Think about it this way. Is a starfish a star? I’m not sure it’s even a fish. I’ve never been able to find its mouth—have you? Maybe that’s a bad example. How about the lowly foxglove, being neither fox nor glove, and certainly not a fox’s glove, which would make it very hard to eat fish, one of its favorites, after tiramisu, but what would really be hard, for anyone, really, would be to eat a starfish, and why would one even want to? I was never very good at biology. My high school biology teacher said my scores barely qualified for sentience.
Of course, I understand such distinctions are of little more than academic interest when one of my relatives is busily retooling your digestive system.
But we’re expected to look like wolves. That’s a given. And I didn’t even have a five o’clock shadow. Mine had barely made it past one fifteen. So I had to be bitten. “And,” my father told me, “you have to pretend to like it. Your Grandpa Jules is going to provide the service. It’s an honor. He doesn’t do this kind of thing much anymore.”
Grandpa Jules? I’d always avoided him. He smelled like a cheese shop with a tanning salon in the back.
The day of the ceremony I got up early and started practicing my “transformation face.” I knew that a dignified transformation face was probably beyond my reach—I just wanted to avoid looking ridiculous. You can imagine the difficulty. Not to be too indelicate, but the experience of morphing from human into wolf shape is a bit like evacuating your bowels, having an orgasm, regurgitating a week’s worth of dinners, and giving birth to a baby all at the same time. It makes for a full evening. If the wrong people witness your transformation your social calendar empties out rather rapidly.
I spent most of the morning in front of the mirror, but I’m afraid the best I achieved was the classic “My groin just exploded!” look.
How do you dress for such an event? And will there be refreshments? You don’t want to wear anything too nice, because it’s going to be destroyed. Something loose-fitting is most often recommended, but my cousin Vinny likes to wear tight clothes for the occasion—he claims the resulting explosion of material impresses the ladies. Clothing is a werewolf’s number one expense, after breath mints, with a new outfit required every full moon. I finally settled on sweats and an “I’d Rather Be Golfing” T-shirt.
The attendance was somewhat disappointing: my mother, my father, cousin Vinny and Uncle Verge, Aunt Elona, my little brother Lonnie, two old ladies from the bar mitzvah next door complaining they’d run out of cream cheese, and Grandpa Jules, who fell fast asleep as soon as he reached his chair. I wasn’t that surprised by all the empty seats, actually—the clan may claim to treat everybody equally whatever their origin, but those of us who have been bitten will always have that stench of the victim about our person and the propensity to dive under furniture when anyone cracks a smile.
The ceremony began with a speech from my father explaining why we were all there, his attempt to reinterpret my follicle deficiency as the beginnings of a noble quest rather effective until he made that strange connection between furry bedroom slippers and codfish. My mother was up next for five minutes of hand-wringing and an elaborate confession involving a bald lingerie salesman consumed during the second month of pregnancy.
Finally Uncle Verge got up to introduce Grandpa Jules. He stood at the front of the hall, both paws firmly gripping the lectern, leaned forward and looked at each one of us, his eyebrows resplendent and fully unfurled. “Grandpa Jules was a giant among our kind. He was not ashamed of who he was, although from time to time just a little self-awareness might have been nice. But if not for him, none of us would be here today. We could have been in New Jersey instead, with all that humidity! But his like will never be seen again, certainly not his exact like, that would be weird, because he never told us he had a twin, or even a brother, which might have been nice, having an uncle to take you to the baseball game, and on to the petting zoo for dinner.”
Grandpa Jules sat in the front row grinning ear to ear, literally. Finally Uncle Verge noticed this, obviously realized he’d mistakenly been delivering the man’s eulogy, pretended to choke on a hairball, and was dragged from the building.
Grandpa sighed loudly, shook his head, and climbed to his feet. Turning around at the front of the room he motioned me forward. “Come along, Lowell. Let’s get this over with.”
I had been nervous enough about the ceremony in general, but had tried not to think about the actual biting. I had never been a great fan of teeth, had forsworn zippers in favor of buttons, and avoided pianos whenever possible. Trembling uncontrollably, I came forward, stopped a few feet away, and, in a final desperate attempt to avoid the inevitable, I brushed up my scant bit of hair and imagined myself a giant onion.
Grandpa Jules saw through my clever plan and shuffled forward. Suddenly he was possessed by a violent seizure, began to hack and spit, and after a disconcerting interval of moonwalking, started removing his clothes and folding them neatly on the floor beside him. Stretching out his full four-and-a-half feet of white hairy nakedness he began to strut youthfully in my direction. As one the audience turned their faces away, some melodramatically covering their heads with whatever was available, including skirts, chair cushions, and trash cans.
With each step Grandpa Jules appeared to spasm out a different body part, jaw and ears and elbows, hands and feet elongating and twisting, pulsing and warping. It was all blurry and much too disturbing to focus on, but I swear there was a moment he appeared all haunches, hackles, and hemorrhoids.
At the end he not so much leapt as collapsed at my feet and began to gnaw on my left tennis shoe.
“Grandpa, maybe a little higher,” I said.
