An Apple A Day... (Part 1)

I've never been a fruit lover. Well... that's not entirely the truth. The truth is, I've never really been a fruit eater. Nowadays, there's just something about it that disgusts me. I think the reason could possibly be the horrendous stories my mother used to tell me as a child about it. She used to tell me that the ground around fruit trees is usually frequented my many, many grotesque animals, and is thus constantly being soaked with animal urine.

I remember one particularly crisp day in September, I was sitting in my corner of the bedroom, sneakily eating an apple, when my mother came through the door, noticed me there, uttered a bellow, and flew across the room at me, smacking the juicy piece of fruit out of my supple young hands and furiously slapping my cheeks. As she grinded and stomped the apple into the carpet with the heel of her steel-toed boot, she told me that I might as well be thirstily guzzling urine directly from the penis of a cow.

I was devastated. I was also very hungry. That apple was all I'd had to eat in several days.. (My father grocery shopped once a week, but as soon as he brought the food in the door, my mother would snatch the bags, rifling through them for what she liked and my father took what was left. I usually went hungry.)...and I hadn't even gotten to swallow any of the scrumptious fruit, due to the fact that after my horrible mother was done smacking my face, she'd reached her dry, spindly fingers into my mouth and taken the chewed remains, in addition to forcing me to throw the rest up. My punishment was to clean my old Uncle Lyle's fecal pot for three months.

Since then, I've never touched a piece of fruit. The fecal pot's smell of sulfur, bad fish, and boiled eggs still haunts me every time I walk through the produce section at the local grocery store, thus making vegetable shopping quite unpleasant. I've vigorously petitioned for the separation of the fruits and vegetables section in the store, but I've been refused every time, being told that my idea is "ridiculous" and that I'm "being disruptive" and that I "need to put my pants back on and leave the store" before they "call the police".

However, contrary to what most people think, my life was not completely controlled by my mother. At an early age, she had forbidden me from eating any type of fish, a rule that I could simply not obey. Eating fish is one of my passions, right behind getting belligerently drunk. Mother used to explain to me that all of urine that's disposed of by animals on land, runs off into rivers and the ocean, and since fish drink the water that they live in, they're also polluted with urine. For several years, I had a fear of eating fish... that is, until my family took a trip to the beach one day and I caught my mother with her bathing suit off, squatting like some horrible bullfrog, letting loose with an amber stream, right into the water. It wasn't the animals' fault after all. I was livid. I took off in a dead sprint, straight towards the boardwalk and proceeded to steal a piece of fried fish from a vendor. As I crouched, naked in the bushes and stuffed the piping hot trout into my gaping mouth, I realized that this was what I'd been looking for. The flavor had me completely hooked. No pun intended.

I normally would never bring up my mother. To do so usually makes me feel nauseas and I'm engulfed in a blind fury as I destroy every tangible object around me that's not bolted down. Fortunately, I've had a considerably large amount of alcohol and my nerves are calm as a result.

As I was saying, I'd normally never let her terrible name cross my lips, but last week I received a mysterious knock at my door.

I expressed my distaste and anger at my mother's unannounced arrival, but she informed me that she had, in fact, called the previous week and told me that she would be coming. Apparently, when she'd called, I'd been extremely drunk. I'd just gotten home from a bar, where I'd been drinking since it opened that morning. They had thrown me out of the establishment for approaching and seducing what turned out to be a cigar store Indian. My blurred vision, in addition to the Indian's long black hair and petite stature, was most certainly to blame for my indiscretion.

I returned home, pulled a large jug of homemade wine from the pantry, and proceeded to guzzle my way into bliss. I assume I blacked out, because I have no recollection of my mother calling me... or me agreeing to her visit.

Unfortunately, the day of her arrival, I was also very drunk. As I was saying, I answered the door and expressed immediate distaste at the sight of her. I did this by grunting furiously and pounding my fist into the palm of my other hand in a threatening gesture.

She stared at me in disbelief, but said nothing. Her shocked eyes traveled from my head, down to my feet.
I wasn't dressed for company, to say the very least.

I was wearing a snug jockstrap and a wife-beater. In my hand was a tall mug of gin and a smoldering corncob pipe hung from my lips. I looked like an old disgruntled Ernest Hemingway...or what I picture him looking like anyhow.

"Mother!!!" I slurred loudly, sloshing gin onto my wife-beater and the floor, "What in the name of Saint Peter are you doing here???"

"Well, I cant say I'm the least bit surprised, you ignorant drunk!" my mother spouted. Her voice sounded like a wheel badly in need of a good oiling. I pictured my mother covered in oil and heaved.

"Well, mother, you're looking enormous, as always." I said with a distasteful chuckle. "Might I add that the stench emanating from your horrid body is making me gag."

"That's no way to talk to your mother!" she screamed and heaved an obese hand at my face. I ducked it, spilling more of my gin, and attempted to shut the door in her face.

"You open that door and let me in, you piece of trash!" she shouted, forcing the door open and lunging for my gin. "And give me this!!! You aren't old enough to drink!"

"I'm twenty-seven years old, you oblivious tub of fat!!" I screamed and stumbled towards the bathroom to lock myself in. I'd wait this storm out from the comfort of my bathtub.

Unfortunately, the door of my bathroom had been kicked in several months earlier by me...from the inside. I'd been marinating my body in a lukewarm coppery soup when my phone rang. I'd burst from the bathtub with the fury of a thousand warriors and breached the door with the heel of my foot, cutting it badly. Enraged, I'd torn the door from it's hinges completely and replaced it with a soiled bed sheet, which I'd also torn down (and to shreds) a few days later when the UPS man interrupted another one of my baths.

I downed the remainder of my gin and turned back towards my enormous guest. It was becoming apparent that I was going to have to suffer through another horrible visit. I walked towards the living room to exchange pleasantries and get the ordeal over with. There, I found my mother, planted squarely on my couch, eating slices of bread directly from the sack, watching TV like a zombie. I was furious that she would delve into my personal food stash, but the bread was moldy and had been sitting on the top of my refrigerator for months now, so I held my tongue.

"Make yourself at home, mother." I said with a grin. "And don't hesitate to finish that bread off. What's mine is yours."

"Shut up!!!", she bellowed back at me, gross crumbs tumbling from the corners of her fat food hole. "I'm trying to watch my stories!!!"

"Fair enough.", I replied pleasantly, and I walked towards my bedroom, stopping only briefly to grab a bottle of rum from the cabinet. I lay down on my bed, took a large gulp of rum, and promptly passed out.