I SOMETIMES LET MY WIFE DRIVE

      Generally, when the wife and I take to the highway, which is a pretty rare occurrence, I’m the one behind the wheel. This isn’t because I have a penis and I think that it takes a penis to operate a motor vehicle. Driving a car with a penis would be difficult, even for those most gifted in the dong area.

The truth is that, despite my penis, I don’t like cars and I hate driving. It’s boring, and it’s cramped, and dealing with the idiots on the road is a pain in the ass. Plus, there’s nowhere I want to go. If I don’t want to go anywhere and I don’t like the act of getting there, what’s the point? There isn’t one.

I’ve also never changed a tire or oil, or even opened a glove compartment.

Actually, I have done the last thing once or twice.

There are two reasons I insist on driving when the only other person in the car is my wife. Want me to list them? No? Well, I’m going to do it anyway. If you didn’t want to read my ramblings you probably shouldn’t have bought this book, and you definitely shouldn’t have made it this far into it.

The first is that my wife gets nervous every time a truck passes her on the highway, and every time she gets nervous, she nearly drives us off the road. Seriously, in eleven years of marriage we’re averaging two close call collisions into the midway per season. It’s amazing there aren’t multiple shards of windshield embedded in my brain yet.

The second reason I don’t like to let my wife behind the wheel is because she seems to think she knows exactly where she’s going, when in truth, she knows very little. The problem is that she’s lived in southern California her entire life. She thinks she knows every secret back road, shortcut, and quicker route home that there is to know. She thinks she’s smarter than the GPS and the various satellites feeding the GPS its information. That’s right, she thinks she’s smarter than the billion dollar computers floating in space.

This is a woman who isn’t yet sure how to empty the trash can on her laptop.

On this particular occasion, when my wife opened her hand, motioned for the keys, and said to me, “I know a shortcut. It’ll get us home in half the time,” she seemed oblivious to just how silly she sounded.

I knew she was going to get us lost and she knew that I knew that she was going to get us lost. The car even knew she was going to get us lost and the keys clung to my palm like sticky candy to the grubby-fat palm of a pudgy baby.

Needless to say, I was reluctant. I tried to shoo her away. “No, it’s okay. It’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything. I’ve got it.”

“Stop it, Steven. Come on. Give me the keys.”

I should have shoved her over. That’s exactly what I should have done. I should have walloped her in the chest with both hands and slammed her to the pavement. When her skull hit the cement, it might have knocked her unconscious. Once she’d been neutralized, I could have rolled her into the trunk, drove us home, and saved us both the misery of what was to come.

Unfortunately, I did the exact opposite.

Her eyes narrowed and she motioned for the keys once again. “Come on, Steven. Give me the keys.” She meant business.

With a sigh and a shake of my head, I handed over the keys. I really need to start walloping people more.

We were on the highway for less than five minutes when she pulled off.

“Where are you going, hun?”

“It’s a shortcut. Trust me.”

Before continuing, I should mention that we were only half an hour away from our destination to begin with. We didn’t have a long trip ahead of us. We weren’t traversing the country by covered wagon and stopping at night to cook beans from a can and blast a buffalo in the face for protein. There wasn’t a chance that either of us was going to die of dysentery along the way. The car was air-conditioned. It was comfortable. There was a bag of fun-sized snickers in the back seat.

In a roundabout sort of way, the regular cut was actually a shortcut.

The wife wasn’t hearing it, though. She thought she knew a quicker way home and damn it she was going to take it!

Ten minutes into the journey it was fairly clear to the both of us that we were lost. The direct route the highway provided was a distant memory. Even if we had wanted to turn around and go back the way we came, we wouldn’t have been able too. We’d been wandering for too long and we’d past the point of no return.

I felt like I needed to say something. “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

“No. Stop it. I know exactly where we’re going.”

I wasn’t buying it. A blind man with one deaf ear, the inability to speak, a pack of rodents living in his lower intestine, and wooden pegs where his arms should be wouldn’t have bought it. My wife is a terrible actress.

She was nervous. She wiped a bead of sweat from her face, tried her damndest to erase the look of utter confusion from her face, and turned on the radio. Some terrible 80s song began to play and she threw one hand into the air like she’d just stepped into the hottest club in town and she owned the place. “Alright! I love this song!”

I still wasn’t buying it. It was a distraction. She was trying to throw me off the scent and it wasn’t going to work. No one likes old Bananarama songs that much. Not even Bananarama.

