Big Balls

The man had exceptionally hairy arms. He could have been an orangutan or something just looking at his arms. He was looking me over and feeling my balls, which were about the size of a grapefruit. He was making faces and disturbing noises. He had an ugly, misfortunate sort of face. Probably, the source of a lifetime of anguish, at least, until he became a doctor. He resembled a frog with his eyes far apart as they were and his mouth that spread miserably across his face with no lips. He took a deep breath and then said I was going to die. He said that I have about six months to live. He recommended a grief counselor and asked if I wanted to talk to the chaplin. 

Well, fuck.

But the good news is that I have really huge balls and also a huge penis because the swelling spread into my penis and made it look like a roll of sugar cookie dough. I took pictures of myself and sent them to Playgirl, who sent me back an email accusing me in so many words of photo-shopping. I told them I'd come to New York and they could see for themselves. But I never went to New York. It wasn't that important to me to be meat in a magazine. Time was precious, suddenly, and I didn't want to spend it chasing any sort of relative fame. 

I got drunk and sent pictures to my ex-wife, Margaret Quilty. She never took my name when we married, which was fine by me. I never had the desire to possess anyone in my life, and I was always uncomfortable when during sex I would compliment a woman's pussy and she would say something like, "It's your pussy." 

I don't want it. I am just borrowing it. 

I made things worse with Margaret Quilty by joking that I finally hit my growth spurt. Eat shit, chicken legs, I wrote. I regretted that one in the morning. She didn't respond. I think she blocked me. But in fairness, she really did have chicken legs. They were white and bumpy. I couldn't get over it. 

I called the Guiness Book of World Records and they said they'd send an investigator out to measure me. They were English, so I expected Bonnie Blue or something like that. But instead I got a guy named Roger whose heterosexuality was suspect. He nonchalantly did the measurement and said that I didn't break the record for penis size, but the impressive circumference of my balls were the largest he ever personally recorded. He measured them with a snug maleable yellow tape. He said he would have to crosscheck them with other records to determine if they were the largest, but they were bigger than the boastful man from the Congo he last measured. 

I told him to come back in a week or so because my penis and balls grew daily. He said that I should bottle whatever I had and sell it and retire a billionaire. I didn't tell him that I had cancer and that someone else probably already had. He probably thought that I had an overactive pituitary gland or something. 

The grim frog-looking doctor had recommended chemotherapy and radiation, but I declined and that's when he gave me the bad news. He then asked me if I wanted to see the chaplin following my prognosis. I said sure. A nurse came in a few minutes later. I was still sitting on the bed in the inclined position, feeling concussed by the terrible news. My balls were still out because I didn't get dressed after the doctor left. I just lied there like a depressed sack if shit and did nothing at all. My mom and dad both died before me of cancer, so I guess it was my turn. Billions of people have died before me. What do I have to cry about? I had it coming. We all have it coming.

Kara, the nurse, was pretty, especially when she smiled. Her lips and teeth did this thing I can't explain. She seemed to know what was going on because she didn't say anything about me being undressed, nor about my giant dick and balls that lounged there down my leg like a beached whale. Like Moby Dick. I suppose she had seen many beached whales before and the sight didn't matter much to her. She had gone dick-blind long ago. 

Of all things to betray me—I lamented—my balls! It's one thing to be betrayed by a woman, or a friend, or even a dog. It is another thing entirely to be betrayed by your own balls. 

"Mr. Custer, are you ready to get dressed? The chaplin is on her way," Nurse Kara reminded me. Her, she said. The chaplain was a her. I pictured a lesbian. 

I nodded. I suppose I ought to cover them back up for the chaplin's sake. But all sense of decency and decorum had abandoned me. Life really isn't about making yourself comfortable—it's about making other people comfortable at the expense of your comfort. That much I have learned.

I expected the chaplin to be some homely-looking lesbian, awkward, giraffe-like, butch haircut, glasses, buck teeth, maybe. But instead she was a pretty woman. She was maybe forty or forty-five. I immediately thought of her in a sexual way out of instinct—no fault of my own—so much so that it was distracting when she offered to pray with me and to ask God for this or that on my personal behalf as though she knew Him personally. I thought about asking her to put her hand on my balls as we prayed, but I didn't have the audacity. I had spent the better half of 48 years essentially ballless. Conditioned, rather, to get along. To go along. To not rock the boat. 

She asked if I had any family to contact and I said no—I was divorced. My kids were grown and moved away and had families of their own to worry about. I wasn't much of a father, anyway. I didn't want anyone to know making it seem like I was pleading for sympathy. I just wanted to go out like a puff of smoke and see what's next.

She said she understood. She had talked to a lot of people who were dying like me of various sorts of things. Cancer was probably mundane in all that she had seen. She asked me if I believed in Jesus Christ, and I said yes. She asked if I had a church family, and I said no. She said she would be happy to do my funeral service if I wanted to talk to her for a while so she could get to know me. I said, I don't know. I might move out west or something.

"What do you want to do before you pass? Is there something special? Maybe I can help you." She had the voice of an angel. She could have a successful career as a phone sex operator, I was certain.  

I thought about gorillas. I randomly think about gorillas. They live in my mind as though it's a happy gorilla sanctuary—as though when I was a baby I had gorilla wallpaper on my nursery walls and it left an imprint on my brain. 

I was really sad when Harambe was killed to save some kid who fell into the enclosure chimping around. I thought being betrayed by my balls was bad. But imagine being a gorilla betrayed by the zookeeper and then Jack Hannah on national TV saying your murder was justified. The fucking indignation. 

Harambe had great balls. Even before I knew I had ball cancer, I'd go to the zoo and look at the balls on things. My eyes have no shame. I've long been a shameless gazer. I often stare at things I shouldn't. People with tumors. Midgets. Amputees. Fat people. Beautiful women. I cannot help myself. Perhaps, that is why I got cancer. For staring at things I shouldn't have stared at. My eyes were always on something. 

