“An American Original”

Once, Skinny Love only ate the complementary chips and salsa at the Mexican restaurant and then got up and said, lo siento, mi amigo to the waiter and left without paying for anything.

Skinny Love thinks the ‘90s were a step backwards. She’s pretty sure The Jews are responsible for the current financial misfortunes of our country.

When someone brings it up in a conversation, Skinny Love says, “Yeah, I’ve been to Boulder, Colorado.  Overrated.”

It’s been rumored that Skinny Love was once part-time at a strip club in St. Paul until a customer grabbed her and she cut his face with an ashtray.  When people ask her about it, she says that she pities any man who needs to pay to get his kicks when there’s the internet about.

Skinny Love went on a camping trip with her friends, Cheryl and Jessie, taking a carton of cigarettes, two dozen pickled eggs, a couple of quarts of liquor and three rifles.  They came back four days later with a truck full of venison and a loudspeaker with a forest service sticker on it.

Skinny Love says the best sex she’s ever had was with her vibrator.

Skinny Love has one child, a boy which she claims will break her heart when he is old enough.  She won’t say who the father was.  I suspect it’s Ronnie Fulton.  I asked him once when we were drinking and he neither denied nor confirmed, but there was something about the way he asked: “How old is that little shit now?”

When I asked Skinny Love what her real name is, she said that she hasn’t been the same since Townes Van Zandt died.

“Who’s Townes Van Zandt?” someone at the table asked.

Skinny Love slapped him and walked out of the bar.

Skinny Love reads Virginia Woolf topless.

All the young dudes want to get with Skinny Love but all she ever says to them is that she’s saving all that love for Jesus.  She does date Richmond sometimes, though.  “He decks anyone who calls him ‘Rich’,” she says.  “You need someone like that,” she says.  “Someone with convictions.”  I think it’s because he just got a new truck and washes it like it’s his baby.

Skinny Love says the only man she’d consider settling in with these days is Bruce Willis now that he finally dumped that harpy he was married to.

When we went to the movies, Skinny Love leaned over a couple of times and said, a little too loudly, “What’s she been in?”  And when there was a sex scene she practically yelled, “Like that would really happen.”

Every year, Skinny Love writes a letter to her congressman.  It says that if she ever catches him voting for gun control she’s going to withdraw her yearly contribution to his campaign.  She signs the letter Tipper Gore.

Once, when we were walking down an aisle at Wal-Mart, Skinny Love stopped and said, “This store is what’s wrong with America.”  She stole some vacuum filters and a pack of Big Red gum.

Skinny Love gets emotional when she goes to her son’s little league games and sees fathers coaching their children.

Right after my first and only date with Skinny Love, she said that it was great and that she needed a good friend like me.

Someone asked why Skinny Love was taking an electrician class.  She said, “Need to find out how to put together a home somehow.”

I’ve only seen Skinny Love ever cry once.

I was there, with her in the bar, when she got the call on her cell.  She looked calm on the phone as she asked her questions.  But when she got off, I said, “Everything okay?”

“Oh, my dad—” she said.  She was wearing mountains of makeup.  All that work and it came avalanching down her face and into her hands in seconds.

“What a son of a bitch,” she said.

I handed her my handkerchief.  I wanted to ask her what happened, wanted more than anything to know.  She cried to herself for a few seconds and then said, “The food is awful here.”  I took her home where she stayed for two days without coming out.

I see Skinny Love at the same bar.  She’s with Larry Karcher, a 22-year old sheetrock hanger.  I hear Larry tell her, “You know why I drink Coors?  Because it’s an American Original.”

“Yeah,” she says.  I turn my head towards them.  She looks tired.  “That’s a good reason.”

I can’t tell if she is serious.