| The Package |
[Aug. 21st, 2006|09:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  mischievous | ] |
Between the two of us, Beth and I had one foe—Verne. So one night we decided to do something nasty to him. A regardless of the fact that we were itching to do something nasty to just about anyone, no one will ever convince me that Verne didn’t deserve what we did to him.
Everything fell into place astonishingly well. I actually had Styrofoam peanuts and a box, and Beth had postage supplies. And most importantly of all, she needed to take a shit. We put a layer of Styrofoam peanuts in the bottom of the box and then took turns going into the bathroom and squatting over it. One of my greatest regrets is that I was only able to contribute an inch long nugget along side her fat, curling turd. A turd that reeked and brought us close to gagging as we covered it with more peanuts, and sealed the box.
Beth was a longtime employee of The UPS Store, and naturally had taken a rather generous supply of postal paraphernalia, which elevated the level of authenticity of our package. Wrapped excessively in postal tape and plastered with a carefully peeled of postage label from another box, our package truly looked as if it had traveled through the mail to the address I had scrawled on the surface.
However, the package did not arrive during regular postal hours, but late in the night. The stench was starting to permeate the sides of the box, so we wrapped it in two garbage bags before setting out to make our delivery. It was hot and lightly rainy outside, and the moist summer air seemed to draw the wretched smell even through the garbage bags as we drove.
In order to make up for my failure to shit adequately in the box, I bravely offered to be the one to drop the package off. Beth waited in the car, a few doors up, while I dashed through the rain and up the steps to the familiar door. I set the package down, checked quickly to make sure that no one from inside saw, and ran back to the car. We sped away incapacitated by nervous laughter.
Beth called me at 5 in the morning that night. I could hear that she was not able to speak because she was either laughing or crying, and it was quite a while before she was able to get a word out. Eventually she spouted out haltingly “he—put—his—hand—in—it!”. And she went back to laughing convulsively.
After closing out a 4 am bar Verne had returned to his house to find a package waiting for him. He noticed that it smelled bad, and decided to call the girl he was seeing, Beth, and give her the news.
“Someone sent me a package that smells really bad! I wonder what’s inside!” he said.
“Well, don’t open it!” Beth said.
“But I want to know what it is! It smells like a dead rat or something.” said Verne
“Don’t open it if it smells bad!” said Beth
“It’s probably just my cousin playing a joke on me or something.”
Unimportant conversation points most likely took place during the time it took him to slice into the box and open it. Any and all small talk ended with the cry “OH MY GOD IT”S SHIT!”
“What are you talking about?!” Beth feigned.
“It’s human shit! Somebody mailed me human shit!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll call you back! I have to go wash my hand!”
By the time Verne made his follow up call to Beth several minutes later, he felt certain that he had gotten to the bottom of things. He was certain that the package had been sent by one of Beth’s ex-boyfriends who was pissed that she had moved on. He based this hypthesis on several rock-solid pieces of evidence: first of all, it was a total frat guy prank. Second of all, it was clearly a man’s handwriting on the box. And most importantly, he knows a man’s shit when he sees it! Verne reiterated these points many times, and held them not only as proof of the male identity of the perpetrator, but also as proof of his own keen eye for the finer details of a situation. There was even some discussion of a future career in psychology or detective work.
As Beth got through this narrative the uncontrollable laughter spread to me as well. And then it consumed me for several days. I could not sleep the rest of the night—any time that I began to let me mind drift off and become sleepy, the image of Verne’s shit covered hand would return, and with it the laughter. A silent, heaving, convulsive laughter. A kind that must be hidden in a room at night or in a crowded public place. A kind that I could not trust not to overtake me at the most inconvenient of times. A kind that had me shuddering in corners the next day, and the next, and the next.
It was the perfect crime. Perfectly conceived, and perfectly executed. And, we were able to follow the details of the story intimately--Verne called Beth at least twice a day to report his progress on discovering the identity of the pooper. He was keeping the box and its contents on his back porch for future DNA testing, and had determined (from the used postal label), that it had been sent from Pittsburgh. And one way or another he would get to the bottom of things and bring the pooper to justice.
Part II:
It is quite likely that now, several years later, Verne knows exactly who sent that box of shit--if he hadn’t already figured it out. I have had, through the years, a tendency to tell people about things that I have done that make me proud. And getting Verne to stick his hand in a box of shit made me proud.
I met Shayna’s seemingly innocuous (if perhaps repulsively hairy-chested) ex-boyfriend Kenneth for the first time sitting at her pink kitchen table. He was eating salsa and looking things up on her computer. Thirty minutes before I had been easily persuaded by the charismatic Richard to go with himself and Shayna to some art openings. And Kenneth had apparently already been persuaded by the also charismatic Shayna to attend as well.
All went as well as could be expected for an evening in art galleries. We bumped our way through crowds, viewed endless streams of art that were at once discouraging (about the state of human judgement) and encouraging (because it must be easy to get something in a gallery if that stuff made it in—heck, I should be a painter!), and sipped glasses of free wine guiltily taken from the hands of untipped servers.
If I hadn’t had the wine, I may not have told the story. Or at least may not have told it so emphatically. But Kenneth brought up someone named Verne, and the word “Verne” triggers an automatic response in me—“You mean Billy with the disgusting earlobes?”
“Um, yes.”
“You mean Verne who's a hairdresser?”
“Yes.”
“I know him!” I cried.
“He used to be my roommate.” said Kenneth
“Really? Did you live with him when somebody sent him a box of shit?” very excited.
“No---but I think I might have heard about it.”
“It was ME!” very, very excited.
There were a few more unnecessary comments between that one of mine and Kenneth saying “Verne is my best friend!” And then he stormed off. When he was down the block he called Shayna and told her exactly how he felt about the sort of company she keeps.
Its not my fault that Kenneth’s best friend has old-lady-vagina-looking earlobes that were reconstructed from extra skin collected from his face after he had a face lift (to get the extra skin) after his original ones froze off and lies about stuff that you really shouldn't lie about. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person, it just means he deserved a box of shit. If I had done to him what he did to me, I would have accepted a box of shit and, frankly, felt pretty fucking lucky. At least I didn’t let my otherwise nonviolent mother hire mob goons to beat him within an inch of his life.
Part III:
I saw Verne last night. He had come to see the show I was performing in--he had come with Kenneth who was there to see his ex-girlfriend as "Little Nikki" grind. I hadn't seen Verne in at least four years--and the last time I had seen him there had taken place the only outward display of rage and hysteria in my adult life. It was a rainy night, and the day before my birthday.
I always assumed that I would feel an intense wave of anxiety and aversion if I ever saw Verne again, and I knew it was only a matter of time until I did. But when I saw him (just from the back) pleasantly ordering a drink at the bar, he seemed very human. Innocuous, funny, and almost sweet, and I could remember why I was friends with him in the first place.
I hoped he wouldn't recognize me. It's possible that he didn't. And that's what I needed to assume in order to get through a show stopping rendition of Just a Gigolo in pasties and a g-string in front of the only two people in the city who hate me. |
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