Tuesday, September 01, 2009

This I Tell You Brother

If you don't read the previous blog, this will make less sense than usual. So, really, just read it.


While you two sober up, we allow you two to sit in the vineyard gardens. It’s lovely there: the sunlight dappling the grape vines, the quiet only broken by the gentle buzzing of the bees at the nearby beehives, the friendly vineyard dog. The very friendly dog. Buster, the nine month-old Labrador retriever with the crotch fetish and the submissive peeing issue. I don’t care where each of you is on the subject of pets. But if we address this now, you should never turn to your mate and say in a hurt voice, “But I thought you LIKED dogs!” If Buster checking out your undercarriage and baptizing your shoes doesn’t bother you, you can safely be called a dog person. For a small additional fee, I can arrange for the barn cat to spring unexpectedly into someone’s lap and claw-bat viciously at any attempt to pet its rump.

Everyone feeling sober after the wine tasting? Good, because you have a room reservation for the night up at a quaint cottage in the mountains. The front desk closes at dusk. The sun is heading towards the treetops.

Race, daters, race.

Learn how the driver handles narrow mountain roads when the possibility of sleeping in the car grows with each passing minute. Learn what sort of relationship the passenger has with The Creator as the car careens up the twisty two-laner and careens around a succession of logging trucks hauling what seems to be the entire Adirondacks.

Race, daters, race.

Arrive at the bungalow court with minutes to spare. Grab your key and head for the restaurant. Discover the restaurant is closed. Ask the desk-clerk where the locals eat. Learn that in the thirty-seconds it took to discover the restaurant was closed, the desk-clerk has evaporated. Cobble together a dinner from what is in the car: a fine repast of Tums, damp Cheetos, the last Slim Jim and a bottle of Clamato juice. Neither one of you drinks the Clamato juice.

[As provisioners of this exercise, we keep a can of Clamato juice in the car for just this moment. We have yet to replace it.]

Finally, you two are in your room. Perhaps, even through the rigors of the day, you have grown to find each other attractive. Perhaps you find each other extremely attractive. Perhaps you just want something pleasant to happen in this day. Well, whatever licentious thoughts you’re having you can just leave in the car with the clam juice. We’re looking for a person who can take you through your life, not through the night. And to keep you two focused on this larger goal, may I introduce the people in the cabin next to yours? Today, these people attended a wedding for friends in the clearing down by the waterfall. It was a lovely wedding, sweet and solemn. The people in the next cabin are compensating for having behaved like little angels all day by drinking a hearty mixture of peppermint schnapps and Robitussin. Here’s a favorite phrase of theirs:

WOO-HOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They have a few other choice phrases as well but they are all too obscene to render here. They also seem to have lots of hobbies, including:

1.) Smoking what they would call cigars but others would call used gym socks soaked in kim chee,
2.) Urinating against the wall of your cabin,
3.) Offering to kick each others asses. The women seem especially fond of this one.
4.) Vomiting on to your porch.

There is a phone in your room but the front desk-clerk has long gone back to civilization. Now it’s just you, your not-exactly date and your new friends the Visigoths. Watch closely how your companion handles this. Does she demand that you “Do something!” even though you’ve just heard them kick down an outbuilding because they thought it was looking at them funny? Does he say wistfully, “If I had a gun...” leading you to believe that he has only two gears, using a gun and wishing he had a gun? Does he negotiate with them, offering them Clamato juice? The car? You? Does she wait until they’re defiling a tree and burn down their cabin? Trust me; you need to know these things.

Eventually, dawn arrives and the Visigoths fall asleep, possibly resting in preparation of a later marauding attack on the Boy Scout camp down the road. You both sneak out, but not before discovering the outlets in the cabin were installed during the Metric Outlet Great Leap Forward of 1975, thereby leaving everyone without a hair-dryer, forced to go into the world without product and a flattening brush. I’m making sure you both have all the information you need.


Next time, we finish our Marathon. Frankly, I'm having entirely too good a time torturing them, but I fear they could start invoking the Geneva Convention.

12 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great blog as usual. I'm so in agreement with you. I think something like this should also be done before people are allowed to be parents. ;)

- Robin Raven who is not logged in...

11:15 PM  
Anonymous FurBabyMom said...

The last post and this post are just brilliant! I can't wait to read the last post in this trilogy. :)

~Elise

12:40 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

This series is hilarious and I cannot wait to find out how it ends for the Happy Couple. So true...so very true.

10:09 AM  
Blogger Judy said...

