September 06, 2004

Mustard Plug

The weather was so nice in Brooklyn today that Chris decided to venture out from his dark, dank writing room and see how the rest of the world was getting on these days. As you can imagine, being a writer keeps Chris indoors for days and months on end, with no human interaction besides the brief exchanges with take-out delivery men. Oftentimes when he finally does leave the apartment, Chris feels and, with his overgrown fingernails, beard, and tussled hair, looks like a man who just awakened from a fifteen year coma. He’ll wander around wide-eyed, with his mouth hanging open, shaking his head in disbelief when a new car drives by, looking perplexed as a boy rides by on something called a scooter, and doing double-takes when scantily clad teenagers flip him the bird.

He did all those things again today on his way to the park, stopping only briefly to buy a hotdog from a street vendor (he also shook his head in disbelief when he was given 2 choices of mustard, both yellow and dark).

“Does this world of the future have room for an old relic like me?” asked Chris.

“Hey, brown or yellow, asshole,” replied the vendor.

With yellow-mustarded hotdog in hand, Chris walked happily through the park. In the park, hidden from the ever changing city, things looked familiar to Chris. There were children giddily throwing sticks at each other, euphoric old couples dancing barefoot, men with grave expressions on their faces flying kites, puckish women climbing trees, and snickering squirrels throwing nuts as passing dogs. These things made Chris feel at home again, and he decided to take a nap underneath his favorite willow tree.

While Chris slept, with the breeze flowing through his Herculean locks of hair, a fly landed near his lips and began to slurp up the bit of mustard left over from the hotdog. Normally I would let this pass, as the fly was, in a way, doing Chris a favor by cleaning him up a bit. But this fly wasn’t just eating, it was also singing. And not only was it singing but it was singing a song that it was clearly making up as it went along. This was too much.

Yummy, yummy, yummy
I got mustard in my tummy!
Yum, yum, mustard is good.
Yummy, yummy, yummy,
I’m a fly, not a bunny!
Yum, yum, bunny’s are dumb.
Yummy, yummy, yummy,
I ain’t playin’ gin rummy!

“Hey, not too close to the lips, buddy,” I said.

“What do you mean, mite?” Asked the fly.

“I mean, fly, that you’d best keep your filthy mouth away from Chris’s lips.”

“Oh, you mean…like this?”

The fly then kissed Chris repeatedly, making exaggerated smooching sounds like when someone kisses a baby. Inside my brain, I felt a twig snap, a door become unhinged, and a bird go cuckoo for Coco puffs.

I leap through the air and landed on the fly, and before he knew it I had tunneled under his skin. This, understandably, made him freak out, and he took off flying straight up, screaming his head off all the way.

“GET IT OUT OF ME! GET IT OUT OF ME!”

I reached his brain in no time and all. Once there, it didn’t take much effort to gain control of his nervous system, and I was able to set up a very comfortable makeshift cockpit, complete with a steering apparatus, foot peddles, and a hole for me to see through (which was nothing more than an actual hole I kicked in his head).

After getting the hang of it, I soared through the air over Prospect Park like a stunt pilot, doing all sorts of eye-popping acrobatic stunts, including rolls, dives, and loopdeloops. A few other flies even clapped and cheered as I raced by them.

All in all it was a grand day, and I was sad to leave my new toy behind. But I couldn’t, in good conscious at least, keep the flyplane stashed in Chris’s hair or stuffed up one of orifices. It just wouldn’t be right.

So after I deplaned, I put the fly on autopilot and sent him off towards the sun. Thanks to the recent mustard meal, he had plenty of fuel left at that point, and, as Chris yawned and awoke from his nap, I waved goodbye to the fly as he slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

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