Putting the Madge in Danna Read online

  I barely speak Greek, but I can - only when I have to like when my foreign relatives come to visit or when Zeus and I take vacations to the islands. Zeus Zepkos is my fiancé. We are childhood sweethearts. I love him very much. How could I not? He’s my soul mate, after all. That’s what everybody says.

  You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. I thought this would be easier than writing in a diary that my mom could infiltrate, the way she had with that little cherry leather one I’d kept during eighth grade where I had divulged the spring fling kissing and stuff that happened between Zeus and me. That was when she’d given me the stern virgin talk. I vowed never to disclose information like that again in such a careless manner. But I do like to write – and this way, blogging on the internet, is much better. No one important will read it (no offense) and I can do it anywhere, like at work at the travel agency, when there’s no one in the office. Cyberspace is actually the greatest hiding place of them all, isn’t it?

  I’m positive that no one will find me here in plain sight, because everyone that matters has sworn an aversion to the computer. To them, it’s like an evil entity, a malevolent mythological titan or something. So what if they find me? That’s an easy fix. I’ll just say that I’d been hacked, my identity stolen. It happens, like that time someone stole my purse out of the grocery cart at Price Chopper. Zeus believes everything I tell him. It won’t jeopardize our relationship.

  I’m honest, except for when I try to hide clothing purchases I make on our joint credit cards. Other than that, Zeus and I have the greatest relationship in the world. We share nearly everything. I mean, I don’t ask about his business trips, because I don’t really understand all that bridge design talk anyhow. Boring! Naturally, he only half listens when I spout off travel agency gossip or anything to do with 2012 doomsday travel plans unless the conversation is to do with our honeymoon or something. Then he listens with both ears.

  I got the idea for this blog from that one about Julia Child and all that French cooking. Really – I thought at the time - women like to cook? No Greek woman with a father in the restaurant business bothers with that. The kitchen in my apartment has brand new stainless appliances and these warm sandy colored granite countertops. It’s merely decorative - I don’t actually use it. It’s more like set decoration for when Zeus and I play our Spank the French Maid game. I wriggle around on the counter in a crocheted hostess apron while he pretends to punish my naked booty-boot for not passing the white glove test.

  I only ever go grocery shopping for microwaveables, like popcorn or blowjob practice foods like bananas and ice cream fudgies. That purse snatch happened when I got a nipsey-russell stuck in the ice cream freezer. I guess my top was a little low cut and my tit-tat’s little salmon pink face peeked out, latching onto the cold wall like an anteater’s nose searching for its next meal. It was so embarrassing that I had to put myself into a self-imposed exile from food shopping altogether for a while. I would still be shuddering at the thought of a shopping cart, if it hadn’t been for that time Zeus brought one home and used it to cage me like a wild animal. Good times.

  I don’t really clean either, obviously. I never actually learned how thanks to a mother and live-in grandmother who considered it grown up work. I’d play with my dolls in my room on a Saturday morning while simultaneously watching cartoons and they would sort of clean around me – fix my bed with me on it sort of thing. When I got older, my room was always tidy by the time I got home from cheerleading practice so that I could concentrate on phone sex with Zeus.

  Thankfully, my future in-laws own a cleaning business. They send a lady named Petra over every other Saturday to dust and vacuum my apartment. She even does the window blinds and that nebula that is the back of the toilet bowl. Should I even be telling you this? Does it make me sound lazy? I do need to save my energy for sex, mind you, because I have a lot of it, but I know. I’m one lucky girl who will never cook or clean. That or I’m living in Fantasyland, I’m not sure which – Zeus does tend to raise an eyebrow or two on occasion when I don’t lick the big kazoo clean after an exceptionally long round of bobbing for balls and pricker. One of these days, I’ll probably have to learn to be a better cleaner upper, like when we have kids.

  I can’t think that far ahead though, because my head is currently consumed by this dream inspired mission. I love the idea of following in my celebrity idol’s footsteps. It just makes perfect sense, it really does. I will channel Madonna, her sex life to be exact, just like I did in the vision. It wasn’t just a dream. I think it was one of those message in an omen thingys that you have to listen to and if you don’t – well I always listen because I don’t like consequences, and consequently, I’ve been very lucky in life because of it.

