Autobiography of a Fat Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

was Dog Girl.
    It had been months since I found both of them, my boyfriend and his newly reinstated girlfriend, packing up his stuff into her VW van right before they planned to flee the state as if they had been profiled on
America’s Most Wanted
the night before.
    “I know it’s weird that I’m calling,” Dog Girl said nervously.
    I didn’t know what to say, so I offered the first comment that volunteered itself. “Do you still have my stereo?” I asked.
    “No,” she answered. “We sold it and bought beads and hemp cord so we could start a hair-beading booth on the Renaissance-fair circuit.”
    “Oh, that’s right,” I mentioned. “I forgot how good you were at braiding hair. What do you want, what can I help you with? Why are you calling me?”
    “Well, I—I—I have bad news,” Dog Girl sputtered. “I have GONORRHEA!”
    I just held the phone, shocked.
    “And so do you!” she added, then broke down into sobs.
    I didn’t know what to say. All I knew at that moment was that I wished my skin would slink off my body the way it does on a boiled tomato.
    “What are you talking about?” I finally shot out as Dog Girl wept hysterically.
    “At A Royal Afayre in Sacramento, Ben said that he was burning a bit, but he thought he just took some bad peyote or something,” she said, in between gulps and gasps. “And by the time we were setting up for Gates of Thyme Faire the next weekend, he said he was on fire. He smoked a whole quarter ounce and he was still crying so hard I had to help him to the first aid station. He just kept saying, ‘Ow ow ow ow ow! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!’ the very same thing he said when Jerry Garcia left us for the next plane of reality.”
    “Wow, the first aid station, huh? A regular trip to the hippie hospital,” I replied. “Can you skip to my link in the venereal disease chain, please?”
    “Well, the nurse looked at him and said that it was probably gonorrhea,” Dog Girl answered. “And that’s when he mentioned your name.”
    “Oh, I see,” I said rather dryly. “He didn’t care enough to say good-bye before I found the two of you leaving on the midnight train to Georgia, but I’m supposed to believe he has enough compassion to ask you to call me as a courtesy?”
    “Well, in a way, I guess,” she continued. “Since he said he got his burning penis from you.”
    If I had had enough money to buy a new phone, I would have thrown that one into the wall. If I had had enough money to build a new wall, I would have thrown that phone very hard. If I had had medical insurance, even with an HMO, I would have put my fist through the wall right after I threw the phone, even though the HMO would have only paid for three of my five broken fingers.
    “How could I have given
him
VD?” I instead raged into the phone. “I went to college! I have a car! I’m not the one that cheats! And I can’t name
one
Grateful Dead song besides ‘Truckin’ ‘!”
    “Well, that’s what he said,” Dog Girl said limply.
    “Put him and his flaming genitals on the phone,” I growled.
“Right now!”
    “I can’t!” Dog Girl said as she started to cry again. “He ran off with someone else, and I’m pretty sure it was Lady Jane, because her face-painting booth hasn’t been set up all day! Why would he leave me like that, and take all of the penicillin, too? I can’t believe it! We were even talking about getting our own Kettle Korn cart to hook up to the van!”
    “Wow, that’s even a broader horizon than his previous life goal of growing his own pot,” I added. “Well, aside from learning ‘Old Man’ on a five-string so he could sing it to a stranger that
might
be his dad.”
    I realized that this was really starting to sound like the Leif Garrett episode of
Behind the Music.
    “I guess I should have known something was fishy when Lady Jane showed up at the van with a guitar one night and started singing that same, exact song. It always makes Ben cry, especially