I WOULD REALLY LIKE THIS JOB

c 2007 Tristan Winter

 

 

When I was a child, I often thought of pleasurable things, and pleasurable things thought of me. Or so it seemed at the time. When I learned to speak I realized that the world did not even exist at all.

This was fortunate, because I was born to an abusive father who could not understand how he ever got pregnant in the first place, and frequently expressed his frustration by hurling little airline bottles of Jaegermeister at me for hours on end.

From this sordid, alcohol-soaked past I rose to become the most important man of letters in the entire Post Office. My reputation was a jewel in the nation’s crown, until the critics, burning with envy, attacked me en masse for my translation of Marcel Proust. This evil calumny exploded with the publication of the very first volume; the one where he slips on a schnitzel and it sets off all those memories.

Still, though glory had been mine, companionship seemed to elude me, for all the women in my life, though hypnotically beautiful, seemed to model their personalities after Benito Mussolini. Thus I eventually opted for solitude, although the police did tell me I could have a family someday.

Not everyone abandoned me, however. In my darkest hour many great men still maintained a secret alliance with me. My advice was sought on every subject, and I had a very deep friendship with my drinking buddy, the Prime Minister, until one day I bet him he could not sing the national anthem forty times while rotating his legs.

By the time he got out of the hospital I was far away, having forsaken the Scandinavian vulva for warmer climes, where until recently I had an excellent business selling human pizza toppings.

Also I can spit real far, and -interestingly enough- my last words were “Am I still alive?”