Now here's Tom with the weather

The last thing I should be thinking about right now is that my underwear is chafing me but, well, that’s what’s on my mind. Right under my left ball, on the inside of my thigh, a little spot that is getting sore from the fabric rubbing against my skin because of all the dampness. I switched to boxer briefs from boxers because of this problem but yet here it is. The second thing that is bothering me is the torrents of water that are rising all around me, and how it’s only a matter of time before it gets high enough to go from being a nuisance to an all-out life threatening situation.

I could sit here and blame myself for all this but what good would it do? What possible solution would come from brooding over my affliction that has not only my life but also the rest of the natural world in peril? Seems pointless now.

I suppose I could fault my parents and their lousy genes for creating such a monster as me but dear old mum and dad had no idea that their copulating would spawn such an abnormal walking catastrophe as yours truly. And if they did, would that have stopped them from losing their virginity to one another in the back of dad’s ’67 GTO? Probably not. Sex is like that, all those rushing hormones and endorphins. Stopping mid stroke to pull out is, well, about the worst thing that a guy can imagine, other then cutting off a piss mid-stream or realizing that your life has just gone to hell because of the imminent impregnation. Sure, it’s hell on the woman too because she is the one who has to carry the brat to term and force it out a canal that has to stretch itself to ten times it’s size just to spit it out, not to mention feed, clothe, bathe and then put up with it’s shit once it becomes old enough to talk, think, so on. Yeah, I suppose it’s no picnic for anyone.

And that is how we all start out, like it or not, not a one of us different then the other. We all get tugged out of a vagina that only nine months earlier some poor bastard was just dying to get in to. The irony is killing me.

Of course then we grow old enough and find a vagina we want to crawl back into, or a father figure we want to keep us safe, if we believe all the Freudian theories, which I think is a bunch of crap. We are biologically driven to breed and are weak enough as a species to find our comfort within those sanctions. Like we are the first one to ever have sex, the first to knock up a chick, the first to become a father. But I digress…

The vagina I found that I wanted to crawl back inside of has a name, and it’s Marly, poor, sweet, tortured Marly who followed the band Phish around for three tours, making junk jewelry out of twine, stones and glass beads. Her hair dreaded like the reggae singer whose name she bears, her nails ragged from lack of proper hygiene, smelling of patchouli oil and marijuana smoke. I saw her from across a crowded campground and decided that she was the one for me, faded, torn dress and all. No matter that her bare feet were black on the bottoms, that her underarm hair were twin afro’s straight out of a ‘70’s blacksploitation movie and her legs were hairier then mine, no, I had to have her. She was the woman that was going to save me from myself, from my curse. As if I was some prize package myself with my ingrown hairs, oily complexion, indecent amount of self-adulation and ability to shift weather patterns as easily as it took others to change their clothes. You heard the old phrase ‘stormy eyes’? Well, I’ve taken it to an all-new level.


And Marly is here beside me, clutching my arm and breathing rapidly as the water fills up all around us. I’ll bet she is regretting that she had sex with me right about now.

My dear old dad, to support his new wife and child to be, he took on all kinds of demeaning, minimum wage jobs. He had no education, no skills, no ambition, no dreams…well, he had one dream, and that was to own a ’67 GTO. Mission accomplished dad. Other then that he had jack-shit and was plain old stumped as to how he was going to come up with the scratch to make the leap from degenerate teenager to responsible parent in nine months. To help himself along he took up drinking and, when that proved to be a dead-end, he switched to methamphetamine. My mom, not to be outdone, took it up as well. This was well before the time of ‘crack babies’. I was a ‘meth baby’. You look at the photos of them on their wedding day and they are so skinny. You would have said they looked good except that their faces were covered with acne and boils, and mom’s eyes were bugging out of her head. Good thing they had the wedding in Vegas with no one else present. I don’t think any sane family member would have let that coupling take place. Not that they kept track of their families, having been the black sheep of their respective households.

Dad’s parents-my grandma and grandpa-were tobacco farmers from Virginia and the last they saw of their ne’er do well boy was the day he stuck his thumb out on the highway in front of the farm and a battered pick-up truck full of illegal immigrants picked him up and carried him away to a new life. Mom’s parents-my Granby and poppa-drank themselves to death by the time she was old enough to turn tricks for food and shelter and didn’t need them anymore. Her siblings all grew up to be respected members of the community, preaching the evil of drink and fornication while she took up a place on skid row and awaited her fate. Good thing dear old dad came along and saved her from that…

But I guess that is neither here nor there at this juncture. At this current point in time, this place in history, I have doomed mankind by just being me and the fate of the world lies in the balance. I have Marly in my arms and after crying for what seems like eons she has come to terms with her mortality and has accepted it. I, on the other hand, have yet to become so complacent. Not that I have any ideas how I am going to save us or all of mankind, no, but within me lies the seed, the kernel that could grow and blossom into an idea, some way to reverse this and put everything back to right.

Because this is all my fault, all of it, like it or not. I could sit here and blame mum and dad and their shitty genetics, I could blame everyone for ridiculing me and making me the fiend I am, for not accepting me for who I was and letting me be but, if Hollywood has taught us nothing it has taught us that the monster is always the one to blame, even if it wasn’t their fault, even if they were created by someone with a much more nefarious agenda then their very own…

Hollywood also teaches us that the solution lies in killing the monster, that only with his death can we be free to live, to learn the lesson that he has taught and to move on with their lives. Therein lies the elucidation to all of this, the answer to all of our hopes, all of our dreams, all of our prayers. The simple solution is that I must die, and quickly, before everybody else does. Marly will be so happy.