The Tales of Leadpants McGillicuddy

2003-09-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

MY FIRST WIFE WENT TO SHIT AND THE HOGS ATE HER

When I turned 25, my bitch goddess of a mother gave me an ultimatum. It
went something like this: “Kyle…praise lord jesus god jesus…idleness, devil,
shame…you’re broke…I’m broke…your father’s drunk…god willing…lord…get a job…
cable bill…or else you’ll be cast into the fires of hell!!!”

She sounded serious, or at least the ring of sweat covering her upper
torso made it seem so. Here was a women who had squandered our family’s minute
fortune on a succession of religious-based schemes, Tickle Me Jesus, Edible
Rosary, The Self Deprecation Boardgame, and God’s Great Guide to US Religious
Sites, among others, and she wanted me to get a job. I had a job, and it was
receiving a weekly allowance and watching every talk show shown in TV land.
I’d held it firmly for seven years without a hitch. How was I to gain the fame
I so jealously desired working behind a desk, peddling worthless information to
worthless people? Easy answer, I wasn’t.

But, something had to be done, because dear mother padlocked her purse
and told me I was either going to get a job, cultivate a money tree, or find a
new sponsor to suck the lifeblood out of. When she looked to my dad for
approval, he took a long swig from a nearly empty bottle, dropped his pants and
told me to kiss his ass. He never gave me a dime before, and he wasn’t going
to give me one now.

The tension was building by the second. I had the overwhelming size
advantage, mom had the professed backing of our lord saviour, and dad had an
empty bottle of whiskey (which worked on two levels). We eyed each other
warily and waited for the first move. In a flash, dad was dead to the world on
the couch, mom remembered she had a meeting with Pastor Von Dong, and I was
left to watch Oprah interview Kato Kaelin on the bittersweet hardships of
stardom. Oh sweet release, how close was I to falling when you stood me back
up? Job hunting could wait, but only for another hour while premium television
taught me how to suck up just enough to find the limelight. The limelight I so
desperately yearned for.

I left the house with a renewed sense of motivation, one awakened by
Kato’s heartfelt chronicling of his life as a pool boy to the stars, a lead
actor in pornography, and lately, his stint as a judge in the Los Angeles
Raiderettes talent search. With visions of stylish blond hair dancing in my
head, I got into my car and began what was to be the first job search of my
young life.

Roberto at the pet store said I had little chance of finding employment
with him after he saw me try to feed a kitten to a snake. Karen at the daycare
center said I looked too much the part of a pederast to work there. Bertram at
the salon asked for my telephone number and wondered if I was busy Friday
night. And finally, Keith at the Science and Industry library told me that no
matter how unprofessional, lazy, and inconsiderate I was, I’d still rank as his
most qualified employee. I took a quick look around and accepted the job of
page at $6.25 an hour. Keith sent me to the break room to find someone to
teach me the fine art of retrieval, replacement, and constant recuperation.
What I found there made me feel immediately at home.

The small television was the only thing that kept the room from being
completely dark, its screen throwing surreal shadows on the back wall. All I
could make out on the couch, no more than five feet from the picture, were two
heads, completely still and obviously mesmerized. On the television was an
interview by Montell Williams with a former Playboy playmate about her recent
appearance for PETA at the National Meat Council’s annual Hotdog Cookoff.

I crept forward, sensing genius, and quietly introduced myself. One
male head turned and asked me, in a screechy staccato stammer, under what
capacity I had decided to enter their sacred place. Another, a female,
directed a question toward me that would have confused a person who hadn’t
spent the last 10 years or so learning life’s lessons from Maury, Jerry,
Montell, David, Jay, Conan, and other TV geniuses.

“Whoever you are, whatever your name is…what are the top three wildest show
topics in Springer history?”

Without hesitation I answered back, “Shocking True Stories of Malfeasance 2:
The Sordid South Dakota State Comptroller Scandal…He Ain’t My Baby Daddy, so
Why He Keep Sweatin’ Me?…and…oh yeah…My Child’s a Kleptomaniac, So Why Can’t He
Steal Himself Some Common Sense…”

A third voice, strikingly effeminate and male, piped up from somewhere
on the concrete floor in the dark room.

