The Celibacy
Posterchild
"...Michael Jackson has been married..twice, Richard Ramirez got married on death row, even Gomer Pyle had Miss Poovey! Where is my Miss Poovey?..."

TROLLING ON NEW YEAR'S EVE

New Year’s Eve and I am entering the club. Alone.

It has taken a great deal of self-motivation (and two Vicodins) for me to arrive at this spot. I have always tended to swim against the crowd on this holiday designed for massive expressions of manufactured frivolity, as if it is almost impossible for me to have a good time on command. One of my favorite New Year’s Eve to date was spent home alone drinking wine, smoking a cigar (during that one year when it was really, really hip to do that) and watching the implosion of the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas. That was a good New Year’s Eve.

But, not tonight. This year is going to be different. Tonight I begin the search for my ladylove, my life partner, my “Ms. Right.” Or, at the very least...someone I can get to second base with.

I start this search at THE spot for the rockabilly/alternative country crowd in Los Angeles. Alt. country, as it is referred to, is shorthand for country singers that don’t make any money. Tonight, the crowd has gathered to toast in the new year with the Western Swing stylings of Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys. I pay the cover charge of $15 and immediately belly up to the bar like a cross between George Wendt and Jabba the Hutt. I order a Long Island Iced Tea. My first mistake.

This is my “nesting” thing; I try to make it look like I am not here to meet women, just to watch wacky sports bloopers on the TV with the sound turned off. Still the nest is warm, the nest has cable, but the nest is empty.

Ten o’clock and things are really starting to swing. The club is filling up with all sorts of rockabilly cats and kittens. The guys pretty much fall into one of two categories, A.) the Fonzie on meth look. Very thin, with hair piled high, beau coup tattoos and a two-foot long silver key chain at their side. And B.) the Hip Hillbilly. This look consists of well-worn overalls and a T-shirt of an obscure band featuring a semi-obscene graphic of a devil character doing a chick on a Harley. The good thing about the Hip Hillbilly is that almost anyone can pull it off. The bad thing is that on a “getting sex” level it goes 90-10 in favor of the Meth Fonizes. I am wearing a camel hair jacket, jeans and look like a junior college English professor who has just been denied tenure and is facing sexual harassment charges from angry young coeds for admiring their hairstyles. This look gets even less play than the Hip Hillbilly does, but I couldn’t bring myself to slap on the Big Smiths. Not tonight, not with this ass.

Now for the women, oh my god, the women. Nothing beats these rockabilly fillies. At this moment, I find myself in a Betty Page sandwich. To my left is a frightened, tied-up bondage Betty. To my right is a straight out, red-hot, leopard print Betty. I quickly use my scorability quotient (drunkenness multiplied by low esteem divided by time of night) I turn to the left. Sadly, I underestimated the effects of the Long Island Iced Tea and the Vicodins; my attempt at witty banter careens off wildly. My “Can I buy you a drink?” comes out as “I have a backed-up sink.” Bondage Betty nods her head in mock sympathy and quickly beats it to the protective grasp of the nearest Meth Fonzie. I make a mental note on a napkin to work on some leather and whip quips.

No problem. One Betty left. I turn to leopard print Betty, only to find her replaced by this man-mountain of a woman. A huge blonde dressed in a gingham shirt tied off at the waist, a pair of blues jeans and footwear of indeterminable nature. This gal could be a pulling guard on the offensive line of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

I am soooo turned on!

Betty Page is nice, but nothing beats a woman you can rassle with. I summon all my powers of speech and say, “I sure do love that shirt!”

Big mistake. The first five compliments that a guy gives a girl should always be related to matters above the shoulders. Like “You have beautiful eyes,” or “I love your hair!” “I like your shirt,” is code for “Man, what great breasts you have and I would like to bury my head in the valley of those peaks until I pass out from lack of oxygen.” I totally negate that this woman has a mind and turn her into a sex object.

She doesn’t seem to mind.

”Why, thank you. I got it...”

Then she goes off on this long story about the history of the shirt, where it came from, the fabric it is made off, how she won it on Ebay. After a few minutes of polite smiling and nodding, she finally stops talking. It’s a rough start and I am dazed, kinda like a guy spending his first night in state prison, who thinks that if he is nice to everyone, they won’t make him wear a dress and answer to the name Pamela.

”Wow, that’s a great story! Can I buy you a drink, sweet thang?”

After a few drinks I revert back to my Southern accent. As if I’m trying to channel that “Elvis-butter-dripping-off-a-hot biscuit” voice, that chicks are powerless to resist.

“I don’t think so.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t think so, but thanks anyway.” And off she sashays.

Mother of wheat!

I have never had an offer for a free drink turned down before. Good God, am I such a loser that she can’t spend the five minutes of time it would require to drink the FREE drink I would buy for her gingham-wearing ass? Personally, I would drink with Ted Bundy if he was buying. I make another mental note on my napkin to ask all the girls I know why they would refuse a free drink from an obviously nice guy. Do they think that if they accept my drink I will get some sort of sexual chit and after I have 20 chits I can redeem them for sexual favors? You know, like those jungle tribes who thought a flash camera stole their souls?

The rejection and the Betty Pages and the slapping bass and the Vikes had me a bit confused. I head for the men’s room. I stand in line waiting my turn with a bunch of guys who look like they are at an audition for the Stray Cats, “E! Hollywood True Story.” After a few moments, I finally reach the urinal trough. As I unzip, lift and aim, I notice something written on the wall.

Agnes Moorehead is God!

Hmmmm. Agnes Moorehead is God.

Not A god.

Not godlike.

But God.

Endora from “Bewitched?” God?

