Twitch

            There once was a man from Northern Nantucket, named Slap-Happy Kiljoy. He was an unspectacular man, high in the pitch and mediocre in ability, yet for reasons unknown to the universe at large, he had a very high opinion of himself.

            Kiljoy believed he was a master poet, possessing a skill unseen since the ancient days of yore, when men sat around all day with lyres, eating grapes and proclaiming their verse to the gods above. He spent all his days working in a menial job at the cracker factory, although he had managed to convince himself that it was a great place to be established at and had his goal set for higher things (what those higher things are, however, we don’t know).

            In the evenings, Kiljoy went around the city, to recitals and crappy little clubs, anywhere that had a microphone that would let him speak, so he could share his poetry with the world. On one such night, he found himself at Skewer’s Steambean, a nowhere coffee house that happened to have an amateur’s night.

            He walked inside and soaked in the atmosphere. It was filled with pale-skinned geeks dressed in black clothes, typing away at Apple laptops and drinking cappucino. Kiljoy walked to the back to the pimply-faced slavemonkey behind the counter.

            “Hey there, my good man,” Kiljoy began…

            “I’m a girl!” the employee screeched back.

            “Ooh, no need to get your panties in a knot,” Kiljoy answered back, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I just want to have a try at the microphone.”

            “Suit yourself,” came the response.

            Kiljoy danced for joy, shaking his limp-wristed hands all about in sheer orgasmical pleasure. He stepped right over to the microphone and began.

            “Hi, everyone, my name is Kiljoy. Slap-Happy Kiljoy. I’m slap-happy because getting slapped makes me happy.” He laughed merrily at his own joke. Oh, I do amuse myself greatly, he thought to himself. And since everyone is inferior to me, I must amuse everyone else, as well.

            Kiljoy went on. “Boy, I just flew in from the bathroom, and boy are my arms tired!” Nobody laughed at his joke. Better break out the “A” material, Kiljoy thought.

            “Poop!” he exclaimed. “Poop poop poop POOP poop poop!”

            Again, nobody laughed. “You’re all very sleepy,” Kiljoy said. “SLEEPY! But I’ll grant you the privilege of hearing my amazingly wondrous prose, anyway.” And he began:

Soybean Jamboree
Running water makes me pee
Dripping nose
Leaky hoes
Bouncy wouncy Tweedle-Dee
 
My weenie is biggy
I wanna get jiggy
Sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex
Herpes
 
Don’t hop on pop
With a tater-tot
Throw the stones at the glass house
For the Jew has a glass jaw
He’s festive
 
Glart bweep furp quirp
Neegle-weegle funxumdum
My weenie is so large

            Kiljoy stopped and held his arms wide to the audience, expecting love and aduration. Instead, all he heard was a chorus of, “You suck!”

            “Thank you, thank you, my work here is done,” Kiljoy said, convinced despite the negative response that he had done excellently. After all, I AM the best poet on the planet. He bowed and stepped away, taking a seat at a booth in the corner, awaiting a flurry of fans.

            He didn’t get any.

            After an hour, he stood up, his eyes glazed over, his brain having ceased functioning. Set entirely on autopilot, he sat down right next to a girl at a nearby table. She was blonde, and rather short. Her face had a perpetually neutral tone that belied both amusement and absolute, stark-raving terror at the same time (don’t ask me how that works, I’m just the storyteller).

            She glanced over at him, her small mouth pulled up in a mild smile. She waited for him to say something.

            After a few minutes of staring at her like homo habilus looking at a pile of raw mammoth meat, his mind flickered back to life and he regained some semblance of consciousness. To his mind, he didn’t feel as if he had moved at all, and that this girl had come to him.

            “Ah! A fan!” he exclaimed. “I trust you enjoyed my poetry. Everyone does. At least, I do, so from that, I extrapolate that everyone does.”

            “Okay,” the girl said.

            “Oho, so you’re up for conversation,” Kiljoy went on. “I take it that you were so amazed at my wonderful poetry that you just couldn’t help but throw yourself at me? I get that a lot. At least, I think I get that a lot, so it must, quite obviously, be so!”

            “Okay,” came the response.

            “Yes, so they tell me,” Kiljoy continued blathering. “By the way, I absolutely adore the items with which you’ve garbed your feet.”

            “Okay,” she answered.

            He leaned over and flung his arm over her shoulders. “I can feel it, baby. I can feel it. I can’t live without you. I need you. My little toe will burst into flames without you. Lemme do ya, baby. Let me do you, and you can have the best sex of your life.”

