God Save the Sweet Potato Queens (3 page)
René leaves behind two kids, a husband, her mother, and her sweet, younger sister, Sue B. Olson. Sue, a stay-at-home mother, lives in Alameda, California, with her handsome husband, Todd, and their adorable 1 1⁄2-year-old son, Nicholas. Sue is very involved with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers), where she serves as co-coordinator. She spends her time taking yoga classes, walking along the bay, and, of course, taking care of Nicholas. Nicholas likes his tumbling class, his play group, and living in Alameda (only an hour away from his favorite aunt, Lisa). Sue and her husband just bought a new house three blocks from the bay.
“I wish René could have seen our house,” Sue said. “It’s such a nice house and so well-decorated. I was hoping René could be inspired and take some of the ideas back and redecorate their mobile home.”
In lieu of wasting your hard-earned money on flowers, the family is accepting cash or check (with proper ID) donations.
To date, for some inexplicable reason, I have not heard from René. If I knew my sister, Judy, had already written something like this in anticipation of my untimely death, I’d make damn sure I had one to hold over her head as well. A good friend of Tammy’s, Alex, said she doesn’t care at all what they say about her when she’s gone, she just wants to be buried in cheese. She envisions a huge coffin-shaped hunk of cheese with a hollowed-out space in the middle for her. She didn’t specify a preference for the type of cheese, having never met one she didn’t want to spend eternity with.
Helen Harloe of Charleston, South Carolina, wrote to me after reading my tips on child rearing in
SPQBOL
to share with me her shining moment in Motherhood. Helen has since become a good friend and a major contender for Queendom. It seems that Helen’s children—ages fifteen, eleven, and eleven, who I’m sure are usually paragons of adolescent virtue—were inexplicably acting awful at the Wal-Mart. No one knows why these things happen, but they do and it’s best to have a plan. Helen had not arrived with a plan, but it took her all of about two seconds to come up with this one, and it’s a ring-tailed-tooter if I ever heard one: “At the top of my lungs, I launched into ‘Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog’!” And she would not stop. I picture her dancing about and using lots of gestures and facial expressions—really emoting with the song—plus, as she said, she was singing real loud and it went on for some time. People were looking around for the cameras. Surely this woman must be in a movie—what else could explain this? And her children? “One of them burst into tears, the other hit the floor, and the third crashed into a display as he was running backward.” Has Helen had any further behavioral deviations from these chirren in public places? Oh no, oh my no.
Helen hoped that this would qualify her as being incredibly witty and cute and resourceful enough to be considered for at least a Wannabe slot. Man, she’s a shoo-in! As a matter of fact, I am hereby officially declaring Helen Harloe Sweet Potato Queen Mother of the Year—possibly the decade.
3
Promises, Promises
J
ust in case you haven’t yet read
The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love,
let me tell you that the hottest topic for discussion to come out of that book has been the Promise.
The Promise refers to the True Magic Words, guaranteed to get any man to do your bidding. All you have to do is tell a guy that if he’ll just do whatever it is you’re asking, a blow job is in the offing; delivering on the Promise, I hasten to explain, is not part of the deal. We describe it in detail in
SPQBOL,
which you really need to read for a full understanding—a necessity before you go out and try to employ the technique on your own. Performed correctly, it is 100 percent guaranteed, and we also guarantee that the Promise is pretty much all you will have to perform.
Readers of
SPQBOL
report nearly total success with the Promise. Kay, who gave me a very fine sock monkey she made with her own two hands, told me she has used the Promise on her husband with felicitous results: She gets her yard work done and she gets lucky—talk about your win/win! She said if she’d known about this sooner, she’d have had the Taj Mahal by now. Another woman, Nina, who sent me wonderful deviled-egg recipes, but I wish she would just come here and make them for me, said she went to a business conference and signed up for the golf tournament instead of the usual “wives’ activities” and found herself in the happy situation of being the only woman playing. A highly competitive individual, Nina really wanted to win, so to inspire her teammates to give it the good ole 110 percent, she made them all the Promise. Big trophy and cash. Good work, Nina. A book club wrote me to say that they used the Promise to get a new sign for their kids’ school. Not to name any names, but I did sign a Promise certificate (see our Web site,
www.sweetpotatoqueens.com
) made out to the mayor of a very large Canadian city where some Wannabes were seeking to influence a decision on some land development. I am so proud to see that you are using the Promise for the good of your communities: The Queens are very civic-minded.
One Cute Girl wrote, however, that she was being pestered slap to death by some guy wanting her to deliver on the Promise, and she wanted to know how she could “avoid this boring part.” Keep right on smiling and Promising, I told her. If he is not whining about that, it will just be something else, and you might as well keep it on familiar ground.