  Zeus is in Japan on business. He works for a big engineering firm – Tungsten & Smith. He left Monday morning and will be away for the next six and a half weeks. No more fucky-wuck until the wedding – for him at least. I’ve decided to use this time to form and execute a plan to replicate sex acts with partners who parallel the significant men in Madonna’s life.

  I’ll blog each week to share with you strangers every lurid detail of what I hope will be an educational summer. I need this. I don’t have a choice. I’m only twenty-three and I’m getting married at the end of August. Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 2:00pm, to be exact.

  Mom seems to think that marriage is the beginning of my life, but come on! Everyone knows it spells the end, doesn’t it? The beginning of the end. I’ll get…comfortable - fat just like all of my Greek girlfriends from church. I’ll end up preggy-preggers right away, like my sister-in-law, Penelope, and have an ungrateful baby. And if it’s a boy (and it better be according to my in-laws) he’ll get spoiled and turn into every other misogynist Greek man on the planet Earth. I’ll be too busy raising him to make fucky anymore.

  On the other hand, maybe not. I shouldn’t worry, should I? Mom’s not that fat and has kids – me and my two brothers, Demetrios and Dean. And Madonna has a son. A daughter, and a son, and a little Malawiian too, and she still gets it on with all sorts of lovers. She really has it all, doesn’t she?

  I want to learn from Madonna, to learn to be a better person, you know, a humanitarian and such. But most of all, I want to learn to be a better fucker. It’s the greatest wedding gift I could give Zeus. I just love him so much. He deserves a woman with experience who will blow his fucking mind every time we do the cuntessa-kazoo.

  I love Madonna too – I mean not sexually, not really. More like a mentor, I guess. She’s much more open about stuff than Mom. She puts herself out there, which is a vulnerable thing to do, but she’s such a strong person, and she’s just so talented!

  I know all the words to all of her songs. I love to sing, by the way. In elementary school, my music teacher, Miss Lanu, had said I had perfect pitch. In the ninth grade talent show, I sang Music, which I’d memorized after hearing it on Napster. People actually thought I’d made it up because it hadn’t been legitimately released! I choreographed a dance to it too – not so cowgirlish. Madonna would have been proud. I didn’t win the contest, because it had been rigged for the principal’s daughter to win, apparently. That’s what my mother had said at the time, and I believed her.

  Madonna and I have loads in common besides music. We could be best friends in real life if we met at, say, the mall or something. Okay, so I’m not Italian, but my old country is only a back-two-three and a toe-ball-change from hers. I have brown hair that I sometimes have highlighted to look a little bit blonde (Madonna is a brunette as you all know), and I can make my brown eyes blue - when I wear my colored contacts (usually only reserved for exotic fun night with Zeus).

  We’re the same height, and I would say about the same size, give or take a few pounds. I don’t exercise nearly as much as she does, but I do go jogging on occasion. Because of the upcoming nuptials, I’m on this regimen of climbing the bleachers at the high school track every morning before work, bar bad weather. And I preten
d to do yoga during sex (ha, ha). I am a lot younger than she is, after all, so I don’t have to work as hard as she does to maintain my figure. Madonna didn’t get into all that training until she was in her thirties anyhow so I have time to kill before I inflict that discipline on myself.

  I love having sex in every hole and crevice, and I’m pretty sure Madonna does too. I don’t really know anyone like her in that respect. Madonna’s whole persona is built around breaking taboos and boundaries of what is acceptable behavior for women in society. People actually devote college classes to her historical significance. She’s amazing!

  Oh, and the coolest thing that unites us is our names. My full name is Dannika Rose Elinopoulous. They call me Danna. Everyone does. Get it? It’s kind of like Donna, and that’s pretty close to Madonna, isn’t it?

  We could practically be twins.

