Proud Mothers: A Recipe for Good Daughters
Are you sure she doesn't need a male role model?
A single tear ran down the girl’s cheek.
She would have cared about it ruining her makeup, but her overall image (reputation, not figure, gosh!) was already past the point of her best friend’s saving (but she did take a picture of this moment!).
A flash blinded her.
A voice she thought came from the midst of the dark of a pale man who beamed as the moonlight had asked her a question unheard by her, distracted by her thoughts:
Why is he asking me all of these questions!?
They’re not the ones that I’m prepped for!
I’m supposed to get softball questions!1
she thought, expertly repressing Imean shaking those daddy issues before the whole wide world.
Wait a minute! This isn’t the normal shaking that I’m used to—! Is this ...
trembling ...? fear...? the awe before the might of our Lord and Saviour?
It was not. It was Vlad!
Her training had prepped her not—not the twirls, the posing, the memorized answers of questions she got in advance from sucking a judge’s cock2 nor the practiced smiles that look natural/smiles that used to be natural/smile she got from her mother.3
Vlad on the other hand, beamed! Similar to the girls on-stage (and girls everywhere (‘cause the world’s a stage, amirite ladies!)) Vlad smiled whenever he knew not why nor how he was where he was. In fact, he (as the girlies do!) wondered just exactly how he had ended up watching a pageant to begin with.4 You see,
he was walking through a grocery store earlier that week, acquiring ingredients for non-garlic garlic knots. Standing at the back of the checkout counter line, he noticed a woman pull a Cosmo mag off the rack. Seeing that this woman had a totally normal weight for her height and age range he wondered if the mag was not like those other mags (he thought they were all diets), and wondered if she’d picked up a cookbook.
Striking up a conversation with this totally normal lady with a nice smile and winning personality (something which Vlad assumed she’d also gotten from her mother), he sought a woman’s/expert’s opinion on just how exactly he ought make his non-garlic garlic knots.
What he wanted to ask, in long, essay form:
In the process of making garlic-knots, there is a step in which the maker must shape, bend or form the dough in a particular manner. Pardon me if you would madam, but you seem like an expert on the matter, and well-read on the subject, clearly informing yourself on the newest developments in such techniques. I wanted to ask how one would go about doing so.
Though understanding from experience that many, including women, are not wont to precision nor excess in description, he settled on a shortform version.
“Just what do you do to get that garlicknot figure?”
he asked, employing the same register, tone and affect he’d heard on The View earlier that morning. Whereas on The View the women are wont to agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, this wonderful woman in the grocery store with a face that reminds you exactly of your mother and first love, immediately burst into tears.
As lightning and thunder, in a flash, hearing echoes sounding similar to a mother’s cries of her lost youth,5 she’d abandoned him with just as much knowledge he had before but ever more questions, responded thereto yet not answered by sounds of the swinging of grocery store doors.
His primal instincts overcame him. In such instances, a flick of a switch in the mammalian male (and vampiric) brain immediately beckons an ancestral response, the only sane thing he was permitted to think (which still isn’t good enough, is it?). He looked at the cashier, and shrugged.
“Women, huh?”6
The girl behind the counter stood horrified.
Yet withstanding strong in his quest for the perfect non-garlic garlicknot, Vlad kept asking more normal, more average for their height and age range women (though all equally beautiful) the same question.
“Just what do you do to get that garlicknot figure?”
And each and every time these grown ass women Imean girls Imean aren’t they forever young forever, daddy? responded in the same way as the first7 (for *some* reason).8
“She must have learned it from her mother!” Vlad said, shrugging and beaming with childish cheeks.9 (He was of course, referring to his conclusion the women/girls/experts had learned the shaping, bending and forming of garlicknots from their grandmothers, their mothers unwilling to teach them themselves (for if they did, they’d come out too salty).10
The girl behind the counter this time (the other one had gotten married and quit already)11 stood horrified.
And so they made him a beauty pageant judge.
Who’s they?
Whoever’s in charge of such matters, preferably men and their patriarchy created to tell girls that their feelings are valid if only they represented on-stage each and every girl who was like them, like them.12
In truth, Vlad had turned into a local celebrity; each and every woman to whom he was spake13 had transformed into a revolving grocery store door (as the kids tell it).
A legend accrued among the adults though:
(from various sources/tongues)
every woman that saw him talking to a totally normal and average weight, height, size and proportions woman—oh god I even scheduled my life around getting in exercise and yoga—a different kind of exercise from the 7/11 people right—and work and your kids and—I’m a mom Imean woman Imean independent woman who is absolutely not a single mom—cause that door revolves and evolves, doesn’t it?—absolutely loved it when they saw—but had not heard, for we too were too far to escape the wrath of their fathers—Imean escaped the wrath of their father—Imean wrath of this man by the counter—Imeant monster—Imean he’s a hero—who does the grocery shopping himself—instead of letting his wife complain about it otherwise knows as that bitch from down the street who thinks she’s a better mother then me—Imean woman than me—I mean … well no this time I mean mother ‘cause that’s a position Imean career where we can be judged and judge and always have the scales turn out right—well I see your botox surgery and raised crows feet you smiling bitch—let’s see if that liposuction can hold back tears when you find out I’m the only one not fucking your husband Imean the father of the boy who bullies my son ….
Oh yeah bitch at least I’m/mydaughter is prettier ….
Oh yeah—!? Yeah! Yeah,
why don’t we have him as judge for the beauty contest Imean pageant Imean awhh hell you guys know what I mean. A who’s prettier contest. And let’s ask that guy …
The only figure he wanted was a vertical ∞, but they all seemed to want to turn themselves horizontal whenever they could.
