ASK J.J.

J.J. Dufresne is accepting questions from his fans. If there's something you want to know, if you need advice or guidance, if you have a problem, you should just ASK J.J.

Send all questions to:

askjjdufresne@yahoo.com

A Clean-Cut, All-American Boy.

J.J. sent me this email today:

i just paid a bulk of some bills and i tell you i dont know what my mom was bitching about because i feel good when i pay my bills. i dont know why she didnt feel as good when she was doing it. i guess maybe since she isnt me she might have a different perspective.

How I Know J.J. Dufresne, Why I Love Him

I've been outed. I was Brandi, the Spikey Hair Rocker Chick. However, as you can see from the picture, I am neither spikey of hair nor very rockery.

My connection to J.J. Dufresne is this: I was the one who had a crush on his best friend.

I have not slept in the same bed as his best friend, but I have slept in the same bed as J.J. Dufresne. I've slept in the same bed as J.J. Dufresne twice.

The first time was in Minneapolis. We'd just brought J.J. back to our hotel room after a night of drinking beer from paper bags and going to gay bars--that's a story for another time--and it was suddenly time for bed. There were four of us girls staying in our hotel room, and we were all in various stages of hoochery that night. We had on short skirts and scandalous tank tops. One of us was even so bold as to be wearing a long shirt that she passed off as a dress. Needless to say, J.J. enjoyed our company. He enjoyed that we bought him drinks during the drag show, he enjoyed that we rubbed up on him as we walked home. He enjoyed the chorus of our giggling and the ideas we came up with when we were drunk.

"J.J.!" we sang, "you get to sleep in the bed with us!"

It just wasn't in our hearts to let a fine boy like J.J. Dufresne sleep on a hotel floor when there was clearly space enough to fit three bodies in one of the gigantic beds--beds that were equipped with those sleep number controls. We made J.J. stretch out across one of the beds. We showed him how to use the remote. We watched J.J. inflate the bed and we watched J.J. deflate the bed.

"This is a pretty nice bed," he said, and it was a very nice bed.

So after we all had brushed our teeth and shimmied into our pajamas, Diana and I told J.J. to go ahead, climb on in our bed with us. We said he could sleep in the middle, so he would feel like a stud. We patted the space between us. We batted our eyes and smiled our best smiles. "Come here, J.J.," we said.

The other girls giggled from their own bed. J.J. looked a little overwhelmed. His hair was bushy and standing on end. He looked tired and whiskey-soaked. He looked like a man who had been kissed on the cheek by a drag queen hours before his night ended with him sleeping in a bed between two women.

"Okay," said J.J. He flopped down into bed between us. He plumped a wad of t-shirts under his head as a makeshift pillow.

When we woke up in the morning, J.J. reached over and put his hands on my chest and my butt. He squeezed as if he were checking to make sure everything he went to bed next to was still accounted for. "Yup," he said, "they seem alright to me."

The second time J.J. Dufresne and I shared a bed, it was a few months later. Diana was out of town on vacation, and I was staying at her house and dogsitting. Before she left, Diana told me to throw a party. She told me to use her house. She told me to be hospitable. She told me to get drunk, but don't forget to let the dog out. I didn't forget to let the dog out. I didn't forget to get drunk.

A few people came over one night. J.J. was in town. He'd been drafted into lawn care while Diana was on vacation, and he had plans to mow the lawn the following morning, weather permitting. So I went to the grocery store and I bought beef. I know how men are, and I know they like red meat. So I came home with plans to make J.J. a nice cut of beef, some scalloped potatoes, some sauteed squash. Other people came over, too, and I ended up making more beef and then fried chicken and an even bigger pan of scalloped potatoes. We drank bottles and bottles of wine. Then I decided to make chocolate chip cookies.

We ate and ate and ate and ate and ate. We ate until we were all fat and full and sleepy. There was baseball on TV, which the boys watched. We put on music and danced. We let the boys tell us silly boy stories. Then everyone left. Then it was just me and J.J.

He asked if he should spend the night on the couch. I said no, that wasn't necessary. The bed upstairs was big enough for both of us, of course, and comfortable, too. I told J.J. he would have to fight the dog for the place next to me, but if he was willing to do that, he could have the bed.

He was willing.

