Fade in:

Scene: The GeekMan’s front door. The scene begins when some people arrive at the door and begin knocking. There doesn’t seem to be a response.

[knock, knock-knock]

“Mr. GeekMan? Mr. GeekMan, it’s Uncle Sam. Are you at home?”

[old woman voice from inside]

“Geldman? There’s no Geldman here, sonny. Now go away, unless you’re here to give me my eight o’clock Ben-Gay rubdown and bunion massage.”

[/old woman voice]

“Mr. GeekMan, is that you?”

[little boy voice from inside]

“My grandma’s very sick, mister man. You better go and get tested for E. coli right away before you get sick and die. Like my grandpa did, cause he was stupid like you.”

[/little boy voice]

[more knocking]

“That’s not funny, Mr. GeekMan. We know you’re in there. Stop playing around and open this door so we can talk like civilized people.”

“Who says I’m civilized? Maybe I’m a crazed, rabid llama wearing a full-body human-suit made out of fried jellyfish. Maybe I’m in here plotting to take over the world by inventing rubber hair replacements for middle-aged men in Shri Lanka. You better run. I’m not civilized. I might eat your spleen!”

“Mr. GeekMan…”

“For that matter, who says you’re civilized? From what I can see through this peephole you look more like forked-tongued, shark-toothed mafia collection bruisers to me…”

“Mr. GeekMan, please. You know very well who I am and why I’m here, so stop stalling and open up. We have a lot to discuss and I’ve got a lot of other people to fleece… errr, I mean ‘tax’ today and I’d appreciate it if you would stop these shenanigans and let me do my job before I call my superiors and order you to be audited.”

“All right, all right. Bureaucratic paper-pusher. No sense of humor…”

[sounds of many locks, chains and bolts being undone]

“That’s better Mr. GeekMan. Can we come in?”

“Before I let you in, would you mind telling me who your friends are?”

“Oh, sure. This is Mr. Hugh Ohmemore, Mr. Sid Deetax and Miss Stakesullcostya. The two big guys in the back are with the ‘We Break 4U’ moving company and I believe you already know Mr. Quarterly.”

“Moving company?”

“I’ll explain once you let us in. You are going to let us in, aren’t you?”

“What if I say ‘no’?”

“You know that nice homeless man who talks to himself and hangs out in front of the train station every morning with no teeth and a paper cup? The one who smells like year-old urine and stale beer?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be his love-bitch.”

“Uncle Sam! Old buddy, old pal! Don’t just stand out there like a stranger; come on in! Can I get you a Fresca?”

“No thank you, Mr. GeekMan. We’re just here to collect what you owe us so if you’ll just stand aside, we’ll take what’s ours and be on our merry way.”

“What? Wait a minute; I just dropped off my tax stuff this morning and I know I sent checks in those envelopes. Big, fat, bank account hemorrhaging, ‘I’m going to need to sell blood and body parts to cover this’ –type checks. How could you be here already?”

“I can’t divulge all our secrets to you Mr. GeekMan. Let’s just say we’ve had our eye on you for some time and leave it at that, ok?”

“…”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. It’s just that when I clear my throat it sometimes sounds like ‘son of a bitch’. Ignore it.”

“Hmmm… That was ‘humor’. I recognize that.”

“Alrighty, then. Why are you here Uncle Sam?”

“To collect what’s due. According to our records, you made a small sum of money last year and, since you’re a Freelance Graphic Designer, we get roughly 99.9% of your yearly gross. After looking into your bank accounts we knew you wouldn’t be able to pay us so rather then let you pawn your fabulous geeky toys in order to raise cash, we’ve decided to simply come to you and help ourselves to your most prized possessions in lieu of payment. This saves you the hassle and embarrassment of a full-fledged audit and helps get the money your government needs to run properly into its coffers faster. Wasn’t that thoughtful of us?”

“Oh crap. Uh, why are those two moving guys looking at my home theater speakers?”

“Correction. ‘MY’ speakers, Mr. GeekMan.”

“Crap. Crap, crap, crap. I can’t owe that much, can I?”

“Oh my, Mr. GeekMan. This is only the beginning! Your front and center speakers belong to me now, the rear speakers and subwoofer are going to the State, and Sid here gets your DVD player and TV.”

[GeekMan is in complete shock]

“I think it was very generous of us to leave Miss Ex-Boxx in your care. Don’t you agree?”

“Wait a minute! I can pay you! Don’t take my baby away! How much do I owe?”

