THE ARTIST, THE PAINTER, THE IDIOT, THE TROUBADOR, AND CARLOS THE BUNN
by
Alec Xander
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Alec Xander on Smashwords
The Artist, The Painter, The Idiot, The Troubador, And Carlos The Bunn
Copyright © 2010 by Alec Xander
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The Artist
He was an artist and his fame was pre-ordained. The son of a doctor -- like Kafka -- and a slightly distant mother -- like Jung -- the mark of success had early been visible upon his breast. The sensibilities he inherited in the soul of Percy Byshe curdled quickly in the bourgoise household of his youth, as well they should, and his subsequent rise toward eminence had featured the very same abandonment by parent and abuse by peer that formed a poet. At university -- where his contemporaries merely attended college to get good grades and get laid -- he wandered aloof "like cloudless clime and starry sky" and all that was best of dark, and dark (not bright), met his weary aspect and stuck in his eye. His consequent wit forged herself into an iron stantion, and though she rarely left the furnace of his mind, which were her mentor, she would one day raise a fallen culture above the ruin of self-serving nihilistic relativism and suspend it there Ozymandias-like just as nuclear and quantam physics had placed the last century before herself in a mirror image of infinity, uncertainty, and death. Yes, he was an artist, if not yet in deed then certainly in blood, and as his delicate fingers curled about a mug of authentic native american tea, and the sun rose past the skyline of the city on a Greek chariot that arched from ancient history just past his balcony, he stopped and thought.
That failing, he stopped and thought again.
After several more minutes in repose he stopped thinking and checked his posture. The hunch was right. The eyes? He leapt to the bath. There they were, smoldering, impossibly large, sad and defiant. Surely a muse could not resist such eyes. He considered himself further -- the wispy hair, the delicate chin, the lips that were perfectly wry -- and then settled his gaze on the coat.
It was, on the one hand, a Pierre Cardin, which leant a degree of snootiness that could turn-off the tender type. But importantly, he had not paid full price. Actually, he had paid nothing at all. Spying the coat in the chair beside, at a hotel lounge where the crankings of capitalism oiled their bearings and tuned their ceaseless exhaust pipes, he'd snatched her away to a better life, to a master with a gentler side, to a life of near-enlightened pondering before organic sun-rises, never again to scorch beneath the hot iron of a garment-pressing Occidental slave when she might wrinkle and crease at will, and thus, in such a natural and relaxed Anglo state, with corded threads running from silk to suede, entice.
But the muse had still to arrive.
Meantime he did not bother to check the shoes. They were Blahnicks, it was true, and purchased outtright on a less-than-daring raid into N.M. (though the neglectful, solipsistic, gray-haired old woman who received the charge on her credit card -- his mother -- would never notice). Designed for women they wrapped his slender artisan's feet like leather ribbons and so were not negotiable. If the muse were so petty as to be put off at this minor self-indulgence, well, let her be, he had other girlfriends who would bare themselves to him merely to live a moment in his shoes.
And so he waited.
Idly he observed the tenor of the tea, a throaty ginseng and ginger two-some, with hints of marjoram and celery seed, and what the label claimed were Missouri Snake Root, though he'd have guessed a Mississippi weed, if pressed, and rosemary, which funny enough he could not detect, and so mentally noted to ask his physician for a second thyroid test with the next month's bloodwork.
Still unvisited at ten past eight he strolled into the kitchen.
Or was it a kitchen? It might have been a repository of inks and brushes, the easel upon which his culinary -- such a common word, epi-cuinambular, perhaps -- works were spread. It might have been the campfire which sustained his soul like a cow-poke upon the Montana plains with a face toward the flame and a full-grain double-stiched sheep-wool-lined and foul-weather-resistant (yet breathable) patented Western-style leather-cowhide men's jacket (medium slim, $199.95 plus s&h) ensconsced back toward the eternal snows. But, he reflected, it was really just a kitchen. And so reaching past the Peruvian Plums and locally-harvested Apple Pears plucked by non-immigrant co-op labor he opened a cabinet, pushed aside a box of Kashmere Kashi (TM), lifted the honey-thrustle, and grabbed a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew.