Fifteen minutes later, the sun began to set. The car jumped and the road turned to gravel. Our tires were spitting dirt, and there were rocks banging against all of the car-stuff on the underside.

I think I heard a piston pop. I dunno what it was. Something popped.

Before I could say a word, my wife held up her hand and pointed her palm at my face. “Not a word, Steven! Don’t you dare say a word! The turn is right up here. Three more blocks and we’re there!”

My only problem was that there didn’t seem to be anything even vaguely resembling “blocks” where we were.

We passed by a fence that looked like it had been constructed in the early 20s from the bones of dead cowboys. I swear I saw a femur. There was a dead raccoon twisted in the barbed wire, binding them all together and blowing in the breeze like a pirate flag. It was a warning.

Five minutes later I spotted a rusted Port-A-Potty in the middle of an empty field. Rip Van Winkle himself peeked out from the door and flashed us the finger. I think I might have seen his junk.

When the sun dropped from the sky I began to get worried. We’d been four-wheeling through the backwoods of DeliveranceTown for nearly an hour. Sure, we hadn’t yet been kidnapped and butt raped by the locals, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. I’ve heard that hillbilly butt rape happens most often at night. Trust me on this. I read it in a pamphlet.

From the darkness outside, something howled. I can’t say for certain if it was a wild dog, or a wolf, or some poor, unsuspecting sap bent over the backdoor of a pickup truck getting his fudge packed more awkwardly than Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. It was one of those things, though.

Something smacked against the window and we both jumped, and my wife laid into the gas. Suddenly the car was swerving, careening back and forth and tearing into the uneven ground beneath us. A flash of lightning exploded over the mountains. Something laughed. The radio went dead and something that sounded like a lion roared. I think I even heard a gunshot.

I was seconds from leaning over, walloping my wife in the face, taking the wheel, and getting us the hell out of whatever circle of hell we’d accidently driven into when the gravel road transformed, quite suddenly, again into pavement. A streetlight popped into existence just over the horizon and three more followed soon after. A couple minutes later my wife maneuvered the car back into civilization.

Not only were we on a street I recognized, but we were also ten minutes from home. A trip that should have lasted thirty minutes at the most, had taken us nearly an hour and a half.

My wife turned to me and smiled brightly. “See? Told you I knew where I was going.”

I think she actually expected me to buy it. The woman’s got balls.

PARLAN NELLISON

I was at my very first comic book convention, I was twelve years old and I was nervous as hell.

The place was bigger than I expected it to be – filled with chubby, greasy-skinned nerds and even chubbier, greasier-skinned nerds in costumes that made them look silly, chubby and strangely, even more greasy-skinned.

I pulled the stack of drawings under my arms closer to my body and breathed deeply. My feet wouldn’t move. My legs felt heavy and my lips were dry. Even the multitude of Spider-Man paraphernalia wasn’t making me comfortable, and Spider-Man had always made me comfortable.

Why did I bring the stupid drawings? I shouldn’t have brought the drawings. I might have been able to enjoy the surrounding nerd fiesta if I hadn’t brought the drawings.

When my mother offered up a trip to the convention a month prior, I was excited. I was really excited. I loved comic books. I’d always loved comic books and I was always going to love comic books. When she suggested that I bring along my drawings to show around, my excitement petered, wrinkled and crawled up into me like a chilly penis.

I didn’t want to show anyone my stupid little drawings. That didn’t sound fun at all.

It’s not that I wasn’t any good, because I was pretty good – for a twelve year old.

There were going to be adults there – people older and more talented than me – people looking for jobs and struggling to feed their families. Editors and business people and such didn’t have time to deal with a twelve year-old wiener with a stack of mostly crappy Spawn sketches.

It was silly and I was going to feel silly doing it.

I shouldn’t have brought the stupid drawings.

My mother mashed her hand into the small of my back and pointed toward the opposite side of the room. “Why don’t you go wait in that line over there?”

Fifty or so feet away a line of Silent Bob-looking nerds was slowly forming. At the front of the line there was a small table with an elderly couple seated behind – elderly from the perspective of a twelve year-old, anyway.

When I didn’t move, my mother nudged me again. “Go on, Steven.”

I lowered my stance, shifted my weight and refused to budge. “Mom, I don’t want to. I don’t even know who those people are.”

It was the truth. I’d never seen either of the white-haired old goats before.

