C. Mortgomery Byrnes
Tristan-Crispin Gladhappy. Quite the, uh, name ya got there. What is it? Greek? Peruvian? Meposian?
Ah, I’m just breakin’ your balls there, guy.
But your name says a lot, especially considerin’ I know more about the socioeconomic impact El Chupacabras had on the impoverished island of Mepos during the Industrial Resolution than I do about you….which is nothin’.
But, as the Bard said, “What’s in a name?”
With yours, I can only hypotheorize.
Who are you, Tristan-Crispin Gladhappy?
With a name like yours, I surmise, that perhaps, you are, in the most literal of senses, a clown.
You a clown, Tristan? You wearin’ that red nose, those big, floppy shoes? You got tufts of bright green hair poppin’ from your head like shrubbery? You jump out at kids parties and put on one of them cartoony voices like Bugs Bunny and screams “HEY KIDS! IT’S ME, GLADHAPPY WITH THE OOGLY, GOOGLY EYES!!! WANT A BALLOON ANIMAL?!”
What’s gonna happen at “Revival”, Speckles? You gonna try to electrocute me with a gag buzzer? Maybe spritz a little seltzer in my face? Or are you gonna wear one of them bowties that spin round and around in hopes of hypnotizin’ me? Fuck you.
But then I think, maybe you ain’t a clown?
Maybe you’re just one of them happy-go-lucky sorts. You know the type: Walkin’ down the street with a spring in their step and a song in their heart, maybe whistlin’ somethin’ upliftin’ like “Singin’ in the Rain” or the theme to “The Muppet Show”. Just goin’ through life with a smile on their face, maybe always givin’ some bullshit positive spin on the most negative of circumstances. People like that deserve a swift kick to the nuts.
Maybe you’re just glad to have a job.
Maybe you’re just happy to have a fuckin’ roof over your head.
Maybe before this, you’re name was “Homeless Jimbo Jerk Off” and Tristan-Crispin Gladhappy is the name de plum you chose for your PRIME career in hopes no one will find out you jerked off degenerate scumbags for a couple of dimebags while livin’ on the streets.
Or maybe not.
Maybe you’re just an average schnook that lost a bet and your frat brothers drew your name out of a fuckin’ hat after your eighth round of beer pong.
But then, what the fuck I know about you?
Maybe you used to be a guy who was glad and happy livin’ his best life. Maybe back in late 2003 a week or two before your twenty-fourth birthday you crossed paths with this really hot secretary, assistant executive engineer or whatever the fuck they are now, while on your way to audition for this original Off Broadway show called “Candlelight Touch” by some no name playwright that won some fuckin’ award that got his piece of shit made, a pretentious, existential romantic comedy with more symbols than Carter Beauford. And yeah, maybe it stung a bit later that day when they called you and told you that you didn’t get the role especially since you had just finished wrapping on “Lucifer’s Lap Dance”, your first major role since “Guy with Gonorrhea Two” in that PSA commercial. Fuckin’ pricks.
However….
Hypothermically speakin’, this young lady on the train you happened to sit next to happened to be listenin’ to her Discman, readin’ the Newsday, and maybe you struck a conversation with her which ultimately led to you two formin’ a bit of repertoire with each other. And maybe you were a little stalkery, borderline, not completely psycho creepy whack job level, it’s not like you followed her home or to her office of anything like that, you just tried to catch the same train and maybe once or twice you ran into her over the next couple of weeks, and eventually you started datin’. You told her about your dreams and may have, for the short term may have left some of the seedier details of your life, just as she may have, at least in the short term, neglected to make reference that she had, at the time, an eight year old daughter, of whom, you eventually interacted with in, at first, a limited basis but grew into something more frequent the seriouser you and her mother, whose name may or may not have been Clarissa, got. But, yet, some of said previously omitted information had come up throughout the course of the relationship.
But yeah, there moments when you and she were together where you felt you could be the best version of yourself. And yeah, at times, when you were strapped financially, maybe you did a few things you weren’t proud of for people you don’t particularly like but you did it not because you were fuckin’ angry or anythin’, you did it for the influx of cash because you wanted to giver her and her daughter a decent Christmas. And maybe you needed to do what you felt you needed to do because she was a hot, single mother with a pretty awesome kid and there were some struggles in her life, so you were willin’ to take certain risks in certain legitimate business practices that might be construed as something otherwise, allegedly.
And, in a couple of to three years after a lot of ups and a few downs, the both of you broke up and as such, your world was shattered as there were no actin’ jobs comin’ in no matter how much you hustled and busted your ass so you decided to back to work for your scumbag piece of shit cousin but you didn’t mind because, let’s face it, you’re pretty fuckin’ pissed, so much so, that you may have, allegedly, broken both legs and an arm or two of one particularly uncooperative client who had certain debts that needed collectin’ with much veracity. Yeah, you went too far. Yeah, you did it in front of his wife and kids. And yeah, you used an aluminum bat when you knew the Louisville Slugger was the more reliable implement.
And maybe, on occasion, you look fondly on those days with Clarissa and her daughter, Alanis.