He twisted his head up furiously, eyeing me with those huge, bloodshot peepers, his mouth full of chewed tennis shoe rubber, Odor Eater insert and Hello Kitty logo. He spat these out and, I noticed, about half his teeth.
This was something new for me. A gaping, wrinkled mess of missing and yellowed teeth and, yes, hairy gums, and flip-flappy coated tongue, clamping onto the fatty part of my calf—if such a ruined mouth could be said to “clamp”—proceeding to vigorously massage its way up my leg.
It’s not a favorite memory. To this day I break into severe facial twitching when presented with a plate of succotash.
Some abrasion and scratching did occur, some blood was drawn, but for the most part it tickled, so much so that I became rather hysterical, jumping up and down trying to get Grandpa Jules off my leg.
I’ve never known whether they were trying to assist him or me, but before I knew what was happening my mother and my father, Lonnie, and a couple of other family members had surrounded us and, grabbing whatever on our bodies seemed grab-able, were tugging and pulling, snarling and yipping, as if somebody had exploded a hamburger bomb at the dog park.
Grandpa, in his nervous excitement, began humping my leg at the same time he was biting it. I have to admit this was a dining experience I personally had never attempted.
Finally someone brought in a garden hose and opened it up on the center of the melee. There ended my ceremony before I even had the chance to announce, “Today, I am a werewolf.”
All that occurred years ago and, mercifully, some of the more sordid details have blurred through the mists of time. Uncle Verge and Grandpa Jules are now sharing quality time at a local nursing home, climbing the fences and howling whenever the mood strikes them. Mother and Father have divorced. He currently lives under a bush in her backyard. I think she still has feelings for him—at least she throws him the better scraps. Lonnie went away to college and now has nothing to do with any of us, insisting that our condition is completely the result of dysfunctional family dynamics.
And I’m a hairdresser in downtown L.A. with a very special clientele. At least now I feel marginally part of the family. Grandpa Jules never actually managed a firm bite that evening—at most some hard-edged gumming resulting in bruises and abrasions. I do go through the change, into something that looks a
bit like a crazed Pomeranian. I try to stay out of the public eye during those times—it would be devastating for my business if anyone recognized me. But overall, living as a werewolf these days really isn’t that difficult—the hard part is doing it with style.
Eight-Legged Vengeance
JEFF STRAND
I am not typically a vengeful person, despite my “Blood for Blood!” temporary tattoo. But when my girlfriend Erica became my ex-girlfriend Erica the Skank, a bit of revenge was in order.
She claimed that she was cheating on me with my casual acquaintance Dave. However, Dave had an alibi for each weekend in question, and the Guitar Hero scores to prove it, so Erica finally broke down and confessed that she hadn’t been cheating on me at all—she just didn’t want to admit that she was repulsed by the small mole next to my ear. Now, I’m not saying that it’s an attractive mole, but give me a break. After six weeks of bliss, we were through.
And so I decided to seek revenge. I didn’t want to kidnap her dog or decapitate her favorite teddy bear or anything like that. I just wanted to do something that was clever and memorable, but not illegal or too mean. I invited my friend Dave (a different Dave than my casual acquaintance) over for a couple of beers and a brainstorming session.
“You could burn her house down,” Dave suggested.
“No. It can’t be anything that would involve the cops.”
“Wouldn’t they send the fire department instead of the cops?”
“Yeah, but when they discovered that it was arson, they’d involve the cops.”
“Bummer.” Dave took a swig of beer and swished it around in his mouth. “What about keying her car?”
“Nothing destructive.”
“What’s wrong with being destructive?”
“Destructive makes it seem like she got to me too much. I don’t want to convey rage. I want her to think I’m laughing at her, not punching holes in walls.”
“So you’re thinking more of a ‘nyahh-nyahh’ than a ‘screw you, hell-bitch’?”
“Exactly.”
Dave drank some more beer. “I can work with that. The way I see it, the best alternatives to bloodshed and/or destruction are fear and/or humiliation. Do you agree?”
I nodded. “Fear or humiliation. Yep. Both of those are good.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Humiliation might be kind of mean.”
“Dude, are you seeking revenge or shopping for an engagement ring? You have to be mean. That’s the whole frickin’ point!”
“I know, I know. I just don’t want to dump pig’s blood on her or anything like that.”
“So . . . fear or humiliation?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s flip a coin.” I reached into my pocket but found it coinless. I reached into my other pocket and found it equally lacking in coinage. “Do you have a coin?”
Dave patted his pockets, then picked up the bottle cap from his beer. “I’ve got this.”
“Okay, if it lands upside down, we’ll go with fear. If it lands right side up, we’ll go with humiliation.”
Dave flipped the bottle cap. It landed on the floor, upside down.
“Humiliation,” he announced. “Cool.”
“No, that was fear.”
“It’s upside down.”
“I know. That was fear.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Dave finished off his bottle of beer. “Fear. Fear, fear, fear. Lots of possibilities in the fear arena. What’s she most scared of?”
“Terrorists . . . cancer . . . dying alone . . .”
“What about spiders? Is she scared of spiders?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What about a big ol’ hairy tarantula?”