“He sounds like he might belong. Winthrop, give this man a cup of coffee and
pay special attention to his exact preference. Bianca, make him up a namecard
with that big, hard black….marker over there. Chop, chop people. We’re not
paid not to be lazy. God, I could use a spritzer right about now…”

The ringleader didn’t look the part of a power player, but the other
two scampered around as if he had a stun gun ready to use. After I had been
given a rancid-smelling cup of coffee and a nametag, we got down to
introductions by the light of a naked bulb, hanging precariously over the small
table in the middle of the room.

Quickly I learned the tragic life stories of each of my three new
coworkers. The squeaky-voiced guy introduced himself as Winthrop Paulson III.
He was the son of wealthy aristocrats who were well known on the social scene,
but who would rather the public not know about their failure of a son.
Immediately I felt I could understand him. He’d been working at the library
for 26 years (he was 46), and had in that time managed to do less work than I
had done since I walked into the place, which amounted to signing my W-4 and
picking up a book that had fallen off a cart. His reasoning for such sloth was
a nerve disorder that relegated him to taking cold showers and sleeping on the
breakroom couch for a strictly controlled number of hours per day. He was a
member of twelve secret men’s clubs, had one of the largest origami collections
in the free world, and was convinced that no less than eighteen conspiracies
were directly related to his work as an archivist at the library. He smelled
faintly of Ramen noodles and his clothes seemed to be the same ones he had been
wearing when he graduated the third grade.

The women told me her name was Bianca Feljman, age 30, twice divorced
and ultimately available. Extremely well endowed in the chest, and hiding
terrific beauty behind an angst influenced façade, Bianca quickly convinced
anyone willing to talk to her that she was a nymphohedonist with a penchant for
library sex and insatiable appetite for television. Noticing that my two other
coworkers were less inclined towards women than myself, I became instantly
optimistic that my 7 year dry spell would soon be over. Her eyes constantly
darting back and forth, Bianca went on to tell me she had been born in Kansas
to a schizophrenic mother and a sexually confused, attorney father, both more
interested in their small worlds than the emotional health of their daughter.
She noted that the only good friend she’d had at home growing up was her
father’s personal errand boy Miguel, who always seemed to be in jeanshorts and
a net tanktop. Nonetheless, she and Miguel had spent long hours together
finding solace in the dull glow of the television and reading interior design
magazines. He now shared an apartment with her, and for some reason unknown to

Bianca, Miguel hired himself as an errand boy to dozens of men in their
neighborhood, even though he was now 35 and had a graduate degree in design.
She spent her off hours from the library reading TV Guide and writing erotic
fiction normally centered on the unsuspecting playmates she’d enticed into
following her to the never-used rare manuscript section on the musky third
floor. Her latest piece she’d titled “Steve, or was it Stan? The Engineering
Student with the Nimble Fingers”. She’d worked at the library, on and off, for
5 years, never staying away for long.

The only story left to hear was that of the flamboyantly gay page
manager named Bertrand “Bertie” Dunderpate, one of the most interesting
specimens of humanity I’d ever come across. For starters, he was wearing
velvet pants and a ruffled Zoro-style shirt, with a beret perched precariously
on his balding head. It was a shame he’d been born a man, as all of his
character traits would have fit better on a very elegant and charismatic dame.

He spoke rapidly and almost desperately, his words searing reminders that I
should watch my ass. Though he didn’t openly come on to me at any point during
my first day at the library, he had a tendency to thrust his crotch into
anything within distance, so that he looked as if he were always going to fall
over backwards. It turned out he’d been born to traveling nudists, his mother
and father having had sworn off clothing long before Bertie was born. He’d
grown used to the nomadic lifestyle by the time he was 18, but his parents
abruptly left the nudist circuit in search of wealth and power in the leather
business around that time.

A stellar student and talented actor/artist, Bertie then enrolled at Wesleyan University to be the first student in the institutions Queer Studies Program. He’d done well for his first few years, excelling in the study of gay fashion, language, and literature, however he’d
been expelled as a junior for knocking up the Dean’s 16 year old son at an
alumni event. Bertie went on to finish his studies through correspondence
courses at Harvard, and came to work at the library under the auspices that it
was simply a place to do research while he wrote his groundbreaking
musical, “Black or White: Straight or Gay…Fuck It Just Dance”. The only thing
eventually broken by the play was Bertie’s wallet, and he’d become so
distraught he ate 12 pints of ice cream and had to have his stomach pumped.

