Christie and I have this on-again-off-again friendship and I really think she’s a sweet gal, but she keeps marrying down. I told her on her first marriage just as she was ready to walk that aisle, “Christie, this is your one shot at true happiness. Don’t blow it.” Did she listen? No. She just laughed and said, “Too late!” Crass. Husband number two, I’m talking to her from Spain as she’s ready to walk down the aisle … again. “Listen, the starter marriage got you a house and a car. Don’t spread yourself too thin on #2.” She giggled when I said that and added, “TOO LATE!” God she can be so crass. Husband number three. God almost takes them both in a helicopter crash in Colorado in 1994 and I tell her, “Defy god! Go back and get married where the copter crashed and make this one stick!” Again she giggled, “WHY DO YOU THINK I’M MARRYING HIM?” Ugh. She always shouts into her cell phone. And again, crass. She didn’t even bother calling me this last time when she married Peter Cook. And you know what? I would have still given her words of encouragement. I would have said, “Listen, third strike and you’re out – but not in pee-wee league. You keep swinging until you get to first base!” I imagine her chortling and adding, “Oh, he’s already made it to home plate … along with his team!” God she can be so crass, even when I imagine her talking.

Christie stumbles out of her Cabrio and runs to the door, screaming all the way. Kind of like that Marianne Faithful song, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan. As I walk up to the door behind a now-sobbing Christie, Ithink to myself, “God, if there’s one person you shouldn’t get marriage advice from, it’s Courtney, who completely redefined the term shotgun wedding but whatever, Christie, whatever.” Always the gracious hostess, Courtney invited Christie to join us at IHOP and she sat there in our booth, makeup smeared and crying about something that Peter, the now-ex-husband, said to her. Apparently she’s a little long in the tooth , if you know what I mean. Her pantry is now a two-car garage. Her crawlspace is now a rumpus room. Her vagina is as sloppy as a Rush Limbaugh at a drug store filling a photocopied receipt and using fake id to purchase narcotics with cash while coming down from his last Oxy pill. That’s not a euphemism, and I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. He said if she were a dynosaur, she’d be a Sloppylottapuss.

I couldn’t order anything. I just had a coffee. And then a thought came to me.

“Christie, it’s not like you haven’t had a little work done here and there to freshen up the years,” I said, taking her roadmappy hand. “Why don’t you hire a ‘decorator’ to trim the curtains in your basement?” She gave me the Evil Eye, but deep down (and probably dangling outside a little bit) she knew it was the perfect solution. “And if that doesn’t work, Christie, maybe they can cast you in the next Harry Potter movie with your big pink wizard’s sleeve.” Courtney kicked me under the table. “OW!” I exclaimed, exaggerating the pain.

“Fine. I’ll do it. Just as long as no one finds out,” Christie relented. “Oh, no one will, Christie,” I assured her, as I wrote down the number of an amazing gynorejuvenator that I know, “no one will.”