1986
It was beautiful outside, really windy, and I hadn't been out for the last week, while they had me under observation. I'm okay now, but the doctor says I should take it easy for a while. So I was walking in the park, watching the pigeons mess up the statues. The pigeons are really clever, you know, they just pretend to be stupid. Some people talk about how they want to drop-kick a pigeon someday (and see if the pigeon would notice?) but you've never seen anybody do it, have you? So the pigeons aren't that stupid. And they sucker the old folks into feeding them bread crumbs. There's one old lady that bakes a chocolate cake (with vanilla icing) every day and brings it into the park and breaks it up and throws it to the pigeons. She's got even worse problems than me. And last time I saw her, some old guy tried to grab the cake from her but he tripped over his cane and they both went down and the cake went flying and hit a cop. I haven't seen either of them since then and that was three months ago, in late June.
So there were lots of people out today; it was cooler than it had been in a while. But I ignored most of them and decided to go grab something to eat at a sub shop. I went in and there were about six people ahead of me. Decided to get a peanut butter and cheese sub, with sweet pickles (no hot stuff). Yum! I grabbed a Coke (no caffeine, no sugar, no saccharine, no cocaine - Doc says I shouldn't get excited, should stay away from caffeine) and got on line. The guy ahead of me was dressed in a business suit, pin stripes and all, with a brief case. Had his hat on still. We were just by the tabloids: Woman gives birth to Venus Flytrap. Alien deviants have sex with raccoons and mutant babies overrun town. And then National Tabloid prints true story!
Amusing but stupid. After finding out precisely where the town of mutant naked amazons was located (somewhere in South America, it turned out), I stared up at the sub list. No peanut butter. Geez. I stared straight ahead while I tried to think of what to have instead of peanut butter and cheese with sweet pickles (no hot stuff), and that's when I noticed the pull-tab.
It was really weird, but the guy in front of me had this little pull-tab under his chin. Really. It was like a little flesh-colored-flap, and I really wondered what would happen if I pulled it. But what was I supposed to do? "Excuse me, sir, could I pull your pull-tab?" He'd call a cop and come up with a few names for me! So I tried to ignore it and started to whistle in that nervous sort of way people whistle when they get really uncomfortable. And another guy ordered his sub and the line moved. Three people in front of me now, and I didn't know what to order, and this guy in front of me had a pull-tab under his chin.
Forget the pull-tab, I told myself. How about mushrooms & mustard? It sort of rhymes, if you match the first syllables instead of the last. But I couldn't think about the sub; all I could think about was that silly pull-tab under his chin. I kept staring at it, hoping he wouldn't turn so I could keep seeing it.
Another sub down, and then the guy reached up to get a bag of chips, and I knew it was my chance. So I steeled up my nerve and reached over and - well, I grabbed a bag of chips too, because he was too fast for me and the guy behind the counter asked him his order. Ham and cheese. Too boring.
My sub turned out to be crab-meat with cheese, mushrooms and ketchup. The guy behind the counter gave me a real look. By that time the guy with the pull-tab was out of the line, so maybe I could get back to whatever I was doing before. So I got the sub and started to leave, but as I walked out, there was the guy with the pull-tab standing talking to this woman at the end of the line. Ah ha! I just couldn't let the chance go by, so I stood there and pretended to look at the magazines: Teenlust and Rock Bodies: The Magazine of Dead Hunks. Never realized how many teenybopper necrophiliacs must haunt sub shops. Finally the right moment came, and I reached over and pulled his tab.
Wow, did it make a mess! He sort of gasped when I did it, and the woman shrieked (but then she fainted) and all this blood came out. It was really weird, his body sort of deflated and sunk to the ground as everything drained out the pull-tab opening. Naturally the other people on line noticed, and since I decided the guy was probably dead now I thought I might want to excuse myself from the crowd. After all, I was only wondering what would happen.
So I t ook off into the park again, and who was there but that old woman throwing pieces of chocolate cake (with vanilla icing) to the pigeons. I sat down next to her, wiped the blood on my napkins and started to eat the sub.
"You should really give some of that to the birdies, young man," she informed me. I ignored her and chewed. Damned hardest crab-meat I'd ever had!
But the pigeon lady couldn't keep still. "They don't have jobs like normal people. They depend on us to help them. So give them a little bit of your sandwich there, young man. Share and share alike!" she concluded righteously.
I mumbled something but some of the crabmeat started falling out, so I stopped. Finally, she reached over, ripped the end of my sub and threw it to the damned birds! That's when I noticed she had a pull-tab too.
So it was pull, and good-bye Mrs. Pigeon Lady.
I would've pulled a few pigeons (not as much fun as drop kicking them, though) but they didn't seem to have anything to pull.
I did it again, later, with the guy who sells tokens in the subway (must be a name for him!) when he wouldn't let me through for free, and again with the fat man who kept squeezing me in my seat. And it really shut up the landlady. How could I have paid my rent when I was instituted for the last week? Dogs have them too; that damned dog of hers that always left a present in front of my door: never more. Left her cat alone though; cats are my friends.
I had to see the doctor the next day and I told him about it and you should have seen him frown. He shook his head and I knew I wasn't going to be let back out. So I told him, "See, you've got one too," because he did, and I pointed at it. He put his hand under his chin and felt, but I guess he couldn't find it. So I reached over and grabbed it and he looked really surprised, and then I gave it a tug, and good-bye, Doc!
Of course the nurse gave me a hard time. Too bad, she was always nice to me before, but I pulled her tab anyway. Nobody was going to keep me locked up in this place anymore. Except maybe the three orderlies who were staring at the mess that used to be the nurse. I guess one of them must have had a crush on her 'cause they sure did take off after me. I managed to keep ahead of them, and finally I hid in some closet.
I apologized to the intern and the nurse who were making out in there and snuck back out when the sounds passed. The three stooges had their backs to me, just waiting to get pulled. So I jumped them, without thinking much about the problems, and before they knew what happened I'd pulled, pulled and pulled and there were just these three little red heaps. Orderlies? I don't see any orderlies.
I grabbed a bus back to the park but it was raining when I got there. I didn't pull the bus driver; he hadn't noticed that I only put in a quarter and I didn't want to snarl up traffic. The rain was coming down hard, so I ran over to this church: Brother Spiro The Bald-Headed's Neo-Buddhist Consortium. I knew Brother Spiro The Bald Headed from way back!
It would have been better if Spiro had taken the dryers out of the walls when he converted this place. The padre came out and I asked if Spiro was around. He asked me for a contribution. I told him to shove off. He told me to shove off. So I pulled him. Look, I really didn't shed blood on their altar (a former Maytag washer, I think); it just sort of leaked there.
I ducked into a pew to contemplate, but it didn't work. My mind was a blank. That's when it hit me. The statue of the Neo-Buddha. Naw, I told myself, it couldn't be. But it was. The Neo-Buddha had a pull-tab under its chin too. And I had an overwhelming desire to pull it. So I got up and reached over under the platypus' bill (oh yeah - the Neo-Buddha is a platypus named Igmor) and pulled.
That's when it all went black. Like, everything. That platypus must've been wired into the All. It's too bad, too; I really wanted to see the new pop-top models.