When I was nine years-old, I remember sneaking out with my friend who stayed over for a sleepover in my tent in the backyard. I watched my fifteen year-old neighbor get plowed in the backseat of a shitty Datsun that was parked on the street by some highschool boy. The windows were all fogged up, but I could still see. It wasn't out of perversion that I stared—it was fascination. I watched his balls flapping between her legs. His Jordache jeans were pulled down to his knees. This was it, I thought. This is the thing that keeps us going. 

While my friend ran back to our tent, I watched them like I couldn't stop. Observing. Like a moth to a flame. They finally saw me and I suppose I scared them. They looked at my face in the window like I was some sort of space alien. Then they yelled for me to get fucking lost. The older boy said he was going to kill me. 

When I got back to the tent, my friend laughed and said I had big balls. But, truly, it wasn't courage at all—it was that I felt stuck there as though my eyes were glued to their naked sweat-soaked bodies. Simple as that. 

Harambe had a large penis and great big balls. I am not sure if they let the apes fuck in the zoo. I suppose they do—that way they can have more zoo babies to sell to other zoos or trade for other animals they don't have, which helps sell tickets. But I don't know that apes are in the mood to have sex in a zoo. I suppose your modesty goes away. I wonder if they fall in love. I don't believe that love is uniquely human. 

"I want to fall in love," I told the lady chaplin. "Can you help me fall in love?"

She smiled. She was married I judged by the huge diamond ring on her finger. How absurd diamond rings are, I thought. They are unoriginal. I once bought Maragaret Quilty a diamond ring which I thought was impressive based upon its expense. Then she left me for a rich man who looked like Stephen Hawking if he wasn't a cripple. He was a rocket scientist, he told everyone. He bought her a bigger diamond ring than mine. He used to be a drone pilot in the Air Force. He'd brag about the people he killed with a joystick. Terrorists, he called them. He would go on and on about specific terrorists he killed, but their names all sounded the same. He said he was the best drone pilot in US Air Force history with the most confirmed kills. There was no way for me to know if any of this was true or not. You just had to take his word for it.  

I don't know what Margaret Quilty did with my ring. I suppose she sold it or donated it to the Salvation Army. She gave me three beautiful kids and that was about it. I suppose, I abandoned the rest. 

Sussanah, the chaplin, politely told me that she would pray for me and encouraged me to pray, too. So humbly we prayed together that I would find true love before I died. I felt weird holding her hands with our eyes closed. I got a monstrous erection, which rose from my pants like Frankenstein's monster in all its raging deformity. I opened my eyes to see if she was peeking, but she wasn't. I don't know why people close their eyes when they pray. I should have asked her why, but I didn't.

"With a woman," I clarified before we finished. "I don't want God to send me a kitten, or something like that. I'm too late in the game for moral lessons."

"With a woman," she chuckled in agreement. "Amen."

"Amen," I repeated. 

Was that too much to ask for? I think not. She told me I had to make an effort to find someone. I couldn't just sit around and wait for someone to come and ring my doorbell. 

So I got dressed and went to the stripclub to see what I could find. I was there by 6 p.m. before all the apes came in. I've always thought of stripclubs as being opportune places for companionship. Like dog shelters. Every once in a while you can find a golden retriever or a poodle. They aren't all pitbulls and mutts. 

I found a pretty stripper named Lily with great lips and a crucifix tattooed to her belly, but there was no spark after I declined a second lap dance, even though it was buy two get one free and I thought maybe it was a sign—the trinity and the tattoo. She was really into me for about an hour or so. I was like a hamburger patty at a summer picnic and she was a fly. But then another guy walked in like a bowl of cold potato salad and there she went. To think, I had forgiven her of her pitbull tattoo. I think she smoked meth, too, but she still had all her teeth. 

I didn't fall in love with anyone at the stripclub and no one fell in love with me. I got a handy from a young and pretty cocktail waitress who looked something like Lana Del Ray. She said she used to strip before she got married to some guy named Billy Something. She missed the money, but promised Billy Something that she wouldn't strip anymore, so here she was, serving drinks like a saint. 

She asked if I would give her a little something for the handy, which she did beneath my table in the darkest corner of the club. She said to act natural and I did my best until I started looking like Stephen Hawking as she stroked my meat and as I erupted like Mount Vesuvius all over the unsuspecting and innocent germs of her hand.

"Pop goes the weasel," she grinned. 

She said she would have given me a blowjob, but her husband smells her breath when she gets home and he has the nose of a beagle. I said it was okay. The handjob was good. She credited her skill to the fact that she played tennis in highschool. I told her my story and my wish to fall in love before I died. She offered some tender affectionate gloop and cooed like I was a walking Hallmark movie. She marveled that she couldn't even cup my balls in her hand. She said it was like dribbling a basketball. She wiped her sticky hand with a cocktail napkin and stuffed the extra twenty I gave her in her bra. I thanked her for the handy and said fare-thee-well and she disappeared.

I left shortly thereafter and went home to get my things in order in all my post-nut clarity. How wonderfully efficient I am after I get off. I wrote a last will and testament and left my oldest son my house and retirement since he seemed to hate me the least and since I didn't have anyone else to leave it to. I was no good at communicating with my kids. He could give the others what he thought best, which I was sure that he would. He was a sensible sort of person. He had a good head on his shoulders.

It's probably my own fault I have ball cancer at 48. I used to beat them senseless like Ike beat Tina. I also used to drive around with my cellphone tucked between my legs when I thought I was hotshit and impervious to death. But there was all sorts of radiation was going on down there. And like Godzilla in the Pacific, the cancer formed in the salty depths of my balls and now it wants to kill me. But the joke is on it. When I die, it dies, too. 

I cannot deny that there's a good chance I got cancer in my balls from fucking hookers and whores. From the toxic lube products they use or just the pollution in general. There's been a lot of traffic down there. So, truly—I had it coming. I don't think God put it there to punish me. But who knows. Maybe He did. Take that, He said, waving His disapproving almighty finger at my degeneracy. 