And that, dear friends, was the beginning of the end of our poet.
Sure, there were a few more inspired moments. There was an episode when a certain man clad in a Ralph Lauren linen suit boldly paired with a square-cut tie from SecondTryStuff and, of course, M.Blanhicks, tilted his head toward a steel office tower and sighed at precisely three o'clock, 211 hours past the spring equinox, and one day from his 31st birthday; if one had peered at the pigeon strutting across the street at that moment he would have seen Beelzebub. There was a poem -- a poem, it was not a poem, it was a paen, a plea, an episodic cry for humanity in ragged line and rough cut -- that flashed in tongues through his dreams for several weeks. And there were broken Mount Blanc's that hinted at something composed in darkness and lightness at once.
But the poetry? It had fled. Fled before the 970 milligrams per serving -- 2,910 milligrams total -- of sodium. It had drowned, drowned in 57 grams of empty carbs and half as much sat-fat. And the muse had not come.
Thus it was a Monday morning, an ordinary Monday morning, in his 33rd year, that a knock finally came on the door, and his pulse, though weakened by failure upon failure, and promises dashed, made one last attempt to quicken.
"Yes?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.
"Maintenance," came the reply.
And he expired. That day, as the sun rose past the skyline of the city on a Greek chariot that arched from ancient history just past his sixth floor balcony doorstep, a shuddering soul with churning legs hung tight to her back and rose above a city that shivered without knowing why.
Lucky for me, though, my realtor happened to be in the building at the time, and we managed to grab the place before it even hit the market. We'll have to rip out the kitchen, and the floors are a mess, but overall, it was a steal. God bless poets, they sure keep things nice!
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The Painter
– or –
The Confession of Juan Valdez Upon the Occasion of His Suicide
-- Translated by his Assistant Pim Plipt
I am Juan Valdez. This is easy for me to say, but not for you, because you are not Juan Valdez, and you could not ever be Juan Valdez, however you tried, but I have been Juan Valdez since the birth of art and always shall I be until I die and cultures cease and time itself ends. I am the painter Juan Valdez and the only one.
I am a painter, but first a connessieur, a lover of tailored suits, the Rumba, and lilies that shine in the evening moonlight. I am from the regions where men are men and women are angels, where romance flows from on high to break upon the masses below, just as a cascade falls from a canyon to wash the grime of existence from the rocks and polish them to the smoothness of a virgin's cheeks ready to be kissed by mine. There is not another man in the world like I, and wherever I go women come to me unbidden, chased from the masses of weary, weary men like flies, and seeking to live once more in the cherubic state to which they were born and so fleetingly lived before their descent to banality. Though I don't want them, I am burdened by them, these angels that come to me, these fallen angels, because I am Juan Valdez, the painter, the artist, the lover, the man.
But I am troubled.
I tell you that I am troubled, yet I know you do not understand. You, who have the luxury to relate to your fellow man, you who are truly more like a mouse or a sheep, or the worm that lives in the mouse beside the sheep, or even just the excrement of the sheep that piles up beneath and warms the mouse that shelters the worm, or perhaps you are more like the simple farmer that will slaughter the sheep that makes the excrement that warms the mouse that shelters the worm that does not understand, but whoever or whatever you are, you are not me, you are not Juan Valdez, you can never be Juan Valdez, and you will not ever understand.
Yet troubled, I press on.
Are you listening, oh beautiful women? You cannot understand me, but you can believe. Do you believe in me, in Juan Valdez? You, who once were so beautiful that gods were jealous and angels cried, you who once drowned me with daily letters of love and affection, you who once threw knives in the circus and danced like a demon until a million midnights that never would end, you who wore the chartreuse when pink would have been enough, you who lent mystery where other women could offer only mystique, you who spoke with your eyes and smiled with your entire head, you who had a genius IQ, you whose empty soul I peered into like the pool of a cavern that adds an unreal depth, you who could not understand me, but tried in vain again and again and again. Do you still try? Do you still struggle to comprehend the infinity of Juan Valdez?
