In Search Of The Point
Episode One: The Walls Have Ears, But No Q-Tips To Speak Of
by Scott Hefflon and Jeff Pare (Additional Cheese Dip Provided By William Ham)
Illustration by Rob Zammarchi
“I’m waiting for the iced tea to come out of your nose.”
“What?”
“I said, I’m waiting for the iced tea to come out of your nose. The last time I told someone that, iced tea came spraying out of their nose.”
“I still don’t understand,” Craig pleaded, trying desperately to understand the physics of one’s nostrils suddenly becoming dual spigots for Lipton’s most popular product.
“O.K., I’ll tell it again. Every time I look at that broken fire alarm, I visualize: My roommate, stark naked, standing on a telephone book that’s balanced on top of a speaker, with a hippie chick wearing only a g-string helping him balance, holding a broom with which he is trying to break the fire alarm, which won’t shut up because it’s trying to alert him to the questionable nature of his own reality.”
Craig dreaded the reply, but knew he had to ask. “Why?”
“Because that’s the way the fire alarm got broken. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”
With that, Craig exploded, literally, leaving only a small nimbus of carbon dust behind as spontaneously combusting people tend to do in this part of town. Hmmm, Duiszk thought as he lit a cigarette from the dying blue flame Craig left behind, much more dramatic than iced tea. Course the last guy had enough brain capacity to live through the punchline.
This was Duiszk’s kick. Recently, he had discovered that if you told someone an unrelated, relatively odd anecdote about nothing in particular, you could produce some interesting responses. Reactions were fashionable these days (at least if that article in Illiterate’s Home Journal was to be believed), and he seemed to run into them quite regularly, mostly due to his roommate. He decided that he would become the world authority on the subject. Yes, this will be my Quest, thought Duiszk, to find, record, and catalog odd occurrences and their subsequent reactions. To boldly go where no man, few women, and only two squirrels have gone before, came the thought from the upper left-hand corner of the room. Ah! Speak of the devil, thought Duiszk. Actually, maybe I’ll do that later. My roommate’s home.
Fejod sang a happy song as he skipped into the apartment and slid in the puddle of congealed Craig. “Duiszk!” He spat some globular vocabulary at his roommate. “What the foul-foul-filth-and-further-foul is salad dressing doing on the linoleum?” He ran to the sank and grabbed a sponge. “Cookies go on the side of the plate, and the Thousand Peninsulas goes in the closet. And don’t give me that ‘Yeah, but there’s not enough room’ routine. I’ve heard it all before. Al Capella used that one this morning and I had to deduct two points off his overall score. My feet are dirtier than yours, and you know it. You just keep that in your front pocket and play with it on rare occasions, O.K.?”
Fejod skulked into the foyer and stood on his head, which hurt his back but made him more attractive if you discounted the footprints on his scalp. Duiszk wiped the marble cake crumbs off his shoulders and put them in the filing cabinet in the manila folder labeled “CRUMBS, PASTRY: A-M,” then resumed counting to zero. He had been at it all morning and was becoming quite adept at skiing in the process. He farted and smiled at his wit. Fejod threw up on himself out of boredom. Duiszk lit himself on fire to outdo him. Fejod sprinted into the bathroom to get some lettuce to throw at his infintesimally small-minded compatriot. “More spaetzle! More spaetzle! More spaetzle!” they chanted in a round, then shifted into an oblong for tax purposes. They grew dizzy and collapsed on the flypaper. “Been redecorating again, I see,” Fejod spat at his fellow man-thing. Duiszk again wiped the saltine dust from his overalls and gave Fejod a look so dirty, he regretted it later. So he helped clean it up. They realized they had been ostentatiously ubiquitous so they rendered each other an odd shade of curious orange and called it a day. Fejod wanted to call it a melon baller but Duiszk overruled him. Too many implications, he implied by doing nothing. So they called it a day. It didn’t seem to mind.
Duiszk went into his room and mentally checked off all of his rationalizations for his present lifestyle. First and foremost on his list were those that involved Fejod. He’d gone through these thousands of times. He’s interesting. He’s unique in that derivative way of his. It makes life a challenge, like naming all 42 presidents in descending order of shirt size. Those were among the most popular rationalizations. From out of nowhere, the phrase Oh, he’s harmless ran through his brain. (This was not quite true, but those vacuum cleaner days were long past.)
The problem with Fejod could be summed up in two words (or one if you don’t know how to use the space bar) – Reality Ado, the newly classified mental disorder now available over the counter. A person afflicted with Reality Ado caused the fabric of reality to fold and twist around them in concentric, circular patterns. This means that the closer you got to Fejod, the less your reality meant. (Needless to say, Fejod got seriously laid by rock ‘n’ roll junkies and origami fetishists who were in it just for the rush.)
The other problem with Fejod was his ego. This was standard for manic-impressive Ado personalities. Being the center of your own reality and reaping only self-fulfilling profits does that to a person. Still, it was known to cause problems between Duiszk and Fejod.
Duiszk pondered this at length, waiting for inspiration or something to fall out of his brain.
No. No. NO! Don’t ever think thoughts like that when Fejod is around! Too late – out came his cerebellum.
“Shit,” exclaimed Duiszk, “I know that for some reason I’m probably going to need that.”
“Fffeeejjjoooddd…”
“Yeah, man?”
“Half my frontal lobe’s in my palm over here.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Things were whole again. Duiszk again began to re-evaluate his roommate status: a) The rent’s good and Fejod usually springs for the groceries. b) Chunks of brain keep dropping into my lap and he never plucks the hairs out of the soap when he’s done using it.
Fejod sat in his own little world, as per usual, creating and destroying the little microcosms of his personal reality. What he was currently dwelling on was creating rivers and streams within their abode. He had to do something – his most recent mindset was What if anything really matters? Here he was, the supposed master of his own spatial existence, yet he could not functionally wash dishes without altering his world. The worst part is my damn subconscious has a god-awful sense of humor.
“Wonder what Duiszk’s brain is really like?” he queried aloud, then began absent-mindedly removing his fingers. “I got the whole batio in my hands,” he sang to himself in a wobbly, off-key tenor.
Duiszk felt a sudden emptiness. “Huh, must be hungry,” he stated. (Got the whole brain in my hands) “Guess I’ll get something to eat.” He left his room, resisting an unnerving compulsion to move boxes. (Got Duiszk’s brain in my hand) He walked to the fridge. (Whole damn brain in my hand)
“No. That’s cruel,” Fejod thought, “and in udder poor taste.”
“Milk’s gone bad,” Duiszk called from the kitchen.
“Christ, what a moron.”
“BHHHHUUURRR!!!” the door insisted.
“I’ll get it,” Duiszk chimed.
To be continued…