Life with Johnny!

My daughter has decided that she wants to have an all girl sleep over party with 10 of her school mates..and this last week has been an ongoing pelting of all the things she needs me to do to make this event successful so that she won’t become a social pariah, drop out of school, perform random sex acts for money, have a meaningless deadend job, a subsequent failed marriage, enter counselling and then blame me for her lousy life…so, yesterday during lunch, daughter and youngest son come home to eat…and she hits me with yet another request…’Mom, you have to go buy some more facial masks for the party so that we can all cleanse our face at the same time’….countered with a look from me that says…’ca-ching, and this will cost’….quickly followed by, ‘well maybe you could make some organic masks for the party if they’re too expensive’ and a quick departure…so 8 yr son and I are left alone in the kitchen to ponder this new request and he says…’you know mom, if you can’t find one of those mud masks..I have something else brown you could use to make one’…followed by immature giggles of ‘do you know what I mean..huh huh…do you get it?’ for the next relentless 5 minutes until I have to finally succumb and say ‘yes I get it…poo’….followed by hysterical 8 yr old boy laughter that finally peters off with him rubbing his belly and saying with satisfaction ‘oh man’……why do I insist on hot lunches…tomorrow a brown paper bag with cigarettes and a map of all the local soup kitchens!

In the about section of this blog I forgot one very important credit..that which of course goes to the model himself, Johnny…this is just one more example of the crazy things that Johnny will do to humour me.  When the staircase theatre’s Fridge Festival rolled around and a general inquiry went out for a very hairy man..I of course volunteered Johnny..you haven’t seen hairy until you’ve seen John.  He makes Austin Powers look like he needs rogaine.  The first time that we decided that we were going to do good bad things to each other and Johnny got undressed I asked aloud if he was planning on removing that mohair sweater…when I realized that he owned it permanently I had visions of our first sexual encounter ending with me choking on a hairball feline style…gunk, gunk, gunk….acccchhhhh.  To this day one of my favorite past times is sporatically calling Scientific America to report that I’ve found the missing link…but I’ve grown strangely comfortable and attracted to my portable pelt finding all other men merely naked mole rats in comparison….however, the combination of 2 very hairy people living in the same house makes for many a shower within a bath..and I’m constantly picking pubes off my kids newly washed clothes…ok, I heard you groan but screw you I’m a conscientious mom.

…not content to see John’s modelling career end abruptly I then volunteered him for the City of Hamilton’s youth anti-smoking campaign.  In this series of photos, John, dressed as a woman, is seen chit chating and offering smokes to various young women throughout the Barton Mall with the caption….the smoking industry will go to any lengths to get you to smoke…of course the photo of John, leg up on the food court bench with his boys peeking out from under the dress didn’t make the final cut, but another did.  This photo was then run as a preview piece on the giant screens of theatres throughout Hamilton.  How proud John and I were when we attended the theatre to see his giant body on screen..and how entertained we were to listen to the 2 girls behind us laughing and saying…owww! look at the cross-dresser on the screen, he must be a transvestite….if it hadn’t been for John’s nails dug into my wrist I would have jumped up and indignantly told those two girls that he was not a cross dresser, just a misunderstood and sexually confused male model..but Johnny’s very unassuming that way.

I never cease to be amazed….this Feb 28th, John and I will have served 9 + 5 years in unwedded bliss and yet just when I think I’ve got him figured out he does something out of the ordinary to catch me off guard…good friends of ours run a night of karaoke in a quaint neighbourhood pub-type setting every Saturday.  Now if you know anything about me, public singing and I go together as well as Ray Charles and a where’s Waldo book…what? too soon!..anyhow, I hate it!…sure I can get up do stand-up in front of a 700 seat theatre, I can whip up a half-ways decent improv scene from nothing, I can travel across country putting it out there night after night to complete strangers and press…but don’t make me sing!…so when the karaoke night first started, as any friend would do, we went to support the night…buy drinks, have a good time, cheer on the participants….and then that would be that…until Johnny says the next week, hey aren’t Kim and Peter doing karaoke tonight, we should go see them!…tentative..’ OK, if that’s what you’d like to do, we’ll go’…blink…unusual…so we get there.. I get wine..I’m watching calories you know…then casual like, John fills out a form, then another.. then a few more when I’m not looking…so now we have a 4 hour commitment ahead of us…omg, you’re a closet karaoker…all these years I had no idea…I mean I often ask John to sing to me…he knows all these old army/camp songs and childhood ditties that I’ve long since forgotten about and my most favorite intimate times are when John will hold me and sing piggies or blackbird to me under warm sheets and in the pitch of night…and the man is most brillant when he’s allowed to free form songs..and I do mean brillant!!..for singing improv he’s the best and funniest I’ve ever seen!…..but karaoke!?…okay, this is going to be a hard past time to get behind…borrying…that is until John sings!!

