Situationships

I was talking to my friend Desdemona the other day—she’s cool, works the bungee jump thing at the mall—and she was telling me about this situation with one of her friends.  A situationship, to be more precise.  Now, if you’re like how I was, you’re probably saying, “Sterling, what the unfeathered chicken gizzard are you blathering on about?  A situationship?  Please explain.”  Well alright then.

So, according to Google—at least as of today while I’m dictating this to my secretary, my spiritual mentor, and my best friend, the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge—a situationship is “a romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established.”  Look, I’ll go ahead and admit, I don’t have time to keep up with whatever the members of today’s youth are calling their informal and unestablished (and often sinful—Rev. Al has a LOT to say about that topic) relationships, but a situationship sounds a lot like that movie with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher.  Oh, and that other movie with Ashton’s wife (or situationship partner?) Mila K. and Justin Timberlake.  Fun fact: both of those movies were released in the Year of Our Lord 2011.  You’d think the big time Hollywood execs would’ve been like, “Hey, wait a minute.  Let’s stagger these a bit.  We don’t want the exact same movie in theaters at the same time, do we?”  Ah, but Mila and Natalie are stone cold babes (Black Swan, anybody?), and Ashton and JT aren’t too shabby themselves, although I’m partial to the former.  JT’s voice sounds like he’s perpetually engaged in a tickle fight with and against himself.

But back to situationships.  If there’s one thing that really steams my beans, it’s portmanteaus.  Ask Rev. Al.  Oh gosh, I remember this time a handful of years ago, we were on some godforsaken highway, heading West to a board game convention.  We were in Al’s red station wagon—a real piece of crap, it’s amazing we made it as far as we did—and it was getting late.  I’d already served my time in the captain’s seat, so I was reclined in shotgun while Al was at the wheel, and I remember like it was yesterday, because Al was gripping one of those monster-sized Slim Jims, the cured meat nearly bursting out of the cylindrical seams.  He looked over at me and told me he was beat and had to pull over, and before I could stop him, he was turning off the highway into a motel lot.  I started going batshit on him.  He’s sort of a slob—if the monster-sized Slim Jim didn’t give that away—and he’d taken off his sandals while he was riding shotgun and left them there on the floorboard, so I grabbed one and started wailing on him.  He started spouting some nonsense about having been forsaken by the Lord, and then he asked the Lord to forgive me “for he knows not what he does.”  What?  I knew exactly what I was doing: I was beating the shit out of Rev. Al.  I mean, he should’ve known.  I hate portmanteaus.  But I do still feel a little bad, because, in the fracas, the top half of his Slim Jim snapped off and rolled under his seat.  We got out and looked for it for a good bit, but we never found it.  It was like it had been teleported up to heaven, cured meat and all, like Rev. Al’s guy Jesus.

My point being, you can’t just put two words together and act like it’s normal.  Situationship.  Barf.  While we’re at it, let’s just go ahead and coin some others.  Strangulationship: a romantic or sexual relationship between two or more partners who like to choke one another.  Like, “Hey, Sterl, we missed you at the party, what’s up?”  “Ah, yeah, sorry lads, I got tied up with what’s-her-name, you know, the one you met at the game the other week?  Well, we made it official and are in a strangulationship.”  Or an alienationship: a romantic or sexual relationship between to or more partners who are together because they’re total outcasts.  Like, “Did you see Sterl sitting over at the loser lunch table with what’s-her-name?  They’re probably in an alienationship, gross!”  Or—this one might be a little thorny—but what about an abortionship?  Like, “I thought Sterl and what’s-her-face broke it off?”  “Well, you know, they can’t ever fully break it off on account of their abortionship.”

Anyway, I kept thinking about the situationship, the one in which Desdemona’s friend was involved, so I headed over to the mall to speak to her in person.  Whenever I go to the mall, I’m reminded about how great of a gig Des has got.  The bungee jumping contraption thingamabob is located in the main atrium, so your nostrils are immediately caressed by a pleasant fusion of sweet and salty and savory scents, of cinnamon rolls, pretzels, and General Tso’s chicken.  Not sure how Des has so much restraint.  I’d be the leading candidate on TLC’s casting list for its next season of My 600-Lb Life.  If I hadn’t spotted her immediately, I’d have taken a couple laps, gotten in a few lines, filled up my belly.  Alas!  So, I rolled on up and cut the line, ducked underneath the black dividers, and then, woah, this mom holding her fat son’s hand started going crazy!  Yelling at me that I was a line-skipper and that I was dead to her and that I’d never amount to anything in life.  Like, ma’am, this is a bungee jump, not the line for Santa?  I told her I wasn’t trying to skip, I was just trying to talk to my friend Desdemona and clarify some things on her friend’s situationship.  The mom was like “I don’t give a flip what you’re doing, Rupert is up next!”  By this point, Des had come over and warned me not to mess with this woman, that she was here at the mall with Rupert every day and that she forced him to ride the bungee jump.  Oh my God, I thought to myself.  I asked Des if we should call CPS and she said, no, that this was just one of those injustices in life that you had to deal with.  I realized she was right, so we stepped aside while the crazy lady forced poor Rupert through.  As he passed, he slowly cocked his head over to me, and I swear I saw him mouth the word “Help.”  And I’ve been thinking about it ever since, how I did absolutely nothing, like a coward, as Des strapped the lug of a child into the contraption, the excess folds of his groin protruding out of the big rubber diaper suspended by bungee cords, and then his mom shouting at him to bounce, Rupert! bounce! and Rupert began to bounce, ever so slightly, and his mom yelled at him to bounce higher! touch the sky, Rupert! and she began to laugh and clap maniacally as her son struggled to touch the sky.  Des asked what’s up, but I’d forgotten why I came down to the mall.