeared.
I was standing on the balcony outside the third-floor Curtis Ballroom, contemplating that glorious Denver Tech Center skyline, when a dark-haired, buxom she-vixen approached and asked me for a light. Suavely, I lit her cigarette, and like that, it was on. I don't claim to be any sort of Casanova, but Suburba-Cougar was digging my shit. If I had to guess, I would say she was high thirties, early forties, but homegirl was smoking, with a detached, glazed-over look that can only be obtained through many failed relationships and Jacuzzis full of Zinfandel. We talked about everything and nothing for about fifteen minutes, and then the cougar sneak-attacked, planting one right on my lips. Gadzooks! I knew there would be suburban honeys at this new club, but I wasn't expecting anything like this!
"Your beard tickles," she said.
"Oh, that's my Obama beard," I explained. "I'm not shaving until the man is elected. So I'm either going to have it for another month, or another month and four years."
She looked at me blankly.
"Oh, don't tell me you support John McCain," I said.
She did. So for the next several minutes, I assaulted her with questions about McCain, making her defend her case and shooting her down on every point. In addition to not being a hero, I'm not a seasoned politico, but I've been glued to this election in a way that borders on hysterical, and I was far better equipped to debate than this vapid cougar in the DTC night. Bitch actually had the audacity to tell me that she really liked the fact that a woman had made it as far as Sarah Palin had and that, as a woman, she felt a duty to help get another woman in the White House.
"Sarah Palin is the person you want representing womanhood?" I almost screamed. "You want the first woman in the White House to be someone who would take away a woman's right to choose? I would be offended if I was a woman. Fuck, I'm not a woman and I'm offended."
The cougar could sense she was losing me — but she was also losing herself to the sauce, and realized she didn't have enough fight left in her to find another victim. It was all or nothing, and so the cougar struck.
"You know what's great, though?" she slurred at me in the type of line that no one actually ever says in real life and yet I was somehow hearing. "Just because you're voting for Obama and I'm voting for John McCain doesn't mean we can't go home and have sex right now."
I looked at her, stunned. I'd never been propositioned so blatantly. I collected my thoughts.
"Actually," I said. "That's exactly what it means."
As I walked back inside, I turned to take one last look at the cougar. Her mouth was open in disbelief, wide as the vast chasm that existed and will always exist between us.
"Vote Obama," I said.
