What do you do
when you're alone? If it's anything like what I do, you should be ashamed of
yourself.
Not that I do dirty stuff. At least no more dirty stuff than your average
broken-down guy in his early forties does. Yes, I do have a few magazines. I
don't even refer to them anymore. Tawdry, revolting publications... they disgust
me. I don't know what I was thinking of when I bought them. Cheri, Velvet,
Club, High Society and all the rest of them. I hardly remember their names. That
section of the magazine rack is strictly off-limits these days. I was on a mini
pornography kick then. Can I help it? I was young. It was 1986, the Reagan Era
of laissez-faire, and I took full advantage in the skin mag department. I keep
the magazines in the bottom of my pants drawer as a reminder: These are from
the days when you were a fool! Don't return to those days! I think as I look
through them.
No, I'm not slobbering over pictures of Amber Lynn or Kitten Natividad anymore.
Now I get my ya-ya's out in a different way. I imitate mice, chipmunks,
squirrels and the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs when I'm alone. I cheep and squeak and
make animal noises and sing in a high voice.
Now there's nothing wrong with cheeping and squeaking once in a while when
you're fooling around at home with nobody watching. Even Kenneth Starr lets out
a squeak now and then when he's by himself, and he's a no-nonsense guy. But I
go way overboard. It's getting to the saturation point, where all my noises are
animal noises. I'm turning into a cartoon character. I partially blame the Bee
Gees for this. Remember their Saturday Night Fever music, when they sang like
mice let loose in a disco? You know - "Stayin' Alive" and "You
Should Be Dancing," songs like that. I've been chirping those tunes to
myself for well on 23 years now. I've always had rodent -like sounds running
through my head. Now they're coming out.
For instance, I have a Bangles record with some very catchy tunes on it, sung
by Susanna Hoffs. Susanna Hoffs sounds like one of the chipmunks of Alvin and the Chipmunks, not
any particular one, not specifically Alvin, Simon or Theodore, but like a
generic chipmunk who didn't make it into the group. I find myself imitating her
helium-like voice in front of the mirror, to the point where I frighten myself.
What the hell am I doing! I'm standing there, in front of the mirror wasting
precious moments of my life with this nonsense. Then I run into the bathroom in
shame.
But as they say on TV, you can run, but you can't hide from yourself. If I'm
not trying to imitate Susanna Hoffs I'm aggravating squirrels with my
impressions of them when I walk outside the apartment building. When I see a
squirrel I feel a need to make squirrel noises, snatting my teeth together
rapidly to simulate nut-cracking and using my tongue and gums to create chewing
sounds. They stand on their hind legs looking at me, their tiny brown eyes
filled with hate. And who can blame them?
That's nothing compared to how I talk to the cat. I don't just make nauseating
baby talk to the cat, though I do do that. I sing to her and do a
call-and-response with her when she meows. She doesn't meow often but when she
does she means business. She doesn't need to hear my meows whenever she cries
for her food or when she does that mysterious howling by the litter box. It
would be like if every time your dog barked you barked back. And I make up
songs about feeding her which must be extremely vexing to her because when I
sing to her about feeding her it's precisely the time she wants to be fed. It's
in that cartoon character voice, too, that flattens her ears every time she
hears it.
My largest fear
in this matter is that I'll be caught in the act. I mean, I'd know how to
respond if someone caught me with a Club or a Velvet. But what do you say when
someone catches you squeaking?
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Quirkee Voices 
(0 vote)
