Merlot and Cardinal Knowlege

A wake isn’t exactly a first date, or the last one either. I suppose this one could be considered a beginning as well as an end. Things ended that day, but nothing ends without something new growing from the ruins.

It all started when Professor Bonehead got his feelings hurt, making this an opportune time to introduce the Professor to the rest of the world.

Everyone has that one friend. You know the one I’m talking about, the please-make-him-shut-the-fuck-up-know-it-all. The one who is the expert on everything, who talks and talks and never really says anything worthwhile? The one who wouldn’t know what the word “pretentious” means, let alone how to spell it, or even pronounce it correctly. The one who butchers the English language on a routine basis and upon finding a new word or phrase will use it in a conversation, usually without the benefit of knowing the pronunciation, meaning, or correct usage.

It started with “i.e.,”. Most people do not use “i.e.,” during a normal conversation. He did. Why I’m not sure. He would use the term when comparing things like the prices at the grocery store, as in “avocados are cheaper at Von’s than i.e., Safeway”. Undaunted by simple literacy, he would use the phrase whenever there was a crowd around to show off his vast vocabulary skills. The ones he clearly did not possess.

The only reason we put up with him because his wife was a joy and she made up for his boorish behavior. He had somehow managed to get a degree in computer technology from one of those diploma mills that had set up shop in the local mall. He did this while his wife supported him and he racked up thousands in student loans. He was eventually hired by this same school as an assistant instructor, a job he would never have qualified for at a reputable school. Dear God, did it ever go to his head! The first thing he does is get a pager, this being back in the bad old days before everyone and their first cousin’s dog had a cell phone. He would then refuse to answer the phone that was sitting on the desk not a foot away and within easy reach. No, you had to page him first and when he returned the call, instead of saying hello, as a normal human being would, he would always say “This is Professor Bonehead returning your call.” Any gathering that featured more than six people was subject to being interrupted by his pager beeping at eardrum piercing levels as he excused himself by saying “I have to take this; it’s urgent.” Off he’d go, in search of a phone to alleviate a problem that only he could solve. He’d come back half an hour later, crisis diverted, gushing on and on about how the kid on the other end of the line kept saying “Professor Bonehead, you have saved me from failure, oh Professor I couldn’t have solved the problem without your timely assistance.” We suspected he was paying the callers to page him.

He started calling himself ‘Professor’. The other instructors didn’t call themselves professors, including the ones with degrees from reputable schools. This being laid back Southern California most of them had their students called them by their first name. No one used anything more formal than Mr. or Ms. But we have Professor Bonehead, a high school dropout with a GED and an associate degree from a diploma mill in a strip mall and you’d think he was on loan out from MIT or Harvard.

Fast forward until the beginning of the last year of the twentieth century. A dear friend of ours had passed away, suddenly and unexpectantly. It was during this horrible time that we discover how big of an illiterate, pretentious asshole Professor Bonehead could be.

After the funeral, we all gathered at the home of Professor Bonehead and his long-suffering spouse. As if being married to this idiot and losing a friend wasn’t enough, she was having to deal with major jet lag. She had retired after twenty years in the Navy, having been stationed in Japan for the last two. She was exhausted from traveling halfway around the world courtesy of Military Airlift Command. What should have been a time of celebration had turned into sadness and grief.

Then, there was me. I wouldn’t know until years later how much people had been depending on me. I did the job that was in front of me. I was exhausted from trying to hold things together for our friend who had just lost her husband, and for everyone else in our group. We were all grief-stricken and walking around in a daze. Or I should say all but one of us was.

Professor Bonehead was in rare form in his role as host. To this day I am not sure exactly what it was he thought he was hosting, and an after-funeral reception is not the time to show off your sommelier skills. He pulls a bottle of Chien Enragé Vingt-vingt ‘98 Sonoma’s Best Private Reserve Merlot, sourced from the 7-11 on the corner, from the refrigerator and announces it’s chilled to perfection. He proceeded with an elaborate uncorking ceremony accompanied by gestures and flourishes that would have had the pretentious foodies from the cooking channel green with envy. He reverently carried the cork around the room for all the guests to sniff. He announces the wine has had enough time to breathe and begins decanting the elixir, complete with a white towel over his arm and more waving his hands about like a conjurer attempting a magic trick, as he carefully poured the wine into Styrofoam cups. That’s right, boys and girls, he was serving chilled Chien Enragé Vingt-vingt ’98 Sonoma’s Best Private Reserve 7-11 Merlot* in Styrofoam cups.

