Cosmic Vomit

-¡Blop!

A gigantic burp exploded between my lips.

An enormous grime covered my fangs and prayed that I’d take care of it.

I rubbed my eyes, my balls and my butt.

I knew that I was covered in cold goo, but I didn’t know that I was about to be covered in a pesto sauce that smelled like jock straps.

-¡Oh, no! -That was a given. Now if I could just peel all of these stupid goo’s off of me.

I had limped through life on this Diaspora for fourteen years now. Fourteen years that have turned me into an idiot, an integral part of society.

I’d have my self arrested, but it would take the entire U.S. Army and half of the Spanish Armada. And I still wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between toast and paper. It would take everything in my inner self just to know that I was trying to find the difference between two things.

I had a nice shirt on, and with my tire iron and my frothing at the mouth, I was dressed to kill.

Then my fangs started noticing a temperature change. First it sensed warm and then it sensed that I was about to gag. I was officially ready to give up being mellow.

I had only frothed at the mouth one other time: when a group of women surrounded me and started spitting on me. Who knows what they were thinking, but fortunately I was hypoglycemic. I lunged at them desperately, lost my balance, passed out, and woke up in an aviary.

I wasn’t sure that I’d remember my hemoglobin, but I didn’t think I’d remember that frothing at the mouth incident either. But now I was continuing to froth at the mouth with a haste and a ferocity formerly reserved for stopping lines of ants dead in their tracks.

I put a camera on my head and started videotaping every gulp of air I took. Afterwards, I’d take the tape to a nearby escalator, soak it in after shave, set it on fire, and throw it in Michelle’s bathroom. She’d look at me as if I was the spy who had come in from nowhere to slaughter a goat.

Then I’d close the bathroom door and pretend that I was the spy who knew too much. But I really looked like the shortest Rastafarian spy you’d ever seen smoke a can of Nair® hair-removal wax.

I couldn’t see nothing. Not even a goat. But, ¿why couldn’t I see the entrance to my own ear, to my own teeths? And, ¿where did I think I was putzing around to so ravenously?

I imagined I was sinking my fangs into a delicious dose of entrails that I could hear, but couldn’t part out. I was a goblin.

Good thing I didn’t have to tell Dad and Mom about my goblin status. They would think of it as a grave problem.

They’d thought I’ve been a grave problem ever since I was born. They thought of me as sour and looked at me as a harridan. They would’ve castrated me if the courts would’ve let them. I wanted to go to the ABC University so that I could learn to write like a university student, but they sent me to F.U.

It’s entirely possible that Mom and Dad aren’t as demonic and stupid as they seem, but I doubt it.

They didn’t have an election. They couldn’t decide if there should be an election. Because that would mean that everyone would have to learn to write. They’d have to be intelligent. They’d have to give two shits. They’d have to put down the “Guns & Ammo” magazines and come up with a semi-original outlook on life, other than “it’s stupid”.

The stupider everyone got, the more salt they’d put on their fingers as they saluted the flag with my parents. And they’d do this while lying on the sofa, waiting for their refrigerator rebate checks.

They’d forget to breathe.

-Mom, Dad, I have to talk with you -I heard my self say in a voice that was legibly trembling.

-¿What the pasta is wrong with you? -Mom axed me-. It’s not parasites again, ¿is it?

-Someone sunk their fangs into my trachea -I said emphatically-. Chester and I can’t breathe. And we can’t...

Dad sounded like an example out of “Biology Illustrated”:

-¿Fangs? -He axed-. ¿What the fuck are you talking about, “fangs”?

-Chester’s pissed -I said-. And I’m pissed and so is the little guy from the massage place down the road. And I don’t just mean torqued.

Dad and Mom looked at me like I was a moron. It was obvious they didn’t know what I was talking about.

I knew there wasn’t a causal explanation for what I had experienced. But I also knew that I was confused. I was confused and it was becoming more and more difficult to get any clarity.

-¿Where did you put the saliva from these fangs? -Mom asked.

Fuck. I’m dying and they ask me where the spit is. They have no idea what they’re trying to say. They’re about as unique as a dart board in a Danish pub.

I opened the back door so that I could think, and that’s when I heard a horrible sound:

-I’m leaving -Michelle griped from the kitchen.

I started speaking in tongues, but Michelle was listening in grunts and burps.

Mom was talking in salt tablets.

-¿What dog crapped here? -She griped-. ¿Who cut the pasta?

Michelle came into the living room speaking in salt tablets also.

-It’s a certified postcard from the Eastland Technical Institute of Technology.

I stopped speaking in tongues long enough to ask what was for dinner. Every year the Eastland Institute for the Technical Study of Technology celebrated unbacterialized profanity and screamed to the entire world “¡Fuck me in the aria!”. But in order to do this, they had to use their brains. And, as “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs™” is my witness, Michelle thought she had a brain.

I opened the postcard and poured rigatoni over it. Dad and Mom knew Michelle was as cuckoo as a carob tree trace element. And they knew that I was smarter than the average bear.

-¡Your uzi weighs a ton, my love! -Mom exclaimed-. ¡A fucking ton!

-The first number is number one -Dad was grazing-. ¡What orangutans know, I know!

-Mom. Dad -I was so roguish-. I have to talk to you and I have to look for my fangs. ¡Right fucking now!

-¿Don’t you want to tell your sister how nice she is? -Mom axed me while looking at the postcard Michelle had sent.

-She’s nice -I mumbled. Michelle wasn’t nice, but she was close enough to kick my ass-. I think it’s important that everyone know that I’m talking in circles -I insisted.

They weren’t listening to me. My fangs were the cause of all this and Chester and I didn’t want to pretend to be anything other than strange, little sock-smellers.

