Mighty Joe Ugly

“Help me Megaman. Please help me!” screamed the pretty young lady from inside a car hanging perilously from the side of a bridge. Megaman flew down to the front of the vehicle and grabbed the bumper just before it plummeted into the river some 100 feet below. He picked up the car as if it were made of cardboard and gingerly placed it safely on the road. In a blur, he quickly moved to the driver’s side door and pulled it off its hinges using nothing more than his pinky finger.

“Oh, Megaman. You saved my life. How can I ever repay you,” the pretty young lady said in a sweet, sexy voice.

“I think I can come up with something,” replied Megaman as he placed his hugely muscled arms around the young lady’s waist and slightly bent her back to prepare her to receive a famous Megaman kiss.

“Slow down your movin’ to fast.
“You’ve got to make the mornin’ last.
“Stepin’ on the cobble stones.
“Doot-in´ doo-doo
“Feelin’ Grooovyyy.”

Joe reached across to the clock radio he had set on full blast the night before and hit the off button. He fell back onto his pillow and rubbed his distorted face with his misshapen hands. It was time to get up. He couldn’t delay any longer. He wanted to get back to his semi-sleep dream world where he could imagine himself to be anybody he wanted. He often dreamed of being a superhero, especially in the mornings. It helped psyche him up for the day ahead.

He sat up and rotated his contorted legs over to the side of the bed. He set his clubbed feet on the wooden floor of his cheep one room flat just a few blocks from the university he attended. Joe got up and walked over the half bath, separated from the rest of the apartment by a blanket he had hung in the doorway. He wondered why he’d bothered to hang it there. Nobody ever came by. Some innate sense of decorum must have been the motivation. He pushed the blanket aside and entered the bathroom to perform his morning ritual, which began with one of the many humiliations he would likely face today. He had to look into the mirror.

Joe was one ugly son-of-a-gun. He had wavy, dirty blond hair, at least in the patches where hair grew on his football shaped head. His ears were shaped like grotesque cauliflowers, which wasn’t that terrible, except for the fact that his left ear was about an inch lower than his right or maybe his right ear was an inch higher than his left. It was difficult to tell with Joe. His nose protruded from his small red face like an overgrown hawk’s beak. His eyes were bugged out and bloodshot and always seemed to look in different directions, as if they were transplanted from a giant chameleon. His lips were pencil lead thin and his chin was, well, nonexistent. His neck seemed to start at his pitiful bottom lip.

The rest of his body was nothing to write home about either. As he grew from a child, some body parts developed faster, or slower, (again, it was difficult to tell with Joe) than others. By the time he was sixteen, his torso was so distorted that he had a tendency to walk in circles. He learned to compensate by taking shorter steps with his longer leg. Needless to say, he was not a chick magnet. You would think that such a boy growing up in our beauty conscience culture would become one of two things. Either he would be a total recluse, living in the shadows, coming out only at night, trying to avoid as many people as possible or a mad, insanely jealous, serial killer of beautiful people. But Joe was neither of these.

He somehow managed to stay levelheaded. His parents had taken him to some of the best reconstructive surgeons in the country, but all they could do was throw up their arms in resignation. They tried a little tuck here and a bone implant there but it hardly made any difference. Over time, Joe resigned himself in the knowledge that this was his lot in life. He would look this way until he died. With this resignation, came the will to accept his condition and to concentrate on improving his mind. He had enrolled himself into the pre law program at the University. He wanted a career of helping those like him, if there were any, fight the discrimination he faced all his life. His grades through school were excellent so he was able to qualify for a four-year academic scholarship. Although Joe excelled academically, school was not a pleasant experience socially.

He went through public school friendless and under constant harassment by the “pretty people”. He even had to suffer the torments of the not so pretty people, who were also harassed by the pretty people. Joe was the bottom rung of the harassment pecking order. But did Joe accept this? You bet he did. What could he do? When classmates called him names like banana beak or Spalding head or elephant man (he heard kids yell “I am not an animal” more times than he wanted to remember) or pretzel boy or Joe ugly or His Hideousness, all he had to do was look in the mirror and have to agree. Kids are cruel but in Joe’s case they were also right.

