Monday, March 19, 2007

COMB OVER

By Wally Funderburk

There is a man sitting beside her at the bar. He is a pale, portly man with beef-stew stains on his shirt, and he is smiling in her direction.

She finishes her drink and lights a cigarette. Smoke streams from between her pursed lips. She has seen this smile from countless men, a smile that surely implies far more than friendly salutations. Before the man beside her can speak, she points her cigarette toward his head. "That," she informs him, "is the worst comb over I have ever seen."

The man is no longer smiling. Reflexively, his hand moves to the sparse crop of follicles that lie plastered across his shiny crown, like tall grass flattened by a summer downpour. He comforts them now with a few gentle strokes.

He wants to tell her the truth: that beneath his comb over lies a mysterious collection of hieroglyphs, etched into his balding pate by a benevolent race of insectoid aliens. He yearns to take her hands gently in his and explain how, one day, the aliens will telepathically reveal to him the meaning of these symbols, and then he will finally be able to sweep aside his combed-over hair and use this wondrous, newfound knowledge to bring peace and happiness to all mankind!

He aches to tell her these things, but the aliens have sworn him to secrecy until the appointed time. And that is a shame, because this woman would be impressed, as impressed as he is with her fantastic rack.

He finishes his beer and gets up to leave. Now the woman's eyes grow wide as she spies a prominent bulge in the crotch of his pants. He sees her staring and suddenly he yearns to tell her the truth: that from the moment she sat down, he has fantasized about what she would look like in a pair of oven mitts and a prosthetic pig snout, dancing a frenzied polka beneath the Harvest Moon.

But he leaves without a word. Surely, he tells himself, she has heard it all before.

(Author Wally Funderburk believes summer sausage is truly a meat for all seasons.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What item did Wally incorrectly guess the price of on the game show?! Geez - thanks for that teaser! Everybody with whom I have discussed this blog post wants to know what the hell he almost won on The Price Is Right. What could he have won if he'd been a better guesser or a more informed consumer? I loved that show when the curtains would part and the announcer would shout, "A NEW CAR!" I always got chills, especially when it was a quality General Motors product, such as that cute little Chevette. Make mine a red four-door automatic with the sport stripes, please! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Dear Reader,

To answer your question, I had insisted on using my own, hand-carved ivory Plinko chip, and things quickly took a turn for the ugly.

Anonymous said...

for a brief stint years ago, i was part of a neo-dadaist resurgence collective in northern zurich. my final piece (which was never finished), consisted of dipping my penis into cans of paint, as spectacular as the rainbow itself, and slapping said paint-covered penis across a 3'x 5' canvas.
bringing this small memory back to the subject at hand, i would often reminisce of past days watching 'the price is right' and whenever bob barker's genial face popped into my mind... well, i suppose you could say my paintbrush increased a few sizes.