October 22, 2007
The Unicorn
To be perfectly frank, or imperfectly chuck (which I believe means to throw something askew) there are times when I've had just about enough of life on this planet. I don't mean I've been thinking about killing myself, but rather that if it were suddenly time for me to go, I'd be OK with that. I've had an amazing life, seen and done more than many, and I could comfortably move on and make room for the next guy if the big pit boss in the sky felt it was time to let somebody with more chips have a go.
Then a woman will walk by me and I'll think, "Nah, maybe I'll hang around for a while."
I adore women, although sometimes I think what I really adore is the idea of women. No, on second thought, it's not the idea of women that I adore, it's the asses of women that I adore. Yes, I adore their asses. But I wouldn't say I'm an ass-man because that always conjures up an image of a suit and tie with a naked, hairy, man-ass sticking out the collar, which I imagine is how many women think of men anyway.
Smart women turn me on in a big way. A woman who can quote Mark Twain or George Orwell will deliver me a major selection of wood. If she can quote Twain and has big tits, my jimmy will fill to the color purple, which, by the way, was a great movie but did not give me a boner. If she can quote Twain, has big tits and a great ass, every drop of blood in my body will drain into my crank, leaving me a shriveled shell of a man hanging off the end of my giant, bursting, pulsating muscle of love, like a second scrotum but with a face, which is an image so vile that I just harfed up some ralph juice into the back of my throat. Yes, harfed. I harf, you harf, she harfed, we were harfing, they will have harfooned. Stop questioning my English.
There was a young woman at the show last night, right in the front row, who grabbed my attention. She was kind of heavy and plain and had a lazy eye. Actually, it's better described as a crazy eye than a lazy eye because it didn't so much lag behind the other eye as it went stark raving bat shit while the "good" eye did its best to look normal.
She wore a slightly tattered white dress, like an old wedding dress; not really a dusty, Miss Havisham kind of wedding dress but not too far from that either. I felt bad for her because it appeared the reason she wore that dress was because she didn't have much choice.
A quarter of a century on stage as a stand-up equips you with a pretty good barometer for personality, and it's not hard to size people up by simply watching them watch the show. She was about 23, never popular, a few close friends, probably works as a cashier, still lives at home with her mom, who coddles her, and drives an old Toyota that her dad gave her. Doesn't smoke, drinks socially, had one real boyfriend and a few others not so real, the significance of which she builds up beyond truthfulness when she's chattering about men with her girlfriends. Something happened to her during childhood, something mean, and it had a withdrawing effect on her that she dealt with by eating. Now she uses her weight as a deliberate barrier to keep people at bay, like the character in Simon and Garfunkle's I Am A Rock who hides in his room and uses his books and his poetry to protect himself from the cruelty of people - "..and a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries."
She was breaking my heart and I almost burst into tears, even as I stood there making 200 people laugh their asses off. I kept glancing over at her and smiling as I told my jokes, and I know she was aware of it because I could see it in her eyes as she smiled back at me. Nobody in the room had any idea of what was going on except the two of us. It was a very spiritual moment that reminded me that we humans really do communicate on a variety of levels.
I wanted to love her and protect her and take care of her and make her forget all the misery that other people have put her through. She was fragile and beautiful, like the unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, rare and easily broken.
Circumstances prevented us from meeting later, but we had that moment and it was ours and I know she felt it too.
I love women. Maybe I will hang around on this planet for a few more years after all.
copyright 2007 john bizarre
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