My balls are the size of two baseballs and getting about as hard. They are dark-red like Indian skin. I will likely die soon. There is no way out of it. I can drink all the olive oil I want, but it will never matter. They can blast me with all the chemicals and radiation in the world until I glow in the dark, and still, I will die. I declined chemotherapy and radiation, which upset my doctor. He argued that it could save my life or give me more years. Dr. Frog, I'll call him. His real name is too difficult to pronounce. He is from Sri Lanka, which is an island south of India.

I have had a lot of girlfriends since I was divorced several years ago. I've had more girlfriends than I've had pants, socks, or shoes, or toothbrushes. Every once in a while, I find items one of them left behind. Little forget-me-nots, you might say. They aren't girls, though, they're women, but you don't say you have a womanfriend. You say you have a girlfriend. It's strange hearing people over forty calling someone their girlfriend, if you ask me. Or to hear women say that they have a boyfriend.

I found one of my ex-girlfriend's dildos buried in my sock-and-underwear drawer. She buried it in the back to hide it. She lived with me for a while, but it didn't work out so she moved out. She took all her things except for that forgotten purple dildo. I texted her and asked her if she wanted it back. She read the text. Then there was this for a while—

...

—and then there was nothing else. It had been four years, which is just one presidential term. I suppose she didn't know what to say to me anymore. We had become strangers again. 

She didn't say she wanted it back, but she didn't say she didn't. So I went to Target and bought a box for it. A nine inch candle box. I thought tissue paper would be a little too much. The batteries no longer worked so I bought a couple of AAs and put them in—Energizers. I fired it up to make sure it worked and it started right up with an emphatic "Bzzzzzzzzzzz!"

I would have normally bought the cheap batteries, but since I was dying, I spared no expense. Those batteries will outlive me, I thought. What a sad thing that was for me to realize.

I drove it to her house and left it in the mailbox. It felt nice because I hadn't done anything romantic in a while. I wasn't sure if I should leave a note or anything like that, but I thought she might want it back, so I left it without one. 

Then I decided it was rude not to leave a note, so I went back hours later and took it out and wrote—with love—on a piece of stationary and put it in the box. 

I thought of writing "warm regards," or "most sincerely," or "happy to know you," and signing my name to it, but I was pretty happy with how I left it. I waited for a few days to see if she would send a message that said thank you or something like that. I really wanted a message. But no message ever came. Then, a few days later, I learned from a mutual friend that she had moved, so I don't know who got her old dildo. I should have just donated it to the Salvation Army. 

I wonder if the Salvation Army takes sex toys—if they have a secret room in the back with a sign that screams in black sharpie something like, "Adults 18 and up only" where gently used and donated sex toys live—pocket pussies, various dildos, vibrators, ball gags—that sort of thing. A room full of misfit toys. I wondered if there was someone at the Salvation Army for me to fall in love with, so I went over there and there wasn't. There were people with bad tattoos who looked like they were on parole and girls who smelled like Beetlejuice. The lady at the register said they don't have a sex toy room and they don't accept gently-used sex toys. I did find a "Dicks out for Harambe" shirt, so all-in-all, I was pretty happy. 

Valentine's Day was fast approaching and it has always been my favorite holiday. Ever since I was a small kid. Every year on Valentine's Day since I turned 18, I have had sex. Even the year I had the flu I had sex drunk on pseudoephedrine. Some years are easier than others. Some years I've had to drive to the city and pay for it after striking out at the local bars. But it's been an annual tradition. I was married for five or six of those years, and it was always a fair trade of roses and chocolates or jewelry for bjs and sex. Marriage is prostitution—through bartering. Change my mind. 

If I'm being honest, my first Valentine was my right hand, who has never failed me once. She can really work me over with great efficiency when she needs to. I have to claim that my hand is female, otherwise, it sounds gay  

It is only a few days until Valentine's Day. I remember making boxes as a kid and taking them to school. I remember giving the best cards to the girl I really liked. The one I liked best and fixated on. In fourth grade, I fixated on Kelly Conner and I traced my penis on one of those cards thinking it was a romantic gesture. I wrote "with love" on it. Love was a bold word then, back before it was washed and recycled. She said thank you and that she loved the dinosaur I drew for her. 

"You're welcome," I answered. "It's a brontosaurus."

"I love brontosauruses," she said.  

 

Since I learned I have ball cancer, I don't see hookers anymore. What's the point? Besides, the grand reveal is too much and I am not sure if they might think they can contract cancer from me, or they'll think I have some other sort of communicable disease and refuse me service. I imagine that is about the lowest feeling in the world—to be turned down by a prostitute. It would be like how Harmabe must have felt being shot for nothing.

I saw hookers for a while after I got ball cancer, before they were grotesquely huge, and one I saw on a regular basis called me "Mr. Big Balls." When my balls flapped against the mattress it was like a basketball dribbling on a gym floor.

There was a time when the cancer was not so bad and it was just right and it appeared that I simply had been blessed with huge balls. So after the hooker named me, I ran with it and I called myself Mr. Big Balls, thinking I was on to something special. I even changed my email address to Mr.BigBalls@gmail.com. I could have done pornography, one hooker told me. She asked me to do "content" with her, but I said no. I didn't want my legacy to be tarnished, I told her, though I had no legacy to tarnish at all. I was a nobody. 

Nobody could possibly put both of your balls in their mouth, she said, groping them like fat fruits to pluck from a tree. She was Hispanic. But unfortunately for me, the more the cancer progressed, the harder they got. And worse, it became as though they would burst at any moment. Then they became one huge unmanageable ball which was like carrying around a cannonball.

The best part about having hard balls is that they are easy to shave. When they were saggy and natural and about the size of two kiwis, they were hard to shave and often I would knick myself with the electric razor and bleed profusely. They don't sell bandages for dick and ball nicks at Walgreen's, so I had to make due with what I had. I bandaged myself like I was Florence fucking Nightengale. I cannot stand a hairy scrotum. 

I suppose I should confess all of my sins so that I can go to Heaven, if that's the way that it works. I was watching a preacher on TV who said no one can go to Heaven without asking the Lord for forgiveness. So here I go. 

Where do I begin? 