This is probably where I should mention Merlot is best served at room temperature after having been allowed to breathe after opening and decanting. Serving Merlot chilled is an abomination that ruins good wine. Before I start sounding like a pretentious wannabe wine snob, I only recently learned this from my sister, who is both a wine snob and a major foodie. I’m not, but common sense and basic hostess skills told me you don’t serve wine in Styrofoam cups.

He pours about two finger’s worth into my cup and the same amount into my friend Allie’s cup. She takes a drink, makes a face, and excuses herself to go outside for a smoke. I took a sip from my cup and was rewarded with a mouthful of sour vinegar and rotten grapes. I managed to swallow the swill without choking. I looked around the room to see people either guzzling the foul concoction to get rid of it or trying hard not to spit it out while feeling envious of our friend Kevin, who, as a reformed alcoholic, had a ready-made excuse for turning down the vintage. I don’t smoke, but I took a clue from Allie and announced I was going out for a cigarette and fled to the patio early to avoid the rush.

It was raining. There had been a downpour during the funeral and now it was the cold gray drizzly precipitation that creeps into your bones and makes you miserable. It could have been raining pitchforks and black cats for all I cared. I needed fresh air and a place to dump the wine where it wouldn’t kill any of the plants or insects. Allie must have had the same idea. I found her dumping her wine into a pot containing the remains of a dried-out and lifeless marijuana plant. One of the Professor’s get rich quick schemes that had died on the vine.

“Great minds think alike,” she said as my wine joined hers in the pot. I bummed a smoke off Allie. I rarely smoked, but today I was going to make an exception. Anything to get the taste of rotten grapes out of my mouth.

“What’s up with the bimbo?” she asked. “I didn’t know she was living here.”

The Bimbo was a twenty-something suicide redhead from West-By-God Virginia who was as pretentious and as full of herself as Professor Bonehead. And, like Professor Bonehead, she was a major know-it-all. She’d been voted Turnip Princess or Brussel Sprout queen or some shit like that when she was sixteen and had never gotten over it. She was so deep into the Goth Vampire Princess thing I wouldn’t have been surprised if she slept hanging upside down in the closet.

I had been expecting the question and hoping to avoid it entirely, but this was Allie, not some busybody. I could tell her what I thought was going on and it wouldn’t be all over San Diego County, with embellishments, by nightfall. “She moved in about a week after Shelly left for Japan. I didn’t ask questions I may be called upon to lie about in court. All I can tell you is she’s the roommate.” I said, trying hard not to grind my teeth as I said it.

“Yeah, right,” Allie said. “I know he’d fuck a snake if he could find someone stupid enough to hold its head and she’s about airheaded enough to be his type. She always reminded me of one of those airy fairies going on about rainbows and unicorns and the healing power of crystals.

“It’s more like vampire bats and black lace but close enough,” I said, wishing for a shot of tequila or Jack Daniels instead of 7-11 Merlot. “Shelly wasn’t even gone a month when the bimbo moves in. The Professor said her roommates moved out and left her with an apartment she couldn’t afford, and he graciously allowed her to move in here, with Shelly’s blessing. It was supposed to be temporary. The only thing is as soon as anyone asks when she’s moving out, she conveniently gets laid off from whatever in the hell it is that she does.”

“I was getting some really strange vibes off the two of them,” Allie said. “Like some next level creepy shit. You think they’re fucking?”

“He says they’re not, and since I have no proof otherwise, I’m going to let it go at that for the time being. That means what I’m going to tell you goes no further unless you want to tell your husband. The day after Sam died, while I’m trying to hold things together for Paula and the kids and make the calls to let people know, I called Bonehead and told him he needed to get his ass to my house ASAP. He gets there, and I tell him about Sam. Shelly was due in from Japan two days later. I made him promise not to tell her anything until we could all be there. Then he tells me he is in love with two women at the same time, but it was okay because they hadn’t had cardinal knowledge.”

“He said what?” Allie asked with raise eyebrows.

“Cardinal knowledge, go figure. In front of witnesses, no less. Kenny and Claudia and my husband. Sam is dead, and he takes the opportunity to confess how he’s in love with both Shelly and Miss West Virginia Root Vegetable Queen.”

While we were talking the cats had arrived, moving stealthily across the balding back lawn, slinking from underneath the privet hedge, and sneaking in through holes in the fence. There were cats everywhere. On the roof of the storage shed, under the overgrown bushes, on the wooden fence, climbing the trellis covered with dead ivy, advancing on us as if we were a food source adding a surreal touch to the day.

“Where’d all these damned cats come from?” Allie wanted to know.

“That’s one question I can answer. They started out with three cats, two females, and a male. Bonehead was supposed to have them fixed while Shelly was in Japan. He didn’t. This is what happens when you don’t spay or neuter your cats. I think there are about thirty of them.”

