Not Andersen Prunty

Seth is my cousin who came to stay with my parents and never left. He lives in a room in the basement. Occasionally, I go downstairs to bum cigarettes from him. He appears at the door, Metallica blasting in the background, sweaty from intense masturbation. “Pounding off,” he calls it.

Today, I go down to Seth’s room to get some cigarettes but there is no metal and he never comes to the door. I stand there for a few minutes before opening it. When I look inside I see Seth hanging from the ceiling by a belt. The word “Satan” is written on the wall behind him in what can only be sheep’s blood.

Buddy called this morning, very excited about what he called his “new figure.” I was excited for Buddy. He had been maybe twenty or thirty pounds overweight and, as no one had seen him for a few months, I assumed he had lost some of this excess weight.

I decided to throw a party in honor of his new figure.

“I’m real glad to hear about this,” I told him. “I think everyone should see you.”

A hundred guests must have shown up between eight and nine o’clock, all eager to see what had become referred to as the “new Buddy.”

Buddy got there around 10:30. It looked like he had put on 200 pounds. Everyone burst out laughing. They couldn’t control themselves. I laughed too, the gin and tonic I was enjoying shooting through my nose and making my eyes tear up. Festive music came through the house speakers.

Buddy seemed totally undaunted. “No, wait, you haven’t seen anything yet!” he announced with the same enthusiasm I’d heard in his voice that morning.

He stripped off his shirt and glided out into the middle of the floor. As everyone’s laughter died down a bit, the music seemed to get louder and Buddy started dancing, flinging his filled skin in all different directions. He made a series of raunchy faces. Buddy’s new figure made him look too middle-aged and weird to really be Buddy, but he continued dancing, rolling that gut in people’s faces while contorting his own.

It was simultaneous, I think, the feeling that we had all quickly come to hate the new Buddy.

The smell of breakfast fills my bedroom.

I go to the kitchen, my head aching from a three-day bender.

Mother is hunched over the stove, working diligently to prepare the meal. My father, a foolhardy schizophrenic, has assumed the role of mad bomber. He is bent over his empty plate, anxiously twisting his crazy handlebar mustache. Quickly, he backs away from the table, crosses the kitchen and goes to the phone.

He has to call in a threat. His voice is vaguely Eastern European.

Mother serves breakfast. The toast is burnt beyond all recognition and the eggs are hopelessly runny.

Agitated, I shove my plate off the table and say, quite loudly, “What is this shit?!”

My father runs back to the front door, reaches into his rucksack and pulls out a black and shiny ball-shaped bomb. He lights the fuse after flicking a match on his teeth and tosses the bomb at me, flashing a dastardly smile all the while. It explodes on the table and knocks me out of my seat. My face is blackened. My hair stands straight up in the air. Smoke rises off my clothes. Mother leans against the sink and cries. Breakfast has been ruined.

Carl was middle-aged. He was free. He had new hair.

His circle of friends waited for him in the parking lot.

He approached them. They clapped him on his flannel-clad back. Carl kept his hands in the pockets of his new pants, the deepest shade of blue and skintight.

“That’s some crazy ass hair, Carl.” Steve was the first to notice.

“Crazy as shit,” Bob said.

“Fancy,” said Frank.

Carl had had his hair professionally permed that morning and was beginning to feel slightly embarrassed about picking such an ostentatious hairstyle. He nervously shifted from foot to foot and ran a hand over his fancy hair.

The next week they all stood in the same parking lot and they all had perms. They smoked their unfiltered cigarettes and whistled at the young girls as they got out of their cars.

I’m going to the supermarket downtown to buy some coffee and eggs when I see Sammy the Legless outside. This isn’t at all abnormal. He has been sitting outside the supermarket three out of four times I’ve been.

“Hey, Sammy!” I call.

He nods and smiles beneath his baseball hat. Smiles a little larger than usual, I think. What could make him smile so large?

While picking out my purchases I overhear the squat cashier talking to a regular customer. Some piece of bar trash I’ve noticed wandering around the town.

“You fucked Sammy?” the customer asks.

“Well, kinda. He’s got some nerve damage down there so he has some trouble getting it up most of the time. But I got him out of that chair and all laid back in the bed. Well, at this point, I was kinda wonderin’ what to do. But I had that horrible fuck ache, ya know? You ever go a whole day and just know yer gonna get it at the end of the day?”

“Oh yeah, sister.”

“Yeah, well, so I has him back on the bed and I’m lickin’ that thing and I know it’s gonna be huge if he gets it up but there ain’t nothing happenin’. And I says to him, ‘Feel good, baby?’ ’N he just looks at me from unnerneath that stupid hat ’n says, ‘I can’t feel a thing.’ So at this point I’m thinkin’, Well one of us is gonna be getting’ off one way or the other so I take off my panties and climb onto his face.”

“Oh yeah? How was that?”

“That little fucker’s got a tongue that’ll go all the way up to yer stomach, let me tell you. God, I couldn’t stop comin’. When we got finished I felt sorta bad for him so I asks, ‘Ain’t there nothin’ I can do, baby?’ ’N he tells me about the dildo in his closet.”

“He wanted to watch you use the dildo?”

