- 2 Pages
I wandered into the kitchen, and there, was an old man sitting at a large table sorrounded by a full breakfast. He held a banana, like you would a handgun, and followed me around the room with it. BANG! He laughed at his own joke until it became unbearably awkward. I tried earnestly to avoid eye contact, but he seemed like a reasonable sort of fellow, so I eventually gave up, he had very watery eyes. He wore lose fitting clothing, the type of man who is perfectly tolerable in a pair of trousers, though you would never want to see his bare legs. The old man said we could take the car on two conditions; firstly that we knew how to drive, secondly that we would repair the car to working order. Neither myself or jack knew a thing about the workings of an automobile; let alone how to drive one of the darn things. So we said yes. We pretended to ask the old man for ‘a second opinion’ on the problem so we might have some vague idea of how to go about fixing it. We were not masters of discretion, out ineptness obvious, the old man ended up doing everything.
“Go inside and get me a drink.” Said the old man, head buried in the elephant trying to find an octopus.
Jack and I went into the cool kitchen and drank lemonade while the old man fixed the car. All the lemonade had built up inside me, and now it wanted out.
“I need to use the bathroom.” I announced.
“Oh, there isn’t one.” Jack said quite casually, obviously it was a family tradition to piss your pants and stay seated until it dried up.
“Well I suppose I’ll just go outside and use the bushes then.” I paused and gave him time to tell me he had only been joking. On my way I added number 2 to number 1 on my -to do- list – this complicated matters somewhat. I went back inside.
“I need to do a shit as well.” I waited with baited breath for his answer to this one.
“So,…the bushes.” He remarked.
The bushes? The Bushes? What the fuck? This old man who lived in the suburbs, not even outer suburbs, lived like a man 500 miles from nowhere. “I’m just going to go in the back of the car when we leave.” It was not an idle threat, I was quite prepared to do it, leave a little present for the old bastard.
“Don’t be a cretin, there’s toilet paper in the cupboard, use the bushes.”
I trudged outside, sure just take a dump incongruously in some old guys garden, found myself a little spot and dropped my pants. One quickly learns that simultaneously urinating and shitting requires a little bit of maneuvering, and quick reflexes if you are to avoid trouble. It took like what seemed forever, I thought many thoughts, about the game Othello, jackets with orange lining, and hostile militant factions. I was still finishing up when I heard a rusty voice, it was the old man.
“That’s a good one.” He said, I turned to face him, he kept walking. That’s a good one? One what? Which one? I ran through all the permeations in my mind, and each one was more disturbing than the next. Good spot? Good ass? God forbid, good shit? My mind does not need provocation like this, it reels with deviant thought. I see a cop in a police car and I think – crooked cop, hooked on steroids, wife likes to dangle weights from her labia, and he has 2 small children locked in his basement.
By the time I had collected my thoughts, and hitched up my pants, the old geezer had repaired the car.
“What do you want the car for anyway?” He was still eating his ridiculously full breakfast.
“Jack told these broads that we were going to pick them up in a car later tonight.”
I made no attempt to the hide the fact I did not want to make eye contact, now, despite his easy to look in, watery eyes.
“Ooh a couple broads eh, you boys fucking yet?” Even jack was set aback by this crude line of questioning.
“Well back in the late forties, early fifties, my companions and I were some of the first; If not the first to do hardcore distributed photo shoots. We did anal, we did whips, we did all that shit. I remember people shooting junk on set in their full Sunday gear, while most were wearing heart high briefs and pulling-off to chrome kitchenettes.”
“Good one” said I, hoping to catch him off guard.
He picked up his banana and aimed true, bang.
What an absurd old man.
The End
Originally Posted 05/05/2004