Long Story Short

By Manuel Royal

 

You'll turn your head and look over here one of these days, and sure I know you don't speak English, supposedly, hey, that's okay.  You're Malaysian or Brazilian or something.

You keep taking the same bus I do and I'll get on at Mackinaw and talk to you every day and talk the same words at you 'til you get off at 25th, and sooner or later it'll get into your brain, I don't care where you come from.  Surely sooner or later you're gonna shoot me a glance.  Hi!  Hi!

You're the most beautiful woman, or possibly really good tranny, I don't care, that ever I saw on the public transit bus.  It's those indigo eyes I love.  If I could just have those indigo eyes of yours in a pickle jar I'd be happy, at least for a while.  Feels good to say that out loud.  Your eyes would get me through those rough days when I stay home and can't go out of my home because of certain issues that come up re: pants.

Hi!  Right off the bat, we should have kids.  For a long time whenever I saw a baby in a lady's shopping cart at the market I'd say, "Hey, what aisle did you get the baby from, 'cause I'd pay a lot for a fat one like that," and they'd laugh, nobody takes a hint so I started putting up flyers about buying me some babies and what little response I got bore no resemblance to what I'd been hoping for.  Police guys came to the trailer and Sheila was there, she had a nose full of meth, making a lot of noise, long story short I did two years and Sheila did a nickel.

I had a court lawyer, but Sheila acted as her own attorney and made a statement, she said she had two dozen clutch purses in the crawlspace that she got on sale because they were irregular and she was going to fill them with C4 and make deadman timer switches so next time some punk snatched her purse he'd get twenty yards away and blow up into little meaty chunks and she'd dance around and yell "It's raining punk!"

So my advice is get a lawyer, because she went to St. Aloysius psych ward for two months and then they said she was faking it and she still had to do a nickel in Rockville.  I blame her dad, but he has a lot of trauma damage because he spent so many years servicing bus station vending machines.  Cycle of abuse.

So, Sheila doesn't come up for parole for a while, and meantime you look like you could squeeze some babies out, unless you're actually a tranny.  I wrote a song called "Pump You Up With Babies" but it got zero airplay.  I didn't write the whole thing down, but it was getting there.  Got a new song called "Unhand That Bitch", more of a smooth jazz thing, I'll sing it to you if you ever turn your head and look at me.  Maybe there's something wrong with your neck.  Something bollixed.  I don't care, we're all irregular somehow.

Hi!  Oh Crikey, look, here's your stop on 25th already.  Okay, sir or madam, farewell until tomorrow.  Just kidding about the pickle jar.  Think about those babies, right?  Pump you up.  Bye!

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BIO: Manuel Royal was born, like Tristram Shandy, with a broken nose.  He will die.  In between, he lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.