“No! He wanted me to shove it up his ass!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, turns out he can’t feel hardly nothin’ in his dick but he’s got a highly sensitive asshole. The second I slid it in he started spurtin’ all over the place.”

I creep by the customer and put my purchases on the counter.

“That all, sir?” the cashier asks.

“That’s it,” I say.

On a whim, I become an anthropologist. First thing, I go to a primitive tropical island. I get to know the locals, using my newly invented universal dialogue. They seem to be a sublime lot, blissed out by what they call the “Orchestra of the Gods.” This orchestra, the island folk explain, plays weekly in a sort of parade.

The rest of the week, I sleep fitfully and fear that I am coming down with the plague. Finally, the day of the parade arrives. The islanders line the island’s one dirt road and I plow my way to the front, my heart thumping with anticipation. An electric murmur runs through the crowd and I know the orchestra must be coming. Upon seeing them, I am automatically disappointed and enraged. They are a stick orchestra, making no noise whatsoever other than the clicking and clacking of the goddamn sticks. But they act as though they are playing real instruments—blowing into the sticks, strumming the sticks, beating the sticks against the air.

The crowd oohs and aahs.

I want to tell everyone there that this is a farce. But I can’t. I’m an anthropologist. An objective observer. A cultural chameleon. In an attempt to fit in, I unthinkingly hold up a lighter. It is the islanders’ assumption that their pathetic orchestra brought this canister of fire to them. After that, I become a god.

Steve and Paul get up off the floor, their faces red and sweaty from wrestling. They are both shirtless.

“Hey, let me try on those pants,” Paul tells Steve.

Steve takes off his pants and hands them to Paul.

Paul slides his pants off and puts on Steve’s pants. He walks around the room and squats down a couple of times.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like these. These fit real nice.”

“Those pants were expensive. I need them back,” Steve tells Paul.

“Fuck you, you little retard.”

“Come on, give ’em back. They don’t fit you anyway.”

Paul is the larger of the two boys, and no, the pants do not fit him very well.

Steve moves toward Paul. Paul punches him in the face. Steve falls to the floor, blood running from his nose and onto the carpet.

“Well,” Paul says. “I’m gonna go in the other room and fuck your sister now.”

Steve figures Paul will have to take off his pants to do that and then he will take them back.

I watch him when I’m out in my yard. He sits in a chair that rocks occasionally and stares out the window, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he listens to beautiful music that floats out of the yellow interior. As I catch strains of it, soft and wind-borne, the music makes me feel good.

Every now and then people come to visit him. I don’t get the impression they are family. Most of them are quite a bit younger than him. College students and professors, I suppose. Sometimes they stay overnight. I read their license plates and realize some of them have traveled all the way across the country.

Curious, I try to read one of his books. I can’t figure out why people like him. I throw the book across the room and it lies there in the corner, a broken heap. I go back outside to stare over at his house, three cars in the driveway. I reassure myself by thinking these people must have come all these great distances to listen to his beautiful music.

It is a very nice day, unseasonably warm. Link decides to take his sandwich to the park and eat it.

He finds a row of swings with only one little boy at them and sits down on one of the swings. Link takes his sandwich out of its wrapper and begins eating it.

A glob of oil runs out of the sandwich and splashes onto his shirt. He grabs his black tie and tries to absorb the stain, but the tie only helps to smear it around and make it larger. Link’s face and cheeks redden. A beautiful day has been ruined. It will be hard for him to go back to work with the embarrassing stain. The boy down the row from Link lets himself fly off the swing. He begins walking and, as he passes by Link, the boy glances mischievously at him. The boy notices the freshly blossomed stain on Link’s shirt. The stain has the boy so enrapt he moves a little closer to Link. He holds out a finger, pointing, and laughs. It’s as though the child can’t stop laughing. He laughs and laughs and laughs, pauses to cough, and laughs some more.

Link draws his hand back, feeling the satisfying weight of the greasy sandwich. He throws the sandwich as hard as he can and hits the boy in the face. A piece of lettuce sticks to the boy’s forehead. Grease drips from his nose.

The boy stops laughing and immediately begins crying.

“Damn that sandwich,” Link says, unbuttoning his rather expensive shirt. He throws this at the boy as well, telling him to wipe his greasy little face with it.

Link decides not to go back to work.

I wake up and realize I’m the best-looking man in the world. I study myself in the mirror. I am stunning, breathtaking. My eyes are a penetrating blue, set deep into my head and framed perfectly by black eyelashes and perfectly arched black eyebrows. My jawline is strong and chiseled. My cheekbones are high and just the slightest bit flushed.

I inspect myself for hours but I can’t find a single flaw.

People have to see me. I have to get out of the house. My parents are in the kitchen but, luckily, their backs are turned as they work away at the dishes. I don’t want them to fawn over me.

I step outside onto a crowded street and am overcome by the feeling that being beautiful is now hopelessly out of fashion.

Everyone looks like a walking Picasso. They’ve had their eyes rearranged so they sit atop one another, or on each side of their heads. Many have had their noses surgically enhanced or, in some cases, lopped off altogether. Slings, casts, and bandages abound from where they have had their arms and legs broken so they’ll grow back in some unnaturally twisted form.

One girl with a giant deformed nipple protruding from her neck throws a glance at me and rolls her hideous eyes back into her ears.