more shit from the archives

photo credit: Terry Plowman
So this friend asks me to him a huge favor. He owned this huge house that he shared with his elderly Grandma Bessie. Grandma Bessie was this sweet old woman who knew nothing about the world past 1969. Somewhere along the line she’d gotten stuck in this continuous loop with no way out, if you know what I mean. She knew her grandson, she knew her cat, and she knew that I was somehow connected to her son. She was always asking me if I knew Martin Luther King. She figured all black folk knew each other. Anyway my friend had to leave town for a few days and he ask me to help out with his Grandma Bessie. Nothing big, just drop in before and after work and heat up her breakfast and dinner. (Grandma Bessie thought the microwave was a TV with fucked up sound) I figured how bad could it get. She never left her floor and kept herself fairly clean and neat, so I said sure, why not. Everything was going smooth as silk till the last day. I’d gotten off work and went over to the house and let myself in and went about my business of heating up dinner for the old girl. I went upstairs and knocked on her door and I could hear her cryin. I rushed in and there she was sittin on the side of her bed bawling her ass off. I asked what’s wrong and she told me her cat had gone out the window. Now this chick was really, really into this cat and I knew she would come apart with out it. I told Grandma Bessie to calm down and I’d get her cat back for her. So I went outside and started lookin and lo and behold there sits the cat. I grab it and start walkin back to the house when this furry little pile of shit comes unglued! He starts swelling up and hissing and shit as he’s shredding my shirt to confetti. I wanna let go but I know how bad Grandma Bessie wants her cat back. But I swear this muthafucker’s getting bigger and bigger and it’s like walkin and holding a bunch of butcher knives by the blades. You know that low-pitched noise that cats make when they’re really pissed? This furry bastard was beyond that. We fought our way into the house and up the stairs and into Grandma Bessie’s room. I’m sweating like a bitch and bleeding from where he’d shredded the shirt, but I force a grin as I holler to Grandma Bessie that I got her cat. She looks up from her plate at me and then looks at the cat. She dips into the pudding and says,

“that’s not my cat”

I’m almost cryin as I say,

“are you sure”?

“I’d think I’d know my own cat”

Then she got up and walked into the bathroom and shut the door. That’s when I did what I had to do. I tossed that furry muthafucker out the third story window and went home. Fuck an old lady and her cat. Some days the good deed just ain’t worth it.

"and the monkey flipped the switch"