“Any way we can drag him through some liver and throw him to the felines?” Allie said, shuddering and grinding her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the patio table.

“He’d probably taste like cigarettes and bad wine. I wouldn’t do that to an innocent feline.”

We went back into the house where Bonehead was rhapsodizing about his relationship with the deceased.

Bonehead didn’t know it, but Sam thought he was an idiot. He was, in fact, the person who christened him ‘Bonehead,’ a nickname he earned in spades during his bout with hemorrhoids. Generally, hemorrhoids are not something you discuss in polite society, or in mixed company. Most folks will only discuss the state of their colo-rectal area with their doctor or their partner. Not Bonehead. He would tell anyone and everyone, going into unwanted detail about how he passed more blood in a day than a woman did her entire menstrual cycle, how many pairs of underpants he’d ruined, how he was forced to use panty liners, ad nauseum, ad infimum. No one was safe from his overly graphic descriptions; not his co-workers, not his friend’s wives, not the single women in our friend group, not the pair of young Marines the rest of us had sort of adopted, and not even our teenaged children. By the time he finally got the surgery done to correct the problem, we knew more about the state of his asshole than we did about our own.

Sam, bless his heart, was Bonehead’s designated driver for the surgery. Sam had a little Miata convertible with a five-speed transmission. After the outpatient procedure, Sam is tasked with driving Bonehead home. They’re on the I-5 freeway heading back to Mira Mesa with Bonehead riding shotgun. Until he passed out, falling across the console and stick shift and into Sam’s lap while the poor man is trying his best to pull off the road without getting into an accident while trying to think up a plausible explanation to give CHP for having a dead man with a bloody asshole in his car.

Shelly was home, briefly, before the Kitty Hawk set sail for Japan. She was going to miss Christmas, her birthday, and every other holiday with us for the next two years. We decided to have a mega-holiday party to make up for the ones she was going to miss. We were still hearing about the hemorrhoids, this time with all the gory details of the surgery, how he was the worst case the surgeons had ever seen, and how the procedure was going to be in all the medical journals. According to Professor Bonehead it had taken six hours’ worth of micro-surgery and had required a massive blood transfusion when he started bleeding out and his heart just stopped, only the doctors managed to bring him back, and now he was going to have to be tested for AIDS and hep C every month for the next few years. It was outpatient surgery. He was home in time for lunch. He was in the recovery room longer than he was in surgery.

All we wanted was a quiet get-together with our friend before the Navy shipped her off to the other side of the planet without anyone’s asshole being discussed. Sam and my husband cooked up the best prank, ever, with but one goal in mind. Make this idiot shut up about his damned hemorrhoids once and for all. I disavow any knowledge or collusion.

Sam went down to the local medical supply warehouse and bought the biggest tube of Preparation H available. I mean a giant-stocking-up-for-the-zombie-apocalypse-family-sized tube; we’re talking about enough butt lube to last a lifetime. My husband takes this giant tube of Preparation H to the local Hallmark store to be professionally gift wrapped. He was and probably still is, the cheapest son of a bitch around. He will squeeze a dollar until George Washington is gasping for breath, and he sprung for professional wrapping with fancy blue and silver paper and a big bow. I was lucky if my birthday present arrived in a gift bag from the Dollar Tree. Another friend got a fancy card with glitter and embossed lettering in a posh envelope and a couple of balloons to go with the package. We all signed the card. Miss Root Vegetable was tasked with presenting the box to Professor Bonehead. She hadn’t a clue as to what the fancy package contained.

You should have seen it! You would have thought she was bestowing a knighthood the way she was carrying on, prancing into the room like Glinda the Good Witch. All she needed was a wand emitting sparkles and a dozen or so Munchkins. She presents it to Bonehead with a sweeping bow. He began by opening and reading the card out loud. We had signed it with things like: ‘may this get to the bottom of your burning desires’, ‘for that itch you can’t scratch’, and my ultimate favorite, from our buddy Kenny who was always about two steps behind the punch line: ‘We’re going to miss you, Shelly’.

Bonehead carefully opens the box, clueless as to what is awaiting beneath the tissue. He pulls out the tube of Preparation H and if looks could kill we would all be dead. We got a very grudging thank you and he stalked off to the back yard to sulk, with Miss Turnip at his heels, assuring him she had no prior knowledge of what was in the box. Eventually, he storms back into the house with the bimbo in tow and announces they were going home. As-freaking-if. Shelly told him he could take Miss Tuber and go; she was going to stay for the party. He stayed, sulking in the corner all evening when he wasn’t huddled up with the Queen Beet smoking cigarettes in the back yard because I don’t let people smoke in my house.

