By Bruce Blackman

…like when you visit them, and they tell you to have a seat, but the couch and chairs are covered with so many decorative pillows that you can’t sit, and you don’t want to throw any on the floor to make a place, so you just sit on the very tippy-tippy edge and act like that’s the normal way you sit as your legs tremble from supporting your weight

And then they serve coffee on a silver-plated tray, and you have to be polite and shit and act like the Earl of Essex and not leave any coffee boogers in the sugar, and you drink way the fuck too much, and then you need to pee like fifty midgets so you go in their guest bathroom which is way too damn close to the living room, and you try to make it go down the side of the toilet so it doesn’t sound like a cow pissing on a flat rock so everybody won’t know what you’re doing like they didn’t know in the first place, but at least you don’t have to advertise it. And you’d like to whistle to cover up the sound, but you’re afraid to because they might think you’re strange which you probably are for thinking about it at all.

And then you wash your hands but the only towels are those monogrammed kind that nobody ever uses, and you’re not supposed to, either, except you don’t have a choice, and you don’t want to yell out, “HEY. Y’ALL GOT ANY REGLER TOWLS IN HERE,” so you use them anyway, and hope you can leave before they notice because now they’ll be pissed because they have to wash them and they never had to do that before.

…like you sit around and go blah, blah, blah—the blah blah blah, and so forth, and you worry about using A WORD YOU CAIN’T USE, so you don’t say much, and you listen to them prattle on and on, and you could care less than less about their new rattan Tiki torches and matching glassware set, and you hope to God they don’t ask you to stay for supper, so you start thinking of excuses that don’t sound totally lame-ass like, “Oh, we’d love to, but Bruce is having a colonoscopy in the morning.”

So, that’s why I don’t visit relatives. I hope you understand, but if you don’t, then you shouldn’t have read this.

You can visit with Bruce on his Facebook Page. Also, check out his website.

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