The next morning I woke up at sunrise. The room was slowly brightening, and there he was: J.J. Dufresne, lying next to me with his mouth hanging open and his hair spiked to heights unknown. I felt strangely untarnished and shocked. I'd expected to wake up with J.J.'s hand on my butt or his forehead burrowed into my spine. I'd expected his hands to be doing impolite things, unconsciously, like a tic, a fit, a seizure, a reflex. But his body was crammed tightly to the one side, and he had barely moved all night. I thought it was cute and sweet and nice. It seemed like some sort of innate chivalry. He would only take a squeeze if someone else were there to witness it. He would not violate a lady's honor when there wasn't some sort of comedic end available.

So I rolled over and poked J.J. in the side and told him I was going. I told him to eat some food, mow the lawn, drink some beer, watch some baseball. I was going out, I said. I'd be back later, and if he was there, I'd make him dinner and we could start the cycle all over again.

How I know J.J. Dufresne, Why I Love Him

When we, the Administrators of "I'm Just Drunk in Someone's Garage," made the switch from old Blogger to New, it, for some reason, outed us, stripping us of our more glamorous identities, forcing us to claim our more mundane selves.

I was Betty Sue, the Sexy Librarian. My connection to J.J. Dufresene is this: I'm the one who gave him two rolls of toilet paper.

Let me start again.

Something in me loves a stray. I was the girl who, in fifth grade, wanted to keep the really cute, really nice stray dog that followed her home from school. Please, I asked my mother, please. Can I, can I, can I? What I didn’t say was that after my first encounter with dog – in the Fast and Friendly parking lot, during which I petted it and it wagged its tail and looked forlorn – I raced home, got a stick of margarine out of the refrigerator, and ran back to the Fast and Friendly, where I found a group of other children petting what I had already come to think of as my really cute, really nice dog. I was going to name him Sweetie, and I was already thinking of him as Sweetie and calling him Sweetie because once you name something, it’s yours. I unwrapped the margarine, encouraged my cute, nice dog Sweetie to sniff then lick the margarine, then I lured the animal home. I said can I keep him? Please? Can I, can I, can I?

My mother said no.

My husband says he would have told me no, too. He also says he wouldn’t have given J.J. Dufresne two rolls of toilet paper. He wouldn’t have given the guy one. “Isn’t he, like, thirty years old?” Al demands. He doesn’t think J.J. Dufresne is cute. He thinks J.J. Dufresne is a pain-in-the-ass, a slacker, lazy and a mooch because that Sunday afternoon wasn’t the last time J.J. Dufresne would stop by. In fact, the guy showed up at our house again just last night. It was suppertime – “Of course!” Al says – when J.J. came waltzing in, carrying a basket of dirty laundry. He ate our food. Drank our beer. Washed his clothes. Crashed on our couch. Then this morning, the guy slept late – “Unbelievable!” Al says – and we all tiptoed around him, speaking in hushed tones like he’s an infant or an invalid or someone really important. Today when he finally woke up, at noon, the first thing J.J. Dufresne did was turn on ESPN. Then he drank three Diet Pepsis, one right after another. Then he griped that he had to pee but he couldn’t pee because somebody was in the bathroom. While he was waiting, his cell phone rang, and after checking the number, he determined that since it was probably a collection agency calling, he would let it go to voice mail.

“And you!” Al says. “You fixed that joker up a plate of cheesy eggs and buttered him some toast! Like he’s His Majesty King Farouk and you’re King Farouk’s mother!”

I nod and pretend I am likewise aggravated, but the truth is I’m not aggravated at all. Part of it is about loving a stray. Spoiling him. Indulging him. Doing all you can because he’s so grateful for it. J.J. Dufresne ate every bite on his plate. He even drank some of the milk I poured him that I didn’t know was spoiled until I caught a whiff of it. “I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said. He didn’t want to embarrass me or hurt my feelings. He was going to drink sour milk because he wanted to be nice.

But part of it is about that night last December. The night I berated J.J. Dufresne at a party in front of a roomful of people. I called him out, I called him a loser, a slacker, a lazy bastard. I accused him of sloth and inadequacy, I accused him of inventing ineptitude. I’d been drinking, of course, and things were stressful at work, and J.J. Dufresne was such an easy target especially because he agreed with me, he agreed with everything I said – “I know,” he said, “you’re right. It’s true” – and the next day, after I begged him to forgive me for picking on him like that, he did. So nicely that I still feel obligated and indebted to him. I still feel responsible for him. You break it, you bought it. You name it, it’s yours. I feel like I owe him, like I need to do for him whatever I can.