No, you have ceased. Confronted with the enigma of me, the question that is not a question, the answer that is no more an answer than a sigh is a particle of truth upon a sea of relativity, you have decided no longer to care, you have abandoned this quest to discover the impossible, to predict the improbable, to see the invisible, and you have taken up instead with mere fancies of flesh, phantoms of men, the common stock which pock the once eternal planes of your existence like a hoofprint in the mud. You've forgotten me, beautiful women.
Yes, you've forgotten the painter Juan Valdez, the only one, the artist and connessiuer, the lover of tailored suits, the Rumba, and lilies that shine in the moonlight. You've forgotten a man like no other man -- forgotten him forever, and ever again.
And that is my confession.
Peace be with you, empty fools and hearltess men, and God bless.
Yours Truly,
The One and Only,
Juan Valdez
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The Idiot
Dear Cary,
I dealt with the stares. The stones. The broken-bones.
The howling dogs. The frightened mothers. The men with the dog-catcher nets and shotguns and fire-hoses.
Then, they made me take an IQ test. Turns out, on top of being ugly, I was also certifiably STUPID with an IQ of NEGATIVE 74.
Not just an idiot, mind you, but I actually was required by law to use the prefix "STUPID" before my name. It's on my driver's license, please look.
Can you imagine that, Cary? Both horribly ugly AND certifiably stupid?
Woe, woe, WOEEE is me!!!
Great big gooeey GOBS AND GOBS of goddammed WOE, Cary. So much woe, and I don't even know how to spell woe, Cary. Can you imagine? (No, you pretty pretty very smart person, you certainly can't.) But never-mind, I muster on:
So one day, long after my mother had abandoned me in a garbage can, and Congress had passed a special law requiring neighbors to shit on my head, and the CIA had requisitioned my image to use in their illegal renditions to torture Al Queda suspects, well, it finally came to me:
Seeing as I was just totally sick and tired of being ugly and stupid, I decided to punish the world (and myself?) and get BRILLIANT and BEAUTIFUL.
Not just smart and pretty, Cary.
Not just lovely and bright, Cary.
But goddammned fucking GORGEOUS with a GENIUS IQ.
Just to show them, you know?
So I dropped 60 pounds and grew out my missing boob, got the kinks out of my hair (and my nose), replaced my ears, grew the short leg longer (and the long leg shorter), unflattened my forehead and re-connected the wandering eye. Replaced the wrinkled-up skin with smooth stuff (and changed the color from blue). And, fuck it, upped the IQ to 27 million and two.
But you know what?
That's right. I'm still not happy.
<sniff>
<sigh>
<sob, boo-hoo>
Is there NO LOVE in the world for the brilliant and beautiful, Cary?
Is there _nothing_ I can do?
P.S. Do you think it would help if I gargled? What about doing some Yoga?
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The Troubador
– or –
One Inch, Seven Days, and a Cyclops: My Sex Trip to the Former Yogoslav Republic of Croatia
-- By Pim Plipt
Author, Investment Guru, and Founder of the micro-penis support group Micro-Penai Anonymous
"The days are so beautiful now. Oh, to have a sweet woman to kiss and hold, to write a novel for, and to sodomize behind a tree."
– Pim Plipt, quoted yesterday
So I went to Croatia to fuck women.
"Not just any women" -- you say, before I've even written the sentence.
But you are wrong. You speak, even in your head, in cliches. I don't. That, along with my micro-penis, is perhaps the critical difference between us.
"Micro-penis," you ask, missing the rhyme and rhythmic allitering.
But nevermind. I went to Croatia to fuck women. Just about any women. And I had a hell of a time.
Croatia. It is a land where the remnants of the lost Venetian empire of the 14th century, home to the young Christopher Columbus, cast fleeting shadows upon craggy cliffs and pebbled beaches that have seen the crucible of blood and war spanning six centuries, the eternal tides of etc., etc., ad absurdum, you get the idea. Thus it was that I arrived in this beautiful land and set about to exhaust my eager little companion.
