Free The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro Page A

Think again, Whore of Babylon. Go back to the bar.
    Dottie nodded her head as she looked at me. She knew she was right about that girl the minute she’d laid eyes on her. She wished she could sentence me, what better thing could she do to service her fellow citizens?
    I didn’t care, and when my name wasn’t called during civic duty first cuts, I wasn’t surprised. The public defender, however, looked at me with sadness in his eyes. He knew the Drunk Girl probably would have voted to have his client walk.
    Who knows?
    All I know is what Linda Hurley told me; that I should not take it personally. Dottie didn’t know shit, because somewhere, in some state, in some county, in some courtroom, I was the perfect juror.
    Yep, I was the perfect juror.
    Just as long as I dressed in an Ann Taylor suit, washed my hair, and lied straight through my unbrushed teeth.

The Speech
    Relationships suck.
    They suck hard.
    Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when my bedroom is as black as death, and the sheets on half the bed are as cold as a five-day-old corpse, I think
    All I ever wanted to be was someone’s Old Lady.
    I want to be the ball and chain.
    I need to be somebody’s squeeze.
    I float in this for a minute, in this bed that is too big for me, and feel a little bit lonely when all of a sudden the wheezing, flopping noise from my lungs wakes me up and shocks me back into Relationship Reality, and I realize
    The empty side of the bed does not fart in its sleep.
    The empty side of the bed does not attempt to sodomize me while I am sleeping.
    The empty side of the bed does not make me look at the turd as big as my leg grounded in the toilet and then ask aloud, “Dude, do you think it will go down in one flush?”
    The empty side of the bed does not wrestle me to the floor, pin me, and then straddle me, in order to do the Spit Torture, dripping saliva out of its mouth over my face, then sucking it back up; dribbling it out, then sucking it back up; dribbling it out, then letting it fall right near my mouth.
    The empty side of the bed IS NOT, I repeat, IS NOT a MAN.
    And for that, I am thankful.
    I want a man as nice as my retarded dog, but one that doesn’t crap on the floor. I want a man who will only cheat on me a little and who will call me once a week. I want a man who will buy his own drinks and who will hold back my hair when I puke. I want a man who is unconfused regarding his sexual identity. I want a man who has never heard of or practiced the Speech.
    I will never find him. He has never been born.
    The last time I got my walking papers, it was over the phone. “It” had lasted about five months, the longest-standing Relationship Record I had held in this decade. Well, it wasn’t even a “relationship.” I called it the “thing.” He didn’t call it anything. He thought I wanted to get married tomorrow, have seventeen kids, buy an Isuzu Trooper, and then staple his scrotum to the living-room couch. All I really wanted was one phone call per solstice.
    Anyway, the conversation was off to a running start when he cleared his throat and said,
    “I am not ready and will not be ready to actively get involved with anyone for at least three to five years.”
    “Why?” I asked. “Are you going to prison?”
    “No. What I am saying is that I’m not ready to commit to anything, either way.”
    “Either way? You mean you can or cannot commit to committing or not committing?” I said, growing suspicious and confused. “Are you giving me ‘the Speech’?”
    “I think we should concentrate more on the ‘Friends’ part of our—well, you know.”
    Suspicions confirmed. I gasped.
    “You ARE giving me the Speech! You just gave me the Speech! That was the Speech!” I cried.
    So I got the Speech, which automatically drops you to the lowest point in life, it’s like throwing the self-esteem balloon on a cactus. You become such a small specimen of existence that you could probably mate with yourself, which would