“You can see for yourself right here on this document…”

[paper shuffles]

“Holy horse jockey with hemorrhoids! I can’t pay this much. Dammit man, Bill Gates couldn’t even pay this!”

“I thought as much. Ok boys, grab our new stuff.”

“Oh. My. God. Not my home theater. Please, anything but that…”

“Sorry Mr. GeekMan, rules are rules.”

“You bastard. Do you expect me to pay?”

“No, Mr. GeekMan. I expect you to cry.”

Scene ends: GeekMan is crying on the floor of a now desolate and empty apartment.

Fade to Black

I really, really, really hate tax season.

The following phone call takes place during my freshman year of college.

“Mother GeekMan’s office, Mom speaking.”

[timid voice] “Mom?”

“Hi GeekMan! How are you? How’s college treating my baby?”

“Mom, I’ve got… I’ve got some bad news.”

“What’s wrong? Are you ok?”

“Mom, I don’t want you to get mad. Just listen to me for a minute, ok?”

“…”

“Mom?”

[in an angry tone] “OK, I won’t get mad. What did you do?”

“Well… Uh, you know my roommate is a little… crazy, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, last night I went to dinner with some of my friends and while I was out my roommate decided to throw a little party.”

“So?”

“He invited some freshmen… girls… and well, things got a little out of hand. There was some pot, and a lot of beer, and maybe sex and stuff…”

“So your roommate had a party while you were out. What does this have to do with you?”

“Let me finish, ok? Please?”

“…”

“Ok, so he was having this party and it was a little loud I guess, because someone on campus called the police.”

[angry, but still tolerant voice] “It must have been some party for another college student to call the cops!”

“I guess… But the thing is, the cops arrived just as I came back from dinner and walked in to my room.”

“Oh, no…”

“Uh, now mom, everyone stuck up for me and told the cops and the college people that I wasn’t involved with the party. They all believe I had nothing to do with the drugs and underage drinking and stuff, but the college people said they need to make an example of us, so…”

[my mothers anger is so great I can physically feel it emanating from the phone line] “Don’t tell me they suspended you?”

“No. No mom, they didn’t suspend us. We’re being expelled.”

Imagine the most vile, angry and venomous string of curses you’ve ever heard. Now multiply whatever you’re thinking of by ten and point it at yourself.

Aha! You just winced, didn’t you?

Unbeknownst to myself, my mother was a cursing pro. I don’t know if she was hanging out at bars frequented by sailors or not, but she was using curses unheard and unspoken of since the stone ages, and never the same curse twice. She started out at a barely audible whisper and worked her way up to a royal scream. At the end, she got so loud that the phone line could only transmit loud static punctuated by rage filled squawks.

If I had done this in person, I would have been dead right then.

“Mom.”

[more cursing]

“Mom!”

[even more cursing]

“MOM!”

“What? What else do you have to say for yourself, you stupid little…”

“Mom, what day is it?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Mom. Concentrate now. What’s today’s date?”

“It’s March… No wait. It’s not March it’s…”

[stifling laughter] “It’s…?”

“…”

“April Fools.”

“You son of a BITCH!”

[laughing] “But mom, that makes you the bitch!”

We both laughed for a long time after that. Every few moments she would have to catch her breath and explain what had happened to her office mates, who would then join in the laughter and congratulate me for my joke, chastise me for being such a bastard and offer condolences to my mother.

My mother has never let her guard down on April Fools Day again.

She loves to tell this story whenever any other parent talks about how cruel their kids can be. My mother always comes away from those conversations the ‘winner’ and I am looked at as if I am some disgusting, heartless and evil scientific experiment gone awry.

“You know, if you had tried this in person, I would have killed you. Dead. With my own two hands.”

“I know, mom. I know.”

I love my mom.

I was introduced to Japanese food when I was in my late teens.

I can’t really recall much of the dinner itself, especially since I didn’t then, and still don’t eat fish. But I do remember that I was shocked to find out that Japanese food consisted almost exclusively of disgusting, slimy, raw fish. However, my friends were greatly amused by the facial expressions I made each time I was offered a piece to taste and kept forcing piece after disgusting piece upon me. Usually preceded by the words, “Oh, but you’ll really like this one!”

This was most likely followed by the explosive ejection of the offered piece of stinky food across the table.

The only saving grace for me was my introduction to the wonderful, amazingly spicy, green ‘mustard’ that sat in a small ceramic bowl on the table. This green stuff, whose name I couldn’t say properly for the life of me, was the spiciest thing I had eaten since my aunt’s special tacos, and I loved it. In fact, the waiters needed to refill the egg sized lump of wasabi twice during the meal.

