Maniac

A True Tale of a Maniac

As related to Deborah J Lindsey by T.M.M..

I am the THE Maimed Maniac and this is my story. It is a sad tale full of similes, metaphors and onomatopoeias. Please, no pity, no stares, no muffled blatant remarks. I can still see, feel, taste, hear and smell. I can still laugh, but I have not laughed in many years. Tears have become my meat and drink, my night and day, the cesspool of my maimed existence. My screams of utter despair rock the night like fireworks gone bad. Sorrow erupts from my bowels and bursts forth, brilliant and dazzling; then fizzles out, leaving the night blacker and more desolate than before.

I was not always the mutilated, mangled, miserable clump of manhood you see before you. I was once THE Dancing King. I was a regular Bo Jangles and I could jump so high and lightly touch down. In those days, my shoes were soft and the living was high, wild and sweet. Coins jingled in my fedora and whiskey flowed like mellow brown rivers. Women paraded in and out of my life like two-bit carnival acts, but there was one that stayed and when she left she tore my very heart out of me. Breck was her name. She claimed to be one of the original Breck girls from the shampoo commercials, but I had my doubts. Breck tended to exaggerate and sometimes she down-right lied, but I never let on. I loved her that much! We rented a little flat above a Chinese deli and set up housekeeping, but we never married. Life was pure gravy in those days. I danced at night and she sewed for rich ladies while memorizing commercial lines from the telly.

"I'll make it big again one of these days THE, just you wait and see!" She always called me by my first name and I liked it that way.

The trouble with Breck was that she had a wandering eye. I didn't mind it so much in the beginning because her eye usually wandered in my direction, but when Louie Louie took over the Ribald Dance Hall and English Tea Room, things began to tear apart. Louie Louie was a boisterous, booming Irish man with a shock of red hair and a brogue that could tame any she-devil. Breck was bedazzled by him from the start .

More and more, I watched Breck's wandering eye stray and linger on that Irish hell- hound. He sat with her at our table and whispered in her ear, calling her "lass" and "m'dear."

One night I overheard him call her his "wild Irish Posy". I exploded. I became a maniac!

I didn't become maimed until later. I jumped higher than I ever had before and touched down smack dab in the middle of the table, landing not so lightly on Louie Louie's left thumb. He screeched in agony and swore to kill me and I swore to kill him right back. We locked horns and roared from one end of the hall to the other. We became a furious cartoon whirl with limbs sticking out at odd angles from a seething, boiling mass. There were stars, asterisks, ampersands and @ symbols flying about like arrows. Words like

CRASH, OUCH and I'LL GET YOU MY PRETTY onomatopoeiaed about the room with tornadic force.

Suddenly, Louie Louie broke free and grabbed a tray a Royal Dalton and crashed an entire service for fifty over my head. I sat there in stunned silence with shards of fine china sticking in my face. Then roaring like a beast, I tore half an ivy-patterned teacup from my bleeding scalp and pounced on Louie Louie with the vengeance of the maniac I had become. Louie Louie was just where I wanted him and I was ready to put out his lights, when the room pulsed with stars, moons, clovers and hearts. I fell over in a dead faint, and when I came to, my legs were shattered, my nose was gone, and the unmistakable imprint of a waffle iron marred both my cheeks. Breck and Louie Louie were nowhere to be found.

I never danced again, but I was able to eke out a living for myself doing sales commercials for car dealerships and furniture warehouses. These jobs were short-lived, however and employers willing to hire maniacs, were not so easy to find, especially maimed maniacs. So I roamed the country like a gypsy moth drawn to the flame of destruction. I worked carnivals, as a roust-about by day and a freak maniac by night. It was a cheap Ripley- reject kind of a side-show life and I was just a minor attraction. Women fainted and babies cried when the curtain was thrust back revealing my horrific self. Men picked at their teeth and tried to look up the fainting women's skirts while I struggled against the chains that bound me. I made guttural animal sounds to please the crowd. I was an actor doomed on a stage from hell.

I never dated a woman again, but I never got over Breck because I often search the audience for her with my one good eye.

Halloween is swiftly approaching. It is my holiday-my season in the sun. My howl in the night. My night to howl. On Halloween creatures like myself can walk the city streets, drink in bars, go to parties, and do things normal human beings take for granted. Halloween is near and I am preparing for a long-deserved night out- unmasked. Perhaps, I will meet Breck across a crowded room. Perhaps? I am hopeful.