First song, Creep by Radio Head.  Now John can’t see at the best of times, blind as a bat and let’s just say reading…or at least reading accurately..is not John’s forte (accent aigu on the e)…so I’m entertained by the repeating chorus of….I’m a widow replaced by I’m a window….OK, this night is showing promise….next comes Smoke on the Water..and the first line is ‘We all came out to montreux’….hehehe…3-2-1 he’s going to look at me and mouth..’what is that word’…hehehe…bingo..but it was sheer linguistic limbo when the line

‘But with the rolling truck stone’s thing just outside’…where the apostrophe for some reason was replaced by the 1/2 sign and John managed to sing the 1/2 sign into the song…amazing!…if I could only have 1/10th of John’s natural ability and ease at making people laugh I would be a better standup 1000 fold…and if only John had my stage presence he would be a star….well there’s always ‘the boy’…did I mention I love karaoke!

So Saturday mornings are usually reserved for Johnny and I to shop the Farmers market.  Each weekend we browse through the stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables, baked goods, meat, grains and fish…it always makes our white bred wasp asses feel exotic and worldy selecting a guava or papaya amongst our apples and oranges.  So today as we passed by the old man peddling his cashews, almonds and walnuts the gentleman inquired of John…’may I help you?’ to which Johnny boldly proclaimed…”No thank you, I’m just looking at your nuts!”….what a cheeky monkey and so forward too!…but it was the look on John’s face that was priceless..it was that look of terror when you know that you’ve made a fatal miscalculation in front of the enemy….when your mouth can’t keep up with your brain…as the words ‘your nuts’ flew from his gob it was accompanied by an inaudible…nooooooo!..(cue soundtrack from Saving Private Ryan as they hit the beaches of Omaha) followed by a slow motion headturn that searched for my proximity and a hopeful self deluding thought bubble of, ‘maybe she didn’t hear me’….hehehe….I have you in my cross hairs now.

Even beyond the grave Orville Redenbacher has a weird sense of humour.  Just last week we bought ourselves a microwave, an appliance that I’ve done without for quite some time.  Our original microwave died a complicated death years ago…it’s part of a very fancy built in wall stove/oven unit that’s also extremely expensive.  Although defunct now, it’s carcass remains on display in our kitchen, an electromagnetic wave mausoleum, as it also houses the controls of it’s counterpart oven….til death, did not do them part..now it’s like a parasitic twin on the shoulder of our oven…I think Kahlil Gibran wrote a lovely poem about this at one time….back to Orville…well aside from warming my many cups of green tea that I make a day (which are then promptly forgotten on some counter) we thought we would try out some microwave popcorn….well our good friend Orville has included a free dvd inside every box of Smartpop sold and on each of these discs includes 5 dramatic episodes from 5 top? shows like House, Law and Order, Law and Order Criminal intent, Rockford Files and Murder, she wrote….so with much anticipation Johnny and I decide that our evening’s entertainment would be to curl up on the couch in front of the fire and watch the episode of the Rockford Files…hey, who raised in the 70’s can resist seeing Rockfish, Angel or Rocky one more time?….the only thing more perfect would be a follow-up episode of Mannix…(it was always so reassuring to me to see without fail that both would be clubbed on the head unconscious every episode)..so we watch and it’s the episode where the mob puts a hit on Rocky..very exciting..and now they’ve found his buddy’s body in a crate down on the docks and Rocky clubs Jimmy on the head with a frying pan and Detective Dennis Becker has dragged them into his office and……to be continued!!!!……blink….blink…rub eyes……whaaaaaaat, you’ve got to be joking….not only are we watching an episode from a show that happened some 3o years ago but those bastards at OR give us a to be continued episode?…hardy hardy haha…something tells me that wherever Mr. R is, perhaps it’s warm enough to make popcorn there.

In Greek mythology the Sirens lived on an island called Sirenum scopuli.  Approaching sailors were drawn to them by their enchanting singing hence causing them to sail into the surrounding cliffs and be smashed to little itty bits and drown.  Thus the siren’s song came to mean an appeal that is difficult to resist and if heeded to, ends badly.  Who could have foretold that my little sea nymph would be a 5′10′, 250lb, slightly balding middle-aged man whose chants of ‘I’ve looked! It’s not there’ or ‘Don’t worry! I have a system’…or whose finesse at stating fiction for fact with such bravado is to be marvelled by even the best of con men.  Daily I chart and sail these waters and gladly anticipate what new trials and tribulations will be set out for me..because between the exacerbations and finding the strength to resist the latest get rich quick scheme (often followed days later by oops, I forgot to carry the 1)…..I’m never bored..I never know what my lovely sea monkey has in store for me but I know that I love and I’m loved and strangely enough, he’s my muse.