Here we were, two years later, with everyone we considered family in attendance after the memorial service. Professor Bonehead is sulking because the service had been a private family only gathering. My husband had been asked to do the eulogy, depriving Professor Bonehead of the opportunity to show off his vast array of linguistic and social skills including the eullogy he'd written months ago. He’s mad because I didn’t invite two of his friends to the gathering, mostly because no one else liked them. He was annoyed because I’d invited two young Marines that he, Bonehead, didn’t think of as family, but Sam had, and Paula wanted them there and that was enough for me. And he was upset because I wouldn’t let him escort Paula around the gathering before the graveside service for people to extend their condolences, in the pouring rain.

But mostly, he was out of sorts and his feelings were hurt because he didn’t have a thing to do with the planning of the service or the eulogy. Women did what we always done. We got everything organized without his help. I suppose he decided the wake was going to be his time to shine. And shine he did. As my old Granny use to say, he shined his ass royally.

First there was the wine presentation. If you’re going to be act like a pretentious wine snob, learn how to serve the stuff! Then the Turnip Queen had chosen that very moment to debut her culinary skills. She had made stuffed mushrooms and grape leaves. The main ingredient in both dishes was way too much Merlot in some overcooked sauce. She had stuffed the mushrooms and the grape leaves with the same filling, a Merlot-soaked concoction of rice, cilantro, garlic, and almonds. The Professor was parceling them out like they were the rarest of truffles. Both dishes reeked of garlic and I passed on both.

Most of us were sitting around the table, exchanging stories about Sam, when Professor Bonehead, once again trying to make everything about himself, once more let his alligator mouth overload his jay bird ass.

“I and Sam,” he started to say. Who the hell ever starts a sentence like that? Oh, wait, Professor Bonehead. To continue: “I and Sam were like brothers. We had everything but cardinal knowledge.”

The couple sitting across from him raised their eyebrows in that “did he just say what I think he said” look we all get when being forced to deal with idiots.

Bonehead continues, clueless as fuck. “We did everything together. He was teaching me karate before he had the last knee surgery. He said I was the best student he’d ever had. It was almost like cardinal knowledge.” This is where I should point out both men were heterosexual. Or at least Sam was.

He had said it again, twice within the last few minutes and once more if you counted the time he was at my house telling me of his undying love for two women. My eyes had rolled so hard I was afraid they were going to stick in the up position.

Our friend Kenny left the table. David and Katie were sitting there looking like deer in the headlights. Shelly later told me I had one of those crazy looks on my face, the one that I get when I have had enough. Shelly later told me she was so jet lagged from the flight from Japan that she thought Bonehead was talking about some sort of Catholic thing and couldn’t understand why because Sam was Jewish.

He says, one more time, just in case anyone missed it: “We were so close it was almost like Cardinal knowledge.”

I am from the south. The portion of my brain that is supposed to override my mouth did not get installed. It’s genetic and you could even call it a birth defect. Or maybe I was tired of trying to keep Bonehead from making an absolute ass of himself. The words came out before I could stop them. “Damn, Bonehead, are you fucking birds now? A cardinal is a bird. The word you want is carnal. C-a-r-n-a-l. As in having sexual knowledge of a person. If you don’t believe me, go look it up!”

I thought David and Katie were going to choke trying not to laugh. I had just corrected Bonehead in his own home. He stalked outside to smoke a cigarette, Miss Collard Green dutifully trotting along three paces behind.

Bad wine and cardinal knowledge.

Sam would have loved it.

That was the last time we were forced to keep company with Professor Bonehead. In response to being ignored, he decided to punish us all by moving to Modesto, taking both his wife and Miss Turnip Root with him. This ending became a new beginning for Shelly. Three months later she filed for divorce and returned to San Diego. As it turned out, that wake was the beginning of the end for most of us, and with every ending, there comes a new beginning. Paula remarried and moved to Montana. Kenny is on his fourth marriage and still hopes to one day get it right. Claudia must have gotten something right; she and her wife recently celebrated their fifteenth anniversary. My husband got religion in a big way and we divorced over who had the best imaginary friend after twenty-two years of marriage and I started writing. Allie and her husband are still together and living in Arizona. Shelly and I came out to visit a few years ago, and two years later, we both moved to Arizona where we are now known collectively as the Sand Witches….

* There is no Chien Enragé Vingt-vingt ’98 Sonoma’s Best Private Reserve 7-11 Merlot. Yes, the wine did come from the 7-11 which has some surprisingly good reasonably priced wines, however, the wine in question should be placed in the witness protection program after the brutal treatment it received at the hands of Professor Bonehead….