Funny B.S. Personal Ad

I'LL EAT MY HAT OR YOUR WHATEVER...If my personal ad doesn't make you laugh or cry or think it'll never end.--Ben South

Dear Desperado,

Shameless, bohemian, freakish, carny trash prone to operatic bombast are just easy brickbats any indecently paid, divorce attorney could have conjured up about me. Opinions are like fetishes, hon, most everybody's got one or five. Hillbilly, assclown, Cracker. Yeah, sure, pile on. Character does matter. Mine may be zany, colorful, even Loony Tunes, cartoon-character; but, wouldn't you like to giggle like a kid again? You're someone of great discernment who doesn't readily chime in with the chattering masses. Make up your own fool mind.

My thirty-one year, starter-marriage was brought to a grinding whimper about five years ago. End of an error. For some of us, it takes awhile to grow back some trusticles.

The only drugs I do now are Lunesta and Rogaine. Unless you're a Darth-breather or snore like the Wabash Cannonball, I'm thinkin' I could go cold turkey on the mattress meds. And, what about the Rogaine? Is hair just a big, ole deal for you? As I age, I find it's coming in nicely on my back, thank you very much. Actually, the most promising patch is not on my back, more on my hump. Apparently, the local wags were right. I was stooping so low and so often that I'm now the Quasimodo of Cornfield County. Neighbor kids rub it for luck.

I'm not as paranoid as everybody in this town without pity thinks I am, or as bipolar. Well, yes and no; front-seat, back-seat. You've sure got a lot of questions for somebody from Paducah.

For the record, that broken record, I'm not much for folks who consider themselves victims. My phone's about to die. Phooey on that tired old chestnut about "honoring" yourself. I say, "git ovuh yourself." Though, if you hanker for adoration and think you could cotton to some full-press exaltation, I've got an open spot on a pedestal you might be interested in.

I'm not talkin' bout wedding and rice. I like rice anyway you wanna serve it, except thrown. Goodgawdamighty NO! If we have to choose, let's go for serial murder over serial marriage. It's so much less brutal. I believe the numbers'll show Elizabeth Taylor killed more people than those gunmen of "In Cold Blood." To our friends who opt for those next nuptials, let's raise our glass and salute the triumph of hope over experience. You and I can find some other things to experience. Ever smoked Tuscan kryptonite? Me neither.

Livin' in sin's another story altogether. Remember when we were young and we thought shackin' up would just kill our parents? Well, most folks our age don't have to worry about that anymore. Cohabitating is more eco-friendly, sustainable anyhow. We could kill two pigs with one bird. Sharing a house could mean using less electricity. Maybe we could at least take baths together. I'm not horndoggin' here, I'm saving the dang planet.

I don't smoke, chew or dip. Do you? In the spirit of full disclosure, a few years back, I won a spittin' contest in the Skoal tent on Mule Day in Columbia, Tennessee. I took home five tins of mint dip and two camo ballcaps, one of which could be your tiara if you'd like to be the Sultana of Spittle. And, what belle wouldn't? The fine art of targeted spitting is another gift I bring in my quiver. Ever tried a champagne spit bath?

It improves your dating chances to be heteroflexible, and, indeed, all the genders have their special gifts but chicks simply smell better. Whether they're lovely flowers, or tasty spices, or citrus clean, an earthy roll-in-the-hay or fiddle-de-dee fern green, they all smell grand. I prayed to Jehovah to endow me with a great appendage and I was blessed, with this Roger Fedderer, bloodhound-worthy sniffer. I admit to being a tad bookish. Lately, even I know I've had my nose in a book, too long. My nose needs a new resting place.

I might go older this fling, join someone on a similar spiral toward death. We could put the spice in hospice, the art back in arterio sclerosis. I'm no longer young, but if I can't show you a good time, I'll eat my hat or your whatever.

In the right light, I've got one profile that looks like an aging matinee idol but from another angle I sorta favor Jimmy Carter's less-handsome brother, Billy. Great for dimly-lit romantic suppahs. Really best during tornado season when the power's iffy down here. Y'all come down for the next hurrication. You are definitely out of my league, but by how many miles?

