Much Ado About Mike

My name is Mike and I've learned that people will stop at nothing to see you naked. It's been going on for weeks and seemingly normal people have become completely ridiculous. Of course with a story like mine, and the type of gossip that follows it, I'm guessing most people can't help themselves.
Let me begin by announcing I am not that interesting naked. I have the usual equipment and an ass used mostly for sitting on -- who doesn't? But that's it -- no piercing, no tattoos, no birthmarks or hair in improper places. So why are people so intent to see my body in the buff?
It all begins back in late January. I worked for a pizza place named Scary Joe's in a town called Serenity. It's an ugly town -- with ugly people too. Lots of people with odd sized nostrils and dirty teeth, living in homes with hollowed out porches for their three-legged lab dogs. I try not to interact with these people. I'm not like any of them and I sometimes wonder how I ended up living among them.
Joe, the owner and my boss, isn't a particularly scary man -- at least not in an intimidating way. His stomach folds over his belt buckle, the fuzz-patched flesh jutting loose from his flour-stained brown work shirt. He keeps a toothpick in the right corner of his mouth causing all speech to droll from the other corner of his mouth like a drunken Scotsman. He's a nice guy. One of the nicest guys I've met in Serenity. But he does have what I call a "sergeant streak" to him. When things aren't going quite the way they should and he thinks I'm to blame, he slips to military lecture mode. Believe me it's much worse to listen to the ramblings of a discharged ex-sailor than any father. Oh and Joe spits when he yells. I always have to wipe off my face after getting in trouble.
That late January day I was taking an order from Wendilice (pronounced When-da-lees) who lives about two blocks kitty-corner from us. She drops in about the same time every afternoon and orders the same order in the exact same words with the exact same stupid red flowered skirt wrapped around her wavy bulging waist.
"I'll have..." she began, but I tuned her out, staring blankly at the wall clock. I didn't know how it had gotten so slow but it seemed to be slowing down more. Time would come to a standstill soon. She paused momentarily and interrupted my space-out. "Did you get that?" I nodded. She sat down.
I felt like telling her, as she took her seat that she could just poke her bug-eyed face through the door...or better yet just mash her face against the window where we can see. Then we could make her 16" mushroom and tomato pizza with "slightly light sauce spread evenly please on a pan crust baked two extra minutes." I had heard it so many times I could write it on the walls of my bedroom in my sleep. I knew Joe was hiding in his office, probably sleeping, -- the lazy fat ex-sailor. He just sits there and scratches his nuts most the afternoon. I've caught him a couple times, hand wedged under his zipper casually scratching. To think, that guy makes almost a third of the pizzas these people eat. No wonder they look inbred.
Anyhow Wendilice was sitting on the plastic bench, the middle of it bowing under the weight of her ass, staring at me as if I was so incompetent to screw up the order I had made every day of work for over seven months.
I grew tired of her breathing as I made her order; relentless wheezing from her nose, the nostrils expanding, constricting, expanding, and over and over. I tried and I tried but could not ignore it. In fact, the sound seemed to grow until it was all I could hear.
It must have been the trance-like state I was in that led to the accident. Now I had heard of hairs ending up on pizzas before. Most times, it probably comes from your head or maybe an eyebrow. These are the most likely because they're up above the pizza and gravity takes its course. Of course, legend has it that pubic hair is most common, but how this happens -- well it seems impossible. This late January day made it seem a little less impossible. To this very moment I fail to understand the physics of it. I make pizza at chest level. The hair would have to travel up 24 inches and down an arm. Frightening to think a pube to be so mobile as an inchworm. Perhaps that's how they end up near the top of the shower walls.
Anyhow, a few minutes later I handed the boxed pizza to Wendilice. She ushered herself through the door as her body struggled to keep up. I released a breath, slumping in relief of the daily Wendilice order at last gone by. I was deeply disturbed by her return 17 minutes later.
She oozed out of the seat of her Green Tercel, her knees nearly buckling under her, and waddled toward the door, kinda like a pimp-limp but less graceful. Her stringy gray hair fell all directions over her neck and face. It was clear she was distressed. Her lips pressed hard against each other and her facial chub lines stood out more dark and definite than usual. She meant to shove open the door and dash through the jamb in all her anger. Her fiery bug eyes squinted shut though, as physics declined to cooperate, the door falling shut against the remaining inches of her back end. The pinch gave her a jolt but she resumed her angry stance.
She stood a confrontational 19 inches from me, breathing her shit-scented breath into my face. Finally she ended the suspense, opening the box. The pizza looked fine.
"Well, what are we going to do about this," she huffed indignantly, drawing my eyes down with hers.
"Ma'am?" I asked blankly, looking down at the pizza. It was fine. Even the crust looked perfect.
"Oh you know what..." she stared at the nametag on my chest, "Michael"
I looked at it again. I looked at it from side to side, up and down making mild grunts so she would think I meant it. "No ma'am, I don't." I took a less polite tone at this point, "But if you would be so kind as to point it out perhaps I could help you."