I paid dearly for the amount of wasabi I ate that night the next day, but damn it was worth it.

Anywaste, we were done with the meal and we were going to start on dessert. My best female friend at the time, who we will call Shaggy for no reason at all, was sitting to my immediate right. Seeing my look of utter confusion at the choices on the menu, she offered to order her favorite dessert and let me taste it. I agreed, she ordered something called ‘Green Tea Ice Cream’ and when the cold, green lump arrived, I tasted it.

I can only imagine that if I were to lick the sweaty, hairy, frozen balls of the Abominable Snowman, it would taste exactly like Green Tea Ice Cream.

Shrugging, Shaggy went back to enjoying her ice cream for a few minutes while I entertained my friends by explaining in great detail why raw fish on wads of rice shaped like slugs shouldn’t be considered a meal. Especially at the outrageous prices we were paying by my poor-college-student standards. Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves, nothing wrong, nothing amiss.

Nothing that is, until Shaggy made The Mistake.

There we all were, sitting at the table, eating, laughing and drinking, when she turned to me discreetly and told me she needed to visit the ladies room. She then excused herself, left the table and made her way to the back of the restaurant where the restrooms were located.

Leaving behind her bowl of ice cream.

I sat there for a few moments, just staring at that bowl with a devilish smile upon my face, until I realized that my friends had all gone silent. Looking up, I found they were all staring at me with puzzled expressions on their faces, probably wondering what was so fascinating about Shaggy’s half eaten bowl of ice cream. Looking around to make sure Shaggy was nowhere in sight, I made a casual observation to my assembled friends.

“Green Tea Ice Cream,” I said in a soft voice, “looks a lot like wasabi.”

When Shaggy returned to her seat a few minutes later, she didn’t notice how quiet the table was and immediately proceeded to eat her melting ice cream. Keep in mind that no one at the table even attempted to warn her. Lifting her spoon, she found that it had a very, very large scoop of what appeared to be Green Tea Ice Cream on it, and she happily opened her mouth and shoved the entire thing inside. As soon as the spoon left her mouth she realized what had happened and her eyes went wide and began to water as her face became so red I thought she would burst into flame.

It was the perfect practical joke.

By all rights, I should have died that night. I should have been a victim of a frontal lobotomy by a spoonful of wasabi shoved up my nose and into my brain, but somehow I survived. Shaggy didn’t get angry, she didn’t even get upset. In fact, as soon as she had recovered from her initial shock, she turned to face me and somehow managed to swallow before calmly taking a drink of water.

“Damn.” She said, as she continued to eat her ice cream.

“That was perfect.”

One fine day, my best friend and I were sitting around with nothing to do when we hit upon the idea of setting off a few old firecrackers and bottle rockets we had left over from the Fourth of July. Not wanting to get caught doing something ‘dangerous’ by our overprotective mothers, we decided the safest place we could go to enjoy ourselves was the roof of our six floor apartment building. We started off innocently enough. A few firecrackers and some sparklers. Nothing dangerous, just two boys having some fun with gunpowder and fire in the big city.

We were kinda like Bo and Luke Duke, only… not.

Well, after we had exhausted our supply of the ‘weaker’ mini-bombs and poppers, we decided to play with the bottle rockets. For those of you who don’t know, a bottle rocket is a slightly more powerful firecracker attached to a thin red stick. You’re supposed to put the stick into a container or bottle, light the fuse and watch as it flies into the air for a couple of seconds before it blows up with a satisfying BANG!

Bottles! As if Bo and Luke would ever use something so wimpy.

Instead of using ‘un-cool’ bottles we came to the conclusion that we could avoid harm by simply holding the stick in our hands, lighting the very dangerous explosive (which was obviously made with care by an overworked, underpaid sweatshop employee in some third world country) and then throwing the lit rocket into the air. Of course, not knowing our physics as well as we might have, it never dawned on us that perhaps a ‘rocket’ made of gunpowder and cheap paper might not have the best aerodynamics in the world and could possibly double back, imbed itself into our anuses and explode in a very painful ball of fire.

Damn. Now that would’ve made one hell of a story.

Anywaste, I don’t recall which of us came up with the idea but somehow we found out through experimentation that if we threw the rockets horizontally, they would fly great distances before exploding with a bang both loud and satisfying enough to make us smile. Soon enough we were throwing these tiny, self-guided missiles all over the roof and we were getting pretty good at learning how to aim them properly.

That’s when the bus honked its horn on the street below.

