Enigma

Enigma (e-nig’-ma): Obscuring one’s meaning by presenting it within a riddle or by means of metaphors that purposefully challenge the reader or hearer to understand.

“It’s no mystery to me.” I lied. Lately, everything was a mystery to me. The time had come for the King to lose his horse. The ducks were walking backwards. The glue didn’t stick. The onion made me laugh. My ass was not in pain. The molehill was flattened by a UPS truck that veered off my driveway onto my lawn.

I apologize for putting it all this way: my plate is not full. In fact it is empty and chipped in two places: my bank account and my septic system. My bank account has drained and my septic system won’t. It flooded my basement. When the tide suddenly went out, it left the basement floor littered with mud-colored sheets of paper that had been stuck in the drain along with a big blob of fat.

But that’s not the real problem: Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m driving around in sub-zero weather with my windows stuck down. My daughter’s marrying some guy who makes sewage look like something that might be good to eat as a snack food. He makes my bankruptcy look like I won the Mega Millions lotto.

He whines. He has no ass—he looks like his ass was transplanted to his stomach which sticks like an ant hill with a belly button. His favorite saying is “Whatever man.” How’s that for somebody going nowhere? He wears sweatpants and a hoodie that says “I Shit My Pants” on it.

At least he has a job. He gets paid next to nothing for it. He strings beads for a living. He brags: “Bead stringing enhances my eye-hand coordination and concentration, fostering patience and problem-solving. As I poke the string through a bead, I implement its placement and improve my string handling.” This indicates to me that he has “issues.” I don’t know what they are, but he played ice hockey for four years in college. He was taken off the ice on a stretcher 19 times, and that was just at home games.

But that’s not the worst. He drools when he looks at my daughter. It isn’t a lot of drool—just a tiny line at the left-corner of his mouth. He wipes it away with his sleeve and makes a snoffling sound, like a boar with impure thoughts. My daughter has taken to kissing away the drool and making her own sow-snoffle sound. When this happens, I want to kill them both.

Somehow, I have to drive a wedge between them. This marriage cannot take place. I had to get him on video cheating on my daughter. I looked up M’ Lady Marvelous. I used to use her services when I was an alcoholic philanderer. I set up a motel room with CCTV and hired M’ Lady to pick the boyfriend up at the bar he hangs out at and spend a wild night with him at the surveilled motel.

M’Lady pulled it off—video and all. She said he was the best “bang” she had in her whole life. I started to worry. I sent the video anonymously to my daughter. It was beyond creepy, but I had to get this guy out of her life. She told me about the video and that it made her really mad. She wanted to know why the boyfriend hadn’t invited her along to the motel too. She said she felt betrayed and was calling the wedding off.

I thought I had won a major battle until she brought the next fiancée home. He dresses like a Flamenco dancer and writes poems in praise of General Jorge Rafael Videla. I’ve bought a gun.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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