Bird

Years ago I went to a city college and had to take math, english, history, and science. I thought it was strange that I took all of those classes in high school so I could graduate and take them all over again.
It was in the fall and I sat on a brown bench on campus. There was an identical brown bench across the concrete path from me. And there, nestled under the shade of an oak tree, sat a fat man. But you wouldn?t believe how fat he really was.
And I could not believe it. When he first sat down everything stopped, as if the whole world had become a picture. I saw every student in the background, and clouds of smoke that hung in mid air, and the sunlight that blended with the shadows from the tree. Some kind of God must have frozen time for a brief moment, just long enough for me to get a good look at the man. Long enough for me to hear the bench creak and moan when he eased his ass upon it. The fat man sat across the path from me, unknowingly creating a moment for my life.
Then the birds resumed their songs and the students? voices rambled on. I stared at him because he was larger than any man I had ever seen. I wanted to absorb every visual detail, because when I tell you he was big, I?m not sure I?m making my point.
A mountain. Now I thought sure the bench would crumble under his weight. He sat off center on it, his mass crushing the planks of wood that used to be alive, but were now cut in pieces and drilled with bolts. I watched him eat chips. He had red shorts on that held back bubbling pockets of lard, all zipped in and tucked away and ready to burst. His legs could not be considered a pair, but more like individual life forces, each one being too large for a human body to support. But there, resting on the edge of the path they sat, like fallen trees, propped up on the heels of his shoes that he couldn?t tie. Each leg was large enough to support an elephant or a bus. They were enormous cylinders of meat getting eaten by white tube socks. He wiped his fingers on his shirt. The mountain.
He stretched his shirt and propped himself upright, looking for some form of comfort. He laid his arms on his stomach and shoveled in more chips. A girl stopped in front of him.
?Hello Dave,? she said.
He nodded and muffled a ?hello? through some chips. They spoke of going to class and seeing each other there.
When she moved on, Dave had changed. He looked spent, like the strain from his conversation had winded him. He started breathing through two gaping nostrils and slowed down his intake of chips. I saw him struggling, battling the carbon dioxide for fresh air. Then he gathered himself and tilted his head back, looking at the sky. Once he felt under control, Dave opened his esophagus, and swallowed the mash of orange pulp.
Then something happened that shouldn?t have happened. It was one of those things that you need to see in order to believe (so feel free to not believe me) and I am now convinced that it did not happen by chance, but was planned by someone or something. Some unknown force aligned the planets and the Gods had a good, hearty laugh.
Another fat man sat down next to Dave. This new fat man looked like Dave?s twin with the brown hair, huge thighs and bulbous face. His T-shirt seemed to conceal the same rolls of blubber and his shorts the same bags of fat. This new man?s jean shorts looked more like jean spandex.
Dave noticed the new fat man and said, ?Hello, Dave.?

So there they were. Side by side. Dave and Dave. Slowly, like glaciers, crushing the wood bench. Over time, the oak would splinter underneath them and collapse in ecstasy, released from its hell, finally returning to mother Earth.
Soon, Dave and Dave?s sweat would pool inside giant creases of fat and run like rivers down to the wooden bench. Each successive layer of brown paint would corrode under volumes of salty water. I could see that some sweat never reached the wood, but soaked into their T-shirts and formed giant wet spots.
I could see it happening, like a show for me, like a gift in a boring life. They pulled and tugged at their T-shirts, searching for a moment of comfort that wasn?t there. Dave nodded and Dave licked his lips. They readjusted themselves. More people flooded the concrete path, all of their voices combining to have the same, mumbling tone.
Dave and Dave laughed at something and bounced their breasts up and down. People walked right by without noticing and I wondered why they didn?t look. Why didn?t they, like me, take time to notice the phenomena sitting on the bench under the oak tree?
Then my brain switched. I don?t know what happened, but I lost any sort of control I had over my mind. I heard voices in my ears and saw images in front of me.
?Am I speaking? Who is this? Am I listening to myself, to myself, to myself??
I looked up and thought I saw concrete blocks falling down from buildings. Just before they fell on my skull I?d blink and shake the image from my eyes. I looked at the campus and the students, and the Dave?s, and saw bowling balls falling out of the sky. But no, God, I didn?t want to think of raining bowling balls that smashed into people and drilled them into the concrete.
Oh, what was happening to me? I shook my head, trying to numb my brain. When I stopped I saw a wave coming at me from across the campus. It built gradually, rising like a giant wall and coming for me. It got dark on campus as the wave got bigger than the buildings. It crested above me, and I remember wanting it to crush me into the bench and plow me into the Earth.
But the impact would never come. It was almost worse to wake up and hear a thousand different voices all around me.
?Is that me? Are other people talking? What? ?.Hello??

I couldn?t stop thinking of intense pressure. The strain of the bolts in the bench, the fibers of the wood being squeezed. I pictured a pair of human jaws with giant teeth smashing into each other over and over. Bits and pieces of enamel shattered around my head as the imagined teeth grinded away, pounding one another like two sledgehammers into white stumps. I shook the image and gazed at the two Dave?s.
Was I not being polite? Would it have been more polite to deny myself of something so unique? Should I have walked away, only to forever question what I saw that day? Wasn?t I the only one that truly saw them? That was truly giving to myself?
My brain searched for answers. I tried to think of a test, of why Dave and Dave sat in front of me that day. Strange thoughts and images flooded my head. Voices came and went like the breeze.
I focused on the space of dirt underneath the leg of Dave and Dave?s bench. The square of dirt was neatly trimmed from the surrounding lawn. A centipede slithered from under the leg and into the grass, gone into its universe. The centipede was a king, a ruler of its world. Yet where was I? Who was the king in my universe and whose bench leg was I under?
I felt small, like a molecule inside a pubic hair under a basement floor. Dave and Dave were there to make me feel that way, and I suddenly became aware of myself in relation to the surrounding world. Dave and Dave?s sheer size, their dimensions, were placed before me in order to test my mind. Could I handle the sight of them together? How fragile was my mind? Who was speaking inside of my ears? I wondered if I could survive in a human race if there were no laws to protect me or schools to hide in? Could I survive if I was left to listen to my own brain?
Of course I could, and I wasn?t going to let the sight of those two mammoths make me go crazy. I would not allow it. They laughed, spitting out crumbs when they spoke. I thought they laughed at me because they knew I was sitting there in agony, slowly losing my mind like some sort of boob. As if the observation and intricate detail of them was too much for my brain.
No way, not me. I was a man, a human being capable of thought, and I?d be damned if I was going to let two fat Dave?s guide my thoughts down a road of psychosis. I refused to not see them and I refused to live in fear of my own mind. The students walked by without noticing the similarities in the Dave?s and that?s just fine. They didn?t care about the same straight brown hair, multiple chins and rolls, thunderous legs, or pudgy faces. I wanted to tell someone that those two guys over there are both named Dave just so I could see a reaction. I wanted to know if it was me, or if someone else would also stare in amazement.
I would not sit by to wait. I became flooded with the urge to give some kind of shape to life, and to create an image that would force those that would not look at the two Dave?s to finally see them. Somehow, others needed to see what I saw.
I leapt to my feet and crossed the path. I jumped atop Dave and Dave?s monstrous thighs and turned to face the students on the path.
?Behold,? I yelled, ?I am the Cock! And these are my two giant Balls!?
And everyone turned to see.

Spunky

Cliff notes?....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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