www.chrisdriggers.com

I’ve been thinking of Fat Janet lately. My uncle had to have open heart surgery this week. He’s fine, but that got me thinking about my Dad, and his sad final months, and that led me to think of Fat Janet. If you know me, then you’ve probably heard me describe her before, but I probably didn’t do it justice. My life could be a story worthy of Augusten Burroughs, and I’m going to try to tell some of it.

I’ll start by telling you how me and my brother met Fat Janet.

My parents divorced when I was 11. I was in the 6th grade. I went for a while without seeing my dad or talking to him on the phone. He just sort of disappeared and I forgot about him. It’s weird to think you can forget about someone that quickly, but I quit thinking about him at all. A while later (i don’t remember exactly how long it was) he called the house and I answered the phone. I didn’t recognize his voice at all. When I realized who it was, it was like a sledgehammer of memories and emotion came down on top of my head. He told me that he was coming to Dothan to visit.

This visit became a routine that we would follow until I went away to school in Mobile. But for now, it was new and crazy. He shows up at the house, and looked so different. When Mom kicked him out, his hair was dark brown. Now, a year later, his hair was stark white and he had a huge beard, also white. He picked us up and took us to the hotel (actually it was a motel) and proceeded to fill us in on everything. I’ll elaborate on all this later, but for now here’s what you need to know:

Mom kicked dad out because he was an alcoholic deadbeat who couldn’t hold a job. Being an alcoholic, Dad was a fucking expert at feeling sorry for himself, and when Mom kicked his ass to the curb, he went down down down into the bottle of vodka. He left Dothan and went to Savannah where he proceeded to lose himself in the telemarketing underground. Yes, there actually exists something like this. Basically, all Dad wanted to do was drink away his sorrow. He didn’t want to fool with a legitimate job. Dad used to be a DJ and had a killer deep voice, so he was really good at telemarketing. People just wanted to listen to him, and they would generally buy what he was selling. So he found this business that would let him come in with a brown paper bag and sit. They didn’t give a fuck if he was drinking as long as he was making calls and sales. They paid him cash at the end of every day. So he was set.

It was at this telemarketing business that Dad met Al and Janet. Al was this skinny old alcoholic who was former military. He and Dad had a lot in common, like drinking, smoking, and anti social attitudes. They’d even run into each other back in their military days. Janet was Al’s wife. They were a telemarketing team who were working for this business. Janet was the telemarketing muscle, and Al was her manager. Janet was the best telemarketer I ever saw. She had the perfect operator’s voice, in contrast to her outrageous fatness. She would read through the telemarketing scripts until they were second nature and she never deviated from them. She was like a robot, or a computer program. She would single handedly outsell everyone else at the office combined.

Dad saw her talent, and formed a plan. Al, Janet, and Dad combined forces and ditched Savannah, which is a crappy place for that business. They moved to Atlanta and started their own telemarketing company. It was just the three of them, and they would hire themselves to charities to get them donations. They took 50 percent of the donations as salary. It was pretty sweet for Al and Dad, because Janet did all the work. Dad and Al would just drive into Atlanta every day to pick up the checks.

Dad is telling Matt and I all of this at the motel, and he informs us that Al and Janet are in the room next door. We go over there and meet them. Al is a skinny gross old dude with liver spots and thick black glasses. He has a moustache and a cigarette and a beer. Janet is there too. I remember seeing her very vividly. She was short. Less than five feet tall. She probably weighed between 350 and 400 pounds. She had a cast on her leg so she hobbled around. Her hair was so thin, you could see her scalp. She was wearing a billowing nightgown. Her voice was surprisingly pleasant.

They don’t say much, and let Dad do the talking. Dad credits them with saving his life. He’s convinced that if he hadn’t met them, he would have committed suicide by drinking. I don’t doubt it. But the fact is that Al and Janet are weird looking and gross, and I’m just a kid. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how old you are. Sometimes you should trust your instincts.

I’ll elaborate on all this more, but to sum up, Dad, Matt, and I visit each other a few times a year, and Al and Janet are always there. They usually don’t say much. Time passes. I move to Mobile Alabama to finish high school at a boarding school down there. While I’m there I make the decision to move to Athens, which is where Dad, Al, and Janet moved. Before I move up, Al dies. He has a stroke, wastes away for a few months, and then kicks off. Dad and Janet are distraught of course. Dad begins drinking even more heavily. I tell him that in order for me to move to Athens, he’ll have to enter detox and sober up, or he can forget it. He actually does it. Apparently Al made Dad promise to take care of Janet before he died, and he’s going to do it. So he detoxes and sobers up. I’m making my plans to move up. Here’s where it happens:

Matt and I come up to Athens to scope it out before I graduate. We’re staying with Dad. Janet is living with Dad now. She has gotten fatter, and to top it off, she no longer has any teeth, just dentures. Matt and I are hungry, so we ask Dad where a good place to eat is. Dad suggests the Taco Stand. Janet loves this idea. So Matt and I go and get the food. We eat it. Janet asks how we liked it. We say “It was good”. Then it begins…..Janet turns to Dad, who was sitting right there and says:

Janet: “The boys sure liked the Taco Stand Bob”.
Dad: “Yeah I heard.”

A little while later, after we’re done eating and are watching TV or something, it happens again.

Janet: “The boys sure liked the Taco Stand Bob”
Dad: “Uh huh. ”

The next day, we’re driving through Atlanta. Dad is driving, Janet is in the passenger seat. Matt and I are in the back seat.

Janet: “The boys sure liked the Taco Stand Bob”
Dad: “OK”

A few minutes later
Janet: “The boys sure liked….”
Dad: “PUT A FUCKING CORK IN IT!!!”

Matt and I look at each other and are stunned by a couple of things. First, we’d noticed that Janet had a tendency to repeat herself, and it was now obviously a mental problem. Second, Dad could ignore it, but when he’d had enough, he put the smack down. And when he did, Janet’s facial expression never even changed. It was like she was a fucking robot.
After that, we notice that she actually never says anything that someone else didn’t say first.

Me: “Hey Dad, the Braves lost last night.”
Janet, a minute later: “Hey Bob, Chris said the Braves lost last night”
Dad: “Yeah he just fucking told me! Zip it!”

She’d sit there, her chair creaking, pink flecks of Polygrip stuck to the corner of her mouth, hand folded over her immense lap. To look at her was to be disturbed. She creeped me the hell out. All the repetition! Never speaking an original thought! And she’d gotten it into her head that I was her surrogate son. She kept calling me son, and I’m too polite to tell her to stop.

I spent the next two and a half years living with Dad, a recovering chain smoking alcoholic, and Fat Janet, an overeating, Munchausen’s Syndrome having, sociopathic, hypochondriac, retard. I slept on the couch with no room of my own for the entire time I spent there. It ended with Dad going crazy, shipping her off to a home, and drinking himself to death. Yeah I got some stories. It was a long two and a half years.