|
Dear Z
It now appears almost certain I was impregnated by aliens during my blackout at the Meet-the-Candidates pancake breakfast at the Rotary Club. Intuitively, I know something is growing inside of me: I feel gassy, swollen and emotional; when I close my eyes at night, I feel the leathery wings of angels beating around my head. As you know, Z, considering my age and my vasectomy, this may be my last chance to have a baby of my own outside a South Korean Petrie dish.
Unfortunately, Jeannine is not taking the news well. She's always had mixed feelings about the perpetuation of my genes, which is why (along with the hot-tub three-way with her little sister and Lumpy from apartment 4) she performed the surgeon-with-a-rusty-knife vasectomy on me in the first place. In her pain and insecurity, she's said some very hurtful things: that I wasn't really a genetic parent, just a convenient receptacle, moist and warm, for the visitors' eggs; that she'd sell my "platypus" to the aquarium in Roswell to buy a new hat; that she's never liked my special-recipe Monday-Night-Football "buffalo-style" frogs' legs. And then, of course, there are the cats: if it hops, flies, slithers or skitters, PeeWee & Tweeter are going to want to "play with it."
To be candid, I also have concerns about the delivery process: my threshold for pain is low, I've always been an easy screamer, and, according to the instructional DVD, "It's Alive!", it's not impossible baby may simply burst out through my stomach lining and crow in bestial exultation. Alternatively, it may get wedged in sideways and hang on by its claws, in which case somebody'll have to reach in, stun it, clip its nails and pull it out. (Shopping list: rubber gloves, claw hammer, crab fork, lobster bib, taser and a sturdy set of barbeque tongs.) In any case, the baby books all agree it's imperative that it not be allowed to hollow me out and feed off me on an extended basis. (Think Palin and McCain, a very sad business.)
Last but not least, it must not be allowed to escape into the heating ducts or toilet pipes, or get between the wall studs.
"No means no, thingamabob!" That's the ticket: loving but firm.
Let's add a half-dozen hits of Ecstasy to the shopping list, because whatever semi-extraterrestial grotesquerie pops out -- say a conger eel with legs or a 3-foot termite with the face of Sean Hannity -- I want to be mellow enough to say "That's cool! Mommy loves you, you little bug!"
Deep down, the social utopiast part of me is hoping my love-child of interplanetary miscegenation might help bridge the yawning gap between human and iguana -- just like the little girl in the TV miniseries "V," who averted nuclear catastrophe by holding onto both ends of the electric lamp cord hanging out of the spaceship dashboard. Gosh, that scene just blew me away. She looked like any sweet, blonde TV girl-child ... until, that is, she unhinged her jaw to eat a squirming, squeaking guinea pig whole. (That made me a bit queasy until I remembered that the Andean Native Americans, descendants of the noble Inca, also enjoy a nice plate of cuyo with black beans.) I sometimes wonder about the prejudice that halfbreed lizard-girl must have faced. Whether she stayed on earth as a right-wing talk-show host or returned to the amphibian planet to watch her earth-mother be eaten like a Cornish game hen by the in-laws -- either way, that's a tough row to hoe for a kid.
Anyway, in the meantime, I find myself spending long, rapt hours in the Snake, Toad n' Turtle aisle at the Chinese Super Market, wearing a loopy grin and crooning soft lullabies amid the jostling shoppers. I feel so fulfilled, so mysterious, so holy: I am the handmaiden of the Lord!
Henry E. Panky
|
