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I’m riding shotgun, AGAIN, because as queen of everything Oprah
ALWAYS has to drive. And yes, it’s her car, but hell, she never
fails to hit me up for gas money and every time we we fill up
it’s "Go get me Fresca, go get me some Yodels" and who pays? Me.
Celine is in the back yammering away in that disturbed
half-English of hers, it never stops, I just turn the radio up
which usually works unless GOD FORBID one of her own horrid
little anthems comes on and then she’s singing along loud enough
to make your ears bleed, beating her frail bird cage of a chest
with one knotted, anorexic fist and I swear to the sweet baby
Jesus it’s all I can do to keep from grabbing the wheel and
steering us straight into oncoming traffic.
You know why Oprah includes Celine? To make herself look better.
No other reason. Richest person on earth, if she said she was
reading a fucking government manual on suspension bridge load
testing it would become an overnight bestseller and she’s still
so low self-esteem she has to cart around some maniacal Canuck
human scarecrow to feel good about herself. And why do I hang
with them? I don’t know. I swear to GOD I don’t know.
Oprah’s hammering the Wild Turkey I PAID FOR like there’s no one
else in the car and I know what’s coming next, I could almost
say it for her, "Let’s go by Steadman’s house and fuck up his
mailbox". I’m all "For Christ’s sake, O, what even makes you
think that poor bastard has his mailbox up yet, we knocked it
over twice last week, he probably wised up and got a PO box by
now" and she just laughs, which is a relief because it means she
hasn’t reached the mean stage of her drunkenness yet.
"Pool Ovair, POOL OH-VAIR!" Celine shrieks from the back, an
octave higher and thirty decibels louder than the constant
patois that had, over the last half hour, mercifully become just
so much outrageously accented white noise, and O goes "Shut the
hell up, you freak!" and Celine screams "POOL… OH… VAIR!!! And
starts scrambling into the front, all elbows and knees and chin
so we pull over.
Oprah looks in the rear view mirror, gives her the eyes that
gave an intern a near fatal Grand Mal seizure just that morning
and asks what the HELL is so important Celine has to harsh the
buzz before the evening has even begun? Now you got to be a
friggin’ micro cephalic moron not to know that’s a rhetorical
question, but like I said, that’s just why O keeps Celine
around, so it should come as no big surprise when she says:
"I gots a Jelly Bean up mah nose."
Except she says the ‘J’ like the ‘Zs’ in Zsa Zsa Gabor, ‘Zselly
Bean’ and puts the stress on the word ‘Bean’ which somehow
changes the moment from surreal to incredibly infuriating and I
have this disturbingly real flash of just what it would be like
to smash her right in the teeth. I mean I can see three of her
big old horse choppers let go, I can feel the skin on my
knuckles snapping like overcooked sausage casing And she’s till
TALKING!
"You know, you know, ah was play-ING? Wis zah Zselly BEANS? Kind
of jus’ rubbing zem ovair mah face, you know, while I was
telling you about Re-NAY? My Mana-GAIR an ‘us-BAND? An’ how he
is old enough to be mah Fa-ZAIR an’ ‘ow I sed-yoose ‘EEM when I
am only za teen ay-JAIR? And zah zselly BEAN? It jus’ go up my
nose! ‘An it won’ come OUT!!"
I’ve been grinding my teeth in my sleep lately and it’s giving
me migraines plus I’ve broken two molars already this year which
Dental does not cover and costs about a grand a pop and now I
realize I’m doing it awake. And when I try to stop, it’s
actually an effort, it takes real willpower to unlock my jaw.
Like I don’t already owe her enough for that God Damn Titanic
song, now the bitch is giving me dentures.
"’An you know, I have to SEENG, for my come-BACK! I’m haveeng my
come-BACK, from my ree-tie-yer-MENT, ‘ow can I seeng wis’ zis
zselly-BEEN up my NOSE?!"
Now the thing about O is you totally never know which way she’s
going. I mean one time back when we used to hang with Liza,
we’re at Red Lobster? And right in the middle of dinner O
reaches over the table and crushes Minelli’s left pinkie with
the nutcracker for a whole hell of a lot less then sticking a
‘Zselly-BEAN’ up her nose. Plus she made her keep the plastic
bib on in the emergency room. And now? She hands Dion a Kleenex.
And she says to me, totally calm, "Why don’t you go in that
Seven Eleven and see if you can find Celine a tweezers?"
And I go "Why don’t YOU go in that Seven Eleven and see if you
can find Celine a fucking tweezers? And by the way, Miss Perfect
it’s either ‘a Twee-ZER’ or ‘a pair of Twee-ZERS’ but only an
idiot says ‘a Twee-ZERS’" Because the thing is? I’m not afraid
of Oprah. That’s probably why she hangs with me most nights, but
that doesn’t mean she brooks any challenge to her omnipotence.
Her eyes get so thin it’s a wonder she can see through them and
she says "Get. Celine. A. Tweezers." And I go. But as I’m going
I say "Don’t suppose you might spring for ‘em, Book Club? No.
Didn’t think so". Oh, she hears all right, but she pretends not
to which is how we keep the peace.
And you know some days it does not pay to get the hell out of
bed because who’s over at the Slurpy machine sneaking No Name
gin into her Big Gulp? Meredith Fucking Viera. And I just keep
my back to her because there is MORE than enough blood under
that bridge, but God hates me and he always has. There’s nail
clippers, there’s nail SCISSORS, like anybody goes to Seven
Eleven to buy friggin’ NAIL scissors, but I’ll be damned if I
can find ‘a tweezers’ and I’m sure O knew there wouldn’t be one
which is exactly why she sent me in here. I’m just starting to
wonder if maybe I could pull the damn Bean out of her snoot with
scotch tape and a push pin when this cloud of hot Clorets breath
wafts over me and it’s the 1980’s again and I’m ‘helping’ Mer
‘get over’ getting chucked off 60 Minutes. Yeah, and you know
what? I owned a "ThompsonTwins" album and I had a Mullet, too.
It wasn’t a good time for anybody, okay?
After that, things got worse faster than Al Roker on a Slip N’
Slide.
Continue onward to
Chapter II
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