SATIRE
Who Is Lindsay Rae Brown and Why Does She Loathe Me So?
I knew her before she was famous
My dealings with Lindsay Rae Brown go back about 15 years. It’s not a pretty tale. It’s a tale of desperation and hardship. Of friendships lost, of new connections made. A time of laughs, and a time of tears. But it’s a true tale. As true as my name is Frankie “the stud” Donnelly.
I was just a young man, then; a desperado, on the lam. I had robbed an old man for his cough syrup. Goddamn tickle in my throat wouldn’t clear up. I didn’t mean to shove him so hard, but I did. We were in front of the local Timmies’, and he knocked the cop’s double double and 20 pack of Timbits out of his hand. Never rob an old man outside a Timmies. The thin blue line (who aren’t really very thin after a lifetime of 20 pack Timbits) is always there. The coffee spilled all over the officer. I never laughed so hard in my life. The cop saw red and pushed the old man out into traffic. I couldn’t stay around for the ambulances, so I skedaddled. I hope the old man survived.
Anywho, I headed back to my basement bachelor in Parkdale, and grabbed my jacket, all the cash I had (about twenty bucks), and my hockey equipment. Can’t leave home without them. My buddy Jimbo always told me if I needed a place to hide out someday, I could come there. Now Jimbo likes the boys, which I don’t mind, since who hasn’t sucked a dick or two for some smokes? Anyway, there’s this new dude there, Larry. He looked pretty hot, so I was hoping to bum a smoke off him, if you know what I mean. Turns out this Larry guy doesn’t smoke, and has some taste, so I’m all outta luck on both counts.
Since there’s nothing else to do on a Tuesday afternoon, we grab a 40 pounder of AlCool down at the LCBO. AlCool is 80 proof grain liquor. Burns like a fucker, but it’s cheap. Jimbo has some grape Kool-Aid powder, so I take a swig of the booze, and he pours the Kool-Aid in. AlCool and Kool-Aid. We’re living the life. We shake it up good. Don’t want any Kool-Aid clumps to choke you on the way down. We spent the afternoon Jim Jonesin’ it, LAMF, without the cyanide. Everybody was feeling pretty good until the cops smashed down the door and napped me. The fuckers didn’t even let me finish the bottle.
I ended up spending 6 months at Milhaven, and a couple of years at CAMH after I had talked to some shrink enough. I’ve pulled myself together some since then, but I still like to raise some hell.
Flash forward to now. (Whoa, if this were a movie, I bet they’d have some trippy slow motion dissolve with a million colours) I’m working at the local comedy club — sweeping up the broken bottles and pocketing the servers’ tips when they don’t see me — and this gorgeous woman walks by me. She’s the headliner at the club, — Ms. Lyndsay, The Queen of Cringe.
Ms. Lyndsay stops, takes a good, long look at me, and laughs.
“What’s the deal, lady? Can’t a guy do his job without getting laughed at. I know I’m just the old dude cleaning up the shit stains in the bathroom, but it’s a job.” I have little self-respect, but I have some.
“Sorry, but you remind me of someone, and they always made me laugh.”
“That’s OK, ma’am.. The lady’s rarely laugh until after I take off my pants,” I say. Maybe she can use that joke and slip me an extra fiver.
The lady’s laugh booms through the club. “Ma’am? You dumb fuck, Freddie. It’s me. It’s Larry. Don’t you recognise me with my new tits? How you doin’? Still the same mess as ever, I see.”
“Larry? Larry, who?”
“Jimbo’s friend, Larry from Thunder Bay, or at least, I was when you tried to bum a smoke and suck my dick. Just call me Lyndsay, though. None of this deadnaming Larry bullshit the old gang likes to do. Fuckers.”
“Larry from Thunder Bay? Oh, yeah! Cool. Back when I was on the lam. The Donut Incident, like all the papers called it. You look smokin’. Speakin’ of smokin’, don’t suppose you have a spare smoke?”
So, that’s how I met Lindsay, before the quarter million in surgeries and the raise to fame. Be sure to watch her Netflix special, “Blowin’ Some Foam”, coming out real soon now.
Too bad she’s no longer packing heat, if you know what I mean. And too bad she still has taste. And no damn cigs, either.
Glossary
40 pounder — a 40 ounce bottle of alcohol LCBO — Liquor Control Board of Ontario — where we buy hard alcohol AlCool — what I got drunk on every weekend (maybe every day) of m university career LAMF — one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded, or Like A Mother Fucker Thunder Bay — a small city in Canada CAMH — Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto Milhaven — a Canadian maximum security prison Timmies — an overrated coffee chain — Canada’s coffee — that was great until a multinational bought it out double double — a coffee with two shots of milk and two shots of sugar Timbits — donut “holes”
All the hip kids on Facebook and Vocal are writing these stories about Lindsay Rae Brown, so I thought I should, too. Keep up with the in crowd.
Paul Mansfield is a writer, a photographer, a guitar player, a philosopher — some he does well, some not so well, but he still tries them all. You can follow him on Twitter @pmansfield.
If you like this story, try this Science Fiction tale.