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  ****

  The Six

  Saturday, JULY 18, 2009 - 10:20am

  According to Wikipedia, Madonna has been in the record business since 1982. That’s a long time. Researching her has been like a social studies project or something – really, she’s older than my mother. I wonder what the ‘80s were like. It was still before Aids and stuff in the hetero community sex-wise, right? Pretty sure it was. But Madonna didn’t seem to worry about that shitilda. I think she really believed that she was headed over the rainbow and maybe she had a guardian angel, like her dead mother was her Glinda, The Good Witch. Every time she found a fucker, it was like finding a friend on the yellow brick road to Oz, and Toto too.

  I’ve been reading about her all morning. There are just so many possibilities for the six – the code for my future lovers. Did you know that she had dated Vanilla Ice-Ice Baby? Or Warren Beatty – why he’s as old as my grandfather! Then there were a couple dancers and models, and porn stars…. I’m impressed with her body of humpity-hump work. Her fuck ethic matches her work ethic and then some. It’s like diamond certified just like The Immaculate Collection. I feel a strong sensation - call it essence of the pinkerson, that I will transform from this experience just as Madonna became a superstar after Who’s That Girl?

  It has been difficult to sort through it all, this thirty-year span of fame, and figure out how I could narrow the partners down to only six types. But six is what she had said in my dream, so I’ll need to stick with that, and since I’m down to six weeks left, I need to hurry along and get this party started.

  Madonna moved to New York City in 1977 with all of thirty-five dollars in her pocket. She dropped out of college and decided to become a dancer, which she did while simultaneously working at Dunkin’ Donuts and posing as a nude model, and other stuff. Somehow or other she ended up playing drums in a band. That led to some singing and songwriting and then into the arms of a record producer. I can’t remember his name – I should have printed the files, but they would have taken up too many pages and I didn’t want to waste the paper I needed to prepare the seating charts for my wedding reception.

  She had a boyfriend at the time, her band mate I think, but I’m pretty sure she cheated on him. Wikipedia doesn’t lie, so it must be true. Because my heroine must have slept her way to the top, right? Madonna knew what she had to do to be somebody. She must have used her sexual superiority to catapult herself to the position of recording artist of the decade.

  This seems like the right place to start. I need to find myself a record producer. Believe it or not, I actually know one - more on that later.

  Madonna had a highly publicized affair with Dennis Rodman, the basketball star who had that freaky meltdown recently on Celebrity Apprentice. Remember that? Rodman once famously said that Madonna wanted to have his baby. He was a bit of a kiss and tell, but so what? So am I, well, a tell anyway- everybody knows that. No one in my family tells me any secrets – except Auntie Sofia, but I don’t know her that well. She lives in Canada. I have the perfect candidate for my basketballer, and he lives not too far from here! He will double as my cougar experience since he’s only nineteen I think, which is something I’m looking forward to. Zeus and I are the same age.

  Madonna also fucked her personal trainer, Carlos Leon, and produced Lourdes out of that union. I wonder what he’s doing now? Do you think he’s still fit? I saw my elementary school gym teacher, Mr. Honeywell, in line at the movie theatre the other day, and he’s all beer tum-tum. It’s really hard to commit to a lifetime of working out, don’t you think? I think Madonna and Mr. Leon were together for a while, and that maybe she would have married him, if it hadn’t been for that Kabbalah stuff. Apparently, he was mystically wrong for her.

  So I’m pretty sure those two men were both important to her even though they didn’t go the distance. That she had wanted to procreate with them and all speaks volumes. I’m sure Zeus and I will have at least three kids. That way, if we buy a four-bedroom house we won’t have room for out-of-town guests to stay with us. I hope that didn’t sound too mean, did it? You know how I feel about household chores, come on!

  Speaking of Jewish mysticism, there was that friendship with Sandra Burnhardt or whatever her name is, you know, that comedienne, did she or didn’t she? Was it a relationship? I’m not sure if I want to go gay in this blog, but what the hell - I did it in my dream, right? And what’s good for Madonna, be it cock or lez-lez, can only make me stronger. Of course, it won’t kill me!

