Mal surprises me by turning around quickly and saying,
excitedly, “I pulled your mother’s pork!”
At the time, I’m kind of in love with the idea of making a
surreal tele-dramedy starring Anna Friel as a sultry dream thief and Crispin
Glover as a glove-maker with the ability to read gloves like gypsy ladies read
palms. But a person would have to wear
the gloves long enough to break them in, to give them creases. Oh, and they’d have to be leather
gloves. And then, I guess, he has to put
the gloves on to get the full feeling. The
premise still isn’t finalized when I’m shocked out of my reverie by Mal’s
declaration.
I am horrified, to say the least. It is the worst thing
anyone has ever said to me, and yet I have no idea what it means. “What? What the hell do you mean?”
I should describe Mal to you because you’ve never met
him. He’s shrewd and cagey, and he
collects jam pots, which are things that British people put their jelly
in. Mal is British.
He doesn’t normally speak of pork, and not of my mother,
either. When he speaks, it is of lifts
and lorries and gunless coppers. He
sings in a band, of course. College
radio loves him. Can’t stop playing that
first album over and over. You have to
be in college to like his band’s music.
A sophomore described them as “a Beatlesque Gang of Four with three bass
players.” Everyone in the band plays
bass. But they have electronic apparatus
to make the basses sound like other instruments.
The band is the “complete opposite of the Doors,” according to one stoned
poli-sci major.
Mal, with some kind of juice dripping from his chin, chooses
to simply reiterate: “I pulled your mother’s pork, mate.”
“Them’s fightin’ words, Mal.
Take it back.”
“Have it your way.” He
shrugs and goes back to fiddling with his HAM radio. “Technology won’t save us.”
“It has surely saved your band of bass. Otherwise, you guys would sound like a
retarded Claypool masturbation session.”
“Are you sure you don’t want one of these pork
sandwiches?” He motions to the plate
sitting on the desk next to the radio.
“I swore to the Jewish g-ds that I would never eat my
mother’s pork, nor be stewed in her milk, though the latter is getting harder
and harder to avoid.” I peer out the
window at the milk drenched landscape.
Global warming has really pulled a doozy. You can’t go anywhere without smelling the
stench of spoiling dairy.
“That’s your mother’s milk, mate. Have some bloody respect…. Oh, hello! Lord,
is that You? I have finally got You on
my HAM radio!” Mal is clearly excited as
he speaks into the microphone, but the Lord isn’t speaking English in reply, so
I have a hard time making out His end of the convo.
“First of all, Lord, I’d like to let you know we need a wet
cleanup on aisle Earth,” Mal says, and then chuckles at his little joke. “Second of all, Lord, I do want to do the
live studio session. The other lads are
quite excited about it.”
The Lord doesn’t offer to produce many bands for live radio
broadcast. Mal is honored, and he should
be. But strangely he hadn’t accepted the
offer on the spot when it was first proffered last Wednesday. He wanted to play it cool, I guess. I think the Lord understands that sort of
thing. I get that feeling from the way
He says His words, because I can’t actually divine their meanings. And I’ve used an online translator and
everything.
Suddenly the transmission is interrupted with a commercial
for Rectal Assassination 8, starring Anna Friel and Crispin Glover as anal
saboteurs who attempt to prolapse the rectums of five not-so-lucky college
girls. It takes place during the Cold War, and there are Soviet agents embedded
in the linings of their colons.
“I can’t wait for RA 9,” Mal says. “That one takes place during the American
Revolution. Tricorne hats abound. John Paul Bones has his spy glass up a
sailor’s porthole right in the magazine advert. Which reminds me, mate. I pulled your mother’s pork!”
I have to assume the Lord hears the homicide over the HAM
radio. How could he not? The murder weapon was the HAM radio.
Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown
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