Read Online It's All Relative by Wade Rouse - Free Book Online Page B

pants, watching drag queens race in high heels. You might as well have set me on fire and screamed, “Flamer!”
    â€œWhat a freak show, right?” my coworker laughed. “We had to see this, too. Can you believe this goes on in our town?”
    His wife rolled her eyes.
    â€œHey, we’re headed over to Bobby’s. Wanna join us?”
    I analyzed my options.
    My coworker was wearing an XXL college sweatshirt with a cotton turtleneck underneath that made him look like he was wearing a neck brace. And Dockers. His wife was wearing mom jeans, a hoodie, and white sneakers.
    Mr. Ring Toss was wearing a skintight baseball jersey that showed every muscle in his torso and jeans so tight I could see the head of his penis. Without squinting. And I had astigmatism.
    â€œYou ready?” my coworker asked.
    It was one of those defining moments in life, the ones that come completely out of the blue: a test to see if you’re comfortable with yourself, if you are willing and ready to embrace the next chapter.
    I wasn’t.
    I turned, without saying a word, and left with a man whom I not only didn’t like but who obviously despised gays.
    â€œWhat a freak show!” he laughed again. “I mean, you just have to see it once in your life. It’s like a car wreck. It’s so disgusting.”
    We walked past throngs of straight people—flashing tits, vomiting, having sex in the street and in the open windows of their rowhouses—all of whom were termed by my coworker and his wife as “hilarious,” “wild,” “fun.”
    And this Mardi Gras? Well, according to them, it was “a great time.”
    I found my friends at Bobby’s and they handed me a hurricane, and then another, until I got so wasted that my friends told me the next day I screamed, “Ring toss!” all night until I passed out in a stranger’s apartment, until total blackness seemed a better option than living another day in the dark.

Matt LeBlanc (Joey):
    â€¦Â Heads or tails? Heads is ducks because ducks have heads, and tails is clowns because …
    Matthew Perry (Chandler):
    â€¦Â What kind of scary-ass clowns went to your birthday parties?
    â€“
FRIENDS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO M(IM)E
Get Outta the Box Already!
    T he most bizarre rural birthday party I ever attended took place at a decaying farm that, from what I could tell, didn’t have anything to farm except, perhaps, dandelions and rocks. The party centered around rides on one low-slung, dirty, rather mean Shetland pony that I firmly believe to this day was two men in a horse suit; a fat clown who forgot to bring his red nose and ended up eating two whole Shotgun Sam’s pizzas all by himself; and, topping it all off, a mime whom I walked in on taking a doodie in an upstairs bathroom.
    The most disturbing part of this day (and there were many) was the fact that the Shetland pony talked and the mime did not.
    The Shetland pony screamed, “Goddammit, kid!” when I kicked it hard with my dingo boots while riding it around a makeshift corral; however, the pooping mime never uttered a word of embarrassment to me, like “Sorry” or “Whoops” or anything. Instead he just looked at me, in whiteface, his bodysuit—yellowed and dusty from sauntering around the dirty farm—down around his ankles. He simply started performing, attempting to free himself from an invisible box that it seemed had trapped him on the toilet.
    As you can imagine, I went screaming down the stairs that birthday, telling the moms in attendance that I had just witnessed a poopingmime. But when I turned around after pleading my case, the mime was already standing behind me, his face all squinched up into a goofy expression, his left palm raised into the air like he was confused, his right hand making a “he’s crazy” swirl around his temple. The moms laughed and walked away, but when I turned to face the mime