            “Okay.”

            And so they had sex. A lot of it. Over and over and over. A lot. Lots and lots and lots and lots of sex. And not much else. This went on for quite a while.

            Several weeks later, after a particularly vigorous bout of impassionate sex, Slap-Happy Kiljoy turned towards the girl and said…

            “Hey, baby, I have to know… what the fuck is your name?”

            “Okay.”

            “Your name is ‘Okay?’”

            She shook her head.

            “Then what is your name?”

            “Xerxina Hubblebroth.”

            “Okay.”

            Time passed, and Kiljoy passed gas. Lots of it, believe you me. But as time passed, Kiljoy began to get tired of the monotony of his agreement of mutual torment that he had forged with Xerxina. Plus, he thought he saw an even prettier girl look in his general direction once, and he took that to mean that she had an enormous crush on him. Plus, her breasts were larger. Kiljoy decided that it was time to call it quits.

            One night, after insisting that Xerxina give him a blowjob and call him “Snuffleupagimp”, he announced, “I don’t like you anymore. I still want to fuck you, when convenient, but frankly… I’m getting bored of you. I think you’re just stupid and nuts, and I don’t see why I should even bother with you. Truth be told, I don’t think you’re particularly attractive, either. And you smell like gorilla poop. So, let me bone ya one last time, and then it’s quits, whatever-your-name-is.”

            “Okay,” Xerxina said. She shrugged, let him have his way with her, and then they parted ways.

            And see, that’s where I come in. For I met Xerxina several months later, at the very same Skewer’s Steambean, where I had been dragged to by a friend who couldn’t stay away from coffee. As I sat in a corner, sipping at the most uncoffee-like beverage the place served – water – I noticed Xerxina standing next to one of the gumball machines looking forlorn. She noticed my gaze and walked over.

            “Can you break a dollar?” she asked. “I want gum.”

            “Oh, don’t bother with the dollar,” I answered, tossing her a quarter. “Go nuts.”

            “Thanks,” she said. After quick return to the gumball machine, she walked back to my table and sat down across from me. She took the gumball between her thumb and forefinger and held it in front of her face. With a fluidic grace that would make Amazon ballerina mutant alien porn stars from Belgium jealous, she arched her neck forward and wrapped her lips around the gumball, moistening the surface so that when she pulled back, dragging her mouth along its surface, it glistened. She opened her mouth to ravage the gumball yet again, dropping her jaw enough so that her arched tongue was clearly visible. Again her lips landed on the gumballs surface, this time probing a bit more, sliding forward and back again, repetitively.

            She continued playing with the tiny orb for about a minute, during which my eyes became quite transfixed. With a wicked grin on her face, she suddenly popped the gumball into her mouth and took an exaggerated chew out of it, breaking the spell. I grunted from realization that I had a small sheen of sweat on my forehead (but, then again, I usually did. I’m just gross like that).

            “That was amusing,” I said.

            “Okay,” she answered.

            “Okay? That’s an awkward response.”

            “Okay,” she said again.

            I arched an eyebrow. “Why, pray tell, is it okay?”

            “O… o…. okay…. I don’t know!” she exclaimed, obviously unaccustomed to that line of inquiry.

            “Why is your first instinct to say ‘okay’ to what someone says to you?”

            “Because… because… because of HIM!” she said, and then she laid out the whole sordid tale of Slap-Happy Kiljoy. His grandiose words, his from-the-heart blatherings, his numerous insistances of some huge star-crossed romantic thing. Then she told about his sudden reversal, his unpredictable and unreasonable dislike of her. I laughed throughout the whole story, thinking that it was a joke (for real life couldn’t possibly be that ludicrous, right?). Finally, she stopped.

            “And…..?” I said.

            “And what?”

            I blinked. “What’s the punchline?”

            “Punch…? Oh, no, there is no punchline.”

            “Wait… you mean all that was true?”

            She nodded.

            “Holy hell.” I smacked my forehead with a ferret. The ferret squeaked and ran away. “The stupidity of some people.”

            “Oh, yeah, he called me stupid a lot, too,” Xerxina said.

            “Right… well… what’re you gonna do?”

            She nodded. “Yeah, well, if that’s how he feels… obviously, he doesn’t care about me, so I’m just going to move on.”

            “That’s a healthy attitude,” I said. Feeling a bit gutsy, I glanced around. “Say, do you particularly like hanging out at a coffee house?”

            “Not really,” she answered.

