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Bingo

Bingo's been off her Lithium for two days and is dealing with it as best she can. Keep in mind that Bingo is out of her tit. Bi-polar, schitzo-effective, OCD, manic. Off her banana. Fucked for lunch. A bit wacky to say the least. It can be hard to convince her that bugs are not crawling under her skin at any given moment. Now there really are bugs under her skin but shes keeping it together in her own way. She dances in front of the command center to Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes and writes "Scabies" across the breakfast table in Cheez Whiz. I didn't even know we had Cheez Whiz but it's good to know it wasn't wasted.

Bingo is Oddjob. Her name varies. But it's usually Bingo or Oddjob.

Father Luke shuffled down to the clinic at the foot of the road to get a perscription - or "subscription" as he calls it - for scabies cream. They make you get a perscription so they know you're not abusing it. You don't want that shit getting into the hands of teenagers who will just end up huffing it under the bleachers for a cheap high.

Perfectly Good Stuffed Animals

People are always quick to justify the aftermath of a bad relationship by simply using standard and somewhat empty words to describe intangible emotions. "I thought I was in love but it turned out I was just obsessed," they'll say, as though they'd just gotten the results of lab work done to pinpoint it. It's a common cover story for the relationship that ended when she had to change her phone number to get away from you. "Oh, ya, I was just infatuated," you'll say, as though you were just a victim of circumstance and had no culpability in the matter.

I met her during a two-week stint at Knuckleheads Comedy Club in Minneapolis in the summer of 1994 after having lived on the road for less than a year. She was one of two out-of-my-league women that decided in the same week to show interest in me, leading me to buy my own press and suddenly dismiss a lifetime of being ignored by hot chicks as a fluke, an oversight that they would be sure never to let happen again. I left town feeling like a pimp on Navy payday and imagined both of these ladies crying into a pillow at my absence. I never considered the possibility that they may have only shown interest in me because I was leaving town. It didn't occur to me then, nor did it occur to me several weeks later when, on seeing an empty couple months on my calendar, I decided to return to my waiting angels.

My cockiness had ruined my relationship with Bobbie within a very short time of my arrival but it didn't matter, as I was sure Christine was the one I really wanted. For one reason, she was the one I hadn't had sex with yet, and two... Well, there was no reason two. Reason one was plenty. And I was so sure that she wanted me that I didn't even detect the sarcasm when she'd said on the phone before my arrival "You can stay with me, my mother will love it." Now I was scrambling for a place to stay.

I wound up doing couch time at my friend Paula's house and spent my days corrupting her 13-year-old son Jonathan. My car had shit the bed a hundred miles outside of town and now I was broke, homeless without a ride or a place to be. I was no longer the life of the party.. Christine was interested in going out and getting crazy on occasion at best. What made it a real disaster though, was that she'd never actually come out and say it. One minute she was giving me a noncommittal and unsolicited hand job while we sat in her car and the next minute she'd go out of town for days with friends she didn't want to talk about. She'd fuck me and a week later deny to me that she ever had, straight-faced save for a devious sparkle in her eye. It drove me mad. The more distant she became the more I needed to be near her. I tried to be cute about it. She had a day job as a secretary for a local used car sales magazine. I got a job there telemarketing for a day, just to see the look on her face when I punched in for work. It was funny, but eventually that type of shit wore thin and Christine told me that she had another boyfriend and that I should, in so many words, fuck off. I was devastated.

I had dates coming up out of town and got myself together to get back to a life on the road. The night I was to leave, I took out the trash at Paula's place and noticed an enormous box next to the dumpster filled four feet deep with brand new stuffed animals. I couldn't imagine why anyone would throw them away. So I get the bright idea and head off to Knuckleheads where she was working and I fill her car - a tiny old Honda Civic - to the walls with stuffed animals, covering every inch but the drivers seat. I called her drunk late the next night from the gig in Sault St Marie, Mich. She seemed mildly amused at the stuffed animal gag, only because I had left town more than likely, but the conversation wound up in a slurring "I-loved-you-and you-didn't-care" diatribe where you could hear her eyes roll as she hung up the phone. She called me a psycho and told me not to call again. I'm sure I did a few more times til she took the phone off the hook. I woke up with that familiar stink of shame and left it to actual road miles to distance me from the embarrassment.

About a year later I finally made contact with Christine, I forget how exactly but it was friendly and we went out for lunch. Eventually conversation turned to that night with the stuffed animals. After several minutes of "Oh-my-Gods" and light histrionics, it finally came out that she had driven around for weeks with the animals in her car only to have her and her boyfriend wind up catching a vicious case of scabies from them. Scabies are evidently much like pubic lice that crawl down into your hair follicles where they party and lay eggs. She said they were everywhere, heads, eyebrows, everywhere. She said the boyfriend still had scars in his genital region from scratching so much. She'd thought I'd done it on purpose. I wished I had. I just couldn't understand why anyone would chuck out perfectly good stuffed animals like that.

Christine and I remain good friends. She's toned down a bit over the years as have I but there's still something about her that keeps me off base a bit. I could say now that I was never really in love with Christine, that it was just a case of wanting what I couldn't have but the reality is that the feeling is exactly the same. Love and obsession are the same emotion, only love requires the obsession of both parties to lay claim to the title. Being obsessed with someone who is obsessed with you, fleeting as it may be, is quite possibly the best feeling in the world. Being in love with someone alone just makes you look like a dick.