I'm trying to call Phoenix, misdial and get Fiji.  So I ask the guy for
instant credit.  He says you can't get instant credit.  I said I always
did when I had AT&T.  He says, "You're not dealing with AT&T.

Well I am now.

I am now.

I am now.

So this branch manager guy calls me up from one of these other
long-distance carriers, right?  And he says he heard about my problems
with the Phoenix-Fiji thing and that he was very very sorry and would I
please reconsider using his company?  He says he'll cut the basic rate
in half, give me free pay-cable for a month and even set up a date for
me with his nubile young daughter.  I say, "Wow, AT&T never gave me so
much." He says, "You're not. . .

So a little while later the guy from AT&T calls and says he heard about
my "defection from the flock."  He says his kid's gotta eat too and then
he starts bawling into the phone-- blubbering just like a woman.  So as
much as I want to nail this one guy's daughter, I say sure, hook me back
up.

No sooner does the AT&T guy hang up but the other guy calls me back and
this time he's crying.  And he brings his daughter to the phone and
she's crying too.  And then he faxes me this naked picture of her, but
like, the good parts are all covered up.  And she's something real
sweet, too, something like I  ain't seen in a while.  I say I'm still
not sure and so I hear him start fiddling with something and his
daughter starts screaming, "No daddy, don't kneel on the tatami mats,
don't part your robe, don't. . ."   I hear the guy  say, "You be my
second, daughter; fetch the katana." "No daddy, please daddy. . ." So
now this guy is going to commit ritual suicide, and like it's gonna be
on my head or something, when the call waiting goes off. So I yank the
phone out  of the wall, and fashion it into a noose when there's a knock
at the door . . .

So this guy calls from MCI, right?  Now by this time I'm getting pretty
damned tired of these calls.  I found out earlier today that my kid
broke her arm on the playground yesterday, but they couldn't get through
because I was on the phone all day with AT&T, SPRINT, and MCI.  So I
went down there and asked her principal why they couldn't tell the
operator to cut through, since it was an emergency, and that bitch just
gave me one of her best 'Don't you think we tried that, don't you think
this has ever happened before, you're the negligent parent not me not
me, my kid's at Harvard--so just screw you' looks and told me that the
phone people had blocked out the emergency lines, so the operator
couldn't cut through.

All right, I think, time to play hard ball.

So I say to the guy from MCI, can he put it in writing?  He calls my
bluff and says, sure, that his lawyers are already drawing up the
paperwork.  All right, I say, does MCI come with 16-bit Turbo Grafix,
the best animation, and a wide selection of the hottest games out there?
  The guy's breathing changed and I knew I had him. "No," he said, "I
don't think it does.  But Nintendo doesn't even do that." "Well," I
said.  "Genesis does." Genesis does. Genesis does.

So now I have no long-distance service at all and that suits me just
fine.  I mean, c'mon, two alimony checks a month, and my second wife's
lawyer makes me pay child support, which I consider pretty shrewd,
seeing as the broken-arm little playground slut lives with me, eats my
food, and threatens me with child-molestation charges if I step out of
line. The other day she shows me these anatomically-correct dolls she
has, just like the ones the police lady will use when she asks the kid
where daddy touched her.  And then she goes, "Right here, where Billy
touched me, and right here, where everyone touched me, and right here. .
." "All right, all right, you can have the bike.  Christ.  Get me a beer
already, willya?"


     So I'm trying to call overseas and I think I've dialed correctly
but--
     "Wokmonanapeakside."
     So I ask the operator for an international number.  And she says
she can't give me an international number, that she 'ain't no nukular
physicist.'"
     I say, "Well, AT&T. . ."
     She says "Begone" and hangs up.

     And then I'm walking down the street with that teenage jerk from
the Encyclopedia Brittanica commercial and he says, "There you are in
there stark white offices, and in front of you are those stark white
flakes."
     "Dandruff?  But I don't have--"
     "No, moron.  Cocaine.  Nose candy.  Bolivian marching powder."
     We both look at each other, point our fingers, smile and say
"Bingo."

     So I'm at lunch with some guy who says, "Well, didn't you ever
think you had been somewhere before?"
     "Well sure, I mean, that's not uncomm--"
     Then he puts his hand on my knee, looks me in my eye and asks, "In
another life?"
     "All right, back off."
     The waiter smiles and says, "I-I see you two are okay.  I'll come
back in a minute."
     The guy gives my thigh a squeeze.  "In a parallel dimension?"
     For some reason I am now fascinated.
     "Read about how little mole-men dug a tunnel from Afghanistan
through to Jacksonville, Florida, just to prove it could be done."
     "Did that happen?"
     The man takes my head in his hands and kisses me on my forehead.
"Read the book.  Read about how Benito Mussolini once beat Omar Sharif
at a bridge tournament while partnered with a meatball stromboli."
     "Did that--"
     I felt my shirt being pulled out of my pants.  Read the--"

     "Read about how Sir Clifford Cameron-Sweeney and his youthful bride
Marie spent their wedding night in King Tut's tomb and how she left him
the next morning for making her do weird stuff with a rotting corpse."
     "Did that happen?"
     "No."
     "Read about the last voyage of Cleopatra's barge, and how it ended
up in the hands of a Volvo dealer in White Plains."
     "Is that true?"
     "What are you--a moron?!  Now, you want to go on a camping holiday
with me?"
     The man clasped his hands together and jumped up and down with
girlish glee.  "He asked me!  He asked me!"

     So the kid says, "Hey, did I tell you I did an entire report for
school by copying verbatim the Brittanica article on human excrement?"
     "Did you get an A?"
     "Got a F."
     "How come?"
     "Wrong class.  I forgot we don't do reports in calc."
     "Stoned, huh?"
     "Out of my mind.  But I did real good on my next one."
     "English class, huh?"
     "Wow, you must be like psychic."
     I put my hand on the ruffian's shoulder  "Well don't you think we
all are?  For example, a mother in California puts her hand on a hot
stove.  At the exact same instant, her long-lost twin sister takes a
dump in her pants during the original Friday the Thirteenth movie."
     "That doesn't prove anything.  Which part?"
     "The scene where she opens up the fridge and find the decapitated
head."
     "You're full of crap.  That was part two."
     "So it was. Hey kid, do you know what flatulent means?"
     "Sure.  Remember that excrement report I did--"
     "All right.  Hey kid, you know there are some things a woman will
never know about a man."
     The kid pressed the button for his floor over and over. "Goddammed
elevator."
     "Men have a violence in them that is completely foreign to a woman.
 Hey kid, do you have anything leather?"
     "Just a skirt."
     "Well put it on."

wC
wokmonanaglennboots