Metaphor (met’-a-phor): A comparison made by referring to one thing as another.
My face is a bowl of Crisco—round and pale with a slightly greasy sheen. I cleanse it four times a day with a special soap designed to clean away the vegetable-shortening look. It’s primarily for people like me. I’ve been locked up in Mount Rockefeller State Prison for 45 years. I have another 300 hundred years to go. Obviously, I’ll never be free again—free to murder some more people—maybe 6 or 7—kidnap children, and literally burn bridges.
When I was running wild, I almost succeeded in burning down the Bayonne Bridge! At the time, it was the longest bridge in the world. I wasn’t fooling around. The plan was to drive a tanker truck loaded with gasoline over the bridge, stop in the middle of the bridge, and light the truck on fire, but I forgot my lighter. I tried to flag people down to ask for a light. One of hose people was Detective Stromboli “on his way home from work.” He arrested me.
We found out during my trial for “attempted wanton destruction of public property” that he was actually on his way home from his girlfriend’s in Jersey. That was the highlight of my trial! The destruction of Stromboli’s marriage was more than I could hope for. Both his wife and his girlfriend were in the courtroom. The girlfriend’s name was Victoria Comer and the wife’s name was Shirley—Shirley Stromboli. Officer Stromboli’s testimony was an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane all rolled into one.
When, under questioning, Officer Stromboli revealed his affair, Shirley Stromboli went berserk. She started pulling things out of her purse and throwing them at him, yelling “Motherf*ker” with every item she threw—she hit him in the face with a set of car keys, the rest of the stuff sailed past him, leaving him unscathed. The bailiff wrested Mrs. Stromboli’s purse from her and escorted her from the courtroom. In the meantime, in true Jersey-girl style, Victoria hurled insults at Shirley: “You dried up banana peel!” “You pickle-brained pig slop.” “Scumbag.” “Your mother’s a chicken’s ass.” Victoria was escorted out of the courtroom yelling all the way.
The two women met in the hallway and started throwing punches and kicking each other. Victoria clocked Shirley with right cross and knocked her out cold. Her head hit a radiator as she went down. An ambulance was called. Victoria laughed and gave Shirley the finger as she was wheeled to the waiting ambulance. As a consequence of the blow to her head, Shirley suffered permanent memory loss. Her entire life, until she woke up in the hospital, was erased. That included marrying Detective Stromboli. There were photographs and papers documenting their marriage that Stromboli found and destroyed.
Stromboli and Comer got married and Stromboli was busted for bigamy as they left the church. Stromboli had failed to realize that his original marriage certificate was permanently filed with the Town Clerk in Richmond, Staten Island. Not only that, there were at least 50 witnesses to the marriage.
Stromboli was a pea-brained nitwit. His poor wife. It was like she landed on planet earth for the first time when she woke up in the hospital. When he was incarcerated, she quickly got a divorce from pea-brain with the help of a sympathetic lawyer.
I see the light every day for about an hour. I walk around in circles in the exercise yard. The story of my trial and conviction gives me solace as I fade into oblivion. That motherfu*ker Stombli’s life was ruined by my trial. Post-trial, as the well-known king of chumps, he had a hard time putting his life back together. Victoria would have nothing to do with him and ended up marrying a meat cutter from Jersey City. Stromboli, a convicted bigamist, ended up working as a busboy in a mob-owned restaurant in Bayonne named “Nero’s.” He was shot dead in a botched hit attempt. Nobody cares but me. Ha! Ha!
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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