Oh yes! That’s one line I’m totally saving.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love my family?
Don’t get me wrong, I love Sampiro’s family too, but I’m certainly glad I’m not related to them.
Waiting for the next installment with baited breath, just like they learned me at the lib’ary.
I am become schadenfreude …
This story is makin’ me want to sit here hitting refresh over and over and over til I see a post from Sampiro. I am completely enthralled. I need another installment!
Ditto.
You forgot Harper Lee and Charles Barkley. 
sampiro: You headin’ south this weekend? About 1 O’clock Saturday mornin’ I’ll be at The Pink Pony, or else at Lulu’s. The young’uns all say I look like the dad in That 70’sShow. Anyways, I’ll probably be the only guy in either place wearing some sort of plaid shirt.
Drop by and I’ll buy you a drink. Bring your crazy-ass sister too. Or bring your mom, even, whichever one of them likes to dance. Just Please Don’t bring ‘em both.
Hope to see ya’ there!
JCoM
ivylass grabs her calendar and a Red Sharpie
Exactly, when is your sister’s birthday? I’ll need to make sure I check the Pit that day…
I had a friend who used to tell me how his mother always put him in a bad mood when he called her in the morning.
When i suggested that he not call her in the morning, he gave a look like I was nuts.
:rolleyes:
I’m hoping Sampiro is going to show up at our engagement party this weekend in Montgomery. He better have received an invitation from my sister in law. There’ll be plenty of my family’s dysfunction to deal with as well (hyper Xtian creationist fundamentalism and substance abuse, along with a niece I’m betting will turn out butch lesbian…God help her in that family,) but I hope that won’t keep folks away. I hope Sampiro feels well enough to make it.
(PS: Is Arroway coming?)
Oh, Lordy – someone find Florence King’s contact info (she is still alive, right?) and send her this! It belongs in her next update of Southern Ladies and Gentelmen.
I’m dying here. More, more! 
To be honest I haven’t checked my mail other than to sort for bills. I don’t know if I’ll be able to this weekend but I will if I can.
Lad Arroway’s had a rough time of it of late (his apartment was broken into [which wasn’t hard because the door was unlocked] and the burglar stole almost $1000 in cash his mother had saved for a car and all of his little dopehead brother’s DVDs/CDs, etc., then there’s his usual family drama which makes mine look like The Waltons. (People think I make this shit up, but weird stuff just happens in and to my family and acquaintances: Ogre can actually verify that Arroway, my ex-love/best friend/favorite homosexual [the one whose door housed a suicide note from my mother]) escaped from Montgomery, moved to an efficiency apartment bachelor pad the gay mecca of midtown Atlanta, and within weeks
1- said efficiency was home to him, his mother and his brother
2- he had been quite possibly the only gay office worker in the history of the Piedmont Emergency Room to have been treated for rabies (in MIDTOWN ATLANTA!)
3- all while pursuing get-rich-quick schemes that would make Ralph Kramden piss himself (this is a guy who flunked out of high school but can discuss the Space Elevator with literal ‘rocket scientists’ and yet he doesn’t feel the need for college)
I’d obviouslylove to see you there, since it’s been forever. All the usual suspects (the email group) have been invited, and I sincerely hope everyone makes it, since this would be the first meeting involving the whole crowd in many a moon.
And God, Arroway makes me verklempt. Easily one of the five most intelligent people I’ve ever met, and he refuses to go get himself edumacated. Anyway, i miss him too, and I’m sorry he’s having trouble. I’ll email you shortly about more detail, if you don’t mind.