I once killed a bird when I was a kid. I consider it the worst thing I've ever done. I shot it dead with a BB gun. I didn't think I would actually hit it, but I did. From a pretty far distance. I still think about it to this day. It was bright yellow. It was on the railroad tracks near my house. I have tried to save any animal I can since then. Even worms washed out on the sidewalk. I was a regular deadeye-dick. I became a vegetarian later in life thinking of that bird. I thought about his family. If he had any bird kids I orphaned. Or if he was a she and a nest of babies waited in vain to be fed.  

What else? 

When I got lonely and was in between girlfriends, I relied upon hookers for pleasure. To my credit, I never owned an artificial pussy or any form of plastic or rubber self-stimulation device. I masturbated more times than most, I think. Every man's first girlfriend is his own hand. I don't care who you are. At one point or other, we've all been our own best friend.

Some of those hookers were high-class, while some were not. Some were in four star hotels, others were in rundown motor lodges with suspect vibrating beds and dead bugs on the floor that I prayed were not bedbugs—which reminds me—if I get to Heaven I'm going to have to ask God if he created bedbugs, flies, and mosquitoes—and if so, why. Or was that the Devil—the lord of the flies. 

Some weren't hookers at all, but I offered them money for their companionship and they accepted. They weighed my level of attractiveness against the amount I offered. It was simple capitalism. Some did not accept and were offended that I asked, but flattered, nonetheless. Some were 60 dollars and some were 400 dollars. The least amount I've paid for sex was 20 bucks for a blowjob, and, of course, 20 bucks for a handjob from that Lana Del Ray cocktail waitress with the beagle-nosed husband.

What's more, I've lied about many things in my life. I can't possibly remember all of my lies. I've lied on resumes and job applications. I've lied to my parents about my whereabouts on occasions. I cheated on Margaret Quilty several times. They were never as pretty or as decent as her in any way, shape, or form. Then she left me for a man named Dano (pronounced Dan-O). He probably tells his friends that his wife's ex-husband's name is really George Armstrong Custer. He was the drone "pilot" rocket scientist who looks like Michael J. Fox without Parkinson's. 

When I was in high school, I grew my blonde hair out. I had beautiful golden-wavy locks that curled on the end. I got a white cowboy hat and wore it all the time. If I had a horse, I would have rode it to school. By coincedence, I drove a cheap 1985 Ford Mustang—it was a real piece of shit and the Ford Motor Company ought to be ashamed. 

I bought a pair of brown Dingo boots and a blue dress shirt and pants. In the yearbook, I said the Indians had it coming and they'll get it again. I was embracing my namesake. I claimed reincarnation and planned to join the US Army Calvary until the recruiter said they'd have to cut my hair and they had no horses. It is the same reason I declined chemotherapy and radiation—vanity. I didn't want to lose my hair. 

I didn't know any actual Indians (feather), but I knew some Indians (dot). They owned a gas station near my high school. There was another Indian (dot) who went to my school. Her dad was a doctor at the hospital. She was short and skinny and ran cross country. We had sex once and never talked to each other again. I don't even remember her name. I'll never forget the smell of her skin, though. Anytime I smell Indian food I get an erection. 

I couldn't think of anything else I had to be sorry about, so that was all for which I prayed forgiveness. I hoped that I didn't forget about something terrible. I had never intentionally hurt anyone, even that bird wasn't intentional. I thought I'd miss. I wonder what happens if you have Alzheimer's. Is there a blanket prayer that covers everything?

Dear God, please forgive me for all the things I forget. 

Amen.

I used to write "with love" on the hundreds I'd pay hookers for sex. It is a federal crime to write on money if it is done with the intent to defraud, but not otherwise. I wasn't trying to defraud anyone. I suppose I am sorry about that, too. 

Forgive me for picking my nose as a child, Lord. For filing head of household on my taxes improperly receiving tax relief I wasn't entitled to receive. For affairs I've forgotten. People I've cursed in anger. For leaving bad tips to insufferable waitresses. Stiffing the Salvation Army bell ringer a time or two or for not saying merry Christmas in return. For anything and everything I have done that has been against God.

Amen. With love. 

With my balls feeling like they were about to burst, I got an itch to see spring training baseball in Arizona. It was one thing I've never done and it was early February and snowing in Ohio and I didn't want to die in the snow. So, I texted my son and told him the house was his to do with what he wanted. I wouldn't be back. He could sell it or burn it. And all the effects inside were also his. There were some valuable things in there—including a Mickey Mantle rookie card that was passed down to me by my father, and a trove of priceless antiques. The card in the condition it was in was worth around $250,000. He must have thought I flipped my lid. If it was mint, it could sell for several million. My dad, however, didn't know that when he was a kid, and so he played with it and stuffed it in a cigar box. 

I drove as far as Oklahoma before I stopped to rest. Mickey Mantle was from Oklahoma. I really didn't know anything else about Oklahoma and don't care to. It's too late in the game to worry about learning new things about things like that. 

I stopped in a small town off the highway called Marvel and ate breakfast at a small diner. Across the street there was a wax museum and I walked in and no one was around. The cowbell on the door clanged as I walked in, but there was nothing else. I don't know if they were open or not, but the door was unlocked, so I helped myself. 

The place was full of wax people. Celebrities. Presidents. Actors. Athletes. You name it. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Wolfman. Evel Knievel. The only other living soul in the place was an old hairy gray Persian cat who purred and rubbed itself on my leg as though he or she was happy to see me. 

The building was old. The floor creaked with every step. Old oriental rugs were thrown down all catawampus to cover a perversion of extension cords and naked hardwood floor. It was a morgue of wax bodies, all of which stood as though they could come to life at any moment. I knew most of them. Over there was Marilyn Monroe. I stared at her for a while. And in my indecorous mind, I wondered if they had carved her a pussy. So I flipped on a nearby metal oscillating fan that blew up her white Seven Year Itch dress. 

No pussy.

Marilyn was standing by a presumably dickless James Dean. It appeared as though they were laughing about something I was not a party to. There was Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill. Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, who looked at me as though they made up. There was Liberace and Elvis. Buddy Holly and Edward G. Robinson. Princess Diana and Mohamed Ali. Pee Wee Herman and his bike. Daniel Boone and Dorothy Gale from Kansas, along with Toto. It might have been the coolest place I had ever been. 