And maybe those thoughts piss you the fuck off even more especially considerin’ the state of your life.
Maybe glad and happy is what you were but now you’re just a miserable fuck stuck dealin’ with the consequences of your poor fuckin’ decisions and “Gladhappy” is one of them things that means contradictitarily from what it sounds like. Jumbo shrimp, sad clown, Super Bowl winners: The Cleveland Browns. You know, shit like that.
The life less traveled, am I right?
Well, Tristan-Crispin, I may not have any idea of who the fuck you are. But I do have a very good fuckin’ idea of what’s gonna happen come “Revival”.
Clarissa had this uncle in upstate New York, Red Hook, if memory serves, with a farm. The guy had chickens, a couple of pigs, and about a dozen cows. Cows! Before that day, I cannot say with any certainty that I had ever come near a cow. Before that day, the closest I ever came to a cow was a steak dinner. I’m sure there were other animals there. I think there was a couple of dogs, maybe a cat. A tractor. I seem to recall seein’ an apple tree.
I remember he had this old red Chevy pickup. I remember commentin’ that the rust that had formulated on the fender had an uncanny resemblance to Pokey. You know, Gumby’s horse.
I had this joke that the original color was probably blue.
Alanis thought it was funny.
That’s not here or there, the point is, Clarissa’s uncle, Bill? Let’s say “Bill”. Uncle Bill had cows on the farm. Now, I do not know what you do and do not know about the concept of “brandin’”. Her uncle, he had this metal, iron, I think, rod with this pattern on it, it was kinda like, uh, what’s it called, with the wings. A Pegasus!
Uncle Bill and his son, Chet….
I know, I never met a farmer named Chet before nor since.
It was on this particular excursion into the country where Chet and Uncle Bill had a bit of an debate on what was more humane, hot iron brandin’ or cold brandin’ with each one performin’ their respective methods on the poor, unsuspectin’ cows. In hot brandin’, they take this iron rod and shoved in this forge until the head began glowin’ this bright orange color at which point Uncle Bill pressed that brand on the cow’s ass. The cow made a very agonizin’. It was fuckin’ traumatic.
Then Chet went to this other cow, he had a rod with the same symbol at the end but it was made from other sort of metal. Copper or brass or some shit. This guy dragged out this huge fuckin’ container. When he opened it, it was real mad scientist shit with fog or vapors emittin’ from the oriface. What Chet did, he dipped the metal head into the aforementioned container, which, as it turned out, was liquid nitrogen, and he pressed the head of the brand on that second cow’s ass, and that cow too let out a painful cry. It was equally traumatic.
I highly considered vegetarianism as a potential dietary option based on that one visit alone.
In either case, the act of brandin’ is to show ownership of the cattle. It could be a symbol, a number, initials, or whatever.
You might be wonderin’ why you should give a half a shit to this…..
Well, in case you hadn’t noticed or maybe you are a member of the uninformed, but I was unfortunate enough to lose my match against Tony Gamble at ‘Ultraviolence”, the consequence of which is that I must join his crew.
You might be thinkin’, “So fuckin’ what?”
I’ll tell you “so fuckin’ what”.
He not only had the balls of change my fuckin’ name to Mortimer Knightingale, but he had “G.A.S.” put on all my gear. My tracksuit, my mask, even my fuckin’ duffelbag.
You don’t think I know what he was doin’?!
He was BRANDIN’ ME like I was one of them cows! Like I’m his fuckin’ property! As long as there’s “G.A.S.” on my person, that wormy motherfucker basically owns me. I cannot retaliate in any sense of the word. It’s not like I can kick down his door with AK-47’s under each arm like Tony Fuckin’ Montana and blow him apart into little chunks of human sausage. I can’t bitch slap him, I can’t Bangkok him, and it is most prohibitive of me to take out any aggression against him on his car which precludes me from placing sugar in his tank and pullin’ the classic Axel Foley banana in the tailpipe gambit. Apparently, in PRIME, these contracts are iron clad and very much not in the favor of the party of the first part, i.e. me.
Tony Gamble has my balls in a vice like Kung-fu grip.
And that….
That does not make me very happy…..
Quite the opposite, in fact….
My current not-so-good situation is about to become your even-morseso-not-so-good-situation, Tristy.
At “Revival”, I cannot touch Tony Gamble in any violent way, I can most certainly touch you.
By touch you, I am not referring to violating you in any particularly deviant way, unless you deserve a kick to the balls, in which case, I will most certainly kick you in your droopy ding-a-lings with ferocity and without remorse.
To be fair, and in all forthrightiveness, I am not above scratchin’ and clawin’ because sometimes, that is what you gotta do if you gotta do it. I would much rather prefer that it does not come down to kickin’ each other in the coglioni, it would be of the most optical preference that I visualize Tony Gamble’s stupid fucking face on your body and just pound you in that face over and over and over until it becomes an unrecognizeable heap of ground meat.
The point is, when we square off, after the match is over, you will be neither glad nor happy. In fact, from therein subsequently, you will be named Tristan-Crispin Sad-Melancolonic.