From there on, he worked his way through the ranks of the library until he
became page coordinator, a job he enjoyed for the many perks it offered. He
and Bianca were constantly fighting over “delicious young grad student ass”,
with the career record of both about equal. Bertie lived in a fashionable
apartment with a cat, a dog, and an endless supply of gerbils. He regularly
performed with the Gay Men’s Chorus, wrote poetry, did community service at a
shelter for runaways, hated posers, never wore underwear, and ate oysters to
help his diminishing libido. I liked him immediately, although I was a little
wary of his overly active pelvis.

He began by showing me how to beat the card catalogue system by simply
going to sleep on the breakroom’s concrete floor.

During my first week of work I experienced a lifetime of interesting
occurrences that I owed to the fact that I was away from my mother. Though she
called me at work up to 20 times a day, when she’d cornered a junebug, when
Paulie Shore called from the Video store about Over the Shoulder Boulder
Holders (perplexing to say the least), when she received word that my father
had been arrested for exposing himself to an elderly group of bird watchers, I
felt more independent than I had in years. To make things even more exciting,
I still got to watch all the TV my heart desired, my coworker Bianca had showed
me all of the tattoos on her body, and Bertie taught me a number of show tunes
that I enjoyed.

When I’d ask him for a favor, or he’d ask one of me, there’d always be a
musical retort. Bertie would literally float between the stacks of books, me
following closely behind, and always with a song.

“Bertie, where does Quantum Mechanic Physiognomy go, under physics or
miscellaneous?”

“They say that life is tit for tat
And that's the way I live
So, I deserve a lot of tat
For what I've got to give…..physics, third row, fourth shelf Kyle!!!”

“Howbout Odors, the Pungency of the World’s Great Stinks???”

“Don't you know that this hand
Washes that one too
When you're good to Mama
Mama's good to you!….Sensory Biology, second shelf next to The Molecular
Breakdown of Fecal Decay!!!”

And so I learned the intricacies of library work, with a flamboyantly gay
middle-aged man obsessed with show tunes. Winthrop and Bianca were somewhat
less receptive to my initial queries concerning my job. Winthrop was fast
asleep on the concrete floor of the breakroom from 8:15 to 8:17, 10:05 to
11:01, 11:06 to 11:30, and finally from 3:04 until 4:57, at which time he’d
quickly gather his belongings and flee the library. His lucid periods were
full of rantings and ravings about new conspiracies that had been set up to
bring him down, for what I could never figure out. His most recent obsession
had been with the girl who made espresso across the street and who always
seemed to stare at him with only her wandering eye. Winthrop was sure that a
miniature camera had been installed as her eye and that the NSA was keeping
track of his coffee intake so as to determine whether he was conducting secret
codebreaking sessions overnight. I was of the belief that the girl’s wandering
eye was simply unfortunate.

I wasn’t quite sure what Winthrop’s job entailed, as he held my same job title,
but on more than one occasion I found him in a small tent he’d set up on the
third floor, near the Neuropsychology texts that no one used. When I poked my
head in I was horrified to find Winthrop painting his toenails gold and reading
a newsletter from the National Association for the Advancement of
Betterment (NAAB).

“Winthrop, how do you manage to still get paid a salary?”

“I’ll have you know that my services to this institution are completely
indispensable. At which time you have devoted the greater part of your adult
life loyally to a cause that you most cherish, then you too may find yourself
with a place of solace at work, a place to call your very own. Now, if you
please, I have a conference call in seven minutes with a man I have doing
surveillance across the street…”

I had absolutely no reply to that, so I trudged off to find someone else to
talk with. I’d never made it as high as the rare manuscripts section, so I
decided to give it a try. I figured, if anything, I’d be able to get a glimpse
of Bianca naked again.

When I arrived on the top floor, I was greeted by the most awful mildew blast I
could have imagined. Everything was covered in dust and grime, bits of paper
strewn across the floor. I noticed nothing unusual at first, until I happened
upon a small camera crew filming Bianca’s forays with an HVAC repairman who
worked at the library on Wednesday’s. She was made up to look like a
curmudgeonly old librarian while he wore a beanie cap and a pair of hightops.
Fitting, I suppose. One of my goals had been realized, and unable to think of
any polite conversation to make, I walked back down the stairs to the breakroom
to watch television.

