Epitasis

Epitasis (e-pit’-a-sis): The addition of a concluding sentence that merely emphasizes what has already been stated. A kind of amplification. [The opposite of anesis.]

I was looking for love in all the wrong places—the grocery store, CVS, Dick’s, the library and everywhere else where the prospect of finding romance is less than zero. Except, I did hear about a guy who started a romance with a woman he met et Lowes. But, after a week she killed him with paint stripper she had flavored with Mentos. As the police took her away, she yelled “This is my best DYI project ever!” So, there you have it: all the wrong places!

But, help is on the way. There’s a club opening down the street named “Sleezers.” It has a sign over the entrance depicting two women wiggling their butts. Between them there’s a flashing sign that says “Hook Up.”

After I paid my $200 membership fee and bought my mandatory t-shirt, I was allowed to enter. The place was huge inside, but there was only one other patron inside. She was dressed like Cinderella and leaning on the bar with a beer in her hand. She asked, “Are you my Prince Charming?” My heart nearly stopped. She shook her scepter at me and said, “Come on baby let’s hook up.” I said “Sure, let’s go my place.” She made me carry her piggy back. It was only four blocks, so it wasn’t a problem.

We were sitting in my living room. She was telling me about her crackpot stepmother and mean stepsisters. Suddenly she jumped up and lifter her dress over head and said, “you better hurry up. My coach will be here any minute.” I wasn’t fast enough. A horn blew the Stones’ “Parachute Girl.” My Cinderella ran out the front door where there was a giant fiberglass pumpkin mounted on a small flatbed truck. She got into the pumpkin and the truck took off blowing “Someday My Prince Will Come.”

I was devastated. I had felt that I had found the one. It might’ve been a snap judgment, but when you’re desperate, snap judgment is all you’ve got. My inability to make snap judgments had left me alone. I was too picky and that’s how I ended up looking for love in all wrong places. Since I paid my $200 membership fee, I kept going back to Sleezers. I hooked up with Dr. Bob’s daughter. He is the Presbyterian Minister. She was wearing a see-through dress and holding a Bible. Evidently, she was conflicted. Our eyes locked. She nodded her head, and we rook off to my place. She read Paul’s Epistles to us in a low and sultry voice. I told her I loved her and proposed. She laughed and said, “Yes, of course.” We got married. She has twenty transparent dresses. That’s all she wears. She still carries a Bible and her father wants to kill me for letting her dress like a “whore”. When he says that, I get mad.

So, I looked for love in all the wrong places and actually found love in a wrong place—Sleezers.

POSTSCRIPT

When he got home from work that evening she had gone. She sent him a selfie of her wearing overhauls, a flannel shirt and Blundstones. There was a note on the kitchen table that said: “You’re boring and I’ve had 146 affairs since we’ve been married. My boyfriend Buck is picking me up and we’re opening a tattoo parlor in Short Hills, New Jersey, where I grew up. Buck will kill you if you bother us.”

He certainly did look for love in all the wrong places. But, where are the right places? I think it’s about people, not places.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

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