Look Evelyn, Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them.: A Collection Of New Essays (14 page)

Sue looked puzzled.

“He didn’t know Steve Irwin. He’s joking.”

Sue’s eyes narrowed, “Oh really. What do you do David? Are you a clown?”

“Of sorts. What do you do Sue? Work in a wind tunnel?”

Sue turned to Holly, “You couldn’t find a nice American boy to settle down with?”

When people ask where my wife and I met, I generally make up something - we met at space camp, or a rodeo, or were the only two that turned up to a group counselling session for borderline Agoraphobia. It gives them something to talk about later. I’d told half the people I spoke to that night it was, “Kind of like in the movie
Pretty Woman
, except I’m Julia Roberts,” and the other half that we met on the set of
So You Think You Can Dance
.

‘Oh, you’re a dancer?”

“Yes. It’s my craft.”

“What kind of dance?”

“Name one.”

“Modern?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

The truth is, Holly and I met spelunking. My torch dimmed and she had a spare set of batteries. Afterwards, we had drinks and got along well. She was American, visiting Australia on a work visa, I was working for a small branding agency called de Masi jones at the time. We were rarely apart after that. We moved in together, married, moved countries, and bought a house. Other stuff happened between that stuff obviously but it was just the normal stuff; walks along the beach, eating spaghetti like the two dogs in that cartoon about two dogs, spinning clay pots etc.

We also had to go through the whole immigration process, which consists of completing several hundred forms with accompanying supporting documents, writing cheques, and attending interviews in which we were tested, in separate rooms, to see if we were really living as a married couple.

“What side of the bed does your wife sleep on?”

“From which direction?”

“Sorry?”

“Looking out from in bed, Holly is on my left. But if you were standing at the foot of the bed looking at us, I’d be on your left.”

“No, you do it like a car. From where you’re sitting.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

“So your answer is left?”

“Actually, it’s more in the middle. I usually only have a few feet or so. On the right. Although, sometimes she sleeps diagonally.”

I’ll just mark it down as left. Next question. Describe your bed linen.”

“Wrinkly.”

I think you are meant to take sheets out of the dryer as soon as it stops spinning but who does that? It’s like leaving the dishwasher and washing machine open when you are not using them so they don’t get smelly. Who’s walking around their house as if everything is perfectly normal with appliance doors open?

Holly pulled me through a sea of oversized grey suits and polyester ankle length pleated dresses towards the bar.

“She seemed nice,” I said.

Holly gave me a dirty look, “She works down the hall from me. All I asked was for you to be normal for thirty minutes.”

“Why did you tell her that I wasn’t friends with Steve Irwin? I was going to make up a whole thing about packs of starfish terrorising Australian beach communities.”

“Yes, I’ve already been asked twice if we really met on the set of
So You Think You Can Dance
.”

“Nobody asked about the movie
Pretty Woman
?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what about
Pretty Woman
?”

“Someone asked me where we met and I told them it was kind of like the movie Pretty Woman.”

“You told people I work with that I was a prostitute?”

“No, I said I was Julie Roberts.”

“Oh my god.”

“It gives them something to talk about. Something apart from
Wheel of Fortune
and what they read in this year’s
Farmer’s Almanac
. Old people crave gossip. It’s like crack to them. Take away gossip at their age and they’d have nothing.”

The weird little man behind the bar filled Holly’s glass of wine and handed it to her with a creepy smile. The top half of his body was normal shaped, fairly slim for a man in his seventies, but from his waist down, he had a fat woman’s body. He was wearing ‘mum pants’ that were tight in the crotch and actually had a kind of flat, wide, camel toe. He was also wearing an ‘official bartender’ badge that he had made himself.

“Just a beer thanks.” I told him.

“No, sorry, you’ve already had two. ”

“It must have been someone who looks like me, I just got here.”

“No, it was you.”

“Any beer is fine.”

“This is my husband David,” Holly said, “He’s Australian. David, this is Tim.”

We shook hands. He had the short man handshake; squeezy like it’s a competition.

“Nice to meet you, Tim. I’m fairly sure one of those Amstel Lights in the cooler behind you has my name on it.”

“There’s a two drink maximum.”

“It’s for a friend. Who hasn’t had any yet.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Fine. I have had two but I didn’t get to drink my second one. Some old man with sores on his face mixed our drinks up and I got the one with denture spit in it.”

“That’s not my fault. You should have kept an eye on it.”

“Just give me a beer.”

“There’s a two drink maximum.”

“Right, well I commend you on taking your job so seriously, I see you made yourself a little badge and everything, but the moment you’re not watching, I’m taking an Amstel light. ”

Tim turned to the large cooler on the counter behind him, closed the lid and snapped the clasp shut. While he did so, I grabbed a bottle of Stella Artois from the counter in front. He turned back.

“That foiled my plans.” I told him, “You’re like Kevin Costner in that movie. The one where he protects Whitney Houston and they fall in love, not the one where he swims a lot.”

I raised my Stella in salute.

“Where did you get that?” Tim asked, “Did you take it off the counter?”

“This? No, an older boy gave it to me.”

“I see you’ve met Holly’s husband David,” said Sue.

She’d followed us through the crowd like the robot cowboy in the movie West World and, if you were to put Yul Bryner in a wispy grey wig and under twenty G’s acceleration, they’d look like identical twins.