Acceptance didn’t mean that Joe liked his situation. It was intolerable to him. However, he had long since acquiesced to a life of loneliness and isolation. He spent all of his time after school in his bedroom studying or reading comic books. He loved to fantasize about superheroes like Superman and the Green Lantern with their perfect physiques and power over everything and everybody.

He would lose himself in those comics and for a while forget about his anguish. He imagined himself as a superhero. Perfectly sculptured in body and face. Fighting the good fight against evil foes. Standing up for the underdogs who were defenseless to stand up for themselves. His fantasies became quite elaborate and vivid in his mind. He would spend hours alone with his eyes closed imagining characters for himself. One day he was Jungle Joe, a super version of Tarzan. Another day he was Megaman, the man with the strength of a million men. He was especially fond of Hom Lee, a ninja type character with the power to turn evil doers into hideous creatures. As he got older, he would create female super partners and have super sex fantasies. These imaginings helped maintain his sanity and he was able to keep them separate from reality.

Joe stared at his distorted reflection in the bathroom mirror and wondered why, as he did most mornings, he was born this way. He had searched his soul for answers but found it empty. It wasn’t fair. Why did he have to carry this burden? He would have liked to have friends, maybe sometime even marry, but those wishes seemed more remote than his fantasies. He wondered why God did this to him. He had often asked himself that question and had come to two possible conclusions. Either there was no God and he turned up craps in the crap game of life or that there was a God and, for some reason, He screwed Joe over good. He preferred the former. However, he wanted desperately to believe. He needed God in his life and he needed to know why He did this to him. If only he could speak to God for a few minutes. Joe shook his head at the absurdity of the thought and turned the water on to wash up.

After dressing and slinging his book bag over his humped shoulder, Joe made his way down the four flights of stairs to the outside world and began the 15-minute walk to the campus. He walked in his usual manner, with his head down, shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. He was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible and ignore the usual gasps from passers-by and pointed fingers from giggling children. After walking a few blocks, he noticed that the pedestrian traffic was less dense on the other side of the street so he decided to cross.

He looked up to make sure there were no cars coming, not necessarily for his safety, but to prevent the usual accidents from rubber-neckers. As he was surveying the traffic, he spotted a church across the street. It was a small white church, one which he had never noticed before, which was tucked between a delicatessen and a dry cleaner. Joe thought he remembered that spot to be nothing but an empty lot. “When did they put that there,” Joe wondered, “It looks like it’s been there for 50 years.” He stood pondering the church, ignoring the tire squeals of the cars as they avoided collisions.

When the traffic cleared, he hobbled across the street and stopped at the church door. It was an ordinary door. The church itself was an ordinary building, a perfect cube from what Joe could tell. In fact, it didn’t really look like a church at all. There was no denomination name scribed anywhere. He knew it was a church only because there was a small sign over the door that read “This is a church”. This puzzled Joe and he was compelled to look inside. He reached for the knob half expecting to find it locked. He turned the knob and heard the latch click. When he pulled the door open he began to have second thoughts about going in. Then he heard someone from inside say in a clear voice, “Come in Joe”.

Joe was taken aback for a moment, but entered none the less. “Do you know me?” he asked tentatively.

“I know everyone Joe,” answered the disembodied voice. The church was dark and he suddenly realized there were no windows. The only light that entered was through the half open door behind him.

“Come in. come in,” beckoned the voice, “Have a seat”.

“Where are you?” queried Joe, trying to adjust his eyes to the dark church interior.

“I am everywhere,” was the reply.

