The Dark Stirrings of a Jungle Man's Soul - March 20, 2007
The great thing about having the basement room in the new house was simultaneously also the worst part about having the basement room in the new house: all the ventilation was directly traceable back to the vent right above my bed. I could hear everything anyone said at any time of the day or night.
Usually, the things I heard ranged from "dinner will be in ten minutes" to "we're having pork chops." On one special Christmas night however, I got to hear the darkest stirrings of a jungle man's soul.
One thing I learned about my new step-father right from the start was that he loved to be the center of attention. This manifested itself in a variety of different ways, from the somewhat subtle manner in which he would look at a book and either laugh or cough loudly until someone asked him what was so interesting, to the more direct approach when he would pull a microphone out of someone's hands and start to sing "Heart Break Hotel" at the top of his lungs.
One day, on Christmas Eve, depressed that there were not as many wrapped packages under the tree for him as he might have liked, Mike went out for a night on the town. Around one in the morning I heard him stomp up the steps, directly above my room, trip, and stumble onto the porch. A silence of about three minutes followed, during which he made no attempt to rise. I stood up on my bed and put my ear against the vent. I heard soft, choked sobs, coming from the floor above.
"Does anyone get me any Christmas presents?" The sobbing became louder. My head tilted in contemplation. Was the thirty-one year old man above me really crying his eyes out because no one had bought him an acceptable Christmas present?
"I work and I work and I work... and what do I get?" the ceiling shook for a moment, and I realized that Mike was pounding his fists against the porch in frustration. Again, there was a silence, filled with Mike's sobs. What followed was what I like to refer to as Mike's Soliloquy.
Never before in my life, and never since, have I heard a drunken man as pathetically moan about being short-changed by life as Mike did that night. For half an hour, he blamed God, the color of his skin, his lack of skills, and his family life for all of his troubles. After he ran out of standard material he suddenly shouted, "Why God!? Why did you give me these tiny little arms and legs when my body is so long?" Then the entire porch above me seemed to shake, as Mike kicked and pounded it shouting "All I want is some fucking normal sized arms and legs!" For a moment my head tilted further, in contemplation. Had Mike really just blamed the relative shortness of his arms and legs in comparison to his torso for all the ills that had befallen him on this Earth? Mike continued before I had time to work up a full force chuckle at the thought.
"I'm sick of this! I'm sick of being treated this way! Do you hear me, Darcy? I'm sick of it!" I heard the two relatively short legs clumsily stumble down the front steps. I heard an engine fire, and a truck drive away. I went to bed thinking that if he drove into a ditch and bled to death that I would start going to church again just as soon as he was buried in the ground.
The next morning, under the tree, sloppily wrapped in shiny green foil was a long rectangular object. It had not been there before. My brother Bryan looked at me, mouthing the words: "Did he buy himself a Christmas present last night?" I shrugged and mouthed back: "I don't know." I still have no idea where he found it so late at night.
We found Mike passed out on the couch in front of the Christmas tree, in front of a pile of freshly cut green foil, and bits of tape. When we woke him, his head popped up his hair wildly flailing from the momentum of his jerking. Instantly, he looked under the Christmas tree. "Oh... it's Christmas time!"
Without waiting for anyone else Mike positioned himself Indian style in front of the tree, sitting only in his white briefs, grabbed the long green box, dug into the green foil and tore it off. It was a Remington 12-gauge Pump Action Shotgun. He looked at it as if he had never seen it before.
"Darcy! Get the camera! I want a picture of me holding it!"
While we were all made to pose with Mike and the gun for several minutes we were given to understand that Mike was "easy to please" unlike us, who would always need more, Mike's desires could be met with such a simple object as the shotgun he held that was more expensive than all of the other gifts combined. "Brandon, isn't this the most freaking primo shotgun you've ever seen?" I shrugged which caused him to exhale in awe at the sleek steel of his new gun's barrel.
Finally he looked at me, my brother, and my mother and said, "I just really want to say thanks guys. This is the best Christmas present ever."
Posted by BC Woods at 12:17 AM
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Comments
This has lost me a wee bit, why did you end up with your mom after the divorce?
BC: Somehow my Dad got the house, and I ended up living with my mom. Don't ask. It doesn't make sense to me either.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 20, 2007 12:37 AM
Status: very drunk
Time: 2 in the morning
Currently: Reading your writing
That is quite the compliment.
PS. True/false medical ethics questions are innapropriate.
Posted by: Individual Formerly Known as Roommate K.S. at March 20, 2007 04:04 AM
If this is true, then apparently Im going to heaven. I cant even pretend to have done something like that.
Posted by: EtotheD at March 20, 2007 04:28 AM
Truly awe inspiring and creepy all at once.
Posted by: M at March 20, 2007 10:45 AM
I don't know what's more disturbing...that he got himself that gift and acted all weird about it, or the fact that such an unstable person now had a shotgun!