            “Wanna go grab a bite to eat?” I asked. “My treat.”

            “Okay.”

            A few days later, I was awakened by a spastic pounding on my door. I threw on some pants and walked downstairs, trying (in vain) to regain something more than just half-consciousness by the time I reached the bottom. The pounding continued unabated, and some incoherent shouting was thrown into the mix.

            I pulled the door open, thinking that it was a Mormon or something trying to save me from Satan. But it was worse, far worse. And far more annoying.

            It was Slap-Happy Kiljoy.

            He was waving a stick around, jumping around like he had ants in his pants, and slobber was pouring out of his mouth. His eyes had a crazed look to them. As soon as the door opened, he rushed right up to me, waving his arms in the air and screaming hysterically.

            “Foobagoobajubbawubba!” he screamed.

            “Wha…?” I muttered, confused beyond belief.

            “Kurgadiggathimbadimba!” he continued.

            “What the hell are you saying, you friggin’ psycho?” I said. I reached out, grabbed his collar, and slapped him.

            That seemed to do the trick. “You no can touchy Xerxina!” he yelled, his foam and spittle spraying all over my face. “Me no likee you do! You no can!”

            “Xerxina…?” I asked. It took me a moment to recall the girl that I met a few nights ago, and with whom I had grabbed a burger and chatted with.

            “You no can!” he repeated. “Me say nobody can touch her! I mark territory on her! She mine, for all time, my toy, my precious!”

            I was utterly baffled by this time. I began to suspect that I was dreaming.

            “Me no like you if you touch her!” he continued on ranting. “She mine! I boink her, so she mine!”

            I turned away from this jibberish-spouting maniac and shut the door. I grabbed my forehead. “I gotta lay back on the booze…” I grumble to myself, and shuffled back upstairs to bed.

            Another few days go pass. I ran into Xerxina again, and we chatted for a while. Conversation delved back and forth among such topics as politics (a favorite choice for her), science and physics (my own preference… imagine how overjoyed I was to find someone who could understand what the hell I was talking about!), and just about anything that struck our fancy. After several hours, however…

            “Oh, by the way,” I said, as the memory quickly returned. “I think I met that guy you told me about… Slap-Happy something.”

            “Kiljoy?” she said, her eyes going wide. “What’d he want?”

            “I’m not sure,” I answered, “he was spouting a lot of gibberish, and I wasn’t really awake. Something about how he doesn’t want me ‘touching’ you or something.”

            “Touching me?”

            “Yeah, it struck me as odd, too,” I said, “especially since I haven’t touched you at all. Do you have any idea what he…?”

            “Oh my god, this is horrible!” she exclaimed. “I should talk to him, make him feel better, give him a blowjob!”

            “Wait… what…?” Again I was confused. Puzzled, if you will. Utterly addled. “Why would you want to do that?”

            “Because he’s upset!”

            I paused, trying desperately to find the logic in that response. Finding none, I said, “So?”

            “Don’t you see? If I ever came into contact with someone, I am then required to give up anything and everything I consider important to appease that person’s sense of hurt!” She jumped up from the table. “I have to go.”

            I jumped up too. “Just a cotton-pickin’ minute, here! Do you think you should?”

            “Of course not,” she answered back. “In fact, I know I shouldn’t. It would be the dumbest, stupidest thing a person can possibly do.”

            “Oh, so you’re not going to do it,” I said with a smile of relief.

            “No, I’m gonna do it,” she said.

“Why? For logic’s sake, why?!? He treated you like garbage. Threw you to the wolves the second he thought he had the chance at better pickings. He pretty much said that he hated being with you, that you were nuts and stupid and worthless. And you want to go back to that… why?”

            “Because he’s making lots of noise!” she exclaimed, and ran for the door. But she didn’t get very far, for Slap-Happy Kiljoy appeared there at that very second. She skid to a halt, and he threw his arms wide.

            “Ah, my dear, my love, my cherished possession!” Kiljoy exlaimed with a flamboyant flourish. “Yes, I have returned, and you may once again have the honored privilege of sucking my most glorious cock! I can’t live without you, Xerxina. You bring out the worst in me!”

            And with that, he threw her arms around her, not in a hug, but in a gesture of dominance. As he kept her in his isolating embrace, his eye turned towards me. He bared his teeth, and a drop of spittle oozed down his chin.

            “You no have her!” he screeched as the wild, uncivilized glint returned to his eye once again. “She mine!”

            “Okay,” I heard her mumble.