True Story

Dear diary,

Well, I was driving my car when suddenly I got a flat tire. This happened right in the middle of the forest, where the sky is colored dark. And I didn’t have a jack or a spare. Luckily, however, I had brought a map of the area; and it showed that there was a filling station further up the road. So, I started walking.

Eventually, I heard a roaring engine from over the horizon. I thought to myself: “Ooh, great; now I can hitch a ride! Man, I’m tired of hiking.” Thus, I put out my thumb and waved my hand.

Too bad: the car didn’t stop. Instead of passing me by, it ran me over and severed my limbs. All my innards were now spilled out and flattened on the road, and my priceless blood was seeping into the grass. Plus the pole from the road sign had gotten lodged into my side. I looked and saw that my head was rolling off into the cornfield.

The moral is: Always keep driving your car, unless it just won’t go.

§

To understand why all this happened, let me tell you a little about myself:

I’m anti-everything: totally mean-spirited and hateful. The only thing I hold serious is hockey. So, I’m here to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. God, I miss drinking hard liquor every morning.

Send me a note; I’ll reply by taking you out to the woodshed, where I keep my giant poisonous metal octopus.

I was the one who talked Santa Claus into only giving gifts to the children if they’re good. He wanted to give them to everyone, but I was like: “No!” Therefore, most kids nowadays end up with a lump of coal or a chunk of soot in their stocking. And I myself put it there: I enter each abode personally; and I embrace the children’s mother, when she comes out to meet me: we begin to kiss. Then the kids wake up and tiptoe out and spy on us, while their dad is still asleep.

After the household’s mother and I have satisfied our desires, she leads me into the kitchen and offers me half a dozen loaves of bread, which she had baked for me earlier that day. I accept with thanks, reminding her that the pieces of coal have been deposited in her children’s Xmas stockings, in accordance with tradition.

Then the sleigh pulls up and parks on the roof. I pat the mother gently and say: “Gotta go; my ride’s here.” Then we fly over miles of sandstone, trombones, and foghorns.

Here is how our folk music is made. I write all the lyrics, Mrs. Claus programs the beat machine, and our dog Mickey cooks meat.

It’s kinda scary to think that you could die at any moment.

Then we eat funnel cake. Have a taste. Now have a Polar-Bear Pudding Pop. Have some Snowplow Puppy Chow.

I tend to scare people off who are friends with me. We go cruising down the boulevard in our motorcar, just rolling down the street with the top down. We got diamonds in the back seat. We’re rolling like Paul Revere, just cruising down the avenue, stealing all your profits. Putting your revenue in our purse. Taking Xanadu from you and pocketing it. I bought your wife a new brassiere, because I don’t like her other ones. And here is a six pack of Smoking Sour Beer for the children, to go with their soot. (We revisit the abodes of the kids who’ve been bad, just to rub it in that they ruined Christmas, and to tease them.)

Then I go visit my high school home economics teacher who flunked me. She lives in a castle that is being guarded by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I bribe him, and he lets me in. I bring the lady around back to the swimming pool and say “Shall we take a dip?” This castle is filled with gentlewomen from all around the world, who join us in the water. We then spend the rest of the day sunbathing.

That one Kennedy who died shows up with the famous Duke of Earl, plus a family of gorillas who traveled many miles to meet us. I share the gentlewomen with them: “Enjoy the plush amenities,” I say. They all smile. When it’s time to leave, I announce: “Don’t forget to take an after-dinner mint, to freshen your breath!” I then have my robo-butler guide them to the door labeled “Chamber of Peril.”

I think that our state’s sports teams are going to perform well this year.

The politicians that you believe in will obtain power.

There is a cyclops running from the police, hopping between rooftops. It’s like the opening scene from Hitchcock’s Vertigo, if the character played by Jimmy Stewart had only one eyeball, very large and round.

“Don’t fall in the slop!” For the streets below are completely covered.

You and I own a mansion with smack on tap. You pull the lever and the spigot dispenses smack. Smack is slang for the drug heroin, but in U.S. English it can also refer to a fishing boat equipped with a well for keeping the caught fish alive. I like to think of our tap as bestowing either substance: it can somehow sense which one of them you more strongly desire, at any moment. So that’s how I ended up with all these fishing boats; cuz I don’t care that much for heroin. I learned a lot from my expedition on the high seas.

That’s also how I got the nickname “Demolisher.” And you are now known as “The Wound-Dresser.” Mrs. Claus is our forewoman. Our dog Mickey joins the masked mimes that get caught in the crossfire of all my damaging and your skillful bandaging. The group rebrands itself “The Mummy Mummers,” and Mickey’s pet name becomes “Mummy Mutt.” (Is this clever or not?)

I used to gangbang, but now I’m retired. On the day when I came home and announced the news of my quitting, my wife’s eyes rolled back and she fell on the floor unconscious. “Somebody call a doctor!” I cried, waving a paper fan at her face. “Open a door, and let some air in here.” Then my robo-butler opened the side-door.

We got her out into the car, and our robo-chauffer drove us to the hospital. “Ah,” my wife sighed, finally awaking when we arrived in the Emergency Room, “a turbo-nap just came upon me because I ate too many Skittles.”

So that’s what caused her to faint: not my retirement news, but her overconsumption of those multicolored fruit-flavored lentil-shaped confections that have a hard candy shell and a chewy interior.

Epilogue

Here I am, back at my house. The year is 1993. I’m holding a super-soaker water-gun filled with nectar for the hummingbirds. Richard Gere is with me; he is smoking tobacco out of a water pipe. Mickey is here also, and Christ will return as soon as he smells the smoke. (He needs to keep in shape for volleyball.) Our ladies are all wearing wool socks.

The attic hatch opens, and Thanksgiving dinner is served. It is a very fat bird. From the stuffing of the carcass is retrieved a strip of paper on which is written our fortune; it says: “One in five never die.” We then say a prayer, finish eating, and head into the game room to play Whip the Winner with a Chain. Hearing the sound of raindrops on our cedar shingles, we head outside with our ladies and enjoy embracing them in the downpour. We pass the night cuddling in this fashion.

The mega bar arrives in the morning. It is like an ice-cream truck: mobile. Inside the mega bar is a limo; we take our seats. There are highways on which one can drive within this vehicle; that’s how roomy it is. I play the Sega video game console while speeding down the limo’s streets, while the limo speeds around the track at the mega bar, while the mega bar orbits Christ. (Christ does not drink or drive or play arcade games or read or write.) Christ is locked inside a jar. There is a Holiday Boat Sale at the hotel within the mega bar’s motel. I visit TV Jesus in the Sega jail and write backwards on a sheepskin my plan to break him out. Then I hand him a red plastic egg that contains a grayish putty, and I demonstrate for Jesus how this product can be pressed against my written message to make a reverse copy of it, which is now readable.

I then freeze into a painted statue of wood. They push me downhill, tied to a toboggan.