Spilling My Guts (Cigar Smoke 2-26-09)

You probably think you’re a better person than I am. Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. You probably think you’re smarter than I am. I doubt it, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. And you probably think you’re better looking than I am, don’t you? OK, I’ll give you that, too, Brad Pitt Face.

But I know one thing you’re not as good as I am on. Nope. You cannot now, or have ever in the past, or will ever in your fecund future, be able to spill stuff on yourself like I do. I can spill, baby. I am the Sultan of Spilling. I have been spilling stuff on myself for as long as I can remember — even as long as I can’t remember. I thought I would outgrow it, but now I have reached the doggone doddering age of 67 and I am still spilling stuff on myself. I have failed in this one aspect of life and I acknowledge it and I hereby pause to listen to your cruel mockery of a spill-stained senior citizen suck-face such as myself. Mock away.


I won’t go back to my childhood days and charmingly regale you with adorable childish spilling stories. But I do remember my mom just taking a bottle of milk and emptying it on my high chair and on my head and on my baby jammies outfit and on the floor, saying, “It’ll save time.” My mom was a kidder.

I will also skip through my teen and college years where I developed my spilling skills to near perfection. You don’t need to know the details, especially if you are eating right now. I will tell you though, that my friends applauded me one day with appreciative slow-clapping of hands that built into a genuine crescendo of pure admiration when they couldn’t determine just what gross liquid I had spilled on my shirt as they watched it eat away one of my pockets and start burning my chest hair. God, those were good days.

When I got married and became mature and bought insurance and sedans and got mad at younger people who spilled things, I had one particular spilling problem. I always spilled little drops of chocolate sauce on my white T-shirts. (For you younger readers, a white T-shirt is like your T-shirts only without all the rock star art and sports advertising bullshit and profanity.) By the way, when I was a kid we didn’t even have white T-shirts. We just had T-shirts. Period. No need to differentiate — colors were invented by the next generation.

Back in the ’60s and ’70s my first wife and I always had ice cream sundaes for dessert after dinner. Almost every night, just some, excuse the expression, healthy scoops of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. And every night I would be on the couch watching TV, and my wife would look over at me, and say, “Why in the name of holy bejabbers did I marry you?” No, that was something else she would say. She would say, “There’s chocolate on your shirt.” And she’d kind of head-point. And I’d look down and, sure as Shinola, there were two dark chocolate drops on my white T-shirt. This would happen most every night. (In later years, if I hadn’t spilled chocolate on my T-shirt, my kids would walk by and smear chocolate onto it. I don’t think the authorities ever found their bodies.)

I don’t know what to say. I still spill ashes on myself every time I drive. A bunch of my shirts have cigar-ash holes in them, and there are burn marks on most of the cushions in the backyard. And I swear I am not trying to be careless.

I really make an effort to not spill stuff. I just don’t succeed. Dammit, I try. Like when I get a barbecue-beef sandwich, I’ll be careful for the first half, but I always fail on the second half. I’ll end up with a wadded-up soppy-ass napkin that could kick Mike Tyson’s butt, and then I’ll accidentally wipe my face and I’ll get barbecue-sauce stains on my cheeks and on my collar and on my eyelids and on my dog. I’m worthless.

Just last night, after Marge went to bed, I stayed up and made myself a fried-egg sandwich. A couple of over-easy eggs on some white bread. I put it on a plate. I go sit down on the couch. I’m watching TV. I am very aware of the egg sandwich and my proneness to spillage. I lift the sandwich off the plate, carefully, and I extend my hands out over the plate like a Boy Scout asking for a nun’s hand in marriage, and I take a big, careful bite.

And I hear something. A whooshing sound. I look on the plate. It’s clean. For a split second I think I am not a spilling slob. Then I glance at my chest and my dark blue robe has a giant splotch of yellow yolk on it. Ugly, ugly splotch, a glob of guck. Looked like the Sea of Cortez with hepatitis. Just all yellow and yucky.

I told you I was The King.

Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.