Pinky-Von-Sox
and the Cave of Squawking Mumbles
Chapter Two
It was a few months earlier when
my best friend, Leaves, had originally asked me if I 'wanna go on an adventure with
him'.
His voice was excited, warm, joyful, friendly, voicelely, seemingly
defecating delight in a way which bathed the third eye, and yet I still knew exactly
what he meant. This was Leaves. That meant by ‘an adventure’, Leaves meant he wanted
to go out somewhere local do something violently unadventurous.
You
see Leaves, despite being my best of bestest friends, is unfortunately just a really,
really, super, really, super, totally, super, ridiculously really super boring
guy.
Named
for the first thing his mother saw looking up after pushing him out of
her, Leaves was born in a small tree house home in the suburb of Mexico City,
in the city of Mexico City, in some unnamed country in Central America. With a
Swedish mother and a pre-US State Era Alaskan father who himself had one
Belarusian parent and One Sri-Lankan parent. They were part of a popular
religion at the time, the Treechrisinas,
a group who believed that Green Tree Frogs had sweet lives, shiny bodies, and
were a fun color, and wanted in on it.
Leaves
parents had been sent to Mexico City by the Great Froggington, the religions
leader, to live in the only two trees left in the entire urban sprawl, figuring
'we get those two trees we'll have a monopoly, and according to the board game The Game Of Life, having a monopoly will
make you rich, and get you a $10 prize in a beauty contest, and what’s the
point of craving shiny green skin if you cant win a prize?’
Yet
Leaves wasn’t as enamored with tree life as his parents were. In fact from an
early age he was mostly fascinated by a local dirt-runway airfield that was hidden
behind those two trees. The planes were exciting, adventurous, flying, and
planeyey, and seemed to betroth airborness in a way that soaked the fourth
mind.
‘Where
do they go?’ he’d think. ‘Where do they come from?’ he’d wonder. ‘Why do my
parents make me eat flies with my tongue?’ He’d ponder. ‘How come despite my
exotic genetic background I look like just a regular Mexican, like a young
Chong, or Cheech, which ever one was the Mexican one?’ He’d contemplate. ‘If I
went somewhere on one of those planes could I be someone else, perhaps even anyone I want to be, like even some
non-frog freak?’ He’d muse.
One
day he asked his parents these questions. It didn't go well.
‘Your mother slaves in the kitchen all day to serve
those flies for you, stop being so ungrateful you little shit!’ his dad
screamed in response.
So
Leaves ran. Ran straight for the airfield. Found a small Cessna parked next to
the Churro stand, and snuck onboard while it’s pilot flirted with a
roller-skate wearing waitress. By the time the pilot had watched the object of his affection get
caught in a gust of wind and roll away into a marsh, and climbed back into the
cockpit, Leaves had crawled into a small crevice under the steering wheel, where he got trapped.
Too
embarrassed to say anything, seeing as his Spanish was affected by a Swedish
accent his mother gave him (just like Cheech, or was it Chong with the Swedish
accent?), that he thought made him sound like a French person doing a mocking
impression of a Chilean trying to learn Norwegian, which was a popular Vaudevillian
trope at the time. So Leaves just stayed put and stayed quiet. And for the next
four years he stayed put and quiet here full time.
It
turned out that this particular Cessna was a drug, alcohol and exotic bird smuggling
plane. And for the next four years Leaves would stay trapped in this tiny space
as this plane circumvented Central America, South America, North America, and
even dabbled a bit around West America, East America, South East America and
America Samoa.
Luckily
for him the pilot of this plane, Juanosa, was addicted to buffalo chicken sauce
so would buy wings by the bucket load, lick off all the sauce, and jam the left
over chicken into the gap behind the steering wheel figuring that they'd
eventually find their way out the landing gear, and he wouldn’t have to deal
with parrots looking at him sitting next to a bucket of bird bones with fear
and suspicion. And so that's what Leaves ate for four years, himself shoving
the bones out through the landing gear whenever they arrived somewhere. He’d
drink the water from the windshield sprayers to quench his thirst. And he'd
shit and piss into the engines and imagine his excrement spraying over forests
and gardens and fertilizing the world. It was a more than satisfying way
to survive.
