Country Music Broke My Brain by Gerry House

and bullied into positions that don’t normally occur in nature. I’m sorry, but I think there is such a thing as Gay Hair. Ridiculous, to be sure, but it’s another of my theories. It’s not the length—sometimes it’s a buzz-cut to the scalp—but it’s a giveaway.
    Look, I’m as gossipy and nosy as everyone else. I’m a total hypocrite in light of all my “none of my business” pronouncements. It is none of my business, but I still sit around with songwriting buddies and wonder out loud, “Who’s he trying to fool?” I’m sorry to fans and hope you won’t take it the wrong way, but I have long suspected there are several major Hillbilly Twang Slingers who ride Side Saddle.
    I am also on record as endorsing gay marriage because I believe gay people should have to endure marriage like the rest of us.
    On another separate note, I also want to announce here in public that I once kissed Keith Urban. Just a peck on the lips. At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. From what I recall, there was a substantial amount of wine reported missing the next morning. My wife was off in another room when the big midnight celebration moment arrived. I puckered up for the nearest person in order to honor Auld Lang Syne. It just turned out to be the guy who married Nicole Kidman. Also, I should tell you that he never writes. He never calls. He treats me like yesterday’s newspaper. I have spent many nights standing in front of the fridge, eating ice cream out of the container with a scoop because of it.

Gorilla Glue
    ONE eye opened. It was cold. Damn, bone-chilling, “shrinking” cold.
    I have got to get up, he thought. I don’t know where I am.
    That’s when he discovered that he couldn’t get up. The queasy realization that he was immobile washed over him.
    I’ve had a stroke. Oh, my GOD! I’ve had a stroke. I’m paralyzed. Oh my God, I’ll never bowl again. Oh, my GOOOOOOODDD, he shrieked silently in his head.
    He tried again, and slowly through the fog realized it wasn’t so much his body he couldn’t move, but that his body he couldn’t move from the cold floor. It was some kind of tile.
    Wait, I know this tile. It’s in her bathroom.
    He focused his eyes and saw the bottom of the hideous green commode, the shower curtain with mermaids, and the plunger with dog bones painted on it. He grunted and stayed there like a walrus on a cold rock.
    What the . . . ?
    He tried to move again. He had to get out of there, and right now. What if she came home and found him. She was already pretty P.O.’d about things. Some women just don’t understand life with musicians. It’s tough out there. It’s hard.
    There are so many requirements and rules, meet ‘n’ greets, recordings and lyrics, and drinks and concerts and women. And wives. Or, in this case, wife. As in, the wife. Some women just can’t get it through their heads that some men don’t wear wedding rings and can still be married. Hell, country music is all about drinkin’ and cheatin’. What did she think they’d been doin’ for three years? Drinkin’ and cheatin’—in equal parts and usually in that order.
    In fact, now that he thought about it, that’s what they had been doin’ last night. He remembered the drinking part. Whose idea was it to try Tequila Sangria anyway? You had to be Mexican to drink that stuff. Couple of beers, couple of Jacks, she’s dancing on the chair, a pitcher of that tequila wine grape juice, and whammo! He made a note to slow down one of these days with the tequila.
    She’s the one who said, “Baby, let’s go back to my place,” he thought.
    He tried to move again. Nothing. He could rock back and forth a little, and yet he couldn’t seem to scoot toward the shower. He noticed somebody had been selling purple Buicks on the big white phone, too. It