His hands are the size of Genoa hams and well suited for pulling the
kneecaps off of longshoremen. He walks towards me and, without
introduction, pulls my eyebrows off, slowly and deliberately, like a
doting mother pulling a band aid off of her sissy son. He puts them on
his upper lip and smiles; his smile is resplendent and angel-thigh
white; a fox’s mouth, full of newly laid chicken eggs.
The sun is setting.
As he smiles, he points to his new moustache with two well-muscled
thumbs. His thumbs are huge and seem to have elbows instead of knuckles.
The warm scent of ground spiced sausage drifts through my splintered front door and we all hear:
“Meat-a-balls; Get your fresha-hotta meat-a-balls here…”
Then, with improbable aplomb, the strongman somersaults through a previously unbroken bay window.
This is why I don’t care for strongmen.
They are as nimble and capricious as they are strong.
Pete fires up another filterless Quinton, smoking it through his
tracheotomy hole. He blows smoke and leans against a wall. He leans with
the gravel throated insouciance of a Hollywood cowboy.
My dog Pete is drinking and smoking way too much these days and has
made some very poor decisions; to wit, the bringing home of stray
strongmen.
Pete tells me that he won this strongman in a game of chance and that I
am honor bound, as his owner, to help him raise the strongman, to give
him a home. Pete said that a guy said his strongman has night terrors
and is prone to fits of snuggling.
I tell Pete to take a flying shit at a rolling toilet.
I think Pete’s reasoning is horseshit, even for a talking dog, and I tell him so via rolled-up newspaper across the snout.
Pete shakes off my discipline. He puts his heirloom watch back into
his vest pocket and falls back to the ground on all fours, cocking a
hind leg. Emitting a smoky, robotic whistle from his tracheotomy hole,
he micturates on the front of my slacks.
Fucking dog dandy!
Fortunately, my slacks are made from genuine Guatemalan duck’s backs so his dudgeon just beads up and rolls away.
Now the strongman is back, this time covered in brick and rubble from
loping through my front wall. He reeks of horse and Italian meats. He
stands there with a meatball smile and again he points to his upper lip
with his two blue-veined thumbs.
The strongman is now wearing a double-decker; one the color of ginger,
and the other, my erstwhile eyebrows, a rakish salt and pepper.
Outside I hear the plaintive hooting of a distraught meatball vender. I
look out to see his upper lip, ghostly pale, hovering over an angry and
disillusioned beard.
His cart is on fire and his horses lay on their sides, twitching,
having been buggered into a restless sleep by this bi-mustachioed
rascal.
In the middle of my living room the strongman begins posing; first the
Crab pose and then leaping into a sprightly front double-biceps.
I glance at the strongman and then at Pete who whistles blithely into
the air. Pete checks his pocket watch and slowly begins licking himself,
adhering to a tight schedule.
I decide to strike a javelin pose followed by a side-triceps.
The strongman mistakes my shared interest in bodybuilding poses for a
calculated insult and bends me into a supplicants pose. Then, applying a
technique he learned from party clowns, the strongman twists me into
the shape of a balloon Weiner-dog and casts me out of my bay window and
into the night.
Pete buckles with laughter.
I float into the sky; Pete licks; the strongman howls in terror as some night spills into the room.
Pete brays as the strongman approaches, pleading with his eyes for quiet snuggling.
I continue to float higher, wondering just how warm the moon is and if
it really isn’t a meatball, praying that strongmen don’t know about
rocket-ships.
The Strongman
Sean Ruane is a shuffle footed basket of slurs. He likes coffee, beer, and Boolean algebra. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children. He has a masters degree in experimental psychology and is working on masters degrees in computer science and creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.