Winthrop was nowhere to be found and Bertie had mentioned he was going to leave
early to make an audition for the part of Joanne in the Kabuki Theatre’s
production of Rent.

I sat down on the couch, happy for the break, and flipped on the television.
A banner headline on the screen alerted viewers… “If you’d like to be a guest
on an upcoming Maury Povich broadcast, and if you’re overbearing, religious
mother is having an affair with a voodoo witch doctor who is trying to ruin
your life, please call us at 555-7757.”

Mom wasn’t screwing Mr. Boombomshakalaka anymore, so I changed the channel.
Immediately, another banner headline flashed on the screen… “Montell is looking
for new and interesting guests, including those whose absentee fathers work in
the smut industry and have been the subjects of frequent sex scandals. If you
would like to apply, call MON-TELL.”

As far as I knew, Dad was working as a soda jerk at the local drive thru.
Laborously, I again changed the channel, becoming a bit agitated by all the
propaganda I was being fed.

And again, as it was nearing 1:00 and the end of numerous talk shows, a banner
flashed across the screen… “Do your obsessive compulsive coworkers film amateur
porn on the premises, take cold showers, and constantly sing cheesy rock
ballads. If so, please contact our director of guest recruitment at 1LA-TIFA.”
Nope. Show tunes. Before giving up completely, I made one more attempt to
find worthwhile action on the television. I clicked the buttons on the
controller one last time and, low and behold, another banner flashed across the
screen signaling the end of an hour-long show… “Have you lost contact with a
childhood friend due to a traumatizing experience you were both involved in,
possibly having to do with circus folk or international crime syndicates? If
so, please contact our producer at 55R-ICKI.”

It sounded almost to good to be true, because hostage crisis stories were
almost as newsworthy as carny tales and stories of international crime. Not to
mention, a sure book deal and numerous television appearances would almost
certainly follow. I hadn’t heard from Bart in years, but the porn shop caper
had kept us close in mind and spirit. I knew that he was bigwig in the
investment world, but I didn’t know where. So, I decided to brave the abuse
and call his father. The number did not escape me, it was 555 JEWS, a both
prophetic and ironic link to the family.

“Paco’s Tacos, this is Paco speaking, how can I help you today?”

“Mr. Schwartz?”

“Maybe, who the hell is this? And let me remind you I don’t speak with any of
my son’s former punk ass friends who still live with their parents and watch
too much television…”

“Nothing gets by you does it sir?”

“Not in my increasing old age Kyle, how are you doing?”

“Well, my new job is treating me quite well thank you. My coworkers are an
obsessive compulsive conspiracy theorist, a nymphomaniacal amateur film
starlet, and a flamboyantly gay pagemaster with a virtual library of musicals
in his brain. Constant new excitement, and how are you?”

“Not bad, not bad. Hey, I should probably let you know that Bart’s moving back
in with us in a week or so, he quit his job and broke up with his girlfriend so
he could straighten his life out. I told him I wasn’t gonna stop wearing the
speedo around the house or having loud geriatric sex with my wife. Anyway,
whatever helps him get on the right foot.”

“Wow. Are you serious. That’s some kind of coincidence. I was just thinking
about tracking him down and now he’s coming to me. Do you have a phone number
for him by chance, I’d love to talk to him before he gets back?”

“Now Kyle, you know I can’t give out sensitive information on my own family,
for fear of catastrophic reprisal. You’re just gonna have to wait until that
sonofabitch gets back. It should be anytime now…I’m just kidding you, he’s got
a cellphone…555-HEBE”

“Thanks sir, I hope I see you soon.”

“You kiddin me. The last time I saw you my son was beating a man senseless
with 24 inches of rubber dong. You think I’m in a hurry to experience that
again. Don’t even think about showing up over here…hehehe.”

“Thanks again. I guess you’re as excited to see me as I am to see you in that
speedo.”

“Fuck off you little shit.”

“Alright, I’ll talk to you soon.”

An interesting turn of events.

2003-09-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

This Kid Can't Possible be Paul Revere's Kin

Though as a kid he had always believed his parents cooked him out of potatoes,
Kyle had recently come to the realization that he was just like any other kid.

