Batshit Crazy

I was in the midst of my ninety-seventh midlife crisis which usually involved three things:

Sex: Asian nympho submissive sex slaves

Drugs: Cocaine, high grade marijuana, and LSD (shroomage acceptable in a pinch);

Booze: Patron Tequila (accept no substitutes)

This usually involves a bender that punctuates my resignation from whatever corporate programming gig I've got going at the moment. I'm generally speaking a happy go-lucky consulting motherfucker. Treat me right and I'll give you the shirt off my back in a snowstorm.

My fuse is normally a mile long and I generally have a smile for everyone I meet, but somehow, someway, every couple of years, some mid-level cunt sauce bitch manager finds a way of soaking that fuse in butane and then french kissing it with a blowtorch.

Now, generally speaking, I don't just up and quit. Why you ask?

Because revenge is a dish best served cold and, furthermore, I'm probably mentally damaged goods from the age of five onwards; I am just compelled to test boundaries for the sake of social science, if not shits and giggles.

So how do I express my chagrin at the corporate world and the inhumanity of cubicle dwelling?

Take insane amounts of breaks for;

A. cigarettes

B. dugout hits

C. Starbucks

D. mani/pedis

Take insane amount of asian massage breaks (this coincidentally covers midlife crisis requirement #1; see how I did that?)

Come in late every morning after smoking a fattie of the kind bud and;

Leave no later than 4:30 PM for happy hour under the ruse of needing to walk my dog

This usually brings things to a head within a week or two at most. At this point nameless, faceless, and personality-challenged mid-level manager will invite me into an available conference room. He will sit me down and outline my transgressions (see #s 1-4) in painstaking detail.

Now, the key here is not to react. To ensure my perpetual disdain for bullshit does not get the better of me, I generally adopt the tack of studying my cuticles with feigned interest.

This is obviously unnecessary thanks to 1D but theatrical effect often finds its tenterhooks in me.

At this point I generally hit manager man up for a raise. I usually say something that goes a little like this:

"Well <namesless|faceless manager>, I'm sensing an irrational undercurrent of, how shall we say, less than brotherly love at play here.

Now, I know most of your employees have mortgages and kids in college and thus wake up at an ungodly hour every day to catch a commuter train so that they might spend twelve hours a day basking under the fluorescent lights of your fine <banking|insurance> institution.

But me, yeah. All I have is a psychotic dog and a small apartment to worry about. So..., if I find myself waking up every day to dread seeing your mug, well then, I just guess you're gonna have to pay for the privilege.

Now, of course, I can give you my notice if you feel you can find someone better to do the job...."

Now, sometimes, this results in me and manager boy coming to a new understanding and things generally go swimmingly thereafter. Aaaaand, sometimes.... It frees me up for yet another...

MIDLIFE CRISIS

So, yeah. This time there was no meeting of the minds and I was on the beach as we say in the consulting biznatch.

It was a Tuesday night and I was holed up in my little crib I was telling you about, staring at a pile of cocaine and weed whilst waiting for the acid to kick in as a very pretty Korean manicurist named Jeannie kept putting my hand on the back of her shapely head insisting, "You come now. Jaw hurting. You do too much drug, Daddy."

"The destination is the journey, slave."

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTT

My psychotic golden retriever, Inigo Montoya tore ass out of the bedroom and ran to the front door growling something ferociously. I eased myself out of fellatio receivership and pushed the intercom button.

"Yeah? Whaddya whaddya?"

"Danny Lemongello?"

"Yeah? Whaddya whaddya?"

"Danny Lemongello?"

We rinsed and repeated until I could take it no more. I hustled my dog, love slave and the giant mirror of drugs into my bedroom with instructions that everybody chill the fuck out while I handled the mad buzzerer. And then I did a fat line just to keep it real.

"Okay master. I wait for you here."

"Wooff. Grrrr...."

"Inigo. Stay."

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

This time it was the front door. Or a giant killer bee. The acid had kicked in a few minutes ago so certitude was not exactly in abundance.