[/end of name-dropping highjack]
So sure enough, a corner of my mother’s dining room has become a concentration camp for beach related detainees awaiting judgment. I had already told my sister about the arrests and she of course went off:
“Who the hell is she doing this shit for? She’s doing it for us! I have no doubt she’ll haul all that shit out to the curb and throw it in the dumpster and she has no idea that we’re not even there to appreciate it anymore? Do you think that the trashmen give one good toot in hell if there are beach pictures in the trash? Does she think the trashmen are gonna look at her garbage and think ‘Aw, some poor old white lady had a daughter that didn’t appreciate her and now she cain’t even look at a picture of a beach without crying! Ain’t nothing worse than a bunch of kids don’t love their Mama!’ They don’t give a shit and she’s out some beach stuff she’ll want back… except they probably will know that cause I can see her now sitting in the window waiting for the trashman so she can run out and tell 'em 'Y’ALL BE SURE TO TAKE THOSE BEACH THINGS! I DON’T WANT ‘EM! YOU SEE, IT ALL BEGAN IN BILLINGSLEY ALABAMA IN 1935 WHEN…’. Hateful old woman.”
Of course I can’t judge the purge of the beach themed things as this is also a genetic trait. I’ve done it, my sister’s done it, several of us have (not with beach things, obviously). When my first relationship tanked, VERY VERY BADLY, back in the late 80s I rounded up everything my boyfriend had ever given me or everything that had attachment to him, mostly the dozens of mix-tapes he’d made me, all while having the most beautiful fantasies of a Fall of Sejanus like purge in which terrified toga-clad servants of the Fallen One were being brought into the palace, once arrogant heartless fecks the lot of them and now pitifully begging me for mercy as I looked at them with a poker face and, in an instant of dramatic silence that could go either way, raised my hand- and then summoned my fiercely loyal Nordic guards to slay the lot of 'em. From time to time I’d find another tape that had survived the purge and accompany it with images of a face now too scared to be evil being pulled from a hovel/cave/hidden-basement and offering bribes and pleas while the gladius ran him through and he fell, a look of pain and complete disbelief, bleeding to the floor. Then it occurred to me that “this isn’t an enemy of the Republic and you’re not a Cæsar- you’re a pissed off fag hitting a mix tape with a hammer”, but whatever. It worked for me at the time (I was a lot less medicated then) so I can understand my mother’s purge, stupid as I thought the motives were.
So a couple of days there (I’d taken vacation time from work when I thought were going to the beach) chain smoking between bronchial spasms, which prompted a doctor’s visit where I was given a steroid injection and prescription and found out that I don’t react well to those (i.e. thought I was going to snap the silver chord while crossing the Shining River). The doctor advised me not to take any of the steroids I had left, which also helped my mother’s mood some.
“I love Prednisone! It picks me up like nobody’s business! That ought to put me in a better mood…”
The food at least was good. My mother’s fried corn. Mmmm… if you’ve never had fried corn it’s a Southern dish that just isn’t around much anymore. (You can batter a whole ear and deep fry it but that’s awful- this is corn scraped from the cob, browned in sizzling butter and mixed with just a little sugar and it’s great.) My sister had stopped calling my mother altogether by this point so there was finally quiet. Unfortunately, eating cigarettes while I was “in the Presence” mixed with a reaction to steroids and ongoing bronchitis had me sick for several days, but finally I returned, minus my dog.
I had only intended to leave my dog in Mgy for a few days because I had to be at work early in the morning and decided to leave him with Marty for some torture and relaxation and pick him up the following weekend. (My mother loves my dog and, strangely, he her, and he particularly loves having somebody home all day and another dog to play with.) Unfortunately that’s when Hurricane Dennis was expected to be the biggest disaster since Krakatoa and my sister called to announce she was staying with me, which is another whole long story that continues their feud.
More later- must return to work for a while.
For the love of God, please don’t stop.
Ditto me, too!
Nooooo! You can’t addict me to this and then just leave me without my next fix! I’m going into withdrawal already!
Too bad teemings isn’t available at the moment.
Think if enough of us requested it, the admins would make this a Sticky?
So do y’all think he had time to de-fag his apartment before Sister Fundie-Potty-Mouth arrived? Has he been outed by an token of homosexuality left lying about? Was it the Tom of Finland posters that did him in? Or was it the rainbow shot glasses? Maybe a pink triangle 'frig magnet. Or the drag queen friend swooping by unannounced?
O! The agony…
Hurry back!
I’ve been following this thread on and off since 2am last night. Sampiro, I’m amazed at your patience with your family; they make mine look like something straight outta Maryberry.
You make it sound damn funny though.