Tall, skinny, 24-year-old, Humphrey Tyrone Turner, a chronically unshaven bachelor, and inveterate loner, arose from bed in his sparsely furnished apartment in Mobile, Alabama, looked past his soiled window curtain, upward at the gray skies and then downward, and profoundly sighing at the sight of the smashed and befouled motorcycle, furtively abandoned by him last night following his inebriate and resonate encounter with a large roadside Porto-potty.
Our protagonist had been granted two days of sick leave due to a painful injury to the right wrist of his tattooed and colorfully festooned, right arm. The injury was caused by his unorthodox and unbalanced style of flipping “burgers” at his regular job at the local site of a well-advertised fast-food franchise.
It can be seen as ironic that, in arguable contrast with his wan appearance, introverted persona, and misanthropic lifestyle, Humphrey, was the scion of a rather distinguished family; said elegant provenance attested to his maternal grandfather, Percival P. Pooke, who achieved world notoriety by being the first man to reach the earthshaking, radical and innovative decision to put cotton in aspirin bottles. His uncontestable claim to elevated familial standing (in contrast to his aforesaid, nondescript appearance) is supplemented by the achievement of no less than three environmental awards to his Uncle, Sedgewick T. Dumpster, an enterprising pig farmer for his utilitarian development of a much-needed woodsy-smelling deodorant for suburban septic tanks for homeowners with unstable lawns and olfactory- sensitive visitors.
Humphrey’s originally anticipated course of higher education had sadly, and eventfully, been curtailed. After graduating, from Wistful Vista High School (albeit two years late) he was successfully admitted to the local institute of enlightenment, “Saving Grace Evangelical Academy,” for which his late Mother, Elvira Swine Dumpster, lovingly and proudly, paid for tuition and board from her accumulated savings, (her “egg money”) accumulated during twelve years of employment as an egg Candler. However, he was unfortunately expelled by the Dean, in less than two years of intense study for “hedonistic behavior.” Among the institution’s allegations of wrongdoing were that of improperly playing harmonica music during his instructor’s recitation of the Biblical “begets” and, as also charged, “Sinfully and “Heretically” creating an abomination by chewing wads of bubblegum and blowing pink bubbles during the College’s solemn Eucharistic ritual.
Our protagonist had a rather limited social life. His one friend, and neighbor, “Moose” (Maynard) Creepes, an upstairs tenant and assembly line employee at a baseball hat factory, (attaching the stereotypic top buttons) would come downstairs on Wednesday or Thursday evenings, to mutually share pizza and watch television. Humphry’s sole contact with the opposite sex was his initial, but ill-fated crush on Wanda, a 22-year-old, blonde, and shapely co-worker at the burger place. Unfortunately, it would appear that they had one too many things in common, notably, their mutual attraction to girls.
When Humphrey, on occasion, chose to watch the evening television news, he did so in a state of disinterest; as he saw it, the so-called “issues of the day” were of no personal interest to him. He had no opinion or views, on politics, crime, racial inequality, or any of the prevailing issues of the day. Humphrey’s singular insularity and minimal scope of life led him to the determined view that such daily societal, and political discourse were personally irrelevant since they took place outside of his residential apartment and were merely, a reflection of the “sick” inclination of the “ elites” to engage in meaningless disputes. Regarding the unavoidable necessity to choose an American President, after a few moments of head-scratching reflection, he decided to support Donald Trump, who he observed as more entertaining than Joseph Biden, and, of the two, importantly the sole possessor of orange hair. (His favorite color had always been orange, thus eternally determining his choice of ices, lollypops, juice, and frosted Halloween cupcakes). Joseph Biden, he observed, with a measure of distaste, by contrast, has gray hair. Humphrey T. Dumpster had always hated gray, as unpleasantly evinced of late, in the overcast skies, the color of overcooked hamburgers, and the eternal stains on his window curtains. Perhaps of even greater decisional importance was the generous gift from his upstairs friend, “Moose,” of a red-colored, and stylishly white-lettered, Trump baseball hat. Humphrey Dumpster earnestly promised himself with clenched fists and tightly closed eyes that this time he would “definitely” vote.
*[Thanks and a cold mug of Guinness Stout to James Joyce, for the amended use of the name, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”].
-p.
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