I seriously hope he was stable enough that he didn't actually shoot anyone with it.
Posted by: Tone at March 20, 2007 11:16 AM
What a special guy...so he wasn't loved very much throughout his life huh?
Posted by: Wayland at March 20, 2007 01:32 PM
Seriously, where do you find a shotgun in the middle of the night? A primo shotgun, no less.
BC: If I knew, I'd tell you. My brother and I still think about it. His friend Mike Frickle probably had one... at least that's the most likely hypothesis we've come up with.
Posted by: Van Wagner at March 20, 2007 03:29 PM
What happened to your sister in this divorce? Or was she older and out of the house by then?
BC: She stayed with my father.
Posted by: Lorna at March 20, 2007 03:29 PM
haha i cant get over the part where HE BOUGHT HIMSELF A SHOTGUN when nobody else got him anything....i also liked that his arms and legs werent proportional to his torso...amazing stuff you write, sir.
Posted by: eric at March 20, 2007 03:47 PM
Mike sounds hilarious, you end up feeling rather sorry for him, not sure whether or not your writing is supposed to convey this or not...
Posted by: Sam at March 20, 2007 04:55 PM
Don't you just love how stupid and retarded adults can be until you become one?
Seriously, I think it is great he got himself a present.
Posted by: Christi Lee at March 20, 2007 08:11 PM
I'm just not real sure what's funnier... The fact that Mike bought himself a shotgun in the middle of the night or the fact that he thanked y'all for it on Christmas morning... PLEASE tell me your mom gathered some sense and eventually dumped him...
BC: They're still going strong.
Posted by: GPT at March 21, 2007 01:11 AM
are we going to see some shotgun releated mishaps in the future.
BC: Actually, yes.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 21, 2007 07:51 PM
Haha, well if it came down to it, I'd probably buy myself a shotgun too.
Posted by: Cody at March 22, 2007 01:09 AM
How do you go to a gun store drunk at 2 in the morning and manage to walk out of the store with a gun that night? I guess this is why they invented the 3 day wait period.
BC: We don't think he got it at a store. We think. We're not sure.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 22, 2007 02:59 PM
Not sure how long ago this was or where, but my roommate bought a paintball gun drunk at 3:00 am at the local Wal-Mart. He probably could have bought a shotgun if he was so inclined.
Posted by: Enrique at March 23, 2007 12:57 PM
Actually no he couldn't have gotten it at Walmart. Federal law, I believe, stopped them from selling the shotguns after 10pm central time. Cause before we could sell them we had to contact some database or something to process the sale legally and that was closed and inaccessible after 10pm. I don't know specifics cause I worked layaway and only dealt with those guns.
Anyways, I have to ask- when you saw that shotgun were you afraid? I mean there's this mentally disturbed and seemingly handicapped man with a shotgun. I'd have been afraid and very much so.
Posted by: Chris at March 23, 2007 02:00 PM
Jesus Christ, I cannot explain how hard I laughed when I got to the part where he said "Why God!? Why did you give me these tiny little arms and legs when my body is so long?"
Fucking amazing. Just... amazing.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 23, 2007 06:29 PM
I thought this would be appropriate:
Stepdad From Hell (with apologies to Pantera)
Under the tree where he stands tall
Nobody touches him at all
Showdown, shootout, spread fear within, without
He's gonna mess up lives that he wants to trash
And won't get gifts that he'll never have
They say the bad dad can't sing
You're tagged and can't turn back
You see him comin'
And you run for cover
He's takin over this house
Here he comes reach your gun
And you better listen my friend, you see
It's been slow down the Pacific,
Aimed at you he's the stepdad from hell
Mom's pregnant, he's won
Ain't talking no tall tales friend
'Cause high noon, your doom
Comin' for you he's the stepdad from hell
Kill the sister, waste life without reason
But don't take it out on the Micronesian
'Cause a ghost family is found
Where your other one used to be
So out of the darkness and into the light
Sparks fly everywhere in sight
From his double barrel, 12 gauge,
Gotta get out of that cage
Repeat 2x
BC: Har har har. Thanks, Jeff
Posted by: Jeffy at March 23, 2007 07:16 PM
I'm sitting in class right now and i just wanted to say that the part about a drunken 31 year old man questioning God about why he was cursed with arms and legs that where disproportional to his body made me start laughing. The puzzled look on my professor's face of why i was laughing about the topic of memorandum of law was priceless
Posted by: Anonymous at March 29, 2007 07:10 PM
The poor, broken human creature, bemoaning the aspects of his existence, to a faceless God. This has got to be one of the most wrenching, pathetic, and creepy things I have ever read.
How do the puppets get so broken?
Brilliant.
Posted by: Ironman at April 1, 2007 05:39 PM
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