He had emerged from his mother’s painfully swollen vaginal canal. Only
recently, however, had he ever actually witnessed the coitus which had once
begun the process of his life.

It was a typical weekday afternoon. Typical in that Kyle was watching whatever
flashing images crossed the screen of his beat-up old univision TV on the only
channel that came in without undue static: QVC. He was hopelessly fixated on
the false diamond necklace which shimmered blindingly on its faux-velvet
pedestal as it rotated slowly, when he heard a sort of scream from upstairs. It
was a bit of a yelp, much like his old dog Mordecai might of emitted, but
Mordecai was dead three years.

Kyle made the virtually unprecedented decision to move off the couch and
investigate, as he knew his mother was upstairs. As he slowly rocked his
enormous girth up the narrow staircase, bowing the banister outward with his
prodigious hips and scraping along on the wall side, he heard more small yelps,
sort of like panting. He had discovered that the best places to take rests were
between the wall-studs, where he more easily flexed the house outward.
Unfortunately, Kyle made the fatal mistake of failing to call out to his
mother in any way. Instead, he was concentrating on mounting the stairs,
something he had done very little since he had moved into the living room.

It was just easier down there. He was near the TV, sleeping on the couch, and
he was SO much nearer the fridge, to which he made regular, almost ritualistic
visits. On his feedings, he would consume such vast quantities of pre-cooked
and packaged foods (he cooked only rarely, and the microwave was currently out
of service) that his mother was forced to replenish the fridge AT LEAST once a
day. The only problem with living on the first floor was that there was no way
to bathe—he’d quickly become immune to the ghastly body odor which emanated
from between his folds of flesh as he shifted his obscene bulk on the straining
couch.

Now, as he mounted the creaking staircase one at a time, taking frequent rest
intervals, he was beginning to wonder if he should take advantage of his
current position to cleanse himself. The sweat pouring off of him seemed to
intensify and unleash the body odor to a degree even he found intolerable.
Reaching her bedroom door, Kyle was surprised to hear some unexpected bass
tones and grunting. He called out “Ma?” as he simultaneously opened the door,
but Gladys didn’t hear her son as she received thrust after penetrating thrust
from the Navy-blue clad man on top of her. The Sherman’s were away, and when
Gladys saw a beautiful, manly butt poking out of the top of a pair of Dickies,
as this hunk of hairy masculinity leaned over to check the electrical box, she
knew it was time for action.

She slipped into her only negligee, a faded brown number with small pink roses
sewn on about where her nipples were, and descended the stairs, asking the Lord
for forgiveness even as she planned her sin. Rounding the corner of the fence
separating her property from the neighbor’s, Gladys ran tits-first into the
hairy man—better than she could have hoped for. He was already speechless, and
after making some excuse about lights not working in her bedroom, it wasn’t
long before the lucky bastard was viciously and awkwardly pumping his
surprisingly un-hairy member in and out of Gladys’ birth canal.

When Kyle saw that he had walked all the way up the stairs to see that
forested, bisected globe between his mother’s veiny legs, he almost gave up his
lunch—but not even the sight of a strange manual laborer porking his devoutky
Christian mother could make him do that. The hairy man continued thrusting even
as Gladys politely told Kyle to come back later, she was busy. Kyle couldn’t
bear to see this seemingly mindless bear on his mother, however, and
approaching the bed to do he knew not, he tripped on an errant shoe and
collapsed on both people on the bed.

Now, weighing in at somewhere between 700 and 900 pounds, Kyle was not the
most spry. It was an immense effort simply to roll over while on the couch.
However, Kyle was not on the couch. He was crushing a strange man whose penis
was lodged within his mother, all three of them sunk down into the soft
mattress.

When the Paramedics finally hooked up the Hoyer Mechanical Lifting Device to
Kyle by rolling his round girth onto the heavy-duty nylon straps, it had been
four days since Kyle had suffocated his mother and the hairy man. The
Electricity company had finally begun talking to neighbors, and when no one
seemed to know what had happened to the worker, the company, helped by the
local authorities, entered Kyle's house on the assumption that the four days
worth of newspapers were a sign of foul play.