He said—or, as the kids say—had spake that he would come back later, he promised!
But we gotta give him a reason first!
Hey mister …!
He accepted (though not knowing what the word pageant meant—what a legend!—(oh the dream or is it a nightmare whose nightmare mine or my mother’s or no it’s probably mine I just want an excuse to display my body to the world and blame it on a less perfect female figure than me), and wanting a no nonsense, simple recipe which is why he was asking those … perfect 10’s in the grocery store their opinions, decided, or rather, was encouraged (cause isn’t that the word your mother always used, Imean you always used Imean you did, kinda, to get others to watch your filthy fucking pageant, beautiful, by the way) by the other ladies in town to judge the local pig fair Imean local pageant Imean … HEY wait a minute! What kind of slop are they eating? (Ben & Jerry’s).
(orsotheysay/barewitheachotherwithhishelp)
So he sat there at the table of the judges (just him) and asked every one of them, (he’d truly lost count at this point) but he figured at least the 8th (for this was the last contestant left, the seven other girls had already cried seven single tears, stormed off, quit the pageant life then were immediately thereto proposed by the boys of their dreams. And they also had very good, fulfilling careers with lots of free time to raise wonderful, beautiful children they all had, maintaining a stable marriage.)14
“Just what do you do to get that garlicknot figure?”
The girl composed herself and took a deep breath. She decided to simply tell the truth.
“I read Glamour magazines.”
And lo, a tiara.
softball question, -s, Noun: Antonym of hardball questions, as those her brothers got Imean father got Imean Father, God, why can’t you let me be a girl for once? she’d say, fixing a ponytail (habit) she’d got from her glory days of when daddy still watched her softball games.
Which is to say, questions whose answers can still be found (in a (softball) diamond).
She, as in her mother; judge, as in her father and cock, as in the lifeblood out of him.
‘Ya see sweetie, the work making me tired isn’t a 9-to-5 office job, but a lifetime of pretending to myself that your mother’s mediocre blowjobs don’t satisfy me as much as Trudy’s from the office.
And that’s why I can’t come (to your softball games) any more (though I really want to).
It’s a certain look she they she, as in her, was going for. It’s a genetic look Imean runs-in-the-family-look Imean I wanted to run but I stayed for your sake, why can’t you see that, mom!
Vlad, after all, finds it ludicrous, unnecessary, incomprehesible and redundant. (All he needs to see is you, smiling, walking down the street making every sidewalk a runway.)
It was in fact, a daughter’s cries of her lost youth, spent worrying about whether her mother worried about her worrying about her worrying about her worrying about her worrying about her worrying ... ‘til both were too old to worry together. Such echoes echo through time and grocery stores.
Just like the ladies on The View’s fathers’ did when they inevitably acted up due to being colicky children. Don’t blame either of them, it’s a genetic thing.
Did you think you were gonna get through a VLAD DIARY ENTRY without encountering some form of biblical allegory allegory? Get this:
The grocery store is Eden; Vlad, the serpent; the women, Eve; Vlad’s innocent question, her temptation; the pint of Ben & Jerry’s/comfort food she’d inevitably eaten afterwards, the forbidden fruit and that knowledge, horrifying and true?
That her boyfriend still loves her after she gains weight.
“But why!?” we all cry.
Except Vlad of course. Vlad beams!
(She does lose it after, though. You know, for her.)
Seeing as how I can’t do the voices for you, you’re just gonna have to insert the voice of your first love Imean father Imean your first love’s impression of your father when he said for some reason, I just love her unconditionally.
Oh.
He/he never said that to you? Try asking another guy, see if that helps :)
For Vlad had watched Seasame Street in those pale moon hours with his son, confusing the actions from the VHS tapes of the Count von Count reruns (yay diversity!) with the words from the home movies he stole from your parents (yay representation!)
Turns out, the secret ingredient in the perfect garlic knot is tears from a mother/daughter. Yet not both. Otherwise, of course, it turns out too salty.
For some of you bitches, this will be the most offensive line in the story.
You must actually be the typical age-height for your fatness.
“I mean come on! A girl who throws a softball like her dad deserves to win—!” a girl hears, before letting her father finish “—over the heart of her father and all of the boys who deserve her/me as a father-in-law. And she does!”
Though maybe letting him finish would’ve achieved the same end-result.
Do it. I dare you. Question Vlad and his choice of diction. The worst thing to happen is the best thing, the only thing: A girl ends up learning something.
I know right?
If that sounds pretty bad to you, it might be some form of some miscommunication. (Perhaps you’re familiar with the definition under a different word; in the aulde tongue ‘twas known as an exorcism)
If this line confuses you go back to uni and major in math Imean engineering Imean hey aren’t you one of those girls who majored in psych who thought she could use a natural advantage of being born with a great smile and women’s intuition in a just fashion ‘cause for some reason you felt guilt about being pretty/prettier than some other her and ... educate? is that the right word? boys but you failed so you decided girls but they wouldn’t listen to you and you thought that was because you’re prettier than them and that’s what you’d do if you were less pretty than some other her because non-pretty girls have different struggles and can’t relate to pretty girls/you?
Jesus, empathy’s some bitch, eh?
(You know you could’ve learned being the daughter your father wanted by watching home movies with him sitting beside you on a big comfy couch you clown bitch. If not yours/his, then the Count’s VHS tapes.)
Oh, and if you’re a guy reading this, what’re you doing here? Jerking off? At least tell me some girl told you to (but if you overheard them and wanted to see for yourself, I, Vlad, unfortunately understand).