"Hello," I called out. "Hello?" No one answered, though it was only 8:15 in the morning. Another part of the store I perused sold magic kits and hats and costumes. Fake beards and mustaches. Sunglasses and wigs and candy cigars. Gag gifts. Whoopee cushions and rubber chickens and penny candy in glass canisters. And books. There were oodles and oodles of books. 

Of course, I found George Custer next to Sitting Bull, or Crazy Horse, whoever the hell he was. He stood there and stared at me as I stood there and stared at him. Toe to wax toe. He looked like an asshole. He probably was. Then I decided that I ought to swap clothes with him. So I stripped him naked down to his wax skin which included his red overalls that were underneath the uniform. His boots. His hat. His yellow gloves and red scarf. It was a further indignation for the once proud general, who famously got his at Little Big Horn. I wonder why they hadn't shot him full of arrows.

I liked the way the uniform fit. The feel of the wool. It was not a cheap costume. It was the genuine article. I stared at myself in the mirror, proud as a peacock. If I had a full yellow beard, I would have looked more like him, though Custer had that bizarre, crazed 19th century look about him. My hair was long with golden ringlets, just like his. But as I stood there staring at myself, I heard a voice from atop the stairs. Stairs with an ornate black laquered banister and gold spindels that led to an upper-level where Rapunzel was throwing down her hair in hopes of a potential suitor.  

"You know, breaking and entering is a crime around here," she said. 

I was startled for a moment. I looked for the soft but stern voice that woke me from my daydream. But my eyes were lost amongst the wax figurines. 

"The door was unlocked. I—thought you were open," I answered. 

"At 8:15 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, I am getting my daughter off to school. We open at 10."

"I can come back..."

"Well, you're already here," she countered.

I found her face, at last. It was a beautiful face. Pure and pretty like a dove. She was maybe 30 or 35. Dark hair and eyes and pale skin that was augmented by the flood of natural light that poured through the windows, and the glow of lamps of all sorts along with the various lights that dangled from the copper-tiled ceiling in a miscellany of antuque glass shades of various pastel hues. It was truly a beautiful face in a beautiful spectacle of light. She looked as though she could have been a vampire. 

"Do you own this place?" I asked.

"I do. My dad died last summer in a truck accident and left it to me. He was the one who made all of these." 

She walked down the stairs to join me. She wore a red dress that looked like something someone would be buried in 100 years ago. 

"My daughter and I live in the apartment upstairs. It isn't much, but it's ours."

"He was an amazing artist. I can't imagine making all of these. And I'm sorry for your loss."

"There are 512 wax people here. Everyone from the Queen of Egypt to Billy the Kid. And not one of them pay rent. They're a bunch of freeloaders."

"Maybe you should charge admission?"

"My father was a terrible businessman and I'm afraid I inherited that gene. He just wanted to delight people with his art."

"Did you inherit that gene as well?" 

"I'm afraid not. Wait—are you wearing General Custer's uniform?"

She walked closer to me and was only an arm length or two away. I couldn't help but to stare. She had perfect doe-like eyes. Black as night, they seemed. She looked something like Morticia Addams or the girl from Beetlejuice. Yet, she was unmistakable in her own right. Her hair was black and piled up on her head with various antique hairpins. The imperfections of her face, her small but awkward nose, and her large ears that hid quietly in the shadows of her raven-black hair only made her that much more attractive. She was herself like the shadow of someone unborn, yet, of no one at all. She looked like the most beautiful corpse one could dig up—one that was somehow perfected by death. But I couldn't help but to stare at the slight blemish of nearly imperceptible freckles that covered the bridge of her nose, despite the pale powder she covered them with. 

"I'm sorry. I was just trying it on. My name is George Custer and, well, I wanted to see what it looked like on."

"You have some balls."

"So I've been told." I shook my head and rubbed my eyes.

"Well, it fits. But that's not really your name, is it? Are you one of those crazy people who think they are someone famous? Have you escaped from a mental institution?" 

"No. It really is my name."

"I don't believe you. If it is, I'll give you that uniform—if you can prove it. Then you can take it and go do whatever you intend to do with it."

"You don't need to do that. I really was just trying it on. I wasn't planning to take it."

"I knew it," she smiled. "So if it's not really your name, well, you'll have to buy me dinner. And then I'll drive you back to whatever funny farm you escaped from." 

"I'm just passing through," I said. 

"Regardless," she replied. "That's the deal. Shake on it?" 

And so we shook. 

Then I smiled and reached for my pants which were on the floor. I grabbed my wallet and took my ID out and handed it over to her. 

"Sonofabitch—George Armstrong Custer. From Blue Ash, Ohio. I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. Well, then—fair is fair. The suit is yours."

"I don't need the suit."

"But it does suit you. I'm Stella, by the way."

She shook my hand again. I took it in mine as someone would take something of great value. Something almost stolen. Something decrepit, though not at all decrepit. It was warm and gentle. It was perfect in its frailty as was she. Small and delicate. And I held it there, and by way of her hand, I held her as though her entire soul was comfortably in my palm. 

I hadn't seen a more beautiful woman in all my life—that I would swear to. It was as though she satisfied ever inkling I ever had of what a beautiful woman should be, and every want and desire that was missed by every other person I had ever seen in my life was answered only by her. I was misled by other women, I knew now. I was duped. And I fell in love in the wax museum as quickly as I was born and surely as quickly as I will die. I could have died then, fallen over where I stood, and left the world a happy man. God had bestowed upon me that which I felt I did not deserve, but that which I asked for. 

"I would still love to buy you dinner," I muttered in a clumsy sort of stumbling of words for that which she evoked. 

"You needn't. But I accept if the offer is truer than a white man's treaty," she joked.

"On my honor as an Indian killer, squaw."

I told her I was on my way to Arizona and Marvel was an unplanned stop along the way. She told me about her daughter, Juliet, who was an unplanned stop along the way for her, so to speak. She planned to go to New York where she knew she would have been miserable and would have burned out like a sparkler. She asked if I had ever been to South Dakota. If I had ever seen Little Big Horn. 