Now, I don't have a peep hole or, it's probably more accurate to say, it was painted over before I moved in over a decade ago, when I was still on the sunny side of thirty.

I finished zipping up my Levis and arranging my wife beater and wiping my shnoz and upper lip. First impressions and all...

I lit a cigarette and swung the door wide open. And then, the bottom fell out of my jaw as I found myself looking at....

MYSELF - ONLY TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER

Now I've seen and thought alot of weird shit under the influence of Sid Vicious. Hell, I've even had conversations with my pickle, but never, ever, had I stood face to face with myself; let alone an 80's vintage edition me.

I scrunched my eyebrows and said, "Who. Are. You. Question. Mark."

Young Lemongello said, "Danny? Danny Lemongello?"

"Yeah. Whaddya, whaddya?"

"Dan-"

"Alright! You're makin' me dizzy for crissakes. I am Danny Lemongello. Accept no substitutes. Now what can I do for you?"

"Erm, can I maybe come in for a minute?"

"Well, I'm a little occupied over here at the moment. Why don't you tell me what this is all about?"

Young me thought about this a moment. Then he took his big hands out of the pockets of his big, black trenchcoat and offered me his hand.

"My name is Oscar Phillipe Santana-Naranja and I believe you're my father."

I shook his proffered hand. Young me had quite the grip. And skin so cold and fair, I might add.

I tried to remove my hand but young me would not relinquish.

"I can maybe come in for a minute?" he said flashing me a broad grin.

I took a deep breath and thought to myself, "My young me, what a big fuckin' set of choppers you sport."

"Can I have my paw back?"

Young me looked down at my hand which seemed to be losing circulation and said, "Oh. Of course."

I opened the door wide and let young me enter. I made some room on the shitty vinyl couch by tossing my slave girls panties and bra and gag-ball onto a nearby Ikea chair that had seen better days.

"Have a seat. Can I get you a drink?"

"No. Thank you. No."

That didn't sound like young me.

I refreshed my highball of Patron and sat down across from young me. Same blue eyes. Same big ass lips. Same big hands and long arms.

Fucking A!

Hell, he was even going bald just like I had at his age. Of course, I had adopted a Mr. Clean 'do long ago. I thought about suggesting young me do the same but it seemed presumptuous somehow.

"Do you know an Elba Naranjo?" young me asked.

Fuck me. Elba...

1986

When I was in high school I had worked part time in a gourmet health food shop and Elba was my manager. She was about twenty years older than me but hotter than a Texas chili sprout.

Pretty much everybody at the shop was a character and drug fueled fraternizing was the norm. I had become pretty chummy with Elba and I had spent a couple of nights at her studio apartment when my mother had locked me out of the house, as she was wont to do with unfortunate regularity.

"You can stay here anytime, baby," Elba constantly reminded me.

Well, one night, somehow a game of chess at her crib had turned into a game of strip chess, which had turned into a Mr. Bubble bubble bath (accept no substitutes), and seventeen year old me had fucked thirty-seven year old Elba for two days straight in a cloud of Maui Wowie, if I recall.

Once the relationship turned kinky Elba had gone from the hip hot older chick to the needy controlling chick in less than forty-eight hours flat.

"Move in Danny. I want you to be my man."

"I already have a girlfriend, Elba," I protested.

Elba saddled up to me and began sucking my neck.

"Why would you want a girl when you can have a woman?"

"Don't give me a hicky, Elba."

But Elba's bony fingers dug into my back and she hissed. I'll never forget the sound of that hiss rolling off her lips and the way her tongue felt like sandpaper scraping my neck. I tried to push her off but she started to bite my neck.

I placed my perpetually stinky puma behind Elba's legs and shoved; hard.

"What the fuck, Elba. I can't be walking around with hickies. I told you; I have a girlfriend."

Elba looked at me from the parquet floor and snarled.

"You used me. Nobody uses Elba Naranjo and gets away with it."

"You didn't seem to mind using me when you suggested strip chess and bong hits..."