Our eyes lit up like the flames of hell and we both ran to the edge of the roof. The bus was just sitting there at the light, waiting patiently for someone, anyone, to strike it down with tiny, hand-guided, flaming pieces of death wrapped in cheap paper. Should we? Could we? Dared we? This, we decided, was a gift from Loki, god of mischief, and we were not about to insult him by letting this golden opportunity pass us by.

We really were little bastards, weren’t we?

The first rocket exploded long before it reached the bus. The second fell to the street and died in a futile attempt to reach its target. Numbers three and four exploded underneath the bus, but the fifth, ah the blessed fifth, managed to outdo its brothers and sisters by not only reaching the drivers side window but actually bouncing off it. Of course, it exploded on the street with nary a sound and doing no damage, but we were too busy rejoicing to care. In our minds, the bus was a flaming, blackened heap on the street with people running from the wreckage trying in vain to put out their flaming clothes and burning flesh.

We pretended our principal was one of the passengers.

When the bus pulled away from the intersection, completely unscathed and unaware, I’m sure that no one on board realized anything at all was amiss. In fact, if we ourselves hadn’t known what to listen and look for I don’t think we would have seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. As the bus was rolling away though, we saw something approaching in the distance that instantly became our next target.

A bike messenger. Oh. My. God.

To be honest, I don’t believe either of us actually thought we could hit him. I mean, a man on a bike is a much, much smaller target than a big, city bus. Plus, he was pedaling hard, moving fast and all the way across the street. All in all, a seasoned Green Beret with a sniper rifle on a windless day would have had a tough time hitting this guy, but somehow I knew that I could do it so I lit the fuse and let the rocket fly.

It exploded somewhere between his rear wheel and his puckering anus.

I’m not sure that some of you understand exactly what just happened, so let me slow explain this in a little more detail for you. A man on a bike is minding his own business, pedaling through a relatively safe neighborhood in Brooklyn on a beautiful summers day. Suddenly, he hears something that sounds like a gunshot directly behind him followed by howling laughter.

Ah. Now you understand.

To say this guy pedaled for his life would not do the scene justice. Imagine this poor guy, who had moments before probably been enjoying his day, suddenly taking off as if he had all the hounds of hell on his tail. I’m not positive, but I think he may have screamed in terror as he made his escape down a side street.

He may even have soiled himself.

I know what you’re thinking and yes, looking back I agree wholeheartedly. We were evil, mean and nasty little deviants and should have been spanked like naughty monkeys to within an inch of our lives on a nightly basis just on general principles alone. But back then, Mr. Hentai and I just fell to the floor of the roof laughing like demons on crack as we each told the other in great detail, over and over again, how funny the whole thing was. In fact, it still makes us laugh to this very day.

Fshshshshshshssssss… BANG! “HOLY SHIT!” Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal. [evil laughter]

Oh boy, somebody spank me.

One day, when I was in my early teens, my brother was gifted with a brand new skateboard. I was on my third or fourth bike by this time and if my memory serves it was a Huffy. My brother, Mr. Hentai and I went out to the street to try out the new skateboard by doing as many dangerous, wacky and idiotic things 13 year old boys are want to do when given a new toy and no adult supervision. I brought my bike just so I would have something to do when it wasn’t my turn to attempt breaking my tailbone on the skateboard.

We were like the Three Musketeers, only crazier.

Oh, just in case you didn’t already guess, none of us knew how to ride a skateboard so we were doing far more falling down than standing up. Add to this that we were doing our skateboarding experimentation in the middle of a fairly busy one-way street and perhaps you’ll begin to understand the danger we were needlessly and unknowingly putting ourselves into. Also, keep in mind that we had no safety equipment whatsoever, since at that time no one even knew what safety equipment was. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because no self respecting 13 year old boy in my neighborhood would have dared wear that safety stuff because they wouldn’t want to be seen as a ‘sissy’ by the neighborhood bully.

Oh look, widdle, baby GeekMan’s wearing a helmut. Did your momma wipe your ass for you this morning, too? Oooooo. You gonna cry now? Are you gonna run home to mamma and cry? That’s right! Run, sissy-girl. RUN!

Anywaste, luckily for us very few cars came down our street that day, so we didn’t need to worry about becoming road kill. In fact, I don’t remember any cars passing us while we were rambunctiously flinging ourselves down the street on a thin piece of wood supported by four casters and no breaking mechanism other than hitting one of the cars parked along the street and praying we didn’t set off one of those newfangled car alarms. We only set car alarms off late at night when we could fully enjoy watching a fat, angry man come outside in his pj’s, cursing a blue streak, start his car, turn off the alarm and go back to his apartment swearing to catch the ‘fracking kids’ in the morning.