No, I said. My interest in my namesake wasn't all that compelling. My mom was a big fan of Errol Flynn. Then she told me how her father had taken her to South Dakota when she was a girl. How she remembered the sunsets and the prairie grass. Sometimes she called him dad and other times it was father. I wondered why it changed, but I didn't ask.

She asked if I had a room and I said no. So she offered me a room above the wax museum. There was a small vacant apartment next to hers that she hadn't decided what to do with after her father passed. He used it for his studio. I agreed and paid her 100 dollars for the night, which was sixty more than she asked for—a gratititous expression of my sincerity. 

I slept for a few hours and woke up in time to get dressed and take her to dinner. There was only one diner in town and we walked over, awkwardly not holding hands which felt unnatural. My hand felt vacuous without hers. She was wearing a black old-style dress with a frilly satin bodice and lacey sleeves, and I wore a simple black suit and tie which she lent me from her father's closet. She had asked to dress me, and I said yes. She explained that she was an amateur seamstress and fashion designer. 

There was an old movie theater we walked by that was playing classic movies. It was like a time capsule. Tonight it was "The Wolfman." She said she could talk to Vinny the owner and get a western on for tomorrow if I wanted to stick around. I suppose that was the best she could do for an invitation.   

We ate dinner and made the movie in plenty of time. The popcorn was salty and the Coke came in glass bottles. 

"Mexican coke," she bragged. "With real sugar." 

She excused herself to speak to Vinny, who was an old man in a white suit with a white nest of hair. He looked over at me and smiled and nodded as she worked him over. He gave Stella a hug and left us alone. She told me he was a very good friend of her father's and they used to drink bourbon and play checkers together on the empty patio table that was outside the movie theater. There were only four other people in the theater that night. It was a Tuesday, after all. 

I realized sitting in the theater that I had received my wish. There was a piece of paper on the red carpet below us that was in the shape of a heart. God was giving me something beautiful to feel before I died. Mercy, maybe it was. He was allowing me to love and to be loved and I had no way in the world to thank Him.

I looked at her as the movie played, as though it was there upon her face and there only. We sunk in the comfortable blood-red crushed velvet seats that were probably 100 years old and soft shadows of gypsies and werewolves and those that hunted the werewolf flickered across the theater of her face. There were such beautiful contrasts. I realized it was all wrong of me, though. To fall in love with her and to allow her to fall in love with me. I didn't have much to give. I had less time than I had change in my pocket.

We walked back to the museum where I met her daughter, Juliet, who was up doing her homework and eating ice cream. She also had jet-black hair and looked remarkably similar to her mother, apart from her braces. She was 14 and had a birthday in a month. I smiled at her and she smiled back, which was enough and quite an endorsement, according to Stella, who said, "Normally, she frowns, if not growl and bite."

Stella asked me to join them tomorrow for spaghetti and then we could go see another movie. Juliet asked to go to the movie too until Stella whispered something into her ear which made her huff and change her mind. I suppose she told her what the movie was. I went to bed in pain. The pain of the cancer was sometimes overwhelming and I didn't take anything for it other than Tylenol and alcohol.

I could have died then. I wondered how it would come. What it would feel like. If I would simply close my eyes and drift away, or if it would be agonizing and long. I wondered if I would go to sleep and not wake up. I wrote a note to Stella in case I didn't wake up. Thank you for your hospitality and decency. I wish I could have met you sooner or stayed longer. You compelled me to decency. The impure thoughts that burdened my life did not exist in your presence. I wish I had more time. More to give you. But I couldn't say I love you. I knew, which is what mattered, but I don't think I could say it. At least, not in a letter.

The next morning, I woke up. The pain was gone and Stella was making breakfast in her apartment. She popped out of her door when mine opened and she asked if I wanted to join her. I stepped inside as Juliet was leaving to catch the school bus. She smiled at me and said hello in passing and then giggled. Stella told me she had told Juliet my name and Juliet joked that Stella had found a way to date the men of the wax museum. She said she thought Napoleon was more her type. She said Juliet has an overactive imagination.

We ate breakfast and watched TV in the living room. Then we made love on the couch. She didn't say anything about the enormity of my balls—the elephant in the room. She just bounced on them like a hippity hop ball on a playground while impaling herself like a shish kabob on my organ skewer. I was thankful that it all still worked long enough to make love to her at least once. We made the most of it and made love for hours until we could no longer. She kept saying it's been so long, it's been so long, it's been so long. I didn't know how to reply to that. I am not a good sex conversationalist. I never know what to say.

Over lunch I told her. I couldn't keep it from her and let my sudden death be introduced by the discivery of my body. So over a plate of grilled cheese, fries, and pickles, I spilled the beans and I told her about my ball cancer. Then, as though in trade, she told me about being horribly in debt and in danger of losing the wax museum and I suppose we felt a kinship in our despair. She teared up when she heard I would die in six months or so, according to Dr. Frog. I didn't cry. I sat there and finished my pickle like a man. What good is it to cry?

I suppose in my desire to be loved, I neglected the reality of what that would actually entail. A brief love affair would leave the person I loved, and who presumably loved me, heartbroken and abysmally unresolved. In this instance, Stella and, possibly, Juliet. I suppose the right thing to do was to pack up and move on. See spring training baseball. Hear the crack of the wooden bat in the Aizona desert and call it a life in some comfortable motel with a pool to the droning of an air conditioner. The cleaning lady would find me, so I wouldn't lie there too long. I could leave her a tip and a note on motel stationary pinned to my chest in some fashion. My body—with love.

But I couldn't leave. I called my son and asked him to find the Mickey Mantle card and send it to me in a padded envelope via Fed Ex. He said that he would. I signed a power of attorney so he could sell the house on my behalf. When I died, the card would go to Stella and she would be able to pay off all of her creditors. She could sell it on Ebay or at auction. It would be a final good deed before I said goodbye, cruel world.

