Joe Ditzel Has Some Relationship Problems

8/8/2019 Joe Ditzel Has Some Relationship Problems

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Joe Ditzel

Has SomeRelationship

Problems


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Joe Ditzel Has Some Relationship Problems

Copyright 2010 Joe Ditzel

Stories originally published between 1995 and 2010

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States o America. No part o this book may beused or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission rom the au-thor except in the case o reprints in the context o reviews For inormation, write Hart-

ord-Whaley Publishing, 914 Westwood Blvd., No. 327, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

FIRS EDIION

Library o Congress/CIP Data Pending

Ditzel, Joe

Joe Ditzel Has Some Relationship Problems/Joe Ditzel

1. American wit and humor.

www.joeditzel.com

[email protected]


3/83

Stuck

A while back I talked about my dads 1965 Mercury Comet. (Mercury is the god o sharp,exposed metal). I mentioned the best make-out spot or the Comet was any hill because you

never knew when it would need a push to get the engine started.

I think that was my strategy one day when I escorted a girl I worked with to a late nightrendevous in a cul-de-sac near my home. We lived in a new development. Some o thestreets had nothing on them except little stakes with orange ribbons that marked the prop-erty lines. Some lots only had basement oundations. Many o these oundations were lledwith neighborhood kids who knocked themselves unconscious when their bikes went yinginto huge holes lled with concrete.

I pulled the Comet into the empty cul-de-sac situated on a slight hill. Te empty lots werestill in the moonlight. I could make out the outline o a bulldozer and several pallets owood in the darkness. Te only sign o other people was the line o homes whose back yardsbordered the empty cul-de-sac lots. Te city had yet to install street lights. It was pitch darkexcept or the dim glow o lights rom the nearby homes.

I tuned the FM converter to KGGO- FM (Des Moines Hot Rock!) and the Wings Silly LoveSongs lled the night air. Or maybe it was Hall and Oates singing Sara Smile.

We talked about our stressul day as bus help or the oppressive restaurant management atthe Des Moines Gol and Country Club. We laughed. We cried. We began to make out.

Now, I have to admit I have always been behind the sexual experience curve. I always pre-tended I knew what guys were talking about when they bragged about the dierent thingsthey did with their dates. I just nodded my head in agreement and said, you know it, eventhough I had no idea what they were talking about.

So I am somewhat awkward with women. However, I did manage to stretch her out on theront seat o the Comet. Her head was squashed up again the metal window crank o thepassenger door. I began a long, passionate kiss.

Te Comet had an unusual steering wheel. Te horn was a hal -circle rim situated midwaybetween the post and the steering wheel itsel. Somehow I maneuvered my lef oot up inbetween the horn and the steering wheel.

Ater a while we began to uncoil our bodies. My oot squeezed the horn:


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HOOOOOOOOONNKKKKKK!

What are you doing?, she whispered.

My oot is stuck. Let me try again.

HHHOOOOONNNKKKK!

Quit doing that!, she cried.

Im not doing it on purpose- my oot is in the wheel!

HHHHOOOOOONNNKKKKK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

Dammit.

Back porch lights began to light up the yards o the surrounding homes. I knew the copswere not ar behind. I slipped my shoe o and peeled o my sock. I gured I would just pullas hard as possible no matter what the noise and then get the hell out o there. I pulled hardon my oot. It wedged tight.

HOOOOONNNNKKKKKK!

I pulled harder. My ankle cut into the horn.

HHHHOOOOONNNNNKKKKKKKKK!

My oot pulled ree with a nal

HONK! HONK!

I grabbed the wheel to pull mysel up. She huddled against the passenger door. I gunned theengine and raced out o the cul-de-sac and down the street.


5/85

Geek Love at Skybar

Te epicenter o trendy LA is the Sky Bar. Every somebody and wannabe in town has tra-versed the wooden oors o this stylish outdoor bar at the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset

Strip. Tere are lot o attractive women in LA. Occasionally, though, Ill meet a woman sobeautiul I nd mysel just staring. Our waitress was like that- thin, blonde, stunning goodlooks with the whitest teeth Ive ever seen. And charm. She laughed at our bad jokes. Shecomplimented my suspenders. An actress, she told us stories about her recent picture, a lowbudget horror ick.

Afer a ew minutes, she moved on to other customers. She became the hot topic o conver-sation among the industry wannabes at my table.

Shes perect or me, one Armani clad poseur in our group exclaimed. Im going to makea move, he said. Ill get her number. Ill take her out on my boat.