“That doesn’t matter, Steven.” My mother squinted her eyes, looked past the line of unshaven, arty nerds and tried to read sign taped to the front of the table. “Look, his name is right there…Parlan.” The conga line of dorks was obscuring most the letters and she was adding replacements on her own, “Parlan Nellison.”

Parlan Nellison?

I shook my head. “What? I don’t even think that’s a name.”

My mother was rapidly becoming annoyed. She wedged both hands in my back, leaned into me and shoved me forward. “Yes it is, Steven! You have to start getting better at stuff like this! Now walk over there and get in line!”

I couldn’t figure out why she was making me do something I clearly had no interest in doing. If she wanted to talk to old man Parlan so badly, why didn’t she do it? I didn’t want to talk to the guy, and I sure as hell didn’t want to awkwardly offer to show him my drawings!

I wanted to call my mother a four-letter word! I wanted to kick her in the shin, tear my clothes off and run into the city screaming! I wanted to chop off her shove-happy hands and drawn my next round of Spawn drawings in the blood spurting from the stumps! I wan-

The look on her face told me that I needed to start walking.

I started walking.

I stood in that line for nearly thirty minutes, struggling to control my breathing and wiping massive amounts of sweat from my forehead. One by one the nerds plopped their oversized nerd butts beside Grandpa Parlan, opened their portfolios and began to explain the ins and outs of their work.  The line was getting shorter and shorter. My neck felt itchy. My legs had transformed from concrete to loose spaghetti. I looked over at my mother - she was flashing me the thumbs up.

I was totally going to paint something in her blood.

The longhaired goober in front of me sat down and opened his portfolio. Suddenly I was next. As old man Parlan thumbed through the pages I was finally able to read the name on the paper hanging from the front of the table. Parlan’s name wasn’t even Parlan – it was Harlan.

Harlan Ellison.

At twelve years old, I didn’t have any idea who in the hell Harlan Ellison was. I had no idea that he was one of the most influential science fiction writers of his generation. I’d never really seen Star Trek, and I had no idea what The City on the Edge of Forever was. I hadn’t read I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, or A Boy and His Dog, and I certainly didn’t know anything about him being the literary world most famous curmudgeonly asshole.

If I had, I would’ve reconsidered kicking my mom in the shin.

Harlan flipped close the portfolio in front of him, shook his head, sighed deeply and waved away Mr. Nerdy McTrenchcoat. When he finally looked at me, he grimaced.

The feeling was mutual.

I didn’t want to be there any more than he wanted me to be there. His old-timey arm raised and his mummified finger pointed squarely in my direction. His lips curled into an annoyed snarl and he flashed his pearly white dentures. He was moments from telling me to go play in traffic when his wife snatched his wrist, and returned his wrinkly appendage to the table.

She smiled sweetly in my direction and patted the table gently with her free hand. “Hi there.”

Women.

It would have been better for all involved if she’d just let the cranky old bastard scream at me, clonk his cup of coffee off my forehead and send me on my way. Instead she had to be nice, and she had to be cordial, and she had to keep him from getting arrested for assaulting a twelve year-old.

Women.

For the next ten minutes, Harlan begrudgingly flipped through the pages of my raggedy sketchbook and rolled his eyes while his wife remarked on just how talented I was. When he came to my poorly proportioned renderings of large-breasted women, he chuckled. When he came to my Liefeld-esque, Youngblood drawings he moaned. When he came to the comic book I’d drawn on typing paper and stapled down the side, he nearly slammed his head against the table.

Clearly annoyed, the cranky old sack, leaned back in his chair, tossed his hands into the air and sighed a sigh so deep it made the old Jim Carey talking butt cheek gag seem subtle.

His wife tossed another talented my way to cover it up.

Suddenly I wanted to kick him in the shin as well – her too – just because.

After all the pages had been turned, the old bastard flipped my sketchbook shut and nudged me in the shoulder – clearly indicating that he wanted me to get lost. His wife shook my hand.

He did not.

I looked Harlan straight in the eye and said, “Thank you, Mr. Nellison.”

At that point I knew his name. I was just being a jerk.

He sort of deserved it.

When it over I shuffled through the crowd and returned to my mother’s side. Believe it or not, the ditzy broad actually had the nerve to try and give me a high five.

To this day she has no idea how very close she was to getting her arms chopped off and how very close I was to crafting my next typing paper comic book with her blood.