2003-01-16 - 4:00 p.m.
I decided this Christmas I’d attempt to make amends with my stepmother’s family. When my dad and his wife first got together when I was 12, I did some pretty naughty things to her. But, c’mon, is that any reason to not talk to me twelve years later even though I’m standing right in front of you eating your apple crumb cake on Christmas Eve? Okay, so the things I did to your sister/daughter bordered on vulgar, but time has passed and I’ve learned to supress my destructive urges.
Knowing how stubborn Midwestern insurance agents and their families can be, I decided to pass the olive branch in the form of homemade leather ensembles. I wanted to give them something that displayed my creativity and would challenge me, but also would appeal to their pastoral tastes. I found some pantsuit patterns at a thrift store and ordered my tanning chemicals off the internet. I’m really not much of a hunter so I called these two retarded boys who I used to play with on visits to my grandparents’ cabin in rural Arizona. They lived on a farm and told me one of their cows just died of malaria. I had a special request for a bear carcass because my stepaunt always wears the same stained Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt each holiday so I thought she might like a new one made out of grizzly.
The boys hacked up the cow and bear and sent them to the office in 57 FedEx boxes. Gina from accounting was a little peeved at me because some of the bear intestine broke loose from its package and spilled on her accounts payable stuff. “No use crying over spilled gore,” I told her.
I cleared off my desk and piled the parts on my desk. With good instructions and highly toxic chemicals, its pretty easy to turn any animal into a jogging suit. I skinned, rough fleshed, washed, rinsed, dry salted, pickled, brined, re-fleshed, neutralized, tanned, rinsed, oiled and broke those carcasses until they became leather so fine that you would swear it was from Corinthia.
Come Christmas day, the stepfamily was quite surprised to see tight, bright packages from me. When they all opened them, they were shocked by the quality of gift I’d given them. They all paraded around in their new hide ensembles for the rest of the day. Just when I thought I’d patched things up with the steps, their bigotry shined through and reminded me why I hadn’t made any previous attempts. My six year old stepcousin Kayla came out of her room with her bitch four year old sister Shala sucking on the utter that I’d left in the armpit of her fringed jacket and the family freaked. Oh, I forgot to mention that before I’d tanned the hides, I was struck by the beauty of the animal’s intestines and decided to leave a few of them attached to the skin. Then my stepgrandmother screamed when she found a bit of pancreas underneath her collar and my stepaunt fainted when she found a sliver of esophagus on her leather Pooh. They call me things like crude and disgusting. Well, back at ya’. What, only certain carcass parts are good enough to keep you warm? There’s beauty on the inside as well, assholes.