Granted, on the show she had many “God-like” qualities. The ability to be anywhere in a moment’s notice coupled with a loving, yet vindictive nature. God turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt had nothing on Endora giving Darrin a pigs head right before a big meeting. But this didn’t say Endora was God; but that Agnes Moorehead was.

I want to…need to...work this out right away, but I’m already in violation of every unwritten rule for straight men’s bathrooms. Instead of doing my business and exiting in a timely fashion, I was lingering. The rockabilly boys were looking at me like I was one of those guys at a porno theatre who wears a trench coat and, even though the theatre is empty, sits in the same row as you.

As I leave the bathroom of the epiphany, it is 30 minutes before midnight. The bar is packed and despite the Vicodin and Long Island Iced Tea, I feel a sense of clarity. The gingham linebacker is being twirled around the floor to a tune called “Feelin’ Kinda Lucky.” And though she is a big gal, she moves with the grace of a…of a…of a not so big gal. On every twirl we make momentary eye contact and I wonder, in that millisecond, if she can tell I now know the identity of the Messiah. But she is Western swung away from me before I can confirm her reaction.

They start handing out the party hats and the assorted noisemakers made from the finest of cardboard. As midnight draws closer, folks are starting to check out their midnight kiss options. I have never understood this pathological need to kiss someone at midnight, but folks act as if the success of the entire next year depended on it. “I lost my job, my stocks tanked and one of my kidneys shut down, but at least I got kissed last New Year’s Eve!” But trust me, nothing is worse than having no one to kiss and being left with the bartender giving you a hearty handshake. I hate the hearty handshake. This year there will be no hearty handshake.

Ah, that kiss, that damn kiss. In all my New Year’s Eveing I have noticed three types of midnight kisses.

A) The “Fuck You, We Are Deeply in Love” Kiss—This is where couples flaunt their couplehood to the fullest extent. This kiss last well past the tasteful time limit of midnight kisses. It involves much swaying back and forth with arms fully clasped around their partner. They project to each other the image that the outside world ceases to exists when they kiss. This couple rarely makes it to Valentine’s Day.

B) The “Let’s Pay The Tab, Before I Do You On The Pool Table” Kiss—No swaying here, just hip-grinding, butt-grabbing tongue-thrusting action like a speeded-up salsa album. This kiss can be dangerous to those party revelers who stand too close to the multi-tentacled lust animal. One could easily be knocked over or have their ass mistakenly grabbed. It is this kiss that elicits the most jealousy amongst the bar’s potential handshake crowd (i.e. me). This couple rarely makes it to the kick-off of the Orange Bowl.

C) The “I Don’t See Any Open Sores” Kiss—The “Hail Mary” of the midnight kisses. It is tradition winning over common sense. It is the “maybe no one I know will see me kiss this person that I wouldn’t usually give the time of day to.” It is the….well, you get the point. This couple rarely makes it to 12:15. There are slight variations and intermingling of the above, but it pretty much holds form. Right now A & B are out for me and C is looking pretty poor.

I head back to my spot at the bar and notice a cute blond sitting by herself on the stool next to mine. I rub my eyes worried that she is a mirage, a sexual oasis in my desert of celibacy. Hot damn! She is not a mirage and has no open sores to speak of.

I notice that she is holding a towel of ice on her hand and is in obvious pain. This has to work in my favor. It is easier to bag a wounded deer, then a healthy rabbit. And, I am a big fan of deer.

She smiles through her tears as I sit down.

“Ohmygod, what happen to your hand?”
“It got smashed by the stall door in the women’s room. Some girl just slammed the door and then just walked away.”
“You’re kidding? Do you think it’s broken?”
“No, but I am probably going to lose a nail.”
“You look like you need a drink. Can I buy you one?”

Pause...Pause...Pause.

“Oh, you’re so kind,” says the wounded deer. “I’ll have a white wine.”

Yes. Yes, I am kind.

This had Kiss C written all over it. Under normal circumstances, I would be thinking of the “pay the tab and hump” Kiss B scenario. This is one of my worst flaws. I tend to turn every potential relationship into some sort of sexual chess game, projecting ten moves down the line to where I capture her knight and bed the queen. This plotting then manifests itself in a nervous possessive energy that tends to turn off any woman, especially one that you met only 45 seconds ago.

But tonight is different.

The deer is named Sarah. She is from Wisconsin and, like half of LA, she is on the fringes of the movie industry. Her urinal-smashed hand means that she is unable to dance, which discourages other deer hunters and keeps one of my many flaws unrevealed. I keep plying her with white wine and before you know it midnight is a minute away. Unbeknownst to us, the pairing of kissers has already taken place and my wounded fawn and I are now matched. As the prerecorded ball in New York City begins its videotaped descent and the countdown hits zero, I have my New Year’s kiss. But, I also have one of those “Grinch-on-the-mountain, trying-to-save-the-toys” moments. Maybe instead of the three previously mentioned New Year’s Kisses, there is a fourth kind. The “Unlimited Hope For The Year Ahead” kiss. Who knows how long those couples last, but at the moment, it does not seem to matter.

Maybe, God/Agnes willing, just maybe, this will be the year.

The Celibacy Posterchild "...Michael Jackson has been married..twice, Richard Ramirez got married on death row, even Gomer Pyle had Miss Poovey! Where is my Miss Poovey?..."

"...Michael Jackson has been married..twice, Richard Ramirez got married on death row, even Gomer Pyle had Miss Poovey! Where is my Miss Poovey?..."

TROLLING ON NEW YEAR'S EVE

Celibacy Posterchild Archives

The Celibacy
Posterchild
"...Michael Jackson has been married..twice, Richard Ramirez got married on death row, even Gomer Pyle had Miss Poovey! Where is my Miss Poovey?..."