J.J. Asks "Is There Time for This Beer?"

And the answer is yes.

S.O.S.!

It's 1984, a leap year on the Gregorian calendar. Hulk Hogan defeats the Iron Shiek; Van Halen says might as well jump, go on and jump; Tina Turner is asking what's love got to do with it. Velma Barfield is executed by the state of North Carolina, Ronald Regan gets to keep the job of president, and J.J. Dufresne is nine years old. He's a third grader in Mrs. Worthless’ class.

He wants to do a little extra credit, he thinks he needs to. He thinks he owes Mrs. Worthless something since she has more than once made it abundantly clear just how dumb he is. She's told him so. Plus during milk break, J.J. never gets to stand underneath the monkey bars peeking at what girls have under their skirts, he doesn't get to go outside like the other kids on account of how bad his math scores are. Mrs. Worthless makes him stay inside. He feels sad about how much Mrs. Worthless doesn't like him

But he's determined to change her mind. He's intent on getting the old lady to see he's not a bad kid, a stupid kid, a nose-picker or a nail-biter or a booger-eater. There are things he's good at. Like drawing He-Man.

J.J. is really into He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, he loves He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, it's his favorite cartoon, his favorite action figure, his favorite thing to think about. In his favorite fantasy, he is He-man, he is Master of the Universe. He's powerful. He's strong. He's bold. He's just, and even Mrs. Worthless has to say so. She has to say oh please forgive me for all the times I have transgressed against you, oh Strong and Mighty One! Additionally, as part of her punishment, J.J. imagines making her pull his finger, how she'd have to say she loves the smell of ass gas. This fantasy is so pleasant and so plausible that he's surprised it isn't real.

Yet.

Because he has an idea.

J.J. knows how to make a hardcover book; he learned how from watching Levar Burton's Reading Rainbow. If you follow Levar's directions, it's real easy. J.J. gift wraps a rectangle of cardboard, glues a length of yarn down the middle then ties in some folded paper and glues the yarn down again. The result of J.J.'s effort is a blue hardcover book with snowflakes on it. He fills in the blank pages with crude but semidecent renderings of He-man and the rest of the Masters of the Universe. He accompanies his illustrations with text, a story spun out of his own wild imagination. It's about the king’s crown being stolen and He-man having to go fight Skeletor. Then J.J. glues a square of white in the center of the cover, and draws a color penciled He-Man holding aloft his sword in his famous pose. J.J. wants people to judge his book by its cover. His drawing of He-Man rocks. He can't believe how good it is. Above the tip of his sword he draws words in puffy letters. ‘He-man and the Masters of the—”

J.J. doesn't know how to spell "universe," but his dad does. His dad knows how to spell everything. J.J.'s dad is in his chair watching TV, the Dufresne family's first TV with a remote control, and Ted Dufresne is still caught up in the novelty of clicking through channels. It's Ted's thumb that will wear a silver smear into the base of the remote, he clicks so much. Click click click: it's like Morse Code, the noise of urgency, HELP or Save our ship! S.O.S!

“Dad?”

Click. “What?” Click.

“How do you spell ‘universe’?”

J.J. draws the letters as Ted rattled them off.

Click. U. Click. N. Click. I. Click. V. Click E. Click. R. Click. S. Click. I. Click. T. Click. Y. Click.

Looking at his book, J.J. smiles one of those smiles, the kind you really remember because of how it feels on your face. He's proud. His He-Man and the Masters of the Universe book will certainly score a few points with Mrs. Worthless; she and J.J. will mend their torn relationship, or at least begin to.

Except that's not what happens.

J.J. volunteers to read his story to the class and Mrs. Worthless points out that he most certainly did not write a “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” tale but rather a “He-Man and the Masters of the University” tale. The kids laugh. J.J. tries to not care but his cheeks burn red. Later that night he told his dad gee, Dad, thanks, but Ted doesn't notice the boy's sarcasm. It's the first season of Miami Vice but Murder, She Wrote is good, too. Click click click.

ASK J.J.

This is a new feature at "I'm Just Drunk in Someone's Garage."

If you have a problem and think J.J. Dufresne has the solution, all you have to do is ASK. Once a week (or whenever he's bored at work or too tired for wanking off) J.J. will entertain questions from those who need answers.