Needless to say, Kyle was relatively distraught by the whole affair, but he
wasn’t entirely stricken. He believed this was an omen that it was time to
become a professional wrestler, “The Blob”. The local wrestling club was not
particularly supportive of him, but Kyle persevered, and after slimming down
to 563 lbs. he was ready to start training full-time for his new job, and his
new life. Not only did Kyle know where he was going with his life, he now knew
(in pretty graphic detail) where he came from, too.

2003-09-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

Has Anybody Heard From That Aryan-Looking Freak?

Installment...Due.

Interview Transcript- The Tonite Show

Jay: Alright, folks, welcome back. We have a great show you for you tonight. My first guest is the author of the new best-selling book My Mother Made Me a Reservation in Hell (But I Said Screw that, I wanna be famous) out on shelves now. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kyle Frederick.

[applause]

[Kyle enters wearing teeshirt “Don’t Hassle Me. I’m Famous” covering his bulging fat belly. To the discerning eye, ascending back hair is visibly sprouting out the top of the neck hole. As he makes his way to the chairs, Kyle gives the two-handed flapping wave to the studio audience and greets Jay with hastily-executed Japanese-style bow.]

Jay: Welcome, Kyle. Good to see you. Now, let me first say, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. I know we’ve been trying to get you for the last two weeks, but you seem to be a busy guy.

K: Well, Jay, I’ve been travelling all around the country on this book-signing tour. It’s been real hectic, just crazy.

Jay: I can certainly imagine. It must be quite a whirlwind for you, all this new found success.

K: Yeah, man, definitely, but it’s been fun. Listen Jay, I’d first like to tell you how great it is to be on your show. It’s been a long time coming. I mean, I feel like my whole life has been building up to this. Man, I was watching you back when you had Branford Marsalis and Kev was just the guitar player.

[Quick pan to Kev, who smiles, nods his heading, laughing, “That’s cold, man”]

See, I’ve heard Kev say that a million times, every time you’d make some lame ass joke and allude to Kev and the band smoking weed, and then he’d always laugh and say, “That’s cold, Jay.” I gotta tell ya, I was always waiting for the moment Kev would just snap after one of your quips, and in one flash of fury, unleash all the pent up spite he had for your years of redundant stand-up and shout, “I’ll cut you, cracker!”

[ pan to Kev, laughing, “That’s cold, man”]

Jay: Well, if Kev ever got that jumpy, I’d say he might be smoking the wrong stuff.

[drum lick]
[ Kev laughing, “That’s cold, Jay”}

K: What I was starting to say was how it’s so surreal to be here in this chair next to you. Like until I became famous, I used to watch you at 10:35 every night, long after my dad had passed out and my mom was atoning for my unholy insolence at her flagellant maidens barbed whipping social circle in the church basement every night that time, so it was one of the few times I was at peace. I’d just throw my feet up on that fat drunk lump of sh___ on the couch, kick back, and sit it on an intimate conversation between you and Bobby De Niro or Stevey Spielberg or ‘Sweat Hog’ Richard Simmons.

Jay: Oh sure. Richard’s been on the show several times. He’s always a bit of a character.

K: I’ve always had a kind of ambivalent feeling towards Richard Simmons. Sure, I was annoyed with how gay he was, always running around like a dumb twat, dressed like a fairy at the gym, but dammit, Jay, the man was genuine. I believe he is one of the blessed few in this country who sincerely want to help fat people. In fact, when I was a baby I apparently met Richard Simmons. I was too young to remember it, but according to my mom, he was in front of us in line at the grocery store when he noticed this lard-ass child sitting in the cart amidst cans of lima beans and Summer’s Eve. I was real blimp of a child on account of my mother, who was always suspicious of soap, would always wash my mouth out with bacon fat whenever I wouldn’t stop crying. He told my mom she had a beautiful and special child, but that he wanted to help free the trapped inner me hiding behind pounds of hideous self-debasing fat. So he gave my mom a walkman with a Frankie Valley tape inside and told her to shake me as often as possible and in no time I’d be sweatin to the oldies, to the tune of a leaner, healthier, happier me. That act of compassion had quite an impact on me. Well, it didn’t quite go as planned. I was still fat and my mom had been shaking me all along anyway, in order to expel the demons from my soul, but I did develop a sort of transcendent connection with Frankie Valley on a whole new level. It’s like we found each other in a realm far beyond the reaches of language. But, then again, I think a lot of that has to do with when my friends and I went to a Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons reunion concert on acid in high school. All I know is that behind all the bubble gum summer fun a capella harmonies, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” is really a desperate cry for help, something pertaining to baseball, angry fathers, and cocaine.