We’d wait 15 minutes and then set it off again. FUN!

Back to our story, at some point Mr. Hentai got the bright idea of combining the speed of my bike with the thrill of riding a skateboard. He decided to try riding the skateboard while hanging onto the back of my bike and I would then peddle as fast as I could and, should he maintain his grip, speedy thrills would ensue. This sounded like a fabulous idea to all of us and without further discussion, we set about making the unreal, real. Mr. Hentai stood on the skateboard, grabbed the back of my bike seat and I took off.

We laughed at the thrill of it all.

Mr. Hentai, unsatisfied with merely hanging on to my bike, began to slalom on the board. That is, he began a vigorous left-to-right-to-left motion on the skateboard behind me which had the unintentional effect of making my bike fishtail. One moment, we’re setting a two-man, bike/skateboard land speed record and the next I’m out of control and headed towards one of the parked cars. At full speed.

If you are male, stop reading now.

If you are still reading this, let me describe exactly what happened during this crash so that you’ll fully understand how painful this was for me. My front tire hit the car on the front passenger-side door, which promptly ejected me from my bike seat face-first into the car window. I remember this vividly, because the rest of the crash unfolded for me in the passengers mirror with the words ‘objects in mirror may appear closer than they are’ emblazoned along the bottom of my sight like the TV captions on Saturday Afternoon Kung-Fu Movies. My forehead smacked the window with such force that my eyes nearly flew from their sockets as if I was one of those dolls whose eyes pop out when squeezed.

Inanimate Objects – 1

GeekMan – 0

Having hit the car, my body began to fall backwards towards the ground but something interfered with the normal gravitational pull of the earth on my body, my bike. You see, my bike’s momentum had made it flip forward, but as I have already mentioned, due to my body having met the door of a car the bike had nowhere to go but directly into my scrotum. The bike seat attempted to invade my groin as if it were reenacting Germany’s invasion of France during WWII in the span of 1/1000 of a second.

Hard and fast, like a jackhammer on soft clay. It makes me wince just thinking about it now.

Of course, having expelled all of its energies and momentum into the soft flesh of my gonads, the bike promptly fell back to the ground. My body was of course forced forward again by this cowardly attack on my manhood, and my face once again met the window of the car.

Inanimate Objects – 3

GeekMan – 0

My body, now sending flashes of blinding pain to my brain as if to say, “Attention. You may want to avoid doing this in the future.” Began to fall back to the ground. Of course, rubber wheels on bikes make them slightly ‘bouncy’ so as I was falling down, the bike was once again coming up. My gonads and bike seat met in what would have been a lovers embrace had the situation not been so painfully non-embracing. I swear to you, I actually thought every single sperm in my body screamed in terror as they saw the bike seat heading towards them again.

It was like my ‘nads were Tokyo and the bike seat was Godzilla.

Well, to make this narration a little shorter, and to avoid reliving this as it is beginning to cause me actual physical pain, allow me to give you the final score.

Inanimate Objects – 9

GeekMan – 0

My brother and Mr. Hentai laughed like hyenas as I walked, splay-legged, into the building. Managing to maneuver the four short steps to the elevator without falling down was the bravest thing I’d ever done in my life. When I got upstairs my mother asked if I was alright and somehow, I don’t know how exactly, I managed to say I was fine and just needed to use the bathroom. When I got in the bathroom, I removed my pants as carefully as I could and that’s when I saw the blood.

I remember thinking, “Oh. Blood. That’s not a good sign.”

I was still receiving waves of rolling pains that began in my groin and expanded outwards to my brain, so I just sat there for a while and cleaned off the blood with toilet tissue. After sitting in the bathroom for 10 minutes or so, the pain was almost bearable and the bleeding had stopped completely. Using the bathroom mirror, I didn’t even see a cut, so I figured I would be fine as long as I took it easy for a few days. I never mentioned this accident to my mother because I wouldn’t have been able to show her my ‘boo-boo’ and if we had gone to the hospital I would have died of shame and embarrassment.

On the spot. Dead, just like that.

After this event, I decided that riding bikes was not really for me. I took it as a sign from above that my future did not involve any two wheeled mode of transportation in any way and I decided walking would do fine until I was old enough to have a car. I’ve ridden on bikes only 5 times since then and let me tell you, my groin and I are on very good speaking terms. Very good speaking terms, indeed.

Now, you tell me. Should someone like me be allowed to buy one of those Segway thingies?