Today's question comes to us from "Klutzy Kat Girl in Marquette, MI."

Dear J.J.,
This is so embarrassing but I don't know where else to turn. Last night, I was entertaining my lovah in my boudoir. I had candles, I had strawberries and whipped cream, I was playing The Best of Barry White CD. As I walked across the room with two glasses of red wine, I tripped over my cat Miss Marmalade and red wine spilled everywhere. Now there's a huge red wine stain on the white carpet in my bedroom. My lovah says it's hardly visible and that my husband will never notice, but I'm still scared! Do you know how to remove red wine stains pronto???

Dear huge stain,
Christ, are you retarded? You have to be if you cant think of a lie to get out of this one.

So first of all, i think you need to tell your retard monitor that some guy has been coming over and giving you the business. the monitor will then call the cops because i am pretty sure it is illegal to screw a retard. and for that matter im not sure if retards can get married. you got more problems than just a wine stain.

Second of all, if you happen to not be retarded i'll chalk it up to panic for the reason you are not thinking of the easiest lie to tell your husband. tell your lover to leave so you can take care of the matter, give him a quick bj, that will get rid of him fast. once he's gone and before your husband comes home, take a shower to get the greasy scent of the other dude off (and out of) you. then dress in something sexy. pour two glasses of wine, set one on his night stand and drink yours so it is empty. then when your husband comes home confess everything you told me except leave the other dude out of the equation. so here say something like this,"i planned on surprising you honey, i wanted to set the mood and everything but as i was, i did the silliest thing, i wasn't looking and i tripped over miss marmalade. i'm such a fool and now there's a big stain on the carpet." believe me, if a dude knows he's about to get lucky he isnt going to give a good god damn about some wine stain. use your head.

i still think you are retarded and so i am going to forward this message to the proper authorities to stop that molester from raping you or other retards.

you're welcome.

J.J. is Buying Himself a Headband Today

Greetings, Dorky Dad! (J.J. wants to know what else does Mamma make you do?) Even though you're not a chick, and J.J. Dufresne really LOVES chicks who read this blog, the Administrators of "I'm Just Drunk in Someone's Garage" welcome you nonetheless.

J.J. does have a motley assortment of male friends, guys in their young thirties who are a lot like him: shaggy, womanless, self-destructive but dear; they are the men of their time, this historical moment, they are part of the national trend of man-boys, guys who've extended their adolescence, who've honed the craft of irresponsibility and immaturity until it became a movement, an art, a religion and a calling.

For example, J.J. has a buddy named Brad. J.J. and Brad drink all the time, often with their other buddy Ken. Last weekend the boys got all boozed up, so Brad and Ken, who are ardent supporters of M.A.D.D., both crashed at Chez Dufresne. The next afternoon while they reorganized their remaining brain cells and cursed J.J. for no food in the refrigerator, J.J. sat at his computer doing random word searches on his favorite porn site. In the search field where a normal pervert would type "threeway" or "anal" or "donkey punch," J.J. was doing uncommon word searches to see what kind of porn would come up. He typed "republican" and "bouquet" (he had to go to dictionary dot com to double check how to spell "bouquet" and that's when he discovered a synonym for it is "nosegay." This amused him.)

But he didn't get any porn to come up with those words, and Brad had just mouthed off--something about you're a moron, J.J., do you hear me, you're an idiot -- so J.J. said he was going to do a porn search for the word "Brad."

What came up was "Brad blows J.J."

Ken said, "Friend, you know you have to click on it."

So J.J. clicked on it, and sure enough, two dudes were blowing each other. They were two other dudes named J.J. and Brad, J.J. was sure of it.

"Maybe it really is you two," said Ken. "Maybe this happened last night and you just don't remember. You were really drunk, man."

"It's not us," J.J. said. He was pretty certain it wasn't because these other guys were really good-looking and not fat. They obviously worked out a lot.

Brad refused to come over and look, but that didn't stop J.J. from first thinking and then saying, "I get to be the guy in the headband!" Because The Headband Guy was way more muscular.

One of Brandi's Favorite Pictures of J.J.