The first female I came across was in the bus station.
"Woman of Croatia, greetings," said I, and shook her left breast with my hand. It was firm, tender -- "
"Adk l kasd fwe3," she replied, in some kind of weird-ass srcyllic slang that is not even supported by Microsoft Windows. Then she promptly broke the socket of my left eye. Recognizing our cultural gap -- and bleeding profusely -- I gallantly withdrew from the situation and hailed a cab.
"To the hospital," said I, less to lick my wounds then to indulge a long-held fantasy of a stern Eastern European woman, a white nursing uniform, and a reasonably sterile 30 French Foley. The cab roared to life and leapt forward. Mountains, cliffs, and the sea flashed by. And within an hour we were well outside the city limits.
"Where are we?" I inquired. But the cab driver was mad! He drove on and on. And on. Helpless, wounded, and yet incredibily horny, I grabbed the shit-handles of his 74 Zap in my left hand and silently blessed my lucky stars for getting a cab of such sturdy Ukrainian construction. The road was rough, and the engine in the trunk behind whinnied and groaned as it ate up the dirt at 100+ km/hr, and the continuous bump and bump -- and bump -- raised a massive yet tiny erection in my mico-penis that I casually stroked with my right thumb.
Soon enough, though, and just as I had really started to get comfortable (and ponder whether I'd brought enough fresh underwear), we stopped. We appeared to be before a farm-house that huddled in the dim twilight of eve below a starless sky. The air was still, dead, without static or sound, and the door of the cab was locked tight. I sat motionless, my firmly erect mico-penis probing the air within my Hanes Briefs like a military antennae tuned to the slightest movement of enemy craft. Finally, after what must have been at least a minute, the driver grunted, ground the nub of his cigarette into the dash, turned to face me, and I saw through the hazy fumes his face for the very first time. He was a cyclops, with one eye on his forehead, and no mouth but a slit, a nose that was long and knotted and forked, and red eyes, and he spoke without moving his slit lips.
"We've arrived," he hissed.
Now, truth be told, this was my one concern about a sex trip to the former Yugoslavia. I'd heard the women were tall and blonde and beautiful -- and brutal -- and the coastline was like the south of France, though unmarred by the hairy fat men in bikinis running around with videocams. I knew the cost of living -- and getting laid -- was low, and they wouldn't lock you up for getting high. And I'd actually thought to myself that it would be worth an eye just to see this lovely spot and empty multiple cubic micrometers of cum onto her taught deflowered bedsheets. But all along a terrible scenario had nawed at the back of mind even from the moment we'd left the ground at Kansas International. What if, I'd asked myself again and again, and again, what if I'd lost an eye, hailed a cab, arrived after hours and hours (and hours) of treacherous high-speed travel in a haze of cigarette smoke and eastern european pop-rock fusion, and found after this long and cacophonous journey that the cab driver who turned to face me for the first time had -- it had been too horrible to imagine then, but I made myself face the reality now -- had stared me down with his single mucous-laden eye and, and, and not even noticed my monstrously engorged wooly-mammoth-like micro-dick? How, I'd wondered, and I'd drunk myself sick on watered-down airline martinis, how would I handle the humiliation?
But as it happens it did not matter. For when I informed the cab driver that I had not yet changed any money, and I still had only American dollars to pay him, he launched into a lengthy and remarkably lucid diatribe against American fiscal policy, denounced Alan Greenspan as a "knob and political kite who pegs interest rates to the hot air coming out of Washington," scolded me for not hoarding more gold, pointed out the dollar was but a fiat currency which must necessarily collapse in the end, and hinted cryptically about a meeting involving George Sorosh, Bill Gates, and the Bank of Serbia in 1992. Then he beat me bloody, took all my clothes, and left me standing wonderfully naked and bare in an ankle deep pile of cash before the farmhouse, its mysterious occupants, and that nebulous maiden known to man since the beginning of time as Fate -- without recourse, without any notion wherefore I had come or whence I would return, and without, unfortunately, any pants -- though, impossible as it may seem, perhaps even more engorged.