Joe suddenly realized what was happening. “What is this, some kind of joke?” he asked irritably, “There’s nothing you can do that hasn’t been done before, so piss off. I’m outa here.” As Joe turned, the door suddenly slammed shut and a dim light began to fill the entire church. There was now enough light to see the ten or twelve rows of pews running across the middle of the building. There was a layer of dust over everything, so thick that Joe’s hand became half buried when he grabbed the back of a pew. He quickly picked his hand up and brushed the dust away.

The voice returned, “I’ve been waiting for you to find me for a long time Joe. We need to talk.” Joe quickly lifted his head and looked around to locate the source of the voice. The interior was made completely of old pine boards, floor, walls and ceiling. On the altar, there was a large pine table devoid of any religious articles or props except for a single piece of white linen that draped over the front. There was no one to be seen.

“Please have a seat” the voice again beckoned. A gust of wind, or something Joe wasn’t sure because he didn’t feel any breeze, blew the dust from a small area of the pew in front of him. Joe became frightened. He still wasn’t sure if this wasn’t someone screwing with him, but the possibility was fading fast. The pew creaked as Joe sat in the designated spot. “There that’s better,” said the voice

“Who are you and where are you?” asked Joe for the second time.

“You won’t see me but I’m here.”

“What do you mean I ‘won’t’ see you?” questioned Joe.

“You are a clever boy Joe, already with the good questions,” replied the voice, “I am God.”

Joe sat silently for a few moments. Then with a nervous laugh said, “What? Come on. Who’s doin’ this?” Joe began to rise to leave but someone grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back down onto the pew. He looked to the right to see who it was, but there was no one there.

“This is no joke Joe, I am God.”

“Then prove it,” responded Joe.

“You’re asking me to prove my existence?” came the thunderous reply, “You know a lot of people got into some real hot water asking me to prove myself”.

Joe persisted, “Well you’ve got to admit, It’s a little specious when a voice, that can be made through a loudspeaker bought at a Radio Shack, claims to be God.”

“‘Specious’? My, that’s a big word. Did you learn that in college?” the voice quipped.

Joe was stunned. If this was God, which he still highly doubted, why was he being so sarcastic? “Did I just hurt God’s feelings?” he mused.

“I’m just having some fun Joe,” the voice said, “You didn’t hurt my feelings. Actually, I don’t have feelings, not like you understand them to be anyway.”

Joe remained stunned. “You read my mind!” The statement barely made out of his mouth.

“What’s in your mind, the words you say, what’s in your soul, they’re all the same to me,” explained God.

Joe was beginning to believe. He buried his face in his hands and began to mumble and rock in his seat.

“See that, one lousy miracle, or what you people think of as a miracle, and you begin to grovel,” God said impatiently, “Lift your head, and stop all the ‘I’m not worthy’ stuff and let’s just talk, man to deity.”

“What do you want of me?” Joe asked in a quivering voice.

“Well, for starters, I wish to apologize to you.”

Joe was again stunned. “God wants to apologize to me?” he asked surprisingly, pointing a gnarled finger to his protruding breastbone.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” God replied contritely.

“For what?” asked Joe, still stunned.

“For what? You are a good kid,” God said almost to himself, “for allowing you to be conceived in the condition you’re in. You think I did that on purpose?”

“Well I sometimes wondered why you made me look like this. I mean…” Joe was cut off mid-sentence.

“Please Joe, you never really believed in me. Don’t tell me you thought about blaming God. I’ve been waiting, since before you were a teenager, for you to think positively of God so that you could find me, but that’s all beside the point. Now that you’re here, you should know that you should not have been released. It was a mistake.”

“Oh that makes me feel better. First you apologize for making me ugly then you say that I was a mistake,” Joe said indignantly.

“That’s not what I meant”, said God, apparently struggling, “This is hard. Your creation was not a mistake Joe, Your condition was. You weren’t finished. Your soul wasn’t properly assembled.”

“You mean you screwed up? God screwed up?” queried Joe even more indignant than before. This was a reason Joe had never thought of. He was the way he was because God made a blunder.