Sometimes
Juanosa would call his girlfriend on the radio and describe what he was seeing,
and Leaves would dream around these descriptions:
'I'm
over the ocean, what do you think I'm seeing fucking goat herds?'
Or,
'I'm
over the desert, what to you think I'm seeing fucking whale herds?'
Or,
'I'm
over the city, what do you think I'm seeing fucking goats herds fucking fucking
whale herds?
It all
sounded magical to Leaves.
Other
times Leaves would catch the tiniest of glimpse of some remote airport runway
or another as he'd be sticking chicken bones out through the landing gear gaps.
It was
a glorious, fantasy filled life.
Tragically
though, one day Juanosa discovered that you could just buy bottles of the
buffalo chicken sauce he loved so hard at the grocery store, and he didn't
actually need to buy the chicken parts, he could just smash the bottle onto his
face and lick it right off himself, and Leaves food source disappeared.
So at
the next stop he climbed out of his happy home, and found himself on a small Argentinian
Island of Vanitjua. Temporarily blinded from seeing more than a crack of
sunlight for the first time in years, he was kidnapped by Pirates, and by the
time his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight the pirates had circumnavigated the
globe and sold him to a Melbourne, Australia based Malaysian family who needed
a new delivery boy for their Chinese restaurant.
Eventually
they would learn to love him as a real boy, and adopted him. And that's when I
met him, delivering food to my house one day, and we became firm friends.
He was
mostly a great guy, but he did have flaws. Like for example he was always
threatening to leave me.
'I
don't know, something inside me makes me yearn to see the world, I have no idea
what or why, but I just do?' He'd say to me when we were hanging out.
'Fine,
go you dick, I don't need you' I'd reply, my feelings hurt.
'Come
on Pinky' he'd plead 'don't be like that, it's just a yearning I have, you know
like your yearning to be funny?'
'Hey I
don't yearn to be funny, I just am
funny, and if you say something like that again I'll cut off your fanny! And
see, that's funny, because a fanny is a vagina, and you don't actually have
one, that's what makes it perfect comedy.'
'In
some parts of the world a fanny is your bottom, and I do have one of those.'
'You
are such a dick. Ok then just go, disappear. Apparently your yearnings are more
important than me getting my Honey Chicken and Nasi-Goring whenever I want it'
'Don’t
worry Pinky, you know I’m not going yet, I'm not going anywhere till I can do
it RIGHT, you know, something inside me makes me feel like I'm ready to travel
in a way designed to really SEE stuff, I have no idea what it is, it's just a
yearning, you know?'
'Like
a monkey yearns to be a wrench?' I'd say, as another perfect joke, ‘that’ll
burn him, BURN HIM LIKE A LOG I DON’T SEE EYE TO EYE WITH’ I’d think to myself manically,
seeing as I’d compared his yearning to monkeys wanting to be wrenches, when in
actual fact they often DON’T want to be wrenches. I often use hilarious burns
like this to break the tension, and cover up that I am again not tipping Leaves
for his latest food delivery. I don't want him to get enough money to afford
his big travels of course; real friends keep them as close to them as they can.
Still the
point is, obviously, Leaves is a boring friend. He'd made a pact with himself that he
refused to go anywhere that wasn't in his new parent’s restaurant delivery area
until he could get enough money to do it right. And Leaves’ pacts were usually
tight, staunch, ironclad, pacty, seemingly leaking enchantment in a way that wet
sponged the fifth cognizance. So within these few dozen blocks was where we
spent all our time, and there
is very little fun to be had in these few dozen blocks.
Yep ‘wanna go on an adventure?’ Leaves
asked. Who would ever have imagined that the boring thing he had planned would
ultimately lead to something that would cause change. And this change would be
in a really, really, super,
really, super, totally, super, ridiculously really super amazing way! And this amazing thing would change the entire world. Superly. Even a fearful and suspicious
looking parrot hostage would tell you that.