“I assume so. We never really talked about it. You think I should mail her a tarantula?”
“Not unless you’re a complete loser,” Dave said. “You’ve gotta be more inventive than that. Mailing a spider is a level one plan. You have to bring this to level two or three at the very least.”
“You’re right. What could we do with a tarantula to make it more memorable?”
“Dress it up?”
“Please stop being stupid,” I requested.
“My bad.”
“We need an inventive delivery method for the tarantula. Maybe a singing telegram or something.”
“Do they really do singing telegrams?” Dave asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve never actually seen a singing telegram. I thought maybe it was just something they did on TV.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Have you ever had a singing telegram?”
“No.”
“Then maybe I’m right. Where would you even go to get one?”
“I don’t know! Any party store! How can you doubt the existence of singing telegrams? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Sorry,” Dave said. “Can I have another beer?”
“Later. Anyway, I don’t think we’ll find a singing telegram service that will sing a song and then chuck a spider at her. Let’s think of a better delivery method.”
“It would be cool if we could figure out a way to get it to jump out of a cake, like one of those naked girls.”
I sat up straight. “I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“We could bake a tarantula in a cake!”
“When’s her birthday?”
“Not for a few months, but still, there has to be a cake-giving occasion coming up. It’s perfect! She gets this nice, beautifully decorated cake delivered to her house. She takes a bite, and something’s a bit off. She investigates a little further, and there’s a frickin’ tarantula baked right into the cake! She freaks out. Vengeance is mine.”
Dave rubbed his hands together in malicious glee. “You, sir, are a genius. Albert Einstein never would’ve thought of that. He would’ve thought of something about physics or science or something. A spider in a cake. That’s brilliant!”
And so our nefarious scheme was hatched. After I gave Dave another beer, we divided up our duties equally: Dave would obtain the tarantula, and I would obtain the cake.
It was a difficult decision. Should I go with chocolate? Vanilla? Angel food cake? Pineapple upside-down cake? After much thought and price comparison, I settled on a yellow cake, since it seemed like it would show off the tarantula the best. I also bought some yellow frosting and a tube of red goop used for writing words on cakes.
I returned to my apartment and played football on my Xbox until Dave showed up. He had a tarantula in a small plastic aquarium, which he set on my coffee table.
“Cool,” I said, tapping the plastic.
“You owe me thirty-five bucks.”
“Thirty-five?”
“Twenty-five for the spider, ten for the aquarium.”
“Twenty-five bucks for a spider?”
“How much did you think it was gonna be?”
“Free! I thought you’d go to a shelter or something, where they were going to step on it if nobody took it home!”
“It’s not a puppy.”
“Well, why did you buy the aquarium?”
“It was half price with any pet purchase. I wasn’t gonna drive it home on my lap.”
I wanted to smack him in the face with an empty beer bottle. “It’s not a pet! It’s a sacrifice! Why did you get a live one?”
“Where am I gonna get a dead one? You think they have a dead tarantula aisle at Walmart?”
“But . . . twenty-five bucks? It’s not even a big one.”
“It’s average size for the species.”
“No, it’s not. Tarantulas are huge.”
“You’re thinking of tarantulas in fifties horror movies,” said Dave. “This is a tarantula in real life.”
“I didn’t think it would be the size of my house, but it should at least be the size of my hand!”
&
nbsp; “It’s a perfectly good tarantula. Stop being such a whiner.”
I held out my hand. “Let me see the receipt.”
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“I’m not paying you back without a receipt.”
Dave sighed. “Okay, fine, it was thirty-two, not thirty-five. You’re so damn suspicious all the time. Jeez.”
“Jerk.”
“Cheapskate.”
“Drunk.”
“Cheapskate.”
“Fine.” I took out my wallet and dug out a twenty, a five, and five ones. That pretty much wiped out my beer budget for the rest of the month. Who knew vengeance would be so pricey?
“Oh, there was tax, too,” said Dave.
“Screw you.”
We went into the kitchenette of my studio apartment and I made the cake batter, while Dave provided helpful advice about what I was doing incorrectly, and I provided very specific suggestions about what he could do with his advice. I cursed as some eggshell dropped into the mix.
“Who cares?” Dave asked. “If it’s going to have a spider in it, it might as well have some eggshell.”
“If she crunches down on a piece of eggshell, she’ll quit eating the cake, then she’ll never find the tarantula, and then my devastating revenge will have been that she ate a bit of eggshell.” I dug out the shell bit and flicked it at him.
“Ow! Ow! Dammit! You got my eye!” He recoiled and stumbled backward, smacking into the counter.
“I did not.”
“Take a look! Take a look! Is it protruding?”
“Move your hand away so I can see.”
“I think you poked my iris, dude!”
“Move your hand.”
“Oh, crap, I’m gonna be seeing eggshell for the rest of my life!”
“Move your hand.” I grabbed his hand and pulled it away from his eye. “I can’t see it.”
“It’s in there!”
“Okay, I see it. It’s not jutting out or anything; it’s just stuck in the corner.”
“Oh, crap . . .”
“It’s no big deal. We’ll just run some water on it.”
Blood Lite II: Overbite Page 31
