I Got Your Regrets Right Here

Look at me, lady.

What is it that you don’t get?

I haven’t received a postmarked party invitation since I was in the sixth grade. Po’ white trash don’t grace no fuckin’ guest lists. My social circle is a dot. How did I compromise the integrity of your Rolodex?

We have met. We have spoken. I know that you know that I don’t shave, I bathe when I itch, and four-letter words are the parentheses around every ill-conceived sentence that I utter. So you invite me to a party with your friends and neighbors? Don’t you like them?

Is this my golden opportunity to make more friends who can borrow my tools? I already have enough of those friends. Is it my chance to meet more people who are marginally lucid and magnanimously boring even before they become inebriated? I already know enough of those people.

How perceptive you must be, how grand a judge of character, to pierce my transparently surly facade and recognize that I just gotta sing, gotta dance. There’s no fooling you; I am the embodiment of a gay and spirited reveler.

And a costume party at that? I’m staggered by your extraordinary uniquity. Marginally lucid and magnanimously boring middle-aged people suited up for a Hawaiian luau. Lots of pasty skin and moles draped in floral fabrics.

Bring a dish to pass? I hope I haven’t misplaced my recipe for that scrumptious artichoke frittata. Or the apple cranberry cookie cobbler that was all the rage at the spring potluck.

Kids are welcome, too? You’re not just doing that for me, are you? I can think of no better way to fill the gaping hole left by my own childlessness than to spend a Saturday evening enjoying the youthful exuberance of a stranger’s spooge production.

You’ve requested an RSVP, so I now have a to-do list where previously there was none. I have acquired a task simply by virtue of opening my mail. Tag, I’m it. It’s now incumbent upon me to feign the previous engagement that I oh so wish I could cancel. Had I only known you were planning such a festive affair.



Dear Gracious Hostess:

No.

I can’t come. I’ll be watching TV.

I don’t want to meet your friends and neighbors. I don’t care about their new cars, new houses, new businesses, new wives, new knees, new hair, new pacemakers and new tits.

I’m in costume every day. I’m dressed as an asshole.

The only dishes I prepare are cereal and frozen pizza. I pass them from my throat to my colon.

Children make good speed bumps.

Look at me, lady. I am forty-nine years old. No wife, no kids, no job, no goals, no hopes, no dreams, no sharing, no caring, no interest. No way.

But thanks for the invite. We’ll do lunch.