Get in line, a black clad trendoid countered. Ill take her to San Francisco or the week-end, he said between sips o his Dewars and water. Well go up to Napa and all in love,he predicted.

Wow- i she only knew what everyone had planned or her. Maybe she did know. Beautiulwomen must get propositions like that all the time.

As the bull got deeper, I watched the object o our aection taking orders rom a table in thecorner. I saw one o the customers remove something rom his pocket. She pulled somethingrom her pocket as well. Suddenly their aces lit up, bathed in the bright light o their SonyClies, a Palm Pilot clone. She was beaming him her phone number. As Palm nerds know,you can send your electronic business card via an inrared link rom one Palm to another.

Whaddyaknow. Our supermodel waitress has geek tendencies.

Bowling. Im going to take her bowling, I said to no one in particular.

Te table sat in silence, staring at my less-than-trendy white Brooks Brothers button-downand rep tie. Did Mr. Midwest here just say he would take her bowling?

Ten what, back to the double-wide or some Pabst Blue Ribbon? the Armani poseursaid, laughing behind the yellow-shaded sunglasses he only wears at night. Te whole tablejoined in.


6/86

Maybe, I said brightly, as she returned to our table.

All attention was riveted on her. I pulled my Sony Clie rom my pocket.

Beam me? I asked, smiling.

Sure, Ill beam you, she laughed as we pointed the gadgets at each other.

RECEIVED said my Clie screen- her name, cell phone, home phone, and birthday ap-peared on my screen.

Do you like bowling? I asked.

She yelled, I love bowling!

O course you do.


7/87

Spin the Pen

oday kids seem to know more about relationships when they are twelve than I do now atthirty-eight. When I was twelve I was just taking learning how to kiss. And the very rst kiss

took place at high noon in seventh grade.

Our classrooms were designed with a sort o notch in the back corner. Te notch in theoor plan may have been some weird way to accommodate the heating ducts. But the nunsound that it was a great place to put a troublemaker. Tey orced you to slide your desk intothis space in the back o the class. It was like putting your desk in a closet with no door.

At lunchtime the nuns would empty the class, turn out the lights and lock the door untilafer lunch. I think it was Gordon who gured out i someone sneaked into the shadows o

the notch right around 11:57 that once the door was shut they could then unlock it romthe inside. A group o three girls and three guys would then sit outside in the deserted hallduring lunch and play spin-the-pen. Tis was our junior high lunchtime version o spin-the-bottle. Since you dont have a bottle you just take your Bic and spin it on the oor. Te luckycouple would then go in the dark classroom and make their way back to the notch andsuck ace or a couple minutes and come back or another spin. Eventually, the pen didnteven spin much. Te person with the pen would pretend to spin it but really just plop itdown so it pointed to the person they wanted.

Judy was the rst girl I won spin-the-pen with. She had shoulder length brown hair, bigbrown eyes and whiter teeth than anyone should be allowed to have. We held hands as wemade our way to the notch corner. Once there I put my arms around her but I couldnt seeher because it was pitch black. I puckered my lips and stuck them out into the darkness. Imoved my head back and orth like an oscillating an hoping to bump into her lips. Some-where in the darkness she said; I cant nd you. I slowly inched my pre-puckered lips or-ward into the void until they touched down on her orehead and scraped back though herhair, narrowly missing being cut by her lime green berets.

I bent down more and pushed my dry lips on to hers. Her breath tasted like Bubble Yum.She moved her mouth around so I did the same. I was just getting the hang o it when shepushed her tongue into my mouth. She then thrust it in and out. I didnt know what to donext. My lips were now motionless. Te only thing I could think o was to slowly close myteeth on to her tongue. I was a human tongue scraper!

Once you kissed Judy you wanted to kiss every girl in the school. (Well, almost every girl).So, we had make out parties. We didnt call them make out parties, o course. Somebody


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would just say, were getting together at Ellens house Friday night. Te rst hal o the partywe spent doing one o two things. Playing the OUIJA board. Or trying to levitate someone.Levitating a kid was serious business- one kid would lie on the ground and feen otherskids would surround them. Ten they would put their ngers lightly underneath the pronekids body. Te idea was that by concentrating on our combined energy, we would be able

to lif the kid in the air. Ten someone would art and break the spell. Tese diversions weredelays or the real action. Eventually couples would move to a corner o the room to suckace sitting on a beanbag chair with duct tape over the holes while the Rolling Stones playedAngie.

But somehow it wasnt near as exciting as scraping Judys tongue with my teeth in the darkcorner o a classroom in the middle o the school day in the dead o a Canadian winter.

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Joe Ditzel Has Some Relationship Problems