“Yes, you can say that. Is it so hard to believe? There's a new human birth every tenth of a second. You think it's easy to work at that pace? If you people would stop copulating for 5 minutes maybe I could catch my breath. I may be all powerful, but even God needs some time off."

Joe was, well, stunned. A lot transpired over the last 15 minutes. First, he met God. Then he found out that he – his life – was the result of a divine mistake. “Does this happen often?” Joe asked God, hoping for some answers.

“No, maybe one in twenty billion,” replied God matter-of-factly.

“What about all the people born blind or with birth defects,” Joe puzzled, “aren’t they your mistakes?”

“They are unfortunate, yes, but they aren’t my mistakes. They are victims of natural variation some time during their physical development on earth. You’re a different case. Your physical appearance is a manifestation of your incomplete soul. You slipped through the cracks, somehow got through quality assurance."

Joe was beginning to become quite upset. "So, your saying that my appearance, the bane of my existence, is due to mistakes in my creation, before I was even conceived?"

"Yes, Joe. I'm still not sure how it happened. The assembly process is usually foolproof, but even an omnipotent being, such as myself, can make an error now and again. Just look at the aardvark. It wasn’t meant to come out that way. Sure, I was young then, but it just goes to show you even the best of us can make mistakes,” God said, trying to be reassuring.

Joe sat there surprisingly composed. Especially, for a guy who just found out he was the victim of what would probably be the biggest liability case in history, if he could bring it to court that is. Joe tilted his oblong head slightly to one side and began the think about what he had learned in his tort class at school.

“Hey wait a minute mister. Are you thinking about suing me?” God asked in righteous indignation.

“I have the right to bring claims against you for causing me grievous harm through your negligence,” Joe responded lawyerly.

“You want to bring a malpractice lawsuit against God? That’s pretty ballsy, even for a lawyer, which you aren’t yet by the way bucko,” God replied smugly. He continued, “Listen Joe, I didn’t come down here to argue. I came to explain what happened and to make things up to you by repairing your soul.”

Joe’s heart skipped a beat. “You can do that?” he excitedly asked.

“What do you think Joe?” God asked rhetorically. Joe could feel that God raised one of his eyebrows, if He had eyebrows.

“If you fix my soul will that make me handsome? Will I look normal? Will I then be in your image?” Joe queried.

“I don’t know where you people got that ‘in my image’ baloney, you all don’t look a thing like me, but yes, you will be ‘normal’” Joe could feel that God did that quote thing with his fingers, if he had fingers.

Joe thought again about his tort class. He became emboldened by thoughts of his life, of the years of anguish and pain he was put through all due to a seemingly avoidable error with his assembly in heaven or where ever he was put together. He was due more than to just be normal. He was due some damages and the law had mechanisms to get him what God owed him.

“I’m not sure I want to settle for just being normal. I think you owe me a little more than that,” Joe coolly pontificated, “If you're admitting to malpractice, then I’m entitled to multiple damages in keeping with the general principals of Tort Law. If you were found guilty in a court of law, a jury of your peers would likely award me punitive damages of some large multiple of the actual damage occurred through your negligence. That’s been recent precedence anyway.”

God thought for a moment, then argued, “Where are you going to find a jury of God’s peers?”

“I can find them,” Joe retorted, “The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dali Lama, they could be summoned to render a judgment. However, if you want to keep this out of the courts we could settle right now.”

“Lawyers,” God said with resignation, “I’m not normally held to man’s laws but I am your God and what example would I be setting if I try to shirk my responsibilities. OK, What do you have in mind, as if I don’t already know?”

The front door of the church burst open. There on the stoop stood a man, no, more than a man. It was Megaman, the superhero with the strength of a million men. Megaman leaped from the church stair and flew into the sun lit sky to fight the good fight against evil foes and to stand up for the underdogs who were defenseless to stand up for themselves.