"So you just think you can fill me with your dirty, filthy, stinky, rotten, corrupted, human jizz and then kick me to the curb like a wet foodstamp? Is that what's happening here? Because you can just get the fuck out you pathetic loser."

"But El-"

"And don't even think about showing up at the shop. You are fired you piece of shit. Nobody disrespects me and gets away with it."

I took that as my cue to beat a hasty retreat and out the door I went. And that was the last time I saw Elba Naranjo, except just now in my LSD enhanced mind's eye.

"Yeah, I remember Elba."

"She is my mother."

"Well, fuck me in the goat-ass."

"And, you are my father."

"Wow."

"Is that all you have to say? Wow?"

"Wowie Kazowie?"

Man, I was starting to peak about now. The young me may have looked at me but something was definitely off about this kid. He had the big smile and everything but it was colder than a witch's left tit and not nearly as inviting.

"You were very mean to my mother. You abandoned us both."

"Uh. I had no idea Elba was preggers, kid. We really only spent a couple of days together, um, that way."

I heard the bedroom door creak open and Jeannie Cho peeked her head out and said, "You want more fun time now, Daddy?"

Young me furrowed his eyebrows into a "V" and remarked, "Daddy? Am I to presume you have begotten more offspring?"

"Jeannie, not now. Give me five minutes."

"But Daddy!"

"Just close the door. I'll be in soon..."

Jeannie seemed perturbed but it could have just been the booze and drugs and lockjaw.

"But-"

"That's an order slave!"

The door shut. I could hear Inigo alternately growling and whining behind the door. Something was rotten in Brooklyn.

"Erm. Oscar, right? Look, this is really not the best time. Perhaps we can meet for coffee in a couple of days? I don't mean to blow you off here but you kinda caught me with my pants down, uh, so to speak."

"That won't be necessary," he said in an unpleasant monotone, then continued, "I just needed to make sure you were the one."

I didn't like the sound of that. Nope. Not even one little bit.

"I want you to know Danny Lemongello. Nobody hurts my mother. There will be a reckoning..."

Young me snarled and I could swore I caught a glimpse of some fang in the dilated pupil's of yours truly's jeepers peepers.

I got up and opened the front door to show young me out. A chill passed by me and made me shudder as if someone had stepped on my grave. I turned around to say my goodbyes but holy fucking Lamont Cranston, young me was gone without a trace.

I scratched my bald head and pondered aloud, "Where'd he go? How the fuck did he do that?"

Jeannie and Inigo came out of the bedroom. Inigo ran to my feet, rolled over and began whining and peeing on his chest. Jeannie said, "Who that man?"

"Says he was my son."

"He bad man, Daddy. Very bad man. He goemul I think."

"Goemul?"

"Monster."

"Okay. Enough of that. How's your jaw feel?"

"Still hurt."

I whipped out my pickle and eased Jeannie back into position paraphrasing Nietzche, "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

As I sat there looking alternately out the window and down at the back of Jeannie's head a fucking flying squirrel landed on the window sill and stared at me with dayglo eyes. It was not a friendly, "Hey man, can I buy you a drink?" kinda stare although so few ever are.

"What the fuckity?!?!?!"

Jeannie popped her head up and said, "What happen?"

I just pointed at the window sill.

"Eeek a bat!"

"In Brooklyn?"

Inigo growled and charged the window and the flying squirrel beat its wings into the chill of night.

That was 9 days ago. I tried googling Elba and Oscar but all I got was snake eyes.

The bat keeps coming back every night. He just stares from the window sill with those fucking eyes until Inigo registers his objection to its gnarly presence.

For the last week Inigo has taken to sitting in front of the window every night and watching and waiting for the bat. We're both starting to stay up all night. I think we're headed for a mostly nocturnal existence and I'm starting to get a little pasty faced from the lack of sunshine.

Ah, maybe I should just lay off the Sid Vicious for a few days. I'm surethat's all it is. Yeah. It's probably just a fucking squirrel that likes to jump off trees or some shit. Probably just another fig newton of my overactive imagination...

From Crucifiction by Krafto Matix.