My friend Allison is having a hard time trapping a man. Or, as she likes to say, "finding someone to have a relationship with"... which is exactly what I tell wasps when they approach that screaming yellow hanging thing on my deck, full of rotted meat and pepsi.
"I'm just looking for the right swarm to settle down with! Go on in and have some cola!"
I used to do the same with rodents, livetrap them and set them free in other people's houses, like I do with my husbands, but I was wrong. Now I have mice, and men, as pets. Which wouldn't be a bad alternative, but Allison won't hear of it.
"What the fuck, are you mentally ill?" she asks. One of us is. One of us is happy and healthy and never has to worry what to do with our old cracker crumbs. One of us is adored.
Allison can lure her prey in, but they just nibble the cheese and leave behind an empty unsprung expectation.
"You need to get pregnant," I told her. "Not just 'with child', either. Children. Many. Fertility pills by the fistfull and canned tuna fish heated in number 7 plastics will help you build your litter of freaks. Damaged babies. Get X-rayed on a weekly basis and huff paint thinner. Clean cat boxes. You need a squeaky pram full of malformed infants."
"...?...what will this accomplish?" she asks, "Are you drinking?"
Of course I am. It helps me see things that aren't there. Things Others can't see.
"You're welcome," I say.
It's easy to leave behind a woman, or even a woman with a baby. Especially a woman with a baby. But an angry woman with a van load full of handicapped babies, each one more horrible than the last...Who wants that thing following them around? Parking out front of where-ever they happen to land? Its better to secure a home and stash them away out of sight.
"No one can afford that sort of child support. Not emotionally, not financially. Together, however, you are sitting on a gold mine. Great parking, extra organs, people pay to see things that may be bad enough to portend evil...like a 2 headed snake baby. Times are ripe for a 2 headed snake baby."
I want it so badly for her.
"Think of how the babies will love you," I tell her, picturing crooked smiles on half formed faces, attached to torsos or arms. Shoes bought singley.
"If nothing else. Damaged babies will never leave you."
I think its not just great thinking, excellent desperate family planning, but its also a great bumper sticker. Totally trumps those fucking Honor Roll issues.
Plus the parking. Did I mention the parking? Sometimes its the little things.
