Mister Gargantuan

by Misti Rainwater-Lites

I am obsessed with receiving e-mail from my special friend in California. He lives in a spider infested room on a mountain. He calls himself Mountain Man and Jethro McFudd, among other things. I call him Mister Gargantuan because he reminds me of Mr. Big from "Sex and the City" even though he insists he is not a metrosexual and he certainly isn't wealthy. My special friend tells me he is a smelly wino and I have no business being in love with him and if I am in love with him (I guess I am, but it's scary and immoral because I am married and not to him and my feelings for my special friend are definitely unrequited so I try to distract myself by sniffing Pine-Sol and Kiwi shoe polish, dancing around to Wham! songs and taking pictures of Barbie and Ken dolls engaging in pillow talk.) he doesn't want to hear about it. I've loved the fucker for four tornado dizzy years, ever since I read his first book of poetry and received his first e-mail (a gracious reply to mine, in which I gushed and crushed like a giddy, sexually repressed Baptist teenager) and heard him read his poems in a bar.

I sent him a long e-mail more than 24 hours ago in which I bragged about walking out of Wal-Mart with a free bag of groceries. I thought he would be so proud of me he would respond right away. I crave his affirmation, his YOU GO, MAMA! Goddamn it, what is he up to? Why doesn't he send me an electronic soul kiss? Is he eating Chef Boyardee pizza with another fan? Is he killing spiders? Is he repelled by my ridiculous neediness? I'm a wife and a mother. I'm a Texan. I have no appeal. During our last telephone conversation last year he told me he knows I'll be rich someday. I'll have a mansion and a butler. I don't believe that shit, not for a hot ass second, and if it's this lonely at the bottom I don't want to know how lonely it is at the top.

Misti Rainwater-Lites has a shitload of books available at lulu.com. She keeps a blog at http://ubiquitousdandelion.blogspot.com. Stalk her. She is starved for your attention. I am proud of myself for walking out of Wal-Mart yesterday with a free bag of groceries worth $20 and change. The details aren't important. It was better than sex. That's important.