  Oh my god! I think I feel all tingly right now. I can’t believe this is happening with Zeus so far away. Need to finish all my strategic planning so I can take a dip in the self- slap. Then I can finish this up….

  Few! Okay, I’m back. Pretended I was being forced against my will to do all these strange things with my facsimilies – you know, handcuffs and such. Really made me get off quickly! Do you think Madonna tried out the BDSM lifestyle? Those snapshots in that famous Sex picture book she sold looked kind of realistic, didn’t they? Plus those scenes in Justify My Love when she was crawling naked with that collar around her neck. And Body of Evidence? Critics thought she had gone too far with her sexual explicitness, maybe she’d been indulging in all that, and more. Wow.

  You know what? I’m getting married, and I’m pretty sure I won’t see any of that type of action if I don’t seek it out Madonna style. Now or never, I’d say. Zeus might be named for the Greek God, but keep in mind he has been raised with Eastern Orthodox conservatism. We’ve done a lot of fun stuff but he’s never tied me up, and I’m way too embarrassed to ask for it, lest he think I’ve gone too far. Yep, I have a lifetime of normalcy ahead of me as a married woman so this would be it gusto grab-wise.

  Madonna was married twice, to Sean Penn, an actor, and Guy Ritchie, a director. But I can’t do both because I’ll go over my Madonna dream-imposed limit of fucksters. It’s either one or the other, or someone who’s both. Where will I find that? The community players at the theatre around here are all pretty much gay. I’m going to Manhattan for my bridal shower though, and we’re staying right near all the theatres on Broadway….

  If I don’t do that, then there’s that whole A-Rod thing...I don’t know what that was – two separated people hanging out. Were they talking religion? Steroid use maybe? If it had been a fucky-wuck, well, baseball’s not really my sport. I get that it’s all American and apple pie but, you know, those guys look fat in their dorky costumes. I’m not sure I can do chubbadubb. Zeus has promised me that he will remain studly throughout our marriage or else I have permission to divorce him. It’s in our fake pre-nup, the one we made the night we were pretending to be law clerk and judge.

  We’ll see. Maybe I’ll bite the bullet and squeeze in a bat toting athlete – if there’s time and there are no other options.

  Okay, I say as I take a deep breath. I’m doing this, whether you follow along or not, bloggers (and since no one has commented, I do realize I could just be talking to myself). I’m committed. But, in the event that you are actually out there - shush okay? Don’t tell anyone, because this, me fucking like Madonna, is all
on the down-low.

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  The List

  Sunday, JULY 19, 2009 - 6:00pm

  All righty and mighty, so I’ve mapped out a list of types, and I’m working on finding real men (and a woman) to be facsimiles to Madonna’s lovers. It’s not in any particular order except for the first one. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

  the record producer

  the black basketball star

  the personal trainer

  the lesbian

  the Dom

  the actor/director

  Six weeks, six fucks. Am I still up to the challenge? You bet!

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  ****

  Tin Man

  Monday, JULY 20, 2009 - 9:30am

  Chad Mavis’ band played at my high school prom senior year. It was the Chad Mavis Band. We all thought he would become wildly successful, you know, go solo, maybe even parlay fame into movie star-slash-celebrity spokesperson for a glamorous product like Grey Goose or Applebee’s. He was hot, kind of like an American Mick Jagger circa 1968 - lean, longish dark hair and a mouth that could swallow a cuntessa. His songs were about love and video games, and drinking whiskey, but mostly they involved a girlfriend named Cherilyn with long, dark hair, kinda like mine was back then, before I highlight-blondified and trimmed it.

  Zeus and I danced our heads off that night. My pinkie was drenched in emollients of sexy juice by the time we made it to the hotel room and pretended it was our wedding night. Blood kind of gushed all over the back of my Jessica McClintock dry-clean only chiffon gown because I was stupid enough to keep it on during our premiere nasty. I had to wear his tuxedo jacket home. Luckily, I was able to sneak in without flack from my parents. They always thought Zeus was (and is) a good boy so it was all good.