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Calista
Flockhart and the MySpace Hoax
By
Michael Frissore
1997
A few years ago I knew this kid. We’ll call him Ty because it’s
short. He was just out of college and a bit of a nutjob. We worked
together as temps for a healthcare company. He was not a very good
worker. Sometimes I’d catch him on plastic surgeon websites
looking at before and after breast photos. I befriended him
because he fascinated me. He always ate lunch in his car, and it
could have been any seat on any given day. Sometimes he sat in the
front passenger side, sometimes the back seat. He had the most
bizarre lunches. Sometimes it would be those Lunchable pizzas that
kids eat; sometimes it would be bread. Just bread, like a stack of
ten slices. One time I followed him out and caught him
masturbating.
When I couldn’t stand to
see him eat in his car anymore, I invited him to have lunch with
me in the break room. He accepted happily. For lunch that day Ty
had three bananas and a can of spinach, an actual can of spinach
with Popeye on it. He didn’t open it with his flaming pipe or
anything; he produced a can opener from this purse-like thing he
called his “fag bag.” He said nothing as he prepared his
lunch. Then, once he had opened the can, he finally spoke.
“You’ll have to excuse
me,” he said. “I’m still in shock from Brian Pillman’s
death.”
“That’s why the spinach?”
I replied.
“No. It’s good for you.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Just
don’t beat me up.”
Turns out Brian Pillman was
a wrestler. Ty was obsessed with professional wrestling. Princess
Diana had died two months earlier, but he was mourning a guy who
wore tights. He kept telling me about all these shows he went to
and what wrestlers he met. He said one guy asked him if he had any
cocaine while he was in the bathroom.
I learned a lot about Ty
during those lunches. He lived with his parents; he hated being a
temp; he thought Louise Woodward was guilty and that JonBenet
Ramsey was “hot.” He claimed the last one was a joke, but it
didn’t seem that way to me. As much as he loved wrestling he
talked even more about Howard Stern and Calista Flockhart. He was
always giggling to himself in his cubicle during the morning with
his headphones on, listening to Stern. And he was always going on
about Ally McBeal.
Ty intrigued me more and
more with each lunch. He knew and asked very little about me, but
I had to know about every tiny aspect of his life. I found out he
had a thing for Loretta, a girl that worked there.
Loretta was pseudo-pretty.
She looked kind of like Sarah Michelle Gellar if someone punched
her in the face. He wouldn’t talk to her and he seemed to want
me to ask her out for him, but I wasn’t going to do that. He was
very passive-aggressive about it, asking me questions like, “Do
you think she’s cute?” and “Think she has a boyfriend?” I
was not going to mention him to Loretta. I think Ty scared some of
the women there.
I sort of became Ty’s
confidant. One time he asked me to cover for him while he drove
home, forty-five minutes each way, to change his pants after he
shit himself. I’m not kidding. And no one noticed he had been
gone. We worked together for a couple more weeks until one Friday
our supervisor Richard told me he was letting Ty go. He said I was
doing a great job, but Ty just wasn’t working out. Later that
day Ty asked if I was coming back on Monday. I said I wasn’t
sure. We said our goodbyes, but he said nothing about him not
coming back.
On Monday Loretta came to me
and asked if I’d heard from Ty. I said I hadn’t and she told
me that he had sent an email to some of the women in the office
saying how much he liked them and will miss them. It seemed to
freak a lot of the girls out, especially considering most of them
had never so much as exchanged pleasantries with Ty. I didn’t
see the email itself, even though I kind of wanted to.
That morning Ty called me at
work. He didn’t mention the email and I wasn’t going to
either. He said he was taking the week off and asked if I wanted
to come to his house some time that week. I didn’t really want
to, but all week he kept calling me at work and asking if I’d
come over. So I finally went to see him one night when he said his
parents would be out. Ty lived at a cul de sac in a nice little
neighborhood with a lot of children playing in the street. As I
pulled into his driveway I saw the strangest thing. The front door
was open and I could swear I saw Ty standing in his parents’
kitchen completely naked. He was just standing there, as if
waiting for something, with the kitchen light on.
(Turn
the page)
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