Don’t Need No Short Men

Again last night I had trouble sleeping. Over the past ten hours I’ve been able to deduce accurately why that is. Had two shots of whiskey about eight-ish—the first drink I’ve had in a week—so by ten that warm feeling in my toes was gone, by eleven I was in bed, and by two my body awakened to ask, where are those third and fourth shots? Since that hour I’ve done a lot of bing.com sort of thinking, my mind pinball-wizarding around every potential topic on which I might have something to say. The course of American presidential history, boiing, guessing the length of my hair and its rate of growth (is it abnormally slow?), guessing my weight, boiing, wondering how many movies in my Netflix queue of 500 (the limit) I won’t get the chance to see before I die, my assessment of the grand movie My Dinner With Andre, which I must write about soon, boiing, my upcoming birthday wishes: a vacuum cleaner and a new journal.

Interspersed in these boiings came flashes of how I might update my Facebook status tomorrow. Which of course got me ruminating on the truth of my life: I obsess about my potential status a lot, think of clever things I might say, and in some of the greater moments of my day-to-day am making copious notes on the blackboard of my mind rather than, oh I don’t know, listening to what Brock is telling me, or reading my book, or working on my writing. C’est moi. I’ve learned that when awakened in the middle of the night and can’t return to sleep, since I’m not technically living my life, I don’t feel guilty about trying to come up with witty Facebook statuses. In this dark I work hard at coming up with some good ones. Problem is, since I’m not truly living at this hour, still the immobile un-dead, the lump next to the lump that will be Brock in a few hours, I can’t write any of it down so I end up losing most of what I internally create. Here some of the nearly-lost ones from the middle of last night:

Brooke Champagne…recently discovered eight laps around my driveway equal a mile, and my hair is 35 inches long. Holy shit, I love summers off.

Brooke Champagne…gave myself one of those $500 Hollywood haircuts last week. It was easy. Just examined every single hair on the head and cut off only the split ends. It only took a week.

Brooke Champagne...has—no lie—split ends on my arm hairs.

Brooke Champagne…, when I compare my end-of-May summer reading list to the amount of books I actually have read, want to give it all up and become a pro sofa-sitter.

Brooke Champagne…can’t wait until certain insecure men’s penises start falling off so I will no longer have to hear that creepy Extenze commercial about how ‘growing’ can be so much ‘fun.’

Around seven this morning I stopped on the Extenze: who uses it and why. Assuming the latter is obvious, I’d venture to say the men buying this product are rich white Republican men. My supremely untested but fun as hell theory about rich white Republican men (heretofore known as RWRMs, an acronym which appropriately makes them sound like a disease) is their biggest problem is their small penises. This is why: their craving of power. This is why: fear of black men, and that these big-penised black men will rape (read: take) their women. This is why: their requisite affairs during mid-life. This is why: their fancy cars. This is why: the world is never enough for any of them. And while it must be said I’ve never in my life sought the measurement of any man, I’ve been told by the wives of certain RWRMs in my family that their penises are indeed tiny. Direct anonymous quote: “I didn’t know God made them so small.” And incidentally, my father, who is the only liberal white male in my family, I’ve been told, is hung. I’ve spent a lot of years trying to block that out as evinced by my hedging in the preceding sentence, but as it supports my still-supremely-untested theory, I need all the pseudo-evidence I can get.

This theory is both frivolous and important to me because of the sudden refrain in my mind at about 7:03—a sentence which frequently appears—and obsessed me until I finally gave up on sleep and spilt my head onto this page: “I fucking hate RWRMs!” It’s the Facebook status I could never write, but wouldn’t go away. And I mean it: for many, many reasons I hate them. Sure, it would make more sense to hate poor Republicans of any gender or ethnicity as they’re voting against their economic interests, but I pity them instead; they cannot possibly understand the hegemonic forces enslaving them. And yes, rich Republican women I loathe good and plenty, but I attribute their ideology and voting record to Stockholm Syndrome, consider them masochists in love with their oppressors. It’s the RWRMs—they get me every time.

Perhaps I’m feeling this rage now because I’ve had several RWRMs—acquaintances from a lifetime ago—condescendingly argued with me over my recent postings regarding Sotomayor and politics in general. RWRMs who didn’t know thing one about this woman’s judicial record, or even that the famous “wise Latina” comment was taken totally out of context (definition of irony, guys: she was actually saying she’s not that wise), but still, they needed to be proven she wasn’t a racist. The same RWRMs who failed to read the articles I posted, but made assertions about them anyway. To me—a teacher, a reader, a writer, a thinker—nothing is more insulting than to opine about something one hasn’t read. In most of these recent cases, I replied patiently, consulted the text directly to support my contentions, or took the even higher road by not responding at all. But the whole time, blinking on the neon sign in my mind: “I fucking hate RWRMs!” All of this reached its apex this sleepless morning. Thus my blogging, thus me and you right now. (How are you, by the way? I don’t ask you enough.)

So amongst my many other dead of night thoughts I came up with a cheeky manual for RWRMs. Originally I thought I’d post it as my latest Facebook status, but it got a bit too unwieldy and I considered I might have unwittingly befriended a RWRM who is actually a good guy, doesn’t use Extenze, isn’t racist or sexist, but just doesn’t know any better yet and could easily be swayed by my more patient rhetoric—though certainly not by this scathing manual. So leaving it off Facebook, I’m including my would-be status here for you to hopefully enjoy:

Brooke Champagne...has created a much-needed manual for RWRMs, because God knows how much they’ve suffered of late, and what small voice they have in modern-day America, and how they have no platform from which to speak, so I will do the courtesy of providing some tips to be heard and be heard well.
1) Don’t let go of the refrain that “they” (and be sure to put them in quotes—makes them more evil)—the blacks, the Hispanics, the women, the liberals, the gays—are taking over the damn country. I mean, hell, it’s written somewhere WE (the RWRMs) officially own this place and for “them” to take power is morally wrong. “They” are stealing from us.
2) Rather than read or learn about the history of this great country of ours, let’s stick to the basic: bumper stickers and boisterousness. People must know, unequivocally, how much we love America, and if you question it, then you don’t, and are pretty much French Canadian and should be excommunicated.
3) Don’t forget God knows we are the superior race (didn’t He write that down somewhere too?). As long as He’s on our side, there really isn’t a need for much arguing, is there?