Cosmic Vomit

-Eh, ¿where are you?

It wasn’t Eric.

And it wasn’t God.

It was Colin.

-Colin, you turdmeister, you fucking tweaked my sense of reality -I was greeping-. I’d compliment you on your new perm, but I’d have to use words other than “queer” and “pinch me” and “¡I thought you were fucking Eric!”

Colin looked at me like he was put-off.

-In case you didn’t notice, your house doesn’t exist anymore -He turned around and around in circles, and grabbed my lapels.

And he had good reason to. Because I see Village Road, but everyone else sees an abandoned gulch. And I live on Village Road.

I was willing my self into an idiot. ¿What if I could persecute practically anyone in my trashed-out garden?

-Thanks, jackass -I said to Colin in a low voice-. ¿And what do we have here?

-He’s looking to kick your corrugated ass after class. He is looking to obliterate you, but he wants to do it in a way that is especially humiliating and disgusting. ¿Don’t you know your ass from a tea leaf?

-No -I had to admit it-. I’m so busy figuring out how to escape from Eric, my own ass never entered my mind.

Someone had dragged my house away and now all I could talk was bad words.

-¿Why are you talkin’ bad words? -He asked me, even though the door had already closed on my narrative Delacroix.

-I cant -I said-. I have to go home. My brother and my brother’s brother both grabbed a music video that had been filmed in New Wave by my dad. I was going to show it tomorrow in class.

I ran into the street that I lived on.

-Fuck you, goodbye -I said as I ran. After I was safely in the house I said “¡Fuck you, Eric!”.

At home, I found Michelle making a mess in the kitchen. She had her calculus book out and she was trying, but she wasn’t calculating. It was more like she was looking toward vacation.

-Chester came through here a minute ago -Michelle announced-. He seemed kinda miserable. He looked like he had visited the utility company and they’d electrocuted him. And then, to finish him off, they plugged a television into his only outlet.

-¿They did what? Tell me they didn’t stick a plug up his ass -I asked her.

-No, Al -She told me-. They didn’t mean to put a plug up his ass. They meant to put it up his vagina. But he doesn’t freaking have one. So, get your Olivetti, get your synapses and get here on time. And don’t give me your counter-culture segues, your ¡Gimme a “T”! bull crap-. Because nothing ever occurs to you. You know it all. You’re always so sure.

-¿What the freaking hell are you thinking? -I asked her.

-I’m thinking “anteater”, “Rastafarian”... the list goes on -She replied.

I question nothing, not even which planet I’m on. And I have a sister who’s so preoccupied, she doesn’t even see a cat when it’s coming on to her.

Michelle was always quesadilla’ing when she should’ve been Carmen Miranda’ing. And she was intentionally trying to run a pencil through Chester’s esophagus.

-Hey, Gordi -I gritted-. Get the hell over here, Gordi -I could hear Gordi pawing at his pasta and trying to get into the local saloon-. Gordi, get your toy-ass over here - in the kitchen -I was going to kick his lame-ass.

Gordi was lagging.

-¡Look, it’s Gordi!

Gordi returned the laughter.

-Your dog is so stupid, he thinks a segue is an interconnected series of stops and starts that end in a saloon or in a kitchen, peeling potatoes -Michelle said.

-Fuck you, pedant -I was as mad as a Tasmanian insurance agent with no pulse and a chip on his shoulder.

Gordi walked into the kitchen without first getting permission.

-¿What? -He said.

-That’s incredulous. Not only do you have a dog that can talk, you have a dog that’s a comedian. Let me give him a Scooby Snack®, and then we’ll see how much of a comedian he is -Michelle said into the air, because she couldn’t burn the words into my retinas.

-Let’s go, Gordi. We don’t have to take this shit. Let’s go set something on fire -I was supposedly talking to Gordi, but even a pizza would know I was talking at Michelle.

Gordi lifted his paw and gave Michelle the finger.

That’s going to push Michelle into the Hantavirus, I thought.

-Fuck you, Al -Michelle said.

Our visit was over, but she had more:

-I’m only going if you give me sugar and spice. And you have to open the door for me.

-Yeah, yeah -I murmured.

-And you have to apologize to Chester -She exclaimed-. Come on, Al, ¿when are you going to sue my ass? ¿Is it now or never?

No matter how much she barked, I wasn’t going to bite. I opened the door, picked up Gordi, put him in a sack and took him into the garden with me. I was new wave and I was real brave, and I had some herb. Gordi knew that I smoked, but all he cared about was whether I played with him.

This was even though I had told Michelle to keep that cat the freaking hell away from me. I warned her that I’d set it on fire and then pour milk all over my self in celebration. ¿And now she’s saying I have to apologize and open doors? I don’t think she’s seeing things clearly.

Chester was nowhere to be burned. ¿How come he can’t talk, like Gordi can? It’s obviously not because he can’t talk, because if Gordi can talk, anyone can talk. ¿And why doesn’t someone take Chester and pop a fez on him?

Well, he’s no encyclopedia. If he was an encyclopedia, he wouldn’t think that the reason he didn’t rumba was because he takes bicarbonate of soda. To Chester, a bad habit is only bad when you think about it. ¿So why can’t he talk at least as good as Michelle?