Sorry if your ribs are sore from too much elbowing of any sexual innuendo in this ad. Sex really isn't all that important, if memory serves me. Which it doesn't. Well, is sex important? You tell me. And, please feel comfy in yelling your answer up close, right in my face where I can feel your hot spewing volcanic opinion. I'll wear goggles. I meant to say, I'll wear goggles if that's what you want me to wear, dear.

Recently, nymphomania has been designated as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. Fortunately, I am not a member. So, you're someone who can't say, "No." Well, I'm someone who can't say "linoleum" or "aluminum."

You are a rare, exotic bird. A perfect pea hen, a really swellegant one, to my strutting but badly in need of a fluffing, molting peacock. Together, we can make beautiful birdsong. We both have endured years of cheap chirpshots of gossipy gulls and moody mockingbirds. Who said not to kill a mockingbird? Let's take a b-b-gun after those peckerwoods. We won't let the turkeys get us down. Your dreams and stuff will lift like eagles The world will be our own private aviary.

Okay, let's just say for argument's sake that I WAS "The Last Man on Earth." Would that make you rethink your position? I'm beginning to think singletons in this town aren't desperate enough. I regularly hear chicks whine about all the sorry bubbas around here and guys kvetching about how sorry the gals have become. Maybe nobody's sorry enough. Or, maybe everybody I know is just nuns and monks. This town's just like one big ole nunnery, or a monkery.

I don't ALWAYS smell like the Buxahatchee paper mill. That was just one brief period and the stench was caused by the trinity of my dandruff shampoo, body lice treatment and the scabies ointment. Let's not pick nits, that can be entertaining but my dates don't have to anymore. The only offensive smell I've got now is from the flopsweat I get when I'm not enjoying regular companionship. You can help me overcome this embarrassing affliction and make things more pleasant for folks around me. Maybe I'm not soaping up quite right. Could you offer a hands-on tutorial or possibly an instructional video?

By the way, you don't have a photographic memory, do you? I've always found that trait a danged nuisance in relationships. I like the philosophy of forgive and forget. Even better, forget and forget and forget to infinity. As we age together, I look forward to your gradual loss of memory, one of the many pleasantries of, shall we say, mature dating.

Really and truly, I fear no one I could be interested in would be wasting their waning years reading this, or any, personal ad. They would be reading something of more depth; the back of a bran cereal box, the comparatively Nobel-worthy words on a mattress tag, that tiny print on those osteoporosis pills.

Tell me you haven't sworn off romance altogether. I've known the cold shoulder of disinterest. Open the door to your heart and while you're at it, please see if they'll let me back in the door at O'Carrs in Homewood. My exposing myself to half the restaurant last Thanksgiving was truly an innocent accident. The men's room urinal is practically cojoined with the champagne fountain. Mind over bladder, hon.

Lucky, lucky you. You toss the dice and I'm your consolation prize. Sorry you didn't get Bachelor #1 but let's make do, shall we? Your winnings include cooking me dinner; nothing too spicey, please, and hearing me go on and on about my exes. Could you hold this torch I'm carrying just a sec whilst I scratch the "My wife ran off with my best friend and God I miss him" tattoo? It's that constant itch above the interlocking rings tattoo and my BS monogram. Sugah honey iced tea.

Speaking of gamboling, do you ever drive over to Philadelphia, Mississippi to the Silver Star to play five-card stud or wrassle those one-armed banditos? Well, me neither, not anymore; not since I lost the family minivan betting on that sure thing before Mike Tyson went bat-guadoo crazy on us. Life's a gamble, right? Like those Swedish sages Abba said, "Take a chance on me." Let's take the Friday night party bus across the state line and see if this time we both cain't get lucky. You going more than two dates with me. What's the odds on that?

Are you still following the Dead? Piercing some flab? Bikini top and Depends bottom? Hangin' with those middle-aged cabana boys? We may be old but we ain't dead. Right? Well, that is right, idn't it? What did you just mumble? Not to be a-a-r-ping, dahling, but put your teeth back in and give me a little better shot at understanding what y'all want.

Something's come between us, hadn't it? And, I don't mean the beer gut. Is it the restraining order? The DMZ? The clamp down? Your priest? Your shrink? Your children? Sorry to be such an askhole, I'll just wait for your hormones to catch up to mine.