While we may offer the Promise, far and wide, willy-nilly, to any and all men from whom we may need or desire goods or services, we admit to a severely low tolerance for the Promise being made to—and especially accepted by—men whom we consider to be
ours
. This may appear to be a confusing set of standards to the uninitiated and also to guys, but we don’t care. Our standards are our standards and we expect everyone else to live up to them fully, whether they understand them or not.
Take, for example, this most interesting case related to me by one of the Queens, Tammy, I believe it was. Tammy’s dear friend Leora was constantly having trouble with her ne’er-do-well husband, Jimmy Lee (pronounced “Jimmalee” in these parts). Jimmalee, it seems, had a job that involved door-to-door walking for one of the utility companies and taking readings from the company’s meter on each of the houses. As we all know, the meter reading has a profound impact on one’s bill for the month, and so if anything causes that reading to be lower, well, it makes for a lower utility bill. There are many ways to accomplish a lower reading, and many of them are publicized by the utility companies themselves—caulking and weather stripping and turning off appliances and such.
Another, probably more effective but certainly not advertised method of lowering one’s utility bill involves direct negotiations with the man who reads the meter—in this case, Jimmalee. Leora related it to Tammy like this: “Jimmalee goes out on the job, and those women are just waitin’ for him at the door, saying, ‘Jimmalee, why don’t you come on inside for some i-i-i-iced te-e-ea and a little sump’n
special
.” And way too many times, according to the highly incensed Leora, Jimmalee was indeed availing himself of the house specialties. As he would leave, Leora said, Jimmalee’s hostesses would stand at the door and call after him, “Now, Jimmalee honey, won’t you re-e-e-ead my meet-ah low?”
Granted, we are only hearing Leora’s side of this story, but that is the only side in which we have any interest. Our job is to support Leora, and that is what we are doing. Jimmalee can get his own friends. At any rate, Leora finally had enough of Jimmalee’s discount meter-reading service and decided to dissolve their marital bonds. We applaud her decision to spare his life.
It’s a Scientific Fact
Some people have taken issue with our judgment that guys are obsessed with sex, particularly blow jobs, even more particularly the getting of blow jobs for themselves. Well, I say
some
people, not a lot of people—okay, maybe one person, or maybe we just talked about how nobody would dare take issue with it since it is so obviously, completely, universally true and everybody knows it. At any rate, if there is a doubter out there, the following story should terminate the issue.
I actually read, in an actual magazine from the newsstand, that some actual guys (biologists, the story said, but I’d bet money they were all guys) did an actual study and they discovered that a male zebra finch readily submits to the indignity of having a white feather glued to his head because female zebra finches find the ornament irresistible. The biologists concluded from this study that the “predilection for crests may be hardwired into the avian central nervous system.” Who do they think they are fooling with that crap—their mothers? The predilection for crests? How about the endless quest for pussy? I suggest that what they proved is this: that guy birds, indeed guys of any and all species, will do absolutely anything to get it. I further suggest that they stumbled onto this crest idea in a search-and-discover mission whose sole purpose was How Can We Get More Pussy?
We all know that many beneficial products and life-enhancing procedures have come from research that was initially conducted on animals, however unpopular and politically incorrect the fact may be. I am convinced that these guys were studying the mating habits of birds with the thought that if they could figure out ways to enhance the birds’ sex lives, they could extrapolate some usable data for human-type guys. I mean, I just have a hard time believing that anybody really gives a rat’s ass about how birds feel about hats. That would be a tough one to get funded. If, however, you plan to do a study that provides concrete measures that male birds will take to absolutely, 100 percent guarantee that they will be chick magnets, and if you can imply pretty heavily that you are fairly sure you can come up with some human equivalencies for this study, the National Science Foundation would probably bring cash over in wheelbarrows. This would be so much more valuable than a better mousetrap.
It is only a matter of time before we start seeing guys walking around with white feathers glued to their foreheads. Here’s what I think we ought to do about it: The first one you see, rush right up to him and all but devour him on the spot, admiring and fondling his feather all the while. Within seventy-two hours, every guy on the planet will have a white feather glued to his forehead. Tee-hee. You know, I bet the genesis for the whole thing was Lyle Lovett—ever look at his hair? I mean, really, it’s like, pretty noticeable, to say the least. I bet those biologist guys were hanging out, wolfing brews and talking about women, of course—about actually getting women—and the subject of Lyle Lovett came up, as it so often does in these situations. Specifically, Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts and how in this world did he ever get her—even temporarily. And maybe, in their stupefied state, they figured it must have something to do with his hair—in particular that topknot thing he wears—and they stumbled back to the lab to try to replicate this felicitous result with animals they had on hand, which just happened to be zebra finches.
