RIGHTING🤺 WRONGS

Why WRITE to the asshole, when I can RIGHT the asshole?

The bandage above my left eye conceals a cut caused by a flying Champagne cork at Molly Jong-Fast’s Party . . .

. . . but Reader! Do not faint! Please! I promise you! Molly’s butler comes quickly with his mop and pail and swabs up the blood, and look at Katie Phang— Not a splatter on her!

I tell you this, because only that conk on the head can possibly explain the bizarre events that occur after I leave Molly’s party.

I’ll lay the facts before you, Reader. So when the young woman who signs herself Can’t Think Straight calls the police—or when that lying rat of a fiancé of her’s hires a lawyer—you can explain to the judge that I am innocent, OK? Isn’t this the best way?

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It all begins when I bid my melodious adieux at Molly’s—you’ve said your good-byes at Molly’s parties, Reader, you know the routine—Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!—and then, pulling out my phone, checking email and stepping inside Molly’s elevator—which, as Molly lives in one of New York’s reigning buildings, looks like Casanova’s water closet—I press LOBBY, and read the following Ask E. Jean letter on the ride down:

Dear E. Jean:  

Three days ago I packed up and moved out of my and my fiancé’s apartment. Why? Sunday night he fell asleep on the couch with his phone on. I happened to glance at the screen—I swear I wasn’t looking on purpose—and I saw a message from a strange woman about “meeting up.” 

I know I should not have gone any further. I’m a trustworthy, honest person, and I HATE snoops, but I couldn’t help it. I picked it up. I just wanted to check if it was about our upcoming wedding, you know.

It turned out he had messages from dozens of women! Dozens! And not just messages, he’s meeting them IRL, he’s having sex with them, and talking about doing all this crazy fantasy stuff, sometimes with two different women on the same day, sometimes including another man.

I’m so upset right now writing this, crying, unpacking all my shit I’d packed up and drove out here to Montclair, where I’m staying with my aunt, and my aunt keeps telling me to get tested for Monkey Pox! I’m terrified. I thought he loved me. You really never know anyone, do you?  

I’m a little out of my mind, I apologize. You said on the podcast last week that “there are no swine on the Upper East Side.” So I just want you to know that a swine DOES live on the Upper East Side and his name is [redacted]. He lives at number [redacted] East 78th and he broke my heart.----Can’t Think Straight

As I am reading and starting to hear people in the lobby yelling “open the damn elevator!” a second email arrives from the same correspondent:

Oh, E. Jean,

Did I make the right decision when I moved out?  I love him more than anything or anyone on Earth!

I quickly type a reply…

Miss Can’t—

Yes! You did the right thing! I’m proud of you! Listen, I’m just leaving the city. I will write more when I get home—

Yours, in gratitude that you did not fuck up your life,

E. Jean.

And, Reader, I don’t know how it happens—but as I press send, with my wits conked out by that Champagne cork, with the vision of the swine’s East 78th Street address dancing in my head, and with the indignant howls of people waiting for the elevator, I conceive the craziest idea that has ever occurred to an advice columnist:

“Why am I writing to her?” I think to myself. “It’s the asshole who needs the answer!”

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I debouch the elevator.

I wish a pleasant good-evening to the extremely huffy people who’ve been waiting for it. I duck out the service door to avoid the photographers who gather in front of Molly’s Fifth Avenue building on evenings she throws her parties.

Reader! It is a fine, sultry night! Perfect for a stroll! In a matter of ten or twelve minutes, I find myself in front of Mr. Redacted’s digs on East 78th. I look up at the handsome five-story red brick building with the neat white shutters and swear the sacred oath:

Dickhead! Thou will feel the wrath of the Septuagenarian Advice Columnist!

I climb the steps to the front door, open it and enter the neat, compact lobby. I see three mailboxes and deduce that Mr. Redacted occupies the top two floors. As I am taking the pen out of my bag, and looking for some paper, I see Mr. Redacted’s buzzer, and I buzz it, thinking:

“Hell, why write the asshole, when I can right the asshole,” and heavens to Betsy, he buzzes me up!

✤ ✤ ✤

So I walk up the stairs to the third floor and knock.

     A male voice says:

    “Who is it?”

    “It is I,” I say.

    “Who?”

    “A messenger.”

    “Whha da . . . .?”

I can see him looking through the eye thing.

I smile.

Who does Mr. Redacted see? He sees a grinning old woman with bandage over her left eye.

He opens the door.

     “Cad! Cheat! Varmint!” I say, striding into his apartment.

I can hear SportsCenter. I can see the couch he fell asleep upon that fateful night, and, across the high-ceilinged living room, I glimpse a balcony with a glider-sofa with bright yellow pillows.

Mr. Redacted himself? He’s in his underwear and holding a Party Bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken at Johnson level. He is quite pretty I must say, lots of dark hair and he’s a big one—at least 6’3” probably 260. His eyes are blue, his chin is short, his mouth is full of chicken.

     “Scoundrel!” I say

     “Whaad?” says Mr. Redacted, nibbling a breast.

      “Cheater! ” I say.

“Who are you?” he says.

“Howdy do?” I say. I throw him a curtsey. “I just dropped by to tell you to go on! Go on! Boff as many chicks as you like—”

“Boff?”

He cocks his head.

“Ok. Ok. Boff is not quite the mot juste, I admit, [laughing airily]. I kinda got off on the wrong word there. Ok. Boink as many women…..”

“Boink?”

He spits out what he’s chewing on the floor.

“You don’t like boink?” I say, backing up. WHERE THE HELL IS MY VOCABULARY? Did that damn cork numb the entire left side of my brain? “Bonk as many women.…” AM I DYSPHASIC? “No? You’re not fond of bonk? Then bone as many women….? Ball as many women…? Now. Now. Let’s not get excited. You’re uptight, I get it…”

He is, in fact, raising the bucket over his head, and his t-shirt is riding up.

“Listen—” I say, staring at the weald of black hairs positively springing out of the waistband of his shorts and crawling up his torso. GET A GRIP FOR GAWD’SSAKES, E. JEAN!

“Lookit,” I say, “I’ve just dropped in to congratulate you. I have the honor of announcing that, Yes! Yes! Bang as many women as you like! Hump the better-looking gentlemen! Your engagement is over, Oaf! You’ve lost one of the best women in the world!

He hits me on the shoulder with the bucket of chicken.

“Get out, cunt” he says.

I bob backwards.

The clod, attempting to punch me—actually attempting to punch me! Reader!—slips on a glob of the Colonel’s coleslaw, grabs the front of my dress to keep from falling—the dress I got for an amazing $65 on Poshmark!—and ends up whirling me around the living room Fred-and-Ginger style till, a split second before he heaves me out the door I have just came in, I deliver such a