Jay: That’s very interesting. Now let’s talk about your new book. I’ve not yet had a chance to read it, but I understand there’s some pretty heavy stuff in here—about your unusual childhood and growing up in the bible belt?

K: Yeah, well, Jay, I had a strange home life growing up- my mother was a very strict catholic, my father a very strict alcoholic. They met in parochial school, where they were both on the Love of Christ Extemporaneous Speaking team, which was really a front for the parish priest to expose his uncircumcised member to the students and make them stay until they had adequately convinced him that his foreskin was not an abomination.

Jay: That’s something. Now I hear that before you became famous, you went through a variety of odd jobs. Is that right?

K: That’s right, Jay. I worked several menial jobs, mostly ones where I didn’t have to really do anything, or better, show up all the time. I was what they call a shirker, a slacker, a welsh, a good-for-nothin’. I can talk about it all quite frankly now, since so much as changed. I’ve been a soda capper, a box sealer, a juice shaker, a bat boy, a desk monitor, a hall monitor, a building monitor, even a monitor monitor. That was my short stint at the zoo, which ended rather abruptly.

Jay: Oh, now tell us about that…

K: Well, Jay, I was doing scatological research for the Cincinatti Zoo, monitoring the mammals and large reptiles throughout the day and observing their defecation habits, recording how often and how much these guys were crapping out. It wasn’t an exact science, just using finger length, or for some guys arm length, in order to approximate the quantity of scatological output.

Jay: Well, that sounds horrible. No wonder you quit.

K: No, it wasn’t watching the animals crap all the time that got to me. I’d always kind of found it fun to watch, with that blank feigned innocence look in their eyes and barely concealed smirk, meanwhile their hind legs are quivering as they strain to squeeze the whole tube out.

Jay: I think Kev’s into those kind of films.

[Kev laughing, “That’s fucking disgusting Jay”]

K: But there was this guy there, Lonnie, who worked the souvenir baboon mug fruit punch stand and who, throughout the years, had developed an intense hatred for the penguin exhibit opposite his cart. He was a retired World War II vet suffering from waking nightmares relating to his days in a Burmese POW camp. Lonnie had increasing difficulty in reassuring himself that the penguins were not a division of Japanese soldiers keeping him guarded in heavy captivity, until one day after his meds had run out, Lonnie liberated the camp and beheaded every arctic penguin with a saber he had taken from a the corpse of naval officer in Okinawa. Needless to say, the zoo closed down for the rest of the summer to do extensive employee background checks before reopening to the public. It was soon discovered that my mother had crucified three sheep during her the 70’s as a protest to the mandatory teaching of evolution in Ohio state public schools. Consequently, I was deemed an internal security threat and promptly dismissed from the zoo, at which point I resumed my prior and much preferred lifestyle of sitting in front of the tele free basing cheese doodles and forcing myself to get aroused to Rosie O’Donnell.

Jay: Well, Kyle, thanks a lot for stopping by tonight. Everyone seems real excited with your work. Folks, My Mother Made Me a Reservation in Hell (But I Said Screw That, I Wanna Be Famous) is out in stores now. Kyle Frederick everyone. Stick around. We’ll be right back with the new world record holder for hagis-eating and comedian, Tom Arnold.

2003-09-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

Fishing for Ramadan Underpants

An Interview With Kyle Frederick, humorist and author of â€œMy Dear Mother Made
Me a Reservation in Hellâ€� By Rolf Esterhauz

This interview, conducted with a veritable genius of our time, aims to bring to
light the real life anxieties of a heavy-drinking, hard-drugging Midwestern
man, raised staunchly Catholic by an overbearing and fat-assed mother. It is
the interviewerâ€™s hope that this piece will help thousands of young people out
there overcome their fears of motherly overbearance, as Mr. Frederick did, by
narcotic self medication, unhealthy eating habits, and a strict
regimen of furious keggles.

RE: Mr. Frederick, give us an idea of what the social dynamic in your
household was before you were old enough to know about rebellion against your
mother.