What happened after that, it turns out, is a matter regulated by the Geneva Conventions Article 313 pertaining to the misuse of foodstuffs vital to the sustenance of a nation during times of war. But in the words of nobel prize winning author, and literary icon, Saul Bellow, "When it comes to women, I think I've mostly wasted my time."*
So next year, I'm off to Honduras. I understand they raise wonderful goats.
~
Travel Info: To reach Croatia, take any airplane that goes there, and then take a bus, but don't take a cab, and don't bother bringing your shitty American dollars. Gold is the true reserve currency of the world, it always has been, and long after Roman emperor Dionetian had inflated the realm's coins to worthless pig iron, peasants would still accept gold. What does that tell you, huh?
Author Info: Pim Plipt is a travel journalist and investment guru. A widely recognized expert on gold-based mining-derivitiaves in central america, his newsletter, "How to Exploit Short Brown People Far Beyond the Borders of Your Home" is widely circulated in certain very influential circles. He is an avid fly eater and horseman, and he does not believe in penile extensions.
* A paraphrase. In the momentous days and hours of September, 1974, standing before the Nobel Laureate committee, Saul Bellow actually said, "To think that I might have better cleaned my rug, or sliced my apples into thinner and tastier slices before blending them into the Passover Choroset; to live with the knowledge that I did not organize my paperclips, nor cross-index my library; and to realize that all I have to show for thousands of hours of ecstasy and orgasm, and what I've calculated to be probably over two pints of cum, is but a few illegitimate offspring, some houses inhabited by ex-wives who mock me, and a recurring case of the clap; this, my children and mentors, my fellows and friends, this is what it is to be a man, an explorer, a thinker, and a writer. God bless you all, and keep you, and please, before I return to the hotel room with the chubby but scorchingly hot Honduran maid--um--en, that is, maiden, somebody get me some slimmer condoms."
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Carlos the Bunn
Help! -- EM&LO -- Help!!!
There are TOO MANY HOT WOMEN on this website. I am eternally tongue tied. I see their yummy photos beckoning to me beside that alluring flashing green icon and I think -- "Click, Carlos, click!"
But I hesitate.
I ask myself imploringly, "Are you a Bunn, man, or a Bunn-y? Are you scare-dee of a mouse?"
(ouch, Carlos, ouch) But still no finger falls on the electro-rodent's smooth silver plastic clickable back.
So I cajole myself, "You ARE a Bunn, Carlos, yes you are, and a truly fine Bunn at that! Send these beautiful ladies of the Salon an IG in your noble tongue. Aquaint them with the oceanic love and tenderness of this lost and dying breed of man . . . sweep them to Bunn-land with God-speed!"
And yet I do NOT sweep. No I do not. I do not even brush dust-bunnies with the rigor mortis of minor deity.
(Do you SEE yet why it is a lost and dying breed, these Bunns . . . ? )
So I ask myself, very sharply now, as Mama would have done, "Carlos, Carlos, are you a LOBSTER?"
(Carlos, Carlos, you are too cruel, not even Mama asked such things, shame to her memory!)
But if I were a LOBSTER, of course, then I need NOT speak, I need only transmit on my powerful long sexy scaled antennae to my lovely lobster-ess across the sea, until she shuttled the luscious curves of her carpuscus to me on the delicate ends of her eighteen feet dancing on undersea pebbles like the notes of Pucini on the lips of the castrati.
But, alas, I am no more an under-sea arthropod than I am a GAZING PELICAN, whatever my yoga teacher may wish me to believe (and it is also clear I am not a Pouncing Tiger or an Arched Bridge of Adonis, isn't it, Miss Yoga Lady?). But it IS obvious to everyone, is it not, that I am not Carlos of the Cold Depths of 10,000 Feet, either, as I am not Carlos of the Empty Sand Beaches Covered in the Delicate Poops of Tall Thin Birds with Big Beaks. No, these are not my homes, are they? In fact, I live right here on Sixth St., I am Carlos of the City!
