When Expressions Collide!

My dad had a particular expression that he often used to describe someone’s appearance which could always elicit a laugh from me, usually because, despite being somewhat ambiguous, it was always uncannily accurate.
The expression? “One more push and he’d/she’d have been an ape.”
My friend Eric also had something of a trademark expression: Sex is like pizza. Even if it isn’t very good pizza, it’s still pizza.
In looking back at my time in Red Wing, one memory seems to lead to another, and given that there’s pretty much nothing going on now that’s worth writing about, I might as well tell the tale of a time when those two seemingly unrelated expressions collided.
As can be indicated by his motto, it’s clear that if I’m “too picky,” Eric is, or at least was, given that he is now settled down and married once again, my exact opposite in that regard.
This became most apparent during one of his splits from his first wife Sally, when he began the process of hooking up with a (partially) shaven Yeti whom I’m fairly certain had received that extra push my dad so often referred to, and who will, for the purposes of this entry, be known henceforth as the Ape Woman.
The Ape Woman, and Eric’s pursuit thereof, was a source of contention between us, as, for one thing, the fact that he spent time around her meant that I had to spend time around her, which was frankly unacceptable, as, apart from her sheer physical repulsiveness she was an unpleasant and obnoxious person. For another, the thought of him rutting with that knuckle-dragging she-ape was just too horrible to consider.
Still, Eric believed these to be desperate times and was determined to resort to desperate measures.
He and I had just moved out of the place where he and Sally had been living and in with our new roommate Tim. I believe it was on our first night in the new place that he had begun the process of “wooing” the Ape Woman. The three of us had left the bar together, and, on the way to dropping her off, we’d stopped by our place for Eric to grab some beer from our refrigerator. By that time I’d engaged in something that was going to become a trademark behavior for me: passing out in the backseat of the car.
In the morning, utterly confused as to where I was, I woke to discover that Eric had, after failing to rouse me, left a house key on my chest, and so I made my way into the house and onto the couch.
After we were all awake, he assured me that he hadn’t made the beast with two hairy backs with the Ape Woman.
However, a few days later we were at home when we received visitors. The Ape Woman, using her heightened animal senses, had managed to track Eric back to where we lived, even though she’d only been by briefly on that booze-filled night.
This was disturbing enough, but what made it even more disturbing was the fact that she’d brought a friend.


Congratulations! You just won the game of Monster Date!

In fairness, the friend was actually much less repulsive in many ways than the Ape Woman herself, but hey, I saw what Jabba did to Han Solo just for owing him money; I wasn’t about to bring down on myself the kind of trouble that would come from messing with his wife.
See? I’m not too picky, I was just covering my ass.
Despite being a simian herself, Ape Woman wasn’t prepared for the monkey wrench that got thrown into her plan to keep me busy with her friend while she flung Eric over her shoulder and swung him back to her jungle lair.
Said monkey wrench was Tim, towards whom I tried to deflect Mrs. The Hut by doing my best to be thoroughly uninteresting and unattractive, two natural talents that I have developed to the highest degree possible.
Not realizing that Tim would be there, Ape Woman hadn’t brought enough wingmen.
Of course, I hadn’t anticipated that Mrs. The Hut would feel that there was enough of her to go around and was perfectly willing to divide her focus between myself and Tim. Thankfully our friend Nate made a timely appearance and Tim and turned all of our attention to him, likely to an extent that made Mrs. The Hut think, “Oh, they play for that team.”
I’m perfectly willing to let someone think I’m gay if it means avoiding being smothered under sweaty, undulating rolls of flab of a woman who won’t take no for an answer.
Soon, Ape Woman and her wingman left, and though he was undaunted by the scorn and derision we heaped on him for pursuing the beast, Eric began setting his sights on skanks of the non-Circus sideshow variety.
One Friday night when were spending a quite evening drinking at home with friends, though, Eric decided that he desperately needed pizza – greasy, doughy, hair-covered pizza with anchovies and probably crabs – and got up and declared that he was off in search of Ape Woman.
I followed him out the door and insisted that he sit his ass back down and stay as far away from that monster as possible. When I said, “If you take another step towards your car, I will fucking tackle you,” he gave in and returned to the Ape Woman-free house.
The next night, though, while we were at the bar we encountered the Ape Woman, fresh from avoiding capture by a team of Crypto-Zoologists in search of the missing link, and I soon found myself unwilling transported across the Mississippi to a bar in Wisconsin called The Woodshed.
Calling The Woodshed a “meat market” would be woefully inadequate. It was more like a garbage can in the back of a butcher’s shop. It was a market for rancid meat.
I once got dragged their on a Sunday night and dubbed it the anti-Disneyland, the “unhappiest place on Earth,” filled as it was with desperate people making one last-ditch effort to not have to face another Monday morning free of STDs.
So yeah, I didn’t much care for the place.
I believe it was that Saturday night at The Woodshed with Eric and the Ape Woman that, buoyed by disgust, desperation, drunkenness, and a desire to distance myself from the ugly mess that I made my doomed attempt at making a move on Tall Chick.
After being denied my chance by 7 foot tall cock blocker teleported in by the Universe, I retired to Eric’s car and, once again, passed out.
The next evening Eric confessed that while I was out he had, in fact, mated with the beast and that the experience was far more traumatic than anyone could have suspected, though I hardly found his confession surprising, given the fact that all day long he reeked of shame, regret, and, of course, rotten bananas.