“Yes,” said Tim, “David was just about to ask me for a bottle opener.”

“No, it’s a twist off.”

“David tells jokes did you know?” Sue continued. She looked at me, “Tell Tim the one about Steve Irwin.”

“It wasn’t really a joke,” I replied, “ I just said that I knew him and it’s tragic he died.”

“Oh,” said Tim, “You knew Steve Irwin?”

“No,” explained Sue, “Apparently that’s the joke. He didn’t actually know Steve Irwin.”

Sue and Tim stared at each other for a moment. It was if they were communicating telepathically and I think there was a little nod.

“Tell us another joke, David,” Sue said.

When I was about eight or nine, there was a boy in my class named Patrick who told a joke one day to a group of us in the playground. It was a dirty joke and we all giggled because it had the word vagina in it. I didn’t get the joke but I laughed anyway so as not to appear stupid. Everyone encouraged Patrick to tell it again and he did. I still didn’t get it and had my suspicions that the only reason everyone told him to repeat it is because they didn’t get it either. Patrick was the star of the day and he told the same joke about twenty times during break. The next day during lunch, about ten people asked me if I wanted to hear the same joke. By the third day, everybody had heard it so everybody was telling it to somebody who had already heard it.  It was about a week later, during ‘religion studies’ class, that I suddenly realised Patrick had been telling the joke wrong. Nobody hearing or telling joke ‘got it’ because somehow Patrick had fucked up the punch line. The punchline wasn’t, “Can I smell your feet then?”, it had to be, “Oh, it must be your feet then.” 

I leant over to where Patrick was sitting at the desk in front of me and tapped him on the back.

“It’s not ‘Can I smell your feet then?’ I told him, “It’s, ‘Oh, it must be your feet then’, you told it wrong.”

“No,” he said, “my way is better.”

“What?”

“My way is much funnier.”

“Your way doesn’t make any sense. You’ve been telling it wrong the whole time.”

“What doesn’t make any sense?” the boy sitting next to Patrick asked. His name was Adam but everyone called him Nits because he once had hair lice.

“Patrick told the joke wrong,” I said, “It’s not, ‘Can I smell your feet then?’, it’s, ‘Oh, it must be your feet then.’”

“No,” said Nits, “Patricks way is heaps funnier.”

An argument broke out.

“Right,” yelled the teacher. He was an elderly chaplain that only taught the one class. “David, Patrick, Adam. What seems to be the problem? Why aren’t you quietly colouring in your picture of Jesus healing a beggar? Stand up please.”

We stood.

“Come on out with it.”

“David says Patrick told a joke wrong,” Nits declared, “But he didn’t.”

“What joke?”

The three of us stared at each other, eyes wide in panic.

“David, what’s the joke?”

“Um...”

“Right now please.”

“A man and a lady get into an elevator and the man says, “Can I smell your... um... thingy?” and the lady says, “No, certainly not.” and the man says...”

“RIGHT!”

All three of us had to stay in during recess and write, “Jesus hears everything we say,” fifty times each on the blackboard. If this was true, Jesus must have been pretty exasperated at hearing the joke told wrong thousands of times. At the end of recess, as we headed off to our next class, the chaplain called me back and asked me what the punchline was. It must have been bothering him. I told him and he didn’t laugh but his lips quivered a bit.

“Okay,” I said to Sue and Tim, “A man and a lady get into an elevator and the man says...”

Holly's eyes widened in horror and she shook her head. She’d heard the joke. I was thrown for a second. I had nothing.

“er...”

“Yes?” asked Sue.

“...the man says, “I really like your dress. Is that Rayon?” and the lady says, “No, I think it’s Polyester, I got it from J
C 
Penney.””

Tim laughed for a second and then frowned. Sue just frowned.

“That’s more of a conversation than a joke,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You’re really quite bad at telling jokes. Buying a dress from JC Penney isn’t funny.”

“No, I suppose not. It’s quite sad in fact. JC Penney is dreadful.”

“My dress is from JC Penny,” Sue said.

“Well there you go.”

The John Denver cover band was cut off as the president of the bank took over the stage. The bottlecap-stick player seemed a bit annoyed by this as he was in the middle of a solo.

The president tapped the microphone a couple of times and asked for everyone’s attention.

“Firstly, a big hand for Brian and his band, The Rocking Mountain Highs. They certainly are ‘rocking’ the roof tonight.”

The audience clapped politely. A few people acknowledged the pun. It wasn’t much of a pun but the president had put a large amount of emphasis on it so perhaps people felt obligated to chuckle. Tim laughed loudly about three seconds too long.

“Secondly, um, Tim would like me to remind everyone that there is a two drink maximum at the bar. This the eighth year in a row Tim has helped out behind the bar since retiring and we really appreciate his efforts.”

The audience clapped again, though not quite as enthusiastically this time. It wasn’t just me who thought the function would be a lot better if Tim fucked off and died. Tim acknowledged the crowd with a big wave and a little bow as if he had just been elected Mayor of the village.

If
I
was the village Mayor, I would make it a law that everyone had to punch Tim at least once a week. And that everyone had to give me money and bring me stuff. I’d actually be the worst person I can think of to be put in a position of power. It’s said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely but I’d be at that absolutely corrupted bit well before I got anywhere near the absolute power part.