Nice grits. No, that's no sillyass double entredre. I'm just sayin' you really have nice grits. They're very firm and full and perky. Let me just leave it at that, okay? Nice grits.

I'm still a bit uncomfortable, less-than-courageous, okay, downright wussy around live chickens. Well, it had to come up sooner or later. Just seems you might should know all. No snecrets from the git go. I yam what I yam, full disclosure. Yeah, I know being chicken around chickens is not one of those super-attractive, zHarmony, dating traits. I'd just feel really bad if we started going out and then you decided to raise show chickens, trust me, it happens, and then I go all Mel Gibson on you. I think it started back when I was about five-years old. I was out in the pumphouse coloring in my coloring book and a neighbor's ginormous rooster invades our yard and commands the brick walkway between me and my mama who was in the main house. The next part happened so fast it's kind of a biddy-hen blur. I glanced up and saw the rooster's huge, menacing redness. I shrieked and simultaneously drove a big, thick, orange, first-grader's crayon up my nose. Yes, Miz Gotcha, the first-grader was orange. My screams scared the rooster away and later mama had to cart me to Arab, Alabama to get a dentist to extract the crayon with his little tools. Over the last fifty years, I've tried to overcome my fear of being hen or roosterpecked but I still have a long way to go. I'm embracing of all kinds of prospects, however, if you are into cockfighting in a big way, and it's crucial for us to share that pleasure, it could be a dealbreaker. I'm just going to lay down now and pray that awful dream of being trapped in a chicken ranch doesn't reoccur. Go you chickenfat, go. Shoo, now. Shoo.

I don't do anything religiously, including religion. My daddy taught at a Catholic college and my mama was a devout, Southern Baptist. I consider myself a religious schizophrenic. You can join me for a kickass Bible drill one week and an incense-choking confessional the next. Or, we could join Father Carlin and be Frisbeetarians. Frisbeetarians believe souls land on a roof and get stuck.

I have a feminine side. It's my right side, not my front side or my backside. It's not that I've ever wished for a Barbie Dream House or would stretch your pumps prissing around while you're out of town. Actually, the gayest thing I've ever done, and there are a few stories, is to cajole a guy into going to see "Dreamgirls" with me--during the pro-football Super Bowl. Yep, a Scientologist drag queen could go down on another guy on Main Street and not get any gayer than that. Yessiree, how bromantic, double rainbows. If it's girlie for me to be empathetic and listen when you share your innermost thoughts and feelings, then guilty as charged. I'm not off-the-charts sensitive, but we could put on some Michael Buble' and uncork a bottle of pink zinfandel if you're not some Feminazi or that kinda beardo.

Having endured thirty years of marriage and enough ninety-dollars-an-hour chat therapy to buy a counselor a lakehouse, I have learned a few things about what love's got to do with it. How about love being a willingness to sacrifice for the other person, you know you are doing it, and you welcome the opportunities? Or, maybe love is just a whole lot of like. I found this thought in a Jonathan Safran Foer book, "This is love...isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More even, than you love their presence."

I could get serious about coupling up, again, but this time I'm determined to find a whole lotta like. And, our share of laughs. Serious and solemn aren't the same thing, I may be solemn intolerant and can be a prick around some puffed up, pompous asshat. "Y'all be y'all" has been my motto ever since Little Richard said it to me during a break when I was following him back in the last century. If we're too solemn, the terrorist fundamentalists win.

Let's do the "Time Warp," again. What you say we take things left to right? We could start at the end where you take exception or umbrage or legal action to every freakin' thing I say or do. We could then go back to icy, then cool, then ho-hum, then warm and move to hotter than a two-dollar pistol. I've had the bitter taste of divorce, it's worse than a Campari-soaked persimmon. I've eaten a boatload of crow. Even crow sauteed by a great, Southern cook can choke a mule. Let's wash this whole, distasteful, romantic past down with a good vintage. How about the vintage we are now?

How to sign off and begin my wait for that letter to pour in. You had me at, "Please leave cash on the dresser." I'm not interested in a volley of email tennis but you could just go primitive and call me. Whatever lifts your luggage. Thanks for any consideration. All proposals taken seriously, though not very solemnly.

Best, BS