Government Waste

J.J. Dufresne has a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a history minor from Augustana College, a private liberal arts school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In May 2001, this educational background evidently provided him with the skills necessary to land a job in Washington D.C., where, despite his limited knowledge of things related to science – his mnemonic device for remembering the planets is Minnesota Vikings Eat My Juicy Sloppy Unappealing Nasty Poop – he was hired to work as a Staff Assistant for the House of Representatives Committee on Science. This committee includes Sub-Committees for Research; Energy; Environment, Technology and Standards; and Space and Aeronautics. During his two years of employment with this office, J.J. Dufresne received a salary of $31,500 a year to do stuff, though what exactly he did has never been clear to me. I’ve asked him a couple of times what were his duties and responsibilities, and each time J.J. gives me the same vague answer: every day, five days a week, he slipped on a pair of pleated tan Dockers that were hand-me-downs from Ted; a white dress shirt from Sears that Nancy had given Ted for Father’s Day; and a striped tie that Ted didn’t wear anymore, and he took the train to his job on Capital Hill.

As far as I can tell, J.J. spent some of his time answering the phone and sorting mail, both snail mail and electronic. One time, he answered the phone, and it was Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon; Aldrin wanted to speak with J.J.’s supervisor, so J.J. put him through. Another time, a nut job sent the Science Committee an email that claimed the government had planted a chip in his head. This enabled them to monitor his thoughts, the nut job said, and he was fixing to get back at the government for this. J.J. forwarded the nut job’s email to the police.

But he spent the rest of his time looking for ways to pass the time. He might look at porn on the internet; he might take a nap in a forgotten storage room. He might tap his foot or eat his lunch at ten a.m. or fold a sheet of paper into the shape of a football then flick it across the room or daydream about what it would be like to be a hero. Being at work was a lot like being bored.

Until J.J. devised a time-passing amusement he called a Log Log.

The Log Log was a file containing detailed accounts of his on-the-job bowel movements. “I took a folder from the office,” he told me. “I used paper from the office, I used the computer in the office, I used the printer and its ink. All of it paid for by you and your husband and everyone else I know.” He said, “I still have it. I could show it to you if you want.”

I told J.J. that for an anal retentive type like me – a girl who didn’t have a BM the entire year she lived in the freshman dorms – the very idea of shitting in a stall where I can see the tasseled leather loafers of a congressman who is shitting in the stall next to me blows my mind. It’s something I’m just not capable of.

J.J. nodded. “That’s because girls don’t poop,” he said.

But, I said, it’s committing this action while on the taxpayer’s clock. That’s what’s unconscionable.

J.J. nodded again. “That’s true,” he said.

I wasn’t saying anything J.J. hadn’t already thought of himself. In fact, even back then, the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. He was, after all, a taxpayer, and what he was doing was…well…government waste, and it really annoyed him. It annoyed him much so that he contacted a reporter at The Washington City Paper. Using the name Calvin Carr – it’s his uncle’s name, but it’s also a cool-sounding alias – J.J. Dufresne blew the whistle on himself, on his own frivolous and reckless use of taxpayer money. He hoped his actions would be seen as here’s a guy who is just trying to do the right thing.

The reporter, however, didn’t seem terribly interested in J.J.’s story. Instead he wanted to know about J.J.’s supervisors, where were J.J.’s supervisors during all this, and J.J., who had nothing bad to say about his bosses, kept telling the guy hey, look, it’s not them, it’s me. It’s me. I’m an idiot! he said. I’m an idiot!

But the reporter didn’t want to hear about that – there’s no story in that, he told J.J. – and that was the end of it. A few days later, J.J. Dufresne decided that since no one else was going to hold him accountable, he’d have to do it himself. He resigned from his position as Staff Assistant for the House of Representatives Committee on Science and he moved back to his home state of Minnesota where he joined the ranks of the unemployed but looking.

This Just In: J.J.'s Fan Base Doubles Overnight!

The Administrators of "I'm Just Drunk in Someone's Garage" send out a hearty welcome to Mamma, our newest loyal reader.

Mamma, J.J. sends his love.

J.J. Dufresne Has His Eye on You

J.J. Dufresne can often look puzzled, befuddled, confused. It could be because he’s thinking about the big questions, which sometimes leave him feeling puzzled, befuddled and confused. How did he end up like this? What does he want to do with his life? What does he want his life to mean?

