It's Been Tu Long

Anh Tu updated. Twice. Don't know if he'll keep it up, but it's reason for celebration in lieu of his usual level of prolificacy. Perhaps a healthy sprinkling of excitement to accompany your breakfast this morning will do. Or at least a puff of mild interest with your evening pipe. It's here if you care to look.

T-Bolt Strikes Again!

Ben was inspecting his wrists objectively and I was fingering a cup of coffee. Outside, it was exterior, and the sun (to which we owe a good deal of heat) was doing the usual. Roughly around this time, the door (to which we owe our presence inside) decided it was going to open and reveal a familiar figure on the doorstep. It was an 8. We let it in and fed it a series of increasingly fattening courses, each of which began in Germany and ended in batter. When this post's namesake actually returned from a casual sex sabbatical, he was incensed to discover us courting a number which was reclining in his favourite chair indolently. This grew to wild fury when Hugh made a joke about exchanging telephone numbers, and he dived forward and tore the 8 in half, making two little zeros which scurried out of the room as quick as their shapes and the angle of the floor could roll them. Ironically, this created the perfect solution to the 8's unwillingness to choose between its hosts, so Ben and Hugh quickly ran after the zeros, leaving T-bolt alone with an empty room and half a dozen greasy plates.

When at last Ben and I returned, we found him slumped unconsciously over the table dressed in his familiar blue outfit and white cape. A gentle prod returned him to our world.
"Hugh?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Ben?"
"Yes."
Hugh thought it best to pat him gently on the skull, while I remained my usual self and refrained from any outward displays of affection.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's OK," reassured Ben.
"Yeah, don't worry," added Hugh.
There was a pause
"We understand," I said eventually.
T-bolt looked dolefully up at me and nodded his head.

Hugh and I spent the night having wild sex with the two zeros — in separate rooms, I might add. The zeros took the Jacuzzi. (Sound of drum and cymbal.) But seriously for a moment, we both ended up impregnating our halves of the 8, and soon our DNA was swimming inside two little half-human, half-half-eights, which were so repulsive and off-putting that they had to resort to incest to quench their desires for sex & companionship. T-Bolt, on the other hand, married something far less abstract than Ben and Hugh's spouses, and had something far less repulsive and far more human-looking than the numerical cross-breeds. But was I any happier? It's hard to say. Sure, I had a loving family, a cape and a hyphen in my Christian name, but was I truly happy? And isn't it weird thinking about what cavemen would do with umbilical chords? They probably wouldn't be able to tie them up properly like we do today, so they'd be walking around with this small bit of tube sticking out of their belly. Then again, I have no idea.

T-bolt spent the next sixty years of his life investigating what cavemen did with umbilical chords, and, in the process, neglected his family. In fact he neglected them to such an extent that he didn't even notice when they left him to live with Hugh and Ben and the zeros in their joint household. But when he finally found out what it was that primitive humans did with the tube that connects the abdomen of the foetus to the mother's placenta, he died a happy man.

One day, Hugh and his zero spouse were cutting up ingredients for a big salad when the knife slipped and severed two points on the right side of the zero's body. A piece fell out and turned the zero into more of an oddly shaped "C". Adding a syllable or two, Hugh finally settled upon a name for the zero after years of referring to her as "love", "dear" or, during arguments, "nothing". Ben, on the other hand, had christened his significant other early on, and he and Nicole (or "Early On", if you want to make that joke) have never looked back.

A fairly happy ending, then.

The Rightful Return

Ben's back atop the pile of flesh, apparently organised into a ladder of sorts. And honestly, he should have never been taken off. But parodies aside, Tom clouded my judgment with the promise of a fruit tree worth of creativity, but only sent one rather shriveled apple which is yet to be delivered. Last night he moped around my garden with scanty pants and a handful of rocks crying catch-cries of the "Nobody loves me" and "My microphone doesn't work properly" ilk, while I snubbed him from the second story in favour of Hank Azaria and Jack Lemon in a screen adaption of Mitch Albom's Magnum Opus. He tested my patience, and evidently it didn't work properly. I apologise heartily to Ben and hope that Tom didn't make too much of a mess in the palace. My parting words: is it cowardice that prevents me from braving African disease?

The Depth of My Hole

So it's dress-ups and speeches. That's what I call fun. Especially on such a day as this, with such a sun as this glomping down on such a sight as this.
"Perhaps it'll remind you there's a life to be had here," said he.
"No, not here. There's a life to be had over there. I'll have that one instead," I responded.
"You're gonna have to burst out of your bubble one of these days. Why not tomorrow?" he continued.
"I'd rather stay in my bubble. Maybe I'll even invite someone in."
A snicker.

And there I sat, broken eyes fixed to the wall.
"I'll show them," I said to my arm.
It responded in precisely the way I instructed it to respond. But it still hurt.

"What can I say about them that hasn't already been said? Exactly. Thank you and enjoy the rest of the night."
A ruffle of applause and one polite laugh responded.

"But don't you see? I was there."
"Really? OK."

There are more important fings in life. Like, for instance, unmolested coffee beans. And stealing someone's looks.

Ben's Nine Tails

Ben (or 'him', as some of you know him) once told me that the secret to happiness is to find a new group of people to hang around with who are more respectable.
"A clique?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "That's a word Anh Tu would use and Harry would later recycle."
"Then what would you call them?"
"Real people."

A while later, somewhere in Europe, I had another exchange with him.
"Does this mean you're 'cool' now?" I asked.
"No. It just means I'm happier."
My face showed the disappointment of someone who booked Neil Finn for a charity auction but got Tim instead.
"Well, I have to go now," said Ben. "See you round."
"Uh huh," I mouthed.
If it weren't for our two subsequent encounters, that would have been the last time I saw him.

Ben soon found a love to accompany his life and married her. They had two little Bens and were pretty happy with each other. His real people friends wound up permanently paired-off, too, and would often meet him on Friday nights for dinner and Scrabble™. Once he even pissed in the bushes during a casual game of golf with a real person. He had to go really bad, you see.

Every morning for the rest of his life he would stand out on his front veranda and say "This is the life!". On certain mornings he would even begin to air-kiss passers-by.

Eventually his heart stopped and he with it. He was a healthy 86 when it happened. His wife outlived him by four months. At this stage, the two little Bens were adults, and were already pairing-off in preparation for the next generation in Ben's cycle. They mourned for a while.

And what of me? Well, I doubt I know the answer to that. Still, for the sake of this in particular, I'll just say that I became a hermit when the posse broke down. Boo hoo.