Please DO start carrying ads for replacement keyboards in your sidebar.

Snorting coffee on MY keyboard is okay. Today I am at my daughter's house and I'm not entirely sure whether or not I should confess about snorting coffee all over hers.

LOVE this.

10:21 AM  
Anonymous Karen said...

Now if it were the true Clamato juice that we have in Canada, i.e. a strange mix of tomato juice and clam juice, all you'd need to do would be to rim a glass with celery salt, pour some of that clamato juice in a class with vodka, throw in a bit of Worcestershire sauce and tobasco, and top it off with a lime, then you'd have what we in Canada call a Ceasar and after a few of those, you and your date would be having a great time!

4:00 PM  
Blogger Char said...

I agree with Karen - what's clamato without vodka?

5:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You make me laugh. And cherish my husband.

2:20 PM  
Anonymous FurBabyMom said...

A PRIVATE COMMENT!!

Hello Quinn. I've left a public comment on your last three blog posts previously, but none of those comments ever did show up. Each was appropriate and complimentary, so I'm not sure why they didn't post. I'm replying just as I always used to do - using "FurBabyMom", and signing my name (Elise). I honestly don't mind my comments not being visible, it's just that since they suddenly aren't I don't know if they are making their way to you or if there is a problem somehow.

At any rate, I continue to enjoy your blog very much. Your last two posts were just brilliant and so funny, and I look forward to the final post of the "trilogy" of the dating couple! :)

BTW, I'm dog_luvr on Twitter; you can message me there (or privately Direct Message me there) at your convenience if you'd like, just so I know if you are receiving my blog comments or not, or if somehow there is a problem.

Thank you. I hope this summer you have been enjoying the popularity of your very delightful book!

Best,
Elise

7:21 PM  
Anonymous FurBabyMom said...

Thank you Quinn, whatever the 'problem' was, it appears solved now. Truly, I'm just glad to know that all your readers' postive feedback, myself included, is making its way to you - you deserve to hear the praise and comments, since your posts entertain so many of us!

Best,
Elise

11:30 PM  
Anonymous Paula said...

So very, very funny and so very, very apt! A two day road trip killed one romance for me. He sipped cereal out of a cup, which I thought was endearing, but his penchant for stopping every place we could drive go karts was not. Such a shock!

I think I peed my pants a little during Part I, the fish taco stand miles from the sea.

Thank you for putting this out there for me to read.

6:32 AM  
Blogger Maggie said...

Quinn - Elise of the above comment and I are sisters under the skin. We worry.
I got all bent out of shape when my comments didn't get posted a year or so ago - but after much whining, you did indeed post my deathless prose (ummmm...what was it, btw? I certainly can't be expected to remember it - so much more deathless prose having passed through my keyboard by now...) But, I was greatly aided by reading your recent (and possibly final) post on the hated FaceBook...and realized that you are an equal opportunity ignorer...and I don't mean that in a bad way, because I understand completely. I do it all the time. I'm not a famous writer, though - so obviously you are under greater constraints. You aren't allowed to forget or ignore!
And, gosh - if this is sounding offensive to either Elise or to you - NO! That is not the intention. In fact, the intention was to be silly. Offensive AND silly would just be bad, so both of you please go with silly, OK?
To my point - oh, really? She has a point?
Well, yes, and here it is:
You CRACK ME UP. You are so spot-on with the marathon (even though part 3 is yet to come), that while reading parts 1 and 2, I almost choked on my Crystal Light. MY "consort" (and oh, I do love that description)even glanced over to see if I was choking to death - in which case he would need to find my Will and life insurance policy on a HOLIDAY WEEKEND, which would be a bummer. (A bigger bummer would have been his finding out that I HAVE no life insurance...)
But when I told him I was just reading Quinn's blog he said "Oh, that's all right then. You often snort liquid through your nose when reading Quinn..." (OK - he didn't say that. He said "Oh - HER! OK, then."
Plus... my book (well, my copy of YOUR book) arrived today! So, let me thank you in advance for the laughter - and probably a few tears as well.
Thanks for letting us ride along, Quinn!

2:22 AM  
Anonymous MidLifeMama said...

I just recently found your blog via Nanny Goats in Panties, and was laughing out loud in my office reading this. I went to a very conservative Christian college like the ones you describe, so can identify with that experience. And I have been married twice and would highly recommend your program. Actually, I pretty much identify all around. I call myself a situational extrovert - I can be if I have to but my inclination is to sit on my deck and read.

11:58 AM  

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