"Don't get smart with me you little pig shit!"
Pig shit? Hadn't heard that one yet. "Sorry. But ma'am I don't see what the--"
"You mean you don't see it?" she yelled. Man her breath stank. I had always been amazed at people's breath that smelled like feces. How does that scent end up in one's mouth anyway?
"No ma'am, I don't see it" I answered turning my head down to avoid her breath.
She stood still -- probably waiting for me to finally notice the problem. Finally, letting out an agitated huff, she reached down and pulled a curly red hair from the right center of the pie. She held it an inch from my left eye.
"You see that, Michael?" she said enunciating my name with a condescending emphasis. "That is a pubic hair." She said it as if I were the anti-Christ.
"Oh..." I paused and examined the hair.
"You are just full of pranks aren't you, you little pig shit?"
Again with the pig shit. Who was this strange woman? "No ma'am I didn't do that on purpose.
"But it is yours," she retorted.
"Mine? But I don't have red pubic hai --" I cut myself short, "Wait I don't have to tell you that!"
"Only redheaded little punks like yourself have red pubic hair!" she yelled.
"But my hair isn't even red, it's dyed."
Oh yeah she'll believe that. Thing was it was the truth. I dyed my hair a couple months ago because I was sick of being blonde. I knew from years of peeing that my pubic hair was dark brown, definitely not red. But she wasn't buying into it.
"You can't even lie good. I want my money back."
"But that hair isn't mine!" I shouted back. Now I was yelling too.
"I want my money!" Wendilice yelled.
Damn! She would wake up Scary Joe and then God only knows what would happen next.
"Fine." I said begrudgingly, my teeth clenched, jaw flexed. I slapped the cash on the counter with a huff.
"Your zipper's open," she said peering down at my crotch.
I looked down. She was right. I quickly zipped. "Do you always look at people's crotch like that?" I asked snidely.
"When there's a pubic hair on my pizza, I do!" she said with emphasis on the phrase 'pubic hair.' She left after that, fisting the wad of cash on the counter and waddling out. I didn't really think much more about it -- well besides being annoyed. What I didn't realize is how fast rumors travel from place to place, especially if people like Wendilice start them. And travel they did.
Wendilice must have a vast outlet of derelict contacts. I could just imagine the spectacle that must have been; town hall for a bunch of sheep humping John Deere rednecks with 13 teeth talking about my pubic hair. The thought made me cringe. But in spite of their intellectual and physical shortcomings, they have the gift of gossip and before the week's end I found myself entrenched in awful guffaws and obscene comments every day I arrived at Joe's. If these subhuman twirps had a second gift it would have to be vulgarity.
Joe's business declined of course. There were picketers, toting their signs outside the window day and night, their smell alone surely detracting from the potential business from other outlets. Joe was upset by this and began to threaten me. "I'll vire you!" he'd yell from the corner of his mouth and point sternly at me. I wasn't scared of Joe but being broke was different. So reluctantly I came to the conclusion that I had to do something.
One thing had to be made clear. That was not my pubic hair. This was the emphasis of my campaign. I wasn't sure how to assert myself. I had friends to be sure, but the sordid type of hillbilly brotherhood I was up against had bonds running bone deep. My friends might testify to my honesty but what good is that against the infamous "pube." In case you are now asking yourself if she kept it, the answer is, sadly, "yes."
She saved it; kept in a miniature yellow envelope. It has more than once been issued to bystanders as physical evidence when people made inquiries into my breaking scandal.
"You see that, it's red!" she would yell and then stare with her bug-eyes and fat jello-face right at me through the window.
I assume this is how I ended up on the third page of the community section of our local newspaper late the following week. I had a chance to detail my side of the story to a reporter, all too greedy in his plight to get a juicy human-interest piece. I was reduced to discussing my pubic hair to someone who was to publish the information for the entire town to see.
I didn't leave the house the following day. Not that that was any better. My parents, until now, knew nothing of the scandal. It was embarrassing enough to have it to my own thoughts and then tell my friends. None of that mattered now. The whole town knew. Even sweet old Mrs. Finch next door, the very lady who gave me caramel-covered apples every Saturday and told me what a nice boy I was -- even she knew!
"What the hell is this?" my mom asked dropping the opened paper in my lap.
"That article is totally unfair. You know my hair isn't really red! The reporter made it look like I had something to hide." And he did. At one point in the interview, after repeatedly asserting the true color of my pubes, the reporter requested an opportunity to "set the record straight with concrete evidence." In layman's terms this meant showing my crotch to a total stranger, a reporter of all people. Somehow that didn't seem like a good idea. How do you get a job with a history like that? 'So you showed your genitals to a reporter...because he asked you to?' 'No it was my pubic hair' 'I see. We'll be in touch.' So anyway, by not exposing my crotch to mister newsman, all the article had in my defense was mine and my friend's word against a whole section of town with evidence of the pubic hair in question as well as the open zipper story.
