XXV. The Day the Music Died

During this time of year, and by that I mean the time when the grass is greener, the days are longer, the skirts are shorter, and the daunting smell of semen ruminates in the air, I like to reflect on what influential people in my life have meant to me.

I recall when I was younger, in my junior year of high school, we had a visitor come to our trailer. Now this was during my final exams, a time when distractions are avoided and I often crumple up suicide notes I've written and throw them into the trashcan like it's a basketball hoop (I'm a bit of a perfectionist). But it was during this time that my distant cousin, a British rugby player for the Brunsfelter Codswallows, came to call on my parents for funds to build a statue of Billy Idol. Though both of my parents were not knowledgeable of this man's existence before he showed up at our door, they agreed to allow him to stay after he showed us the bomb he had strapped to his chest.

He smelled of turned milk and gravy, which he applied to his underarms before he made us play twister with him. A most bizarre fellow, he had seen a Pizza Hut ad for stuffed crust pizza in which a man eats his pizza backwards and had since begun to insist that we all eat every item completely backwards. If that was not possible, he would have us eat while being held upside down.

At night, I was unable to sleep because he would scream as he masturbated at all hours while simply looking at Wheaties boxes with Kerri Strugg's Olympic photo.

On Thursdays, he would make us watch "Matlock" on mute and narrate the scenes as he deemed appropriate.

Finally we had seen enough and decided that it was time for this strange man to go. So we gave him a bus ticket back to London, which he was too dim to realize was a farce. He took the ticket in hand, cleaned out his diaper, shaved his entire body, and dumped gravy on all of our heads as a sign of gratitude.

Since that day I've often thought of that man and wondered if he thought that the "normal" things that we do - showering, going to school, spitting on homeless men, eating family dinners, volunteering - seem strange to him. So, every Thursday, my family and I gather together to watch Matlock and narrate the scenes because we know, somewhere out there, there is a British man with a heart of gold making love to a pot of gravy that wishes he was with me and my family.