They probably experimented with a variety of interesting articles on those poor bastards’ heads, in attempts to attract the girls, with many failures at first. They knew it had to be very puffy and very big in relation to the bird’s head and body but lightweight enough that the bird could still stand and prance about in studly bird–fashion. Wonder what all they tried? A paper clip perhaps—too business-Bob-looking; a cotton ball—too swishy; a golf ball—way too heavy; a gumdrop—too sticky and it attracts bugs, which is not altogether a bad thing for a bird, but at the moment the bird is horny, not hungry; a Q-tip—too stiff, but the shape was more appealing in a drum major or military way. And then they tried a feather, which turned out to be the equivalent of a date-rape drug for birds. The girl birds were just lying around spread-eagled (spread-finched?) all over the lab, begging for more of that hot bird-y love. The guy birds were insufferable pricks, strutting around, screwing every chick in sight. Outside the lab, it was pandemonium: Every male finch in North America was hurling himself against the lab windows, desperately trying to get a white feather glued to his head and trying to get insurance to pay for it.
The biologists will probably get, and they certainly deserve, a huge bonus not only for this huge discovery, which will be a boon to birds and men everywhere, but for solving, they believe, the biggest mystery of the millennium—namely the Lyle Lovett/Julia Roberts thing. Science knows no bounds apparently.
Of course, if they had bothered to ask a woman, she could have told them promptly and free of charge: Julia (and all the rest of us) love Lyle in spite of his hair, not because of it. We can listen to him sing “I loved you yesterday” one time and be ready to bear his children and wash his socks for the rest of our lives. Do you ever wonder why they never ask us what
we
like—just foolishly try to figure it out amongst themselves? It must be related to never asking for directions.
Magic Words—For Men Only
Many men have also written me about the Promise. Men have thanked me for this enormous contribution to their education, and some have expressed their delight at the dramatic increase in the number of times they have personally actually succeeded in collecting on the Promise. But there are, to be sure, the whiners, who complain that they never can collect and they are pissed off big time at how often they have been suckered in by mere words alone. Well, you are all on your own as far as the Collection Process goes. But now it is time to let the guys in on a little-known tip that will greatly enhance your Collection Potential. Yes, there are more magic words out there—and these work on us. (Don’t panic, girls: if they pay any attention at all to me, nearly all benefits will be yours. Men are, after all, easily satisfied, are they not?)
There is one sentence that all of us long from the depths of our souls to hear a man say. Six little words—the most powerful, the most seductive words we can imagine. The words are more powerful than all the flowery declarations of love, loyalty, and lifelong fidelity you can compose. I would have to say that they cause nearly the same effect on women that the Promise does on men. They make our knees weak, our eyes dilate, and our breathing heavy. We have been known to sigh deeply and flush visibly at the sound of these words. Any woman alive can tell you immediately, without hesitation, and in vivid detail the last time she heard these magical words. And she can count on one hand the times she has heard them from some man other than her own personal daddy.
The Six Words a Woman Most Loves to Hear from a Man—I’d say they are the modern equivalent of riding up on a white stallion and plucking her from a burning tower. Okay, guys, imagine this: The woman you desire is there before you, engaged in some activity. For the sake of conversation, let’s say she’s simultaneously trying to arrange to have her car repaired, cook dinner, unclog the sink, do the laundry, make plane reservations for an upcoming trip, cut the grass, and clean out the garage—just a typical woman’s typical workload after her typical eight-hour workday, of course. Suddenly, magically almost, you appear. You stride up to her purposefully, you take her gently in your arms, look deeply into her eyes, and you say, very softly but firmly, the Six Words.
You say the Six Words to her—and say them pretty quick because until she hears them, she’s liable to think that you are here in the midst of the mountain of her work feeling frisky, and if you don’t swiftly disabuse her of that misconception, you could be maimed on the spot. So there she is, overwhelmed, and there you are, purposefully striding, embracing, looking deeply, and saying softly but firmly . . . the Six Words:
Oh no, let
me
handle this.
Gasp! Girls, can you imagine it? I swear, it gives me a tingle in my nether regions just to write the words!
Once the words are spoken, and your deliriously happy lady has finished her swoon, say them again for maximum impact. Then listen very carefully, maybe even take notes, as she gives you the necessary instructions for the task you will handle.
Caution:
If the woman is Southern, her immediate response to the Six Words will be a soft, “Oh no, that’s okay, you don’t have to do that.” We were brought up that way, but let me assure you—WE DON’T MEAN IT! You must at this point
insist
on doing it and commence doing it immediately or all will be lost.
While
we
can hand out Promises thither and yon with nary a thought to delivery—woe, woe, woe be unto them (and any innocent bystanders) if they utter the Six Words to us and don’t make good on the deal. We’re not talking about your sexual favors here; we’re talking about bona fide errands, goods, and/or services. We’ll be more than happy to consider sexual favors after the successful completion of errands and delivery of said goods and/or services. But until such time, believe me, we will not be in the mood.