"I told you to zip up after going potty." Mom said
"Mom why do you always say 'potty'?" I whined, "I'm 18 years old. I have a car. I have a job," I assumed, "and I'm going to be starting college next year."
"And you forgot to zip your pants up. You've come a long way haven't you dear?" she mocked patting my shoulder. She came around in front, staring down her face at me. "So what are you going to do about this?"
"I'll have to keep telling the truth," I replied breathing out the words in a long exasperated sigh.
"Good luck," she said with a tone that said she expected far less than good luck.
Good luck indeed -- that's what it turned out that I needed. As the weeks rolled the calendar into March and April the magnitude of the scandal escalated far beyond anything I could ever imagine. This is the special charm of any small town such as mine. Any news was big news and with 1100 people, this scandal was king.
Several articles ran, interviews requests came almost daily and people on the street could pick me from a crowd so accurately, I swear they likely knew the texture of my middle-right toe. I had many requests for evidence to prove my innocence. It was hard not to give in to the pressures, I have to admit. But my principles, my dignity as a young man were surely at stake. I fought myself many a time but stood determined not to show the public my pubes. This is most likely why on April 17th an editorial graced the local papers with the following headline. "What does Michael have to hide? -- Show us the Hair."
This article was absurd to put it lightly. The whole premise was a call to action on my part to prove myself. He went so far as to request my "public stripping at the City Square amphitheater." If I didn't -- It was up to the readers to take it upon themselves to learn the truth. It ended in three words, which frankly made my skin crawl -- "No matter what."
I wasn't real worried at first about what might happen. I was pretty disturbed by the newspaper and the fact that they could run such a disturbing piece of literature. But I was banking on the assumption that most of the people in Serenity that were causing me all this grief didn't know how to read. Oh sure they probably had skimmed Cat in the Hat and figured out the gist of the story from the pictures, but I didn't think they would pick up a real live newspaper and decipher all those words. How wrong I was.
I've found out that even schoolteachers aren't immune to the mindless persuasion of a newspaper columnist. I also found out they have pretty sophisticated means of installing locker room surveillance equipment. Luckily I discovered these cameras while I was clothed. Of course I always was these days anyway.
I didn't dare get naked anymore. I didn't even trust my own parents who developed this weird habit of barging into the bathroom or bedroom without knocking. They tried to play it off as simple accident but I'd have to have been fed paint chips for years to lack the common sense to realize the truth. That sort of accident just doesn't happen five times a day, every day.
What got really scary was walking the streets of town...something else I had to quit doing. Hell, even riding a bike was a risk. I probably put every school nerd in history to shame with the number of pantsings I got.
One day, on my way to the mailbox, some business-looking man and his kid almost became the town heroes. They hid behind one of those huge evergreen bushes until I was at the mailbox. They were cunning, swift and before I knew it, the kid had his fists wrapped around the bottom cuff of my shorts. I looked up and saw the father cameraman glaring through his movie machine with a grin so evil, I almost made a cross to make him go away. The kid tugged and jerked away as I held up the waistband, hoping the shorts didn't tear.
"Turn him around, boy!" The evil cameraman yelled frantically. "We don't need no picture of his ass! Turn him around!" The boy pulled left and pulled right, jostling about from side to side. I was pretty scared now. The kid was doing whatever this crazy man with the camera told and I realized that he would get desperate. I had to do something.
I can't remember how it happened now. My idea was to kick the kid off away from me... but more of a shove with my foot than an actual kick. But I guess what happened was I flung my foot out to the left just as the kid came swinging back in the same direction. I kicked the little bastard a good five feet. I didn't even look at the dad and ran inside.
I suppose I should have made the paper for that incident -- 18-year-old assaults first grader. But instead, the amateur video this lunatic produced filled the third news story slot on the six o'clock report. The dad didn't tape "the kick." I realized that day that my life was over. All the normal adult things that people do were a distant dream for me.
From that day forward, I made some major life changes. I quit my job and moved into a tent in the backyard. I wanted to move further away, far away from Serenity and all these backward-ass hillbilly idiots, but I didn't even want to attempt moving a few blocks out of fear of repeated stripping attempts. I lived off of the frequent donations of oatmeal and Spam my mother left outside my tent door and managed to kill off thirst with the little dew drops that collect on the inside of the tent walls.
I think about stuff now and again. I sometimes wonder why I had so much pride. I could have shown the world my pubes. But then again, that doesn't solve anything. That red hair could never have been mine. By now, no one would believe me anyway. "You dyed them, you little pig shit!" That's what Wendilice would say. I also wonder from time to time just whom the hair belonged to. Joe's hair is gray, Wendilice had gray hair... no one has red hair. I guess I was the target. But it didn't matter. I was finally safe from the world -- all alone, in my tent, probably forever. But at least I never showed the world my pubes