Or it could be because he wears dirty contacts. I know, because last night when J.J. crashed on the couch at my house, he left his contact case on the bathroom sink, and this morning, when I was taking care of my own toiletries, I mistook his case for mine. Our prescriptions are very close—I’m a 6.0 in my right eye and a 7.0 in my left; J.J. is a 6.5 in both. For several hours today, I wore J.J. Dufresne’s contacts, I saw the world through his eyes, and upon realizing this – when J.J. went to put his contacts in and found an empty case – I felt puzzled, befuddled, and confused.

"Ewwwwwww," J.J. said. "That's nasty. I hope you don't get some weird ocular disease," he said. "You could sue me for damages, but since I don't have any money, it wouldn't be worth your time. Then you'd hate me. That would be your only recourse."

The Votes Are In

We, the Administrators of "I'm Just Drunk in Someone's Garage," a blog devoted to the life and times of J.J. Dufresne, hereby grant TRINA with Number One Reader Status.

C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S,

T r i n a!

His Motherland

J.J. Dufresne’s niceness comes from having grown up in Minnesota, where nice is the state adjective, and also from his parents, for whom niceness is the highest of all qualities. I never met Nancy and Ted Dufresne, but I’ve seen photographs of them in wooden frames that J.J. keeps on the mantle over his fireplace. J.J.’s mother and father are middle-aged and stout, gray-haired and smiling open, friendly smiles. They look nice. Generous. The kind of neighbors who’d collect your mail for you when you go out of town or let you borrow their rake, their snow shovel, their jumper cables. Nancy and Ted look like what they are: educators, a special ed teacher and a superintendent of schools, smiling for the photographer at the local Sears Portrait Studio.

Nancy, especially, looks nice. When her sons were small, she promised she would always buy them whatever books they wanted, and last summer when she and J.J. browsed at Barnes and Noble, he wanted The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy and The Ghosts of Sodom: The Secret Journals of the Marquis de Sade. Nancy quietly took the two books up to the counter where she paid for them, but a few days later she nicely told J.J. if he didn’t mind, she’d didn’t want to buy any more books like those two. Those books made her feel uncomfortable.

When I first met J.J. Dufresne, he lived in a crummy apartment in Small City, Minnesota. He had long dark hair that he gathered into a low ponytail. That rope of hair was his best feature – glossy, shiny, thick – and it was on impulse that he got cut it short. But it looks good short. Now he has the kind of haircut mothers like, the one boys end up with when their mothers say to the barber, “Just give him a regular haircut”: short but a little fluffy, tight around the ears, with tiny bangs that fringe across the forehead.

At six feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds, J.J. Dufresne is soft-bellied and slouchy. He’s chipmunk-cheeked. He always looks like he needs a shave. His ethnic makeup is Swedish, Norwegian, Indian (“Feather, not dot,” he says), Luxembourgian, Irish, French (“Cheese-eating surrender monkey,” he says) and Scottish. He holds himself like a guy who’s just gotten out of bed or one who wishes he was still in bed: heavy limbed, slump shouldered, and reluctant to move too far or too fast. When he’s drunk, his mouth hangs open slightly.

J.J. Dufresne is drunk a lot. He loves beer and whiskey, rum and vodka and wine. He’s the guy at a party you don’t give the good liquor because what’s the point of that? Why waste the good stuff on the guy who will swill the rancid? When he’s drunk, he’s silly and clumsy and a lot of fun. He loves to talk on the telephone, I’ve spent hours just chatting with him on the phone. He’ll let you wrap a blanket around him like it’s a sari or a diaper. He’s always up for going to the greasy all-night diner for middle-of-the-night eggs. He’ll pose questions you can’t answer, questions like why don’t monkeys get Down’s Syndrome? and why aren’t there autistic monkeys?

When J.J. Dufresne is sober, he can look tired, or sort of cute, depending on how much sleep he’s had, how much day-old pizza he’s consumed, when’s the last time he ate a vegetable, and how hard he’s been trying to get his life on track. Sometimes, he’s perky with optimism and schemes. He’s going to rake in some cash by selling some plasma, some sperm, he’s going to win a bundle betting on horses at the race track. He’s going to meet a girl, a hot girl, of course, but she’s also smart and sweet, and she doesn’t mind being the one on top all the time, and they’re going to fall in love, get married, have some kids, and live happily ever after in the great state of Minnesota.