A very *lonely* Carlos of the City.
So, please EM&LO, wise oracles of online mating, match-makers of the new millennium, goddesses of electronic gals -- and very sexy ladies -- please help poor lonely Carlos of the City free himself of this endless pointless pelican poise, this eternal un-clicked-ness, this unpounced tiger he has become, this fallen bridge of adonis he truly is.
Please drag him from this seventh grade dance that has lasted until the less than tender age of 31 (okay, the ad lied, so sue me, Carlos has attorneys, doesn't he?). I may have been Hitler's dog in my last life, or even the ringworms on his left testicle, may it please the deities, but I beg your consolance that somehow, somehow the Bunns will once again be one, as they must. Somehow the Bunn must meet, mate, and go on!
From the barren northern tundra of single-dom, in the flaming ocean of love that is the true heart of the last and truest Bunn,
And with much love for you sexy ladies,
Yours Truly,
Carlos the Bunn
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BONUS: Human Relationships, A Rant
My girlfriend and I recently reached that milestone stage of our relationship known as "she moved out." It's been a good opportunity for us to spend some quality time not being together, reflect on all the unique things each of us brought to the relationship and then subsequently packed into the back of another guy's SUV and drove off with, and masturbate. So far, I'm handling it well.
For starters, I have learned a lot about who I really am. In no particular order, I am a man who can (a) subsist on the daily nutritional requirements of a starving Ethiopian child, (b) open a beer can with my bare hands, and (c) enjoy a variety of cinematic offerings including war documentaries, war reenactments, war comedies, war musicals, and war Christmas specials. I have also had time to contemplate human relationships.
As I see it there are two primary animal species involved in human relationships: cats and dogs. The cat is a pre-cohabitation animal and the dog is a post-cohabitation animal. The woman acquires a cat in a purely feminine environment b/c the cat is a far more fickle pain in the ass than she is and she knows that when the male suitor appears on her doorstep and interacts briefly with the cat she will become far more desirable by contrast. The dog, on the other hand, appears after the couple is living together. One day the woman says, "Honey, I think we should get a puppy." By which she means, "If I am to continue co-habitating with your sorry ass in this god-awful environment I need you to go out and fetch us a mammal with a penis that I can still respect." Hopefully your relationship will never reach the stage where she asks for a horse.
If the cat and dog phases progress smoothly enough things reach the honeymoon stage. Here things appear to the man to be going swimmingly. There have been no major fires, the physical infrastructure surrounding the copulatory environment has not yet crumbled, and the food in the fridge is only slightly moldy. It is at this point that the woman says, "Honey, do you remember my best friend's favorite pop song sophomore year?" That's right, for dinner tonight, a blowjob Saturday morning, and the right to continue sleeping in your own damn bed, name her best friend's favorite pop song from 1985. You have five seconds. Now the truth is, as women know, she didn't even *have* a best friend sophomore year of college, and if she did they wouldn't have been talking about 80's pop songs, they'd have been talking about what a jerk *you* were. But you do not know this because you are a man so you say the only thing that can possibly be the right answer: "Sweetie, I want to take you shopping."
Now, I've studied the great men of history, from Napoleon to Julius Caesar to me, and the fact is that some men have believed they could avoid the shopping trip. They thought they could preempt it by buying her the stuff in advance. So one day after a long campaign Napoleon returned to France and his wife said, "Honey, do you remember my best friend's favorite 80's pop song sophomore year?" And being a great man Napoleon said, "Sweetie, I have brought you something very special. Behold, Italy." And she looked at him, and she looked at the conquered nation-state of Italy, and she said, "You brought me Italy? I could have had Spain, Portugal, or the even just the stinking Netherlands, but you thought what I wanted was Italy?" And so Napoleon went out, conquered the rest of Europe, and died alone on an island off of France.