KF: Well Rolf, let me put it this way, most mornings I was awakened by my
mother spanking me with a bible. After a few years of this, I really started
to like the smack of holy book on my ass, so mom had to figure out other ways
to get me up. Iâ€™d say her most effective ploy was to have Jesus (my dad kept a
costume around for times like this) beat me mercilessly about the head with a
rubber truncheon shaped like a crucifix. And that was just the beginning of
the day for me when I was between 8 and 13â€¦.

RE: Thatâ€™s utterly fascinating. So what youâ€™re saying is that your mother and
father worked together to teach you strict observation was the key to a healthy
and successful life.

KF: I wouldnâ€™t go that far. My dad was well aware that he wouldnâ€™t get booty
if he refused my motherâ€™s demands. Usually, heâ€™d reluctantly agree to help her
if at all. He wasnâ€™t a staunchly religious man, because I remember numerous
times waking up for a drink of water and finding him drinking whiskey and
jerking off to Animal Planet. Iâ€™m not sure mom knew about that. Anyway, I
remember a normal day for me, after the rude awakening, was to go out back and
hose myself off, because mom didnâ€™t believe the pressure of a regular shower
would wash off the ungodly stench of failure from me. Then sheâ€™d give me a
bucket of oats, a ladle, and a whistle, and tell me to go sit out back and blow
when I was finished. After that, I was usually told to confess the sins of my
dreams and burn myself with a hot fork for each unholy thought. Then came a
long period of bible study, meeting with the pastor, bible study, confession,
prayer, bible question and answer session, dinner, bible study, nightly
prayers, and while I slept I was forced to practice osmotic bible study. That
was a normal day for me, Rolf, so you can imagine that there was an animal
inside me growing more desperate by the day.

RE: Youâ€™ve given us a window into your life at home, Kyle, which was both heart
wrenching and queerly stimulating. Now, if you would, enlighten us as to what
life was like outside of the house, at school, when you were beyond your
motherâ€™s reachâ€¦

KF: Wellâ€¦I was never quite beyond my motherâ€™s reach Rolf. She usually paid
off one of my classmates to rat me out if I was bad at school. I was never
really sure who the snitch was, but I had a suspicion it might have been my
best friend, Bart Masterson. He always seemed to be a little too observant of
me, oh and he was constantly taking pictures of me, which seemed like an odd
thing for an elementary-aged kid to be doing at school. I was in Catholic
school, of course, so I was pretty unaware of the social revolution that was
taking place in the late eighties and early nineties. We listened to Christian
music and read Christian books, ate Christian food and were told that good
Christians resisted all the major urges. Even though a little devil inside me
told me to where a mirror on my shoe, a much bigger entity was telling me that
if I happened to see up a girlâ€™s skirt, I would explode into sinful flame and
die a horrible, agonizing death. That was the pressure we lived with. It
started to really gnaw at me as my hormones started to rage in the fifth grade.

RE: What it sounds like to me, Kyle, is that you started to feel overwhelming,
naughty urges that were poised to break the grip of Christianity on your
impressionable soul. Is there a specific occurrence that you recollect as
having opened the floodgates, so to speak.

KF: The one event that I remember as having had set me on the path to self
destruction happened in the fifth grade. The local high school, just down the
block, was having their annual homecoming parade, in which students built
floats and spread wild good cheer. Their mascot was the Knights, and one float
in particular caught my eye. It was a knight on a horse with an enormous
lance, strangely oversized, but nonetheless exciting. I sat there, surrounded
by sisters and my overly obedient contemporaries, and waited for the
interesting float to pass by. What I saw upon closer inspection were a bunch
of men dressed liked maidens, with exaggerated breasts and asses, dancing
around the knight with the huge lance. When they got directly in front of us,
the maidens tore the paper covering off the lance to reveal the largest cock I
had ever seen, and Iâ€™m talking the size of a Buick here. At that precise
moment, something snapped in my head, and I laid back, looking straight up into
the sky, as the sisters scampered to gather up the children and retreat into
the safety of the church. While I lay there, I saw up more than one skirt, and
I knew that things were going to be different from there on out. For the first
time in my life, I felt like the little munchkin in my pants needed a good
punching, and thatâ€™s exactly what I did when I got home from school that day.