Further Proof That J.J. Is a Classy, Elegant, and Subtle Sort of Fellow

From Brandi's diary, April 11, 2004:

J.J. called today on his way home from Chicago. He wanted to know if he could come by my apartment and pick up the shoes he left here. I said sure, as long as he hurried up and got back to Minnesota because I was going over to B's house soon.

J.J. cleared his throat and raised his voice so everyone who was in the car with him would hear him say, "OH. I SEE. YOU'RE GOING ON A COCK RUN!"

J.J. Dufresne Also Likes Slutty Boys.

Well, not like that, but he sure likes to have some booze and wear boas with them.

Shrines

J.J. keeps a shrine to his dead cat in his apartment. He really, really loved this cat. And so, after its untimely demise, J.J. erected a picture, some miniature statues, and some sticks of incense to pay tribute to this cat.

When I moved away from Minnesota one of the very first things I did was erect my own shrine. A shrine to Minnesota. Everyone I liked an awful lot got their own slot in a collage picture frame. There are pictures of my friends pretending to be Satan, sitting with stuffed bunnies, smoking cigarettes, and writing the next great American novel.

J.J. got a slot near the top of the collage. In the picture I selected he's posing in the typical J.J. way: flicking off the camera. I have thousands of pictures of J.J. where he's frowning and flicking off the camera. Whenever my friends from back home would page through my photo albums they would note that all J.J.'s pictures looked the same. "He looks grouchy," they'd say. But J.J. is not a grouchy boy. He's easygoing and fun. He has a pretty smile.

My mother would tap at his picture, concerned in a way only a mother could be. "What's his problem?" she'd ask. She thought there was some sort of deep psychological trauma that made J.J. want his photo taken like that. I told her I thought maybe he was proud of his middle finger. It was very straight, after all. A fine middle finger. A dashing digit.

And so that's the kind of J.J. photo I selected for my Minnesota collage. People who stop by my room and see the collage always comment on its inappropriateness. Everyone else looks so wholesome--in fact, there's even a picture of me holding on to a friend's chubby, squirmy baby. People are scandalized. Why is there a picture of a man flicking off the camera next to a picture of a innocent baby?

I have to tell them J.J. means no harm, that he's not a bad sort, that his flicking the camera off is just a thing, a tic. If he were a supermodel, it would be his signature move, one that he flashed at the end of each photo shoot. If ever he he retired from modeling and started his own daytime talk show, his people would put out a retrospective of his work--a book of every single flick-off he ever did. It would sell like hotcakes.

So, really, to have a J.J. picture in my collage that showed him doing anything else would have been wrong. That's the way I'd like to remember him: sitting with a beer in front of him and his stick-straight middle finger pointing up to the ceiling, up to the sky, up to God.

Milk Does J.J. Dufresne's Body Good

It was Charmin.

Many years ago, Jefferson Jameson Dufresne, whose family and friends call him J.J., knocked on my door for what I assumed was a just-happened-to-be-in-the-neighborhood social call. He sat on the couch, drank a glass of iced tea, and visited with Al and me for a bit. It was a nice conversation, pleasant, a normal conversation, though my end of it was a bit stilted. I was feeling awkward because Al was staring at the floor, nodding and saying uh huh, uh huh which may or may not mean he’s listening. He was no doubt wondering the same thing I was wondering: why the hell has J.J. Dufresne shown up at our house unexpectedly at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon. We didn’t know J.J. very well yet. He was just a guy who briefly dated one friend of mine, groped another, and came with other people to a few of the parties we threw. What’s he doing here now?

About forty-five minutes later, we found out.

That was when J.J. pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket.

“I almost forgot!” he said. “I’m really glad I wrote it down!”

He handed me the note, I read it, and this is when it began. This is when I fall in love with J.J. Dufresene. What I feel is not a romantic love, it’s not any sort of sexual attraction. I’m not going to leave Al and run off to South Dakota with J.J. Dufresne. I don’t want to have sex with J.J. Dufresene, I don’t want to tongue-kiss J.J. Dufresne, and I certainly don’t ever want to see J.J. in the nude, not even to get a look at that weird nub-thing on his chest I’ve heard about. I’m told it has a hair growing out of it and it may or may not be a third nipple, J.J. isn’t sure.