See, the problem is, it's not about the stuff. She already has more than enough stuff. There is an entire closet filled with her stuff. She has 38 pairs of shoes and 36 of them have never seen the light of day. You go in the closet and the shoes say, "Excuse us, we are the shoes, if you are something else then please get out." She actually has shoes that you have never seen stored in strategic locations around the globe b/c like all women she knows that a day will come when men have ruined the earth, and the space aliens who built the pyramids will return and take all the good people (women) to another planet filled with better men, and she will be god damned if she's gonna step off that spaceship into her new life on another planet filled with better men in a pair of second-hand, off-brand, crappy old pumps that don't match her space suit.
So what's it's really about then? The relationship, you dunce. There is a tipping point in every human relationship when the woman realizes that something has gone terribly wrong. It was only a few days ago that her man was mortally afraid to even ask for her phone number. Yet now there is a serious possibility that both she and her unborn children may expire in a lethal cloud of unstoppable intestinal gas. It is at this point that the woman instinctually knows that in order to restore the love, peace and harmony of the relationship -- not to mention keep the puppy alive -- she must re-instill in her man his original condition: an utter fear of women. So she says, "Honey, take me shopping."
Now there was a moment in my life when I was a happy man. It was a time before money, and women, when I lived on the beach and owned a second-hand metal detector. And every morning I went out and said to myself, "Alec, all you have to do this morning is find ONE item that is worth fifty bucks and that will be enough to purchase a sufficient quantity of beer to keep your roommate drunk for the rest of the month so that he never asks for your rent." And if that had worked, I would still be there. But I'm not, and that's because I'm not a woman, and I don't have the ability to enter an offprice discount store in a factory outlet center where everything is 50% off and find the one item that fits perfectly and costs a little less than your first house.
So you see, it's not about the shoes, it's not about the stuff, it's about the relationship. Specifically, it's about how much pain she can inflict on your sorry ass while your mind is still stuck on her fabulous tits. It's about making you realize that there ain't ever gonna be a Harley Davidson parked in your driveway, you will never own the complete works of a genius like Craftsman, and if you plan to one day watch Monday Night Football on a 96" plasma HDTV, well, you better get a second job at Best Buy. B/c if this relationship works out, she's gonna be carrying a nine pound bowling ball in her belly for nine months, squeezing it out of her fabulous cunt, and nursing it on those fabulous tits until they hang below her belly button like a pair of three-day old animal balloons. And if she's gonna go through all of that fabulous crap for you, my friend, you can sure as hell can take a couple more pairs of $100 heels and stuff them straight up your wazoo.
So there you are, driving off to the mall, and you are trying to psych yourself up. You are saying, 'She still loves me... I mean, she can't hate me that much. I bet we can keep this trip under fifty bucks, or maybe two hundred. B/c, you know, it's the 'THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.' And what she knows, and what every other woman knows, is that it ain't the thought that counts, you sorry fuck, it's the Prada that counts. It's the Guci, the Claiborne, and the $500 Coach leather handbag, but it's sure as fuck not the thought that counts. B/c if it were the thought that counts, bars would be full of men THINKING. But when is the last time you saw a dude THINK his way into a woman's pants? And if it were the thought that counts, fifteen year old boys would be licking beer off naked cheerleaders all day. But as we all know, fifteen year old boys do a lot of so-called thinking but they don't do any god-damned fucking. So it ain't the thought that counts, gentleman, it's the plastic that counts, and don't you go wasting it on something that won't bear your children.
So there you are, and here she comes, and she's got all that great stuff in her cart, and you feel the credit card melt in your pocket, and you do the one thing that evolution has exquisitely prepared mankind to do in this stage of the human relationship: you run for your fucking life.
P.S. I've moved on to a new relationship now. She doesn't cook or clean, she leaves her shit all over the place, and she screams a lot. That's right, I'm dating a parrot. But she's my sweetie and if we're very lucky there's an egg in our future. In the meantime, please don't tell her about the Labor Day sales.
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About the Author
Alec is a writer in Atlanta. Find more at http://www.alecville.com or follow him on AlecTweets.