2006-02-21 - 9:04 p.m.
Huzzah! Horray! Oh happy day!
Hey hey, ho ho! Oh, so, you know.
Oh, Jubulation! Oh, Celebration!
Yahoo! Ya hey! Whoopsidoodle yay!
Oh, booble oh babble! Oh happy nabble!
Yippee Yapoo! Whatchoo gonna do?
It is a day of celebration! The sun is shiny, the sky is blue. The children are dancing and laughing in the streets. Come: Join me in joy! Break open the beer! Let’s raise a toast to pleasure and bliss!
It is a time of happiness! For the day has finally arrived. This is it! I am leaping about like a child on Christmas morning. My face is wreathed with smiles so broad that I almost resemble a pumpkin. I am giggling like a school girl on prom night! I am as joyful as the Pope on the morning of the Grand Rapture! I am as gleeful as a pig in a bucket of slop. If you called me up there to the podium and gave me the Novel Prize For Spite, I swear I could not be happier. The mascara is running in my eyeballs from the tears of joy that I am shedding. It is a happy, happy day.
You see, today is the day that Fat Boy has been banned from The Novel Café! Can you imagine? Did you ever think that you would live long enough to see this day? I certainly thought that he would outlive me at the damned place. But no: He got the boot up his capacious ass. He received the enormous eighty six-a-roo-ni. He was shown the door and ordered not to come back, ever. And not a moment to soon, I must tell you. I wish I could actually tell you the joy that this news brings me. I hung bunting all up and down the café. I tossed confetti and silver sparkle all over the 15 year old paperbacks. I threw up my hands and called out, “Cappucino and chocolate mousse cake for EVERYONE! It’s on ME!”
Just to refresh your memory, since obviously you cannot be as enthused by this news as I am, you will remember that Fat Boy is the enormously obese and miserable wretch who lives in his van, the back of which one suspects is filled with severed heads in quicklime. He has been my “bete noir” at The Novel, the delightful coffeehouse which is my second home, for more years now than I can remember. Each day you would arrive at the café to see that beast -- that foul monster of hideousness and excess -- sitting at one of the little tables peeping PEEPING at you, his jaws masticating, his eyes rolling, his smirky rubbery lips rippling.
More often than not, he would be surrounded by his familiars and sycophants -- filthy homeless men, dressed in rags, clouds of vermin and bugs dancing around their heads. They would scratch their smelly crotches, rummage through their shopping carts full of garbage, and readjust the antennae on their tin foil hats. Decent, upwardly mobile people would walk into the Novel, spot the monstrous hatefulness of Fat Boy and turn on their heels, running out muttering about how if they wanted to spend time with the creepy and the dissolute, they’d hang out at Skid Row.
Fat Boy was gay – so his particular favorite hobby was to befriend homeless gay boys just off the bus from the Midwest and offer them space sleeping on the floor of his van – for a price. He was known for bragging to his pals, in a loud voice, about how he paid some homeless boy-wretch two bucks or four cigarettes for a blow job. Yuck! Those boys are not valuing oneself highly. One can’t help but think that if you are going to sell your body, you could do better than two cigarettes and two bits.
Anyway, it is fairly recently that the manager of the Novel has come to realize that the place is falling into disrepute, mostly due to the exceedingly low caliber of the clientele (not meaning me, thank you very much). And who, in fact, was responsible for more of the filthiness than Fat Boy? It wasn’t that HE was especially unclean or dirty or gruesome in and of himself – but he drew all the very worst elements to him, and they were there with his approval and benevolence.
It was time for a putsch! After all, Crack Head had recently been ejected – and so has Skanky Jewelry Lady. The manager, perfectly pleasant young fellow who has been appointed to the job by the spooky Korean overlords, had a few words with a couple of regulars – Dopey Joe and Irritating Ralph. A short time later, Joe and Ralph approached Fat Boy while he was sitting there in front of his homeless DVD player, watching the endless movies he watches, since he used his welfare check to by one of those “All You Can Watch” passes to Blockbuster.
“Fat Boy,” sneered Joe, who is well known for being the descendant of gangsters from South Florida. “We don’t like the way you take up a table all day long.”
“Yah, Fat Boy,” echoed Ralph. “And we really don’t like the dirty, filthy jerks you bring in who are trashing the bathroom and leaving bags of garbage all over the front door.”
Joe cracked his knuckes. “Yes, Fat Boy. We want you to think, verry hard as to whether you might be happier waiting to die, since that is all you do all day, some place ELSE. Starting today!”
Fat Boy heaved his enormous, whale-like bulk to his feet, the chair creaking almost as loudly as his protesting, spindly knees. His raisin-like eyes glittered with rage and anger. “How DAAAARE you say such a thing to ME!” he snarled. “Who is telling you that I am here all day! I want to know names! Who!”
“Do you hear anything, Ralph?” smirked Joe.
“Why, Joe, I only hear a grunting noise, like from an enormous fat pig!” returned Ralph.
“Well I NEVER!” gaped Fat Boy. “I’m LEAVING! And I will have you KNOW I will NEVER be back! To Hell with you all!” And with that, he packed up his DVD player, his laptop, and his shopping cart of plastic baggies, and he loaded it all into his dirty van. He drove off – the exhaust pipe dragging against the tarmac, spitting sparks. The Novel erupted in cheers! And, as soon as he left, the Novel settled into a peaceful happiness the likes of which hadn’t been seen in three years at least. It was the very heaven.
We are told that Fat Boy has moved, lock, stock, and sycophant to The Abbot’s Habit, a scruffy coffeehouse in Venice proper. I have heard through the grapevine that they are already as frustrated and as irritated with him as we are at the Novel. He has been heard to hold forth, bragging about how HE has decided that HE will never, ever return to the Novel! Well, whatever – let him think that. Whatever the reason, let him think whatever he likes – as long as he stays far away so I do not have to spend more time with a beast monster like him than with the people I love.
Sooner or later, they will gird their loins to ban Fat Boy from the Abbot’s Habit, too. But, you see, I could really not give a rat’s ass – for his character has been nicely written out of my soap opera. And I could not be more pleased. Why, I think I shall buy myself a nice iced cappuccino this very minute to celebrate the advent of The Day Fat Boy Was Driven From The Novel!
