As American As Peanut Butter, Constipation, and Gay Rights: Part I of Several

Yesterday, racial humor prevented me from tasting the world’s sweetest hog, the Iowa Swabian Hall, pictured below.

Jk, of course. This man is Carl Blake, the father of the world’s sweetest hog.

This notorious pork was being served, buffet style, at the Tripoli Opera House.

My wusband, TJ, was performing comedy at its grand reopening, and from the stage, she announced the order which the audience members were to rise to serve themselves: “White people first…” By the time I arrived at the troughs, all of the “other white meat” was inside white meat.

Of course, my wusband tore up the stage. All it takes to get is a standing O in Iowa is the whispering of whords tater tot casserole and TJ whispered them with aplomb. A ginger magician also performed, as did another comedian whose middle name is Ha Ha. He must be Asian.

We got to Libya by way of the American Southwest and the QUEER route.

 I looked for the Colonel, Colonel Gaddafi, but the most Libyan thing I found in Tripoli, aside from its name, was a three pump gas station. Oily.

We exited California by gayly twirling through the chapped lips of Arizona.

We stayed with a family that practices law in Phoenix and they taught me a beauty trick for making your face extra tight: accidentally washing it with hand sanitizer.

After wallowing in Phoenician nihilism, (Thus spake Arizonathustra!), Teej and I herded our bodies back into our Fit and trekked to a place that I had been to but never seen, Tucson, the city upon which I was conceived. Cactii served as my parents’ aphrodisiacs. So did reptiles, rocks, and a heat that the devil is jealous of. She’s so jealous.

TJ and I performed as part of a storytelling series, Female Story Tellers, or FST, which the storytellers pronounce as FIST. On stage, I explained that at work, the math department offers a class call fst, finite statitics, but from now on, I will think about it as FIST, and those who take as THE FISTED. I invited the audience to FIST the air and the fisting engulfed me like a masochistic rainbow.

The evening’s theme was No Place Like Home and to that theme, TJ told the tale of having a heart rooted in Iowa. I told the story of being haunted by angry Mexican ghost. Her story was corny, windy, and heart-warming. Mine tasted of cilantro, gangrene, and cobwebs.

What TJ is forced to wear when she comes home with me. In Mexico, TJ is Tijuana.

Our friends, the gorgeous and saintly Sam and Amrit, hosted us.

When I grow up, I want to be Amrit. And I want to have hands like this.

Hands ought to tell a good story. There’s nothing worse than a boring pair of hands, especially on a woman.

Before leaving Tucson, Amrit took us to an amusement park called FOOD CITY. It features Mexican kitsch (not quiche) Catholic iconography, food, and ingredients for spells that will do things like make others take off their underwear.

Sam and Amrit were kind enough to offer us their studio in Truth or Consequences to crash at next so that we wouldn’t have to drive all the way Tucumcari. Tio Samuel, Uncle Sam’s cousin, lurked along our way.

At their studio, TJ decided to practice some thumb-sucking on the midcentury modern furniture.

I decided to practice some Mexican-Polish witchcraft outside the bank.