But I wouldn’t mind holding his hand as we walk across the parking lot to the bingo hall or sharing an afghan as we eat popcorn and watch all of our favorite TV shows, one right after another. I would be happy to bring J.J. another glass of iced tea and fix him a peanut butter sandwich. I can imagine myself marrying J.J. Dufresne someday, thirty or forty years from now, when I’m old and fat and forgotten, when I’m lonely widow cooking enough food to feed a family of eight, and he’s a sloppy slob of a bachelor, smelly and unshaven, who has holes in his socks and pee stains in his boxers. If J.J. Dufresne and I got married, instead of having intercourse, we would have matching Lazy-Boys and separate bedrooms. We would buy each other slipper socks for Christmas, and giggle during the sexy parts of movies. We would get a miniature schnauzer. J.J. would refer to me as “Mom,” and I would nag him to take his vitamins, take his blood pressure pills, have you taken your cholesterol medicine. We would each need the other.

The note he handed me said Ask for a roll of T.P.

I gave him two.

JJ Dufresne: His Creation Story

On November 13, 1975, Ted and Nancy Dufresne brought their new addition, their third of three sons, home from the hospital. Home was a comfortable ranch style house (three bedroom/two bath, den, avocado appliances, garage, red brick patio, basketball hoop in the driveway) on Pluto Street in Cosmos, Minnesota. A town of 582 citizens, sixty-eight percent of whom identify themselves as Lutheran or Catholic, the streets of Cosmos—Astro Boulevard, Milky Way Street, Gemini Avenue, Saturn Street, Zenith, Neptune, Capricorn Avenue, Mars Street, Jupiter, Pegasus Avenue, and so on—are safe. Little kids race each other on Big Wheels unsupervised. Seniors stroll around the block twice daily, doctor’s orders. Dogs don’t bite, and they don’t bark, and they never mess on the neighbor’s lawn, unlike this newest Dufresne boy who will, three years from now, pull down his pants, assume a squatting position, then take a dump in his front yard. This action will lead to his first spanking, administered by his father. It will also give his brothers a reason to mock him during Thanksgiving dinner every year for the rest of his life.

It’s not hard to imagine Cosmos, Minnesota. It’s a place where soy beans rise out of black nutrient-rich soil, where somebody’s mom is always pulling a pineapple upside down cake out of the oven or a batch of sugar cookies or a loaf of banana nut bread, and somebody’s dad is forever standing poised over the barbeque, grilling pork ribs. Somebody’s brother has what it takes to make Eagle Scout and somebody’s sister is a blue-eyed blonde of heartbreaking beauty, the kind of girl who at age eight and twelve and fifteen, seventeen and twenty-two will crinkle up her lovely perfect nose when the youngest Dufresne boy asks does she want to go to the movies with him. She might say I like you but only as a friend but she’s thinking are you fucking kidding me?

It’s not hard to picture Nancy Dufresne changing her newborn’s diaper while her two older sons, ages five and six, hold their noses and their breath. They’re squawking jeez oh man, he stinks, we’re gonna faint before they collapse dramatically to the harvest gold wall-to-wall shag-carpeting. Later today, one of them will flick loose that weird brown thing hanging from the baby’s belly button that looks like a dried-up, shriveled-up piece of poop and try to force it first into the other’s mouth then in his ear then up his nose. One will threaten to shove it up the other’s butt because that’s where poop comes from.

Ted Dufresne stands at the barbeque, grilling pork ribs. He named his new son after both his grandfathers. Jefferson Jameson is a lofty name to put on a little boy so Ted proposes they call him J.J. What do you think of that? he asks his wife.

Oh that’s cute! says Nancy. I like it!

One day, thirty years from now, Ted will wonder, but not often, and only to himself, if this is where it all started, where he went wrong, what he did wrong. If taking away a dignified name, one with history and tradition and weight, and replacing it with a name that’s not even a name but two letters, no heavier than a basketball thumping twice against the pavement, is why the boy turned out like he did.

Nancy might wonder, but not often, and only to herself, about some of her youngest child’s…interesting choices…but she’ll never doubt his inherent goodness. When this boy is six years old, he will zip into the kitchen wearing nothing but his Superman Underoos, he’ll ask her to turn a red pillow case into a cape, he’ll tell her he’s like Superman, he’s strong and powerful and brave, he’s going to be a hero, do great things, save the world. Nancy tells him she doesn’t doubt it. Nancy will never doubt her love for this boy or his for her. It’ll never occur to her to.