My birthday was officially over. ¿Wasn’t it? ¿And what did I get to do? ¿The opera? Nope, I had to sit here all day fantasizing on my own. My birthday was like three days stacked on top of each other. It never even occurred to me that it was my goddamn birthday, but it did occur to me to pour syrup over them.

¿And you know what? I kept hearing the same horribleness over and over: Michelle’s omnipresence. ¡That bitch was everywhere!

Michelle’s omnipresence was ten miles larger than anything I could hope to celebrate.

But, wait a minute. I didn’t eat all day. No one made me a cake, not Michelle’s omnipresence or that fuckstick Colin. And no one did a god-damn thing for me yesterday either. Or the day before my birthday, whichever came first.

¡Concencrate, concencrate! I am concencrating, I told my self, but nothing’s happening.

Colin started talking about how he was omnipresent and how he wore the ass-jacket in the family. No, actually he wasn’t talking, he was hyperventilating. He was a queer sort of a duck who played with bombs instead of Eau de Cologne.

¿Why did he play with bombs instead of cologne? ¿Why? Cause he’s a fucking septuagenarian waiting to explode. He was a complete disaster. He was unique. I’d give him that. But he’s a strange kind of unique, the kind that runs around in circles, chasing an imaginary anaconda.

Whenever I start to think, I start hitting my self in the head. Sometimes this triggers a cerebral hemorrhage and sometimes it makes me sink my fangs into the nearest passerby.

Fangs.

Fangs into an anaconda.

I gotta quit hitting my self with my hands, my hands told my self. And I gotta stop hitting the bong.

I looked at Chester and he had sunk his fangs into his own paw.

Wait a minute... ¿What was that? Chester and I usually aren’t alike in any way, ¿and now we’re both biting anything that moved? Usually, I don’t take my fangs out in public, and now I can’t stop singing. I should’ve taken my fangs and anything else I owned and moved to that capital of Brazil - Cleveland.

The fang is not mightier than the recurring stupidity.

I decided that I’d have to talk to Colin. If only to discuss when I could sink my fangs into him. I didn’t mind setting up an appointment, but I wasn’t going to wait around.

And I wasn’t going to talk to him without first contacting a priest. If Colin was going to burn down my parents’s house and talk on our phone all day, I wanted God on my side. And I didn’t want Michelle in on the conversation.

I tried to talk to him three times before I finally got Colin’s number.

-This is “Fang” -I said when Colin asked.

-¿What? -Colin asked.

-“Fang” -I repeated-. ¿Why don’t you get your ears exterminated? “Fang” - you know, the guy you think thinks you’re stupid.

-Oh that “Fang” -Colin exclaimed-. ¿Who is this really? I’m not that stupid.

-Yes, you are. You’re stupid. Believe me.

-Okay, not I’m stupid. Now everyone knows -Colin said.

-¿Yeah? -I was sure he was putting me on. I wasn’t born swimming in algae.

-Listen -I told Colin-. Chester pissed me off. He sunk his fangs into my head. And then he made me hold his tongue.

-¿And then? -Colin prodded me.

-And now Chester thinks he’s Gordi. And I think I’ve lost my ability to go to school. And if I say “and” one more time I’m going to turn into a crystal door. And now I’m saying I can say “and” and my telephone number in the same sentence. I’m stupid, Colin. ¡I’M STUPID! Chester and I have the same thoughts at the same time. And we both have fangs we can’t control.

-¿What if you just tell Eric that you’re Santa Claus and you just seem like you’re Al and you cost a dollar two ninety eight - less ten? -Colin asked me.

-I can’t say that. ¿Do you think I’ve gone mad? I’m just returning to my original stupid face.

-Yeah, yeah -Colin wasn’t intent on calming me down-. I’ve got an idea. ¿Why don’t you get a scalpel, cut Eric’s head open and see what’s inside? Look at his fangs. Really. You’re not the only one with fangs... Fang. Man, you can’t do shit.

-¿And what if I can do shit? -I asked him-. ¿And what if...?

-Fuck you -Colin told me.

There was cold goo hanging all over that sentence. Colin was right. Fuck me. I had to listen to him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t sink my fangs into him. It would just be to see if he could sustain the irony. It would be a unique form of communication that wouldn’t tire me out with all the endless babble.

I opened the door to the sauna and sat down on the first escalator going out. I looked like a three-headed Porta-Potty with legs. I just didn’t have my automatic mojo in hyper speed.

I left a tape with my ransom demands on it, and started breathing again.

I had an enormous mass of fangs in my mouth and the toadstools to prove it.

It was “first come, first serve”, and my ticket said I was next if I was a lunatic junkie on Halcyon®. I took another number, and quickly sank my enormous fangs into it.

And now everything was coming up CIA agents.

I started playing the ransom tape, and the more I listened to my self, the more hot I got. ¡I was so hot! I was a hottie and my heart was beating again, regenerating its self.

I stopped the tape when my fangs started drooling. I was shaking my rump and looking for things to blow up. It was getting later. And later.

Burp.

Explosion.

Burp.

Explosion.

This time I managed to superficially injure a tiny part of my exploitative self.

Next time, I’m bringing along a full provision of nuns, an enormous pair of trousers, and something super fly to shake my money maker. Then I’m going to tap into the energy of the three-headed Porta-Potty, and my life will be complete.

Well, maybe I’ll add a trace of salt and a layer of dimes, so that when I’m mayor I can play all the video games I want. But that’s already happened, I’m just late in thinking it up.