After our spaghetti dinner, we strolled over to the movie theater and on the white marquee in bold red letters it red, "They Died With Their Boots On." It was story of George Armstrong Custer, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. My mom had a thousand affairs with Errol Flynn in her mind.

I sat in the movie theater and watched a handsome man who looked nothing like Custer get killed by Indians in one final triumphant and climactic scene. Death, according to Hollywood, is a magnificent event to behold. There are triumphant trumpets, strings, drums, and no matter how gruesome, never any blood.

And so the cancer was my Little Big Horn and the wagons inside of my body were circled. We ate popcorn and drank soda and watched the pretty Custer get his in about the most glorious way a person can die—fighting for something of worth—the glory of land and pride.

I walked Stella home and after she went to bed I took a stroll to the only pub in town which was nearly empty. I bellied up to the bar and told the elderly bartender to surprise me. He made the drink of least resistance—the first draft beer he reached to pull. I watched as my liquid optimism rose in the glass, capped with a beautiful head of foam.

The circus is a dying thing, but what made its way through that sleepy Oklahoma town was the remnants of a once great circus in the dirty and dusty body of its broken, old ringmaster, who was having drinks at the bar that evening. He wore a tattered-green velvet suitcoat with tails, had a brown felt tophat with a peacock feather in the blue band, and a handlebar mustache that was perfectly curled on the ends.

But his most curious feature was a glass eye that he regularly took out of his head to hold in his hand as he made jokes to entertain myself and Walt, the owner and bartender. He said their stuntman suffered a dreadful injury in Joplin, Missouri due to his own miscalculation, so the show would suffer greatly without him, but that it would, nonetheless, go on. 

"He was but meat and muscle," the showman related. "Meat and muscle he was—though he had—great big balls! Too few men these days have great big balls," he pined. "Our president has great big balls. Teddy Roosevelt had big balls."

I chuckled under my breath. I couldn't help but to stare at him as he spoke, partly because of my disorder in staring, and partly because of my fascination with the man as the most interesting character I've ever met. It was strange to me that in an entire life lived, the most interesting man I ever met came at the very end. He handed me his glass eye and I held it and gazed into it as though it were some sort of mysterious oracle, or a crystal ball.

I knew this to be God's invitation to me. So I told him—Hadley, was his name, Hannibal Hadley—that I would be his meat and muscle and so I offered my services. He looked me over and smiled, probably assumed it was the alcohol talking, the false courage of intoxication, which maybe he knew all too well. He took his eye back from me and dipped it in his drink and put it back in his head and gave me a thorough looking over. He was a little man, I realized as he got up from the barstool. His pants were mustard-yellow and his worn brown boots were laced to the knee.

He put a hand over his good eye and pretended to look at me through that milky glass eye, saying that it was a gift from a witch and that it was all-seeing. Then he asked if I was afraid to die, to which I answered—no. He asked if I had ever been shot from a cannon, if I was afraid of fire, and if I could ride a motorcycle.

"No. No. And yes," I returned.

"And how do you feel about wrestling an angry grizzly bear or dancing with hungry lions?"

"I never have, but I suppose I would."

Walt seemed impressed as he poured us both another drink.

Hadley grinned from ear to ear exposing his candycorn teeth beneath that wild mustache which was thick as a horse's tail. He was something out of a movie. Something that must have coalesced out of the ether of another bizarre universe. Maybe he was bitten by a werewolf and unable to die or age. Some otherworldly figure that didn't belong anymore in this world—as though he crawled out of a jar at an antique store or out of someone's wild imagination.

"Don't you want to know what it pays?" Hadley asked me.

"What's it pay?" Walt interrupted before I could ask.

"One thousand a show!"

"Dollars?" Walt asked. In my delay, he became my unofficial agent.

"No. Buttons! Yes, dollars, dummy!"

Walt and I looked at each other.

"And you get to travel the whole world!" Hadley added. "With the bearded lady, the strongman, the mermaids, the clowns, the lion tamer, the midgets, and all the beautiful acrobats you could ever imagine!" They all seemed to spill out of his imagination through his words as though his mouth was the Big Top itself.

It wasn't long after, though, that the man passed out. And when Walt asked me what he ought to do with him, and I didn't have an immediate answer, he asked me to help him move him to the back where there was a cot Walt said he used sometimes himself, fretting over whether the little man had bedbugs or some sort of communicable skin disease.

Walt said he supposed he ought to get his wallet and look for an identification. He looked at me as though for approval and I watched him pull Hadley's wallet from his yellow pants and there wasn't an ID, nor a dollar, nor a bank card or credit card of any sort at all. It was like he was a perfect nobody.

"Plum empty!" Walt bitched.

"I'll pay his tab, Walt."

It turned out the man was a drifter and he wasn't part of any circus. It was very unlikely that his name was Hannibal Hadley and that he belonged anywhere. He was a true misfit. A man that simply blows in the wind until he turns to dust and dissipates into the air. The man lived entirely in his own imagination. A man built entirely out of the strangest of fiction—that which he collected for years or absorbed. He will likely live to be a hundred and four. Maybe a thousand and twelve. Who knows how long he had been, or how long he will be.

The next morning I saw Walt who said he woke up to check on Hadley but he was gone. So I left the idea of joining the circus, but I knew I would have to leave Stella soon. I couldn't stick around and die and leave her with the obligation of my corpse. We spent another day together and the Mickey Mantle card came in the mail so we had dinner and I gave it to her. I had put it in a box, wrapped it, and put a bow on top. It would be the first and last gift I would ever give her, I suppose.

She didn't know what it was worth, but she recognized it was old, and to her credit, she knew who Mickey Mantle was. I told her to look it up when she got home and to auction it off on Ebay with a minimum bid of $250,000. She said she had thought about auctioning off the wax people, as she called them, but she just couldn't do it.

Inspired by the bold words and accounts of Hannibal Hadley, I started a website called "Big Balls" and, with the help of Juliet, I made a TikTok. I bought a cheap dirt bike and made some modifications and the little town of Marvel, Oklahoma became my home. With the help of some local kids, I built two ramps—one from which to jump and another on which to land. Then I called a local junkyard and made an agreement to buy ten busses dirt cheap, which I would set on fire and jump downtown for the 4th of July. When the junkyard heard what I was going to do, they donated the busses. Stella and Juliet helped me make posters.

And so it was billed:

"Big Balls! George Armstrong Custer returns to jump ten burning busses!"

It was going to be a live event advertised all over Oklahoma and broadcast via live feed all over the world with proceeds going to save the Marvel Wax Museum and historic downtown. I didn't know if I would be able to make the jump, but what did it matter? I practiced for a few months on an abandoned farm outside of town, but didn't want to damage the bike so badly that I had to pay for another.

There was a chance I wouldn't be alive by the 4th of July, I realized. Either the cancer would kill me or the various other stunts I started doing to gain followers would. The first was walking on a highwire strung across Red Rock Canyon. I never knew I could balance before I tried it. If I fell it would likely get over a million views. But it went off without a hitch. Stella recorded as I walked and a small crowd of onlookers cheered me on. Then there was the alligator wrestling in Norman. Swimming with electric eels in Stillwater. Bear brawling with Bernie the Bear in Ft. Sill. I got beat up, cut up, mashed up, fucked up, but I lived. I set world records for beers drank at one sitting at Walt's Pub and cigarettes smoked in 24 hours. It seemed obvious that the cancer is what would kill me. Nothing else.

Stella auctioned off the Mickey Mantle and got $277,890—half of which she put into the Big Balls' 4th of July Event. She became my de facto promoter and agent, and I wore that blue wool suit I took off the other Custer.

She bought me a brand-new dirt bike with Big Balls painted on the gas tank. Five months into a six month prognosis to live, and I was still alive. She no longer tried to talk me out of it and she sold Big Balls shirts and merchandise in the wax museum. On the shirt, I was jumping over burning school busses in my uniform, waving an American flag.

After many wonderful nights and dinners and movies with Stella, the day of the jump finally came—the 4th of July. The town of Marvel had a parade and they asked me to be the grand marshall, so I accepted and rode in the back on the motorcycle I was going to make the jump on. The busses were all parked at the school waiting to be moved into position. The mayor said over two thousand tourists were in town to watch me and it was the biggest event in Marvel's history, apart from a gunfight that occured on the very spot my jump was to happen back in 1888.

Stella said they sold out of Big Balls' shirts and she had to order more because of a backlog of online orders. The TikTok page exploded, which Juliet ran and resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue. There was also the OnlyFans page, which made as much. All tolled, we had made enough money to pay off the wax museum three times over and the town was happy with the revenue generated from tourism. They erected a sign as you entered town that said, "Welcome to Marvel. Home of Big Balls—the other George Armstrong Custer."

It didn't matter if I lived, I knew. My time was about up. The wick of my life was nearly burned out. I made love to Ella that morning like it was the last thing I'd ever do. She, once more, bounced upon me as she had before like the bell was about to ring at recess. I suppose we both knew. I suppose, the real Custer had his moment before Little Big Horn when he figured this was all she wrote.

We didn't watch much TV, but the TV happened to be on in the room as we lay there and she played upon my skin with her fingers drifting to sleep. I had grown a decent mustache and beard, which I twirled when I was nervous. I suppose I was nervous, knowing this was probably going to be it. Even with the new motorcycle Ella bought for me, I wasn't sure I could make the jump. Then God must have thought it was all too funny and the perfect time to announce what He was to announce.

The TV was on the morning news—the Today Show. The anchor lady read the script. "Out of Cincinnati, Ohio, a strange story. A doctor was charged with giving false cancer prognoses to patients with non-malignant tumors to convince them they needed chemotherapy and radiation bilking hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies."

It couldn't be...

My eyes were closed as I tried to rest. At first, I thought I was dreaming. Then Stella said what I feared she might say.

"That doctor looks like a frog."

And there he was. In all his ugly glory and miserable anguish—Dr. Andujar. Dr. Frog. Grimacing at me from a thousand miles away through a pixilated image. Staring right into my soul. Was it possible that the tumor I had was non-malignant and this charlatan had convinced me I was dying when I was not? When I simply needed an operation to remove the tumor or some sort of treatment—not chemo and radiation?

I didn't say anything to Stella as we lied in bed. I kept it all to myself. Dr. Frog was a fraud and there was a chance I didn't have cancer at all. Yet, this evening, I would be making a jump over ten burning school busses that could kill me.

For some reason, all I could think of was Dr. Frog's arms. Those hairy ape-like arms. They were like a flea forest. Maybe I was dreaming, but I shrunk, and I was lost in his arm hair.

It was only two hours until showtime. Ella made us lunch and we ate on the rooftop of the wax museum where she had a nice patio set and a beautiful pergola for shade. There were giant clay pots full of exotic plants—things she had ordered from the internet. Plants that couldn't have imagined that they'd end up on a rooftop in Marvel, Oklahoma—population 2,457. They were transplants from jungles or deserts ten thousand miles away. But here they were, and such is life. Like it or not.

I was all dressed and ready to go in that blue wool uniform. It was 90 degrees and I was sweating profusely. I nearly forgot that I promised the mayor that I would skydive into town from Ned Abernathy's crop duster. Ned Anernathy, who was a pilot in the Korean War and a POW after he was shot down. What's more, I said I would wing walk before I strapped on the parachute and made my jump. I've never parachuted in my life. Juliet gave me her GoPro headband that would record the whole thing for the live stream. What had I gotten myself into?

Ned was 92 years-old and I could barely see him in the cockpit. He looked at me as I climbed on board. He told me I could sit on the wing and to just hold on to the bar. The plane was as old as Ned and twice as rickety. I wouldn't be surprised if it fell apart upon take off. One day it certainly would.

Stella kissed me goodbye and wished me luck. I wondered if George Custer's wife, Elizabeth, had kissed him and wished him luck before he left. Maybe she gave him a lock of her hair. She could tell I was nervous. More nervous than I was when I arm wrestled the King Cobra, or rode the back of the Bengal tiger. I regretted only that I never snuck into the gorilla enclