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by Karen Craigo
Chauncey cares about two things in life: his after-work pink lady and that key party disguised as a game show called “Match Game ’78.”
I shake up the ingredients – lime juice, grenadine, heavy cream and gin – and he inclines his glass in my direction, then heads to the bedroom to rewatch host Gene Rayburn, dead three decades, leaning against the podium and leering at his skinny phallus of a mic.
“My wife can tell I’m seeing the pet shop girl on the side because I come home each night with ___ on my collar,” Gene Rayburn says, dentures gleaming like interrogation lamps.
I’ve heard this episode at least five times, but Chauncey yells out possibilities anyway, not one of them the least bit matchable – things like aquarium rocks, dewormer, sawdust, ferrets.
“Try PUSSY,” I shout into the bedroom, and he shouts back, “What?” pretending he doesn’t hear.
I guess between Nipsey Russell and Betty White, it’s a way to take our minds off Jonestown, blizzards, test-tube babies, until we learn to cushion ourselves alone within the orange foam of our Sony Walkman headphones.
Karen Craigo works as a business journalist in Springfield, Missouri. She is the author of two poetry collections and is the prose poetry editor of Pithead Chapel.