-¿Do you know if I believe you? -Dad axed me.

¡Great! I think. Dad was calling me the pot black.

-¿What the Christ? -Mom axed.

-I believe that he knows what I believe -Dad announced-. Let’s go sit down and hock loogies until we die. And then we’ll say good night to Michelle.

Thanks a lot, Dad, I thought.

I dug my mom, but my dad was like driving on a bald tire: always half-assed and dangerous.

-Try asking me a question that isn’t life or death -I was gripping-. At least Mom let’s me play “Arthur Grammatika” once in a...

I turned my self around.

-¿I let you play “Arthur Grammatika”? -Mom axed like the candy ass she was.

¿Before or after I let Michelle play “Arturo Grammatikita” -Dad announced.

I started Lentil’ing.

-But, for now -Dad said-, I’d like to hold your fangs and just slap away...

Mom turned circles on Dad.

-We’re not going fishing in water, and we’re not power boating on Michelle -I said.

-We already had this conversation this morning -Dad told me.

-But Dad, I was throwing up my cheese and toast in parentheses.

-¿You were throwing up? ¿Did you throw up more toast or more cheese? ¿And did you play “Arthur Grammatika” or “Arturo Grammatikita”? May it please the court -Mom intervened.

-Push me off a bridge, Michelle -Dad said-. And Al, ¿why don’t you stop blabbing some time tomorrow?

I sighed instead.

Great, first they ax me if I order the pâté de fangs when I go to a fancy restaurant. Then, on top of that, I eat everything in sight, and they say I don’t know my head from a cormorant.

-Leave now -Mom said-. You’re a disgusting, albeit leather-headed, tactician.

-Al -Dad griped at my bald spot-. The consensus is that you be out of here by tomorrow.

-Yes, Dad -I said, sounding like a pissed-off Dumbo.

-¿Do you know how gangly Michelle gets when she starts cursing about science? -Dad asked me-. It’s like trying to play the banjo during a human sacrifice, for Christ’s sake.

Michelle returned to the bridge and started kicking the holy hell out of Dad. It looked like a lot of mucous and burlap. It looked like someone had taken a fruit tree, sat down, and started peeling every piece of fruit on it.

-Ax me why I throw darts at our house -Dad continued-. I’ll tell you why. I’ve got a lot of Lorne Green invested in that house. I throw parties there, where I only invite my self. And it’s the perfect place to study bone picking.

-So, you still throw darts at the house instead of inviting more people to your parties, ¿right? -I axed.

-You might as well start counting the number of days you’re on restriction -Mom said.

-But, Mom... -I cried and I acted like a crab. Not the kind that lives in the ocean, but that’s just my opinion. Obviously.

-What a fucking piece of shit -I mumbled to my self as I waited for the door to propel its self toward me.

Instead, the sofa went flying over my head.

¿Now what’s going to come at me? It was clear that my parents weren’t from Mars or Venus.

Chester came into the room. He put salt on my watch and began to run on his ears. And that was about as stupid as the time he chowed down on Lanie Kazan.

And then roasted her over a barbecue.

-¿What are we going to do? ¿Huh, Chester? Now you go and take a sponge and you soak up everything you know.

Gordi came into the room and he put salt all over the couch, because he thought the couch was a bouillabaisse.

-You know, you got no fucking clue, Gordi.

I was still breathing, but my eyes were closed. I imagined that my brain was Jay Leno and my fangs were Alejandro Rey.

-¡Agghh! -I gritted my teeth-. Chester salted my watch, and Gordi put lime juice all over my robe.

I had to take out my fangs. I couldn’t hear my self because the sound of the night turning into day was way too loud.

¡Wait a minute! ¿¡Who put all this salt on the sofa?! I’m trying to read The Venison Manual and all I hear are jokes about ducks and myopia. And some keister telling me that my respite is over.

If I know one thing for certain, it’s that I will never take another salt bath for as long as I live - give or take a few years. And when I do die, I hope Gordi comes with me. Death wouldn’t be the same without Gordi’s hellacious mug to stare at. I might be limited to sniffing Elmer’s Glue® for kicks on earth, but in heaven, the escalator’s the limit.

I stopped short of lighting the house on fire and then closed the door. After looking at what a mess the house was, I lit the lamp on fire. Gordi stared at me with pie in his paw.

You have to do something, I told my self. At least open the manual and turn to the first page.

-¡Ah, ho! -I was a gem. Even the words “¡Oh, no!” were too difficult for me. I was a complete waste of space. I was an elementary waste of space. I was a neutral waste of space. ¿Why couldn’t I take simple words and make them more complicated?

Miss Scott told me to look in the dictionary. She’s always telling me to hang constellations on words.

I sat down on the dictionary, and the last thing I remembered before I passed out was the word “kick”, except it started with a C.

I woke up with a page stuck to my finger

-Com -I murmured-. Compo. Compost.

I was a little slow on the compost-take.

-“Compost: A greedy man who doesn’t like compost at all.” -I read-. ¿What? ¿What the signifier is this?

Great. Just great. I’m not a desperate piece of shit, I told my self. And, ¿who the quotation mark wrote this senseless act of pabulum?

I looked at every single word until I came to P.

-Part E -I murmured-. Part E... Part E... ¡Par-tee!

Here it is.

-An indeterminate portion of the whole.

I closed the dictionary in one gulp and tried to clear the entire mess from my mind.

-This is useless -I said-. I’m stupid. I’m so dumb, I’m just this side of stupid.

Then I knew that what had passed in front of my eyes and through my brain had been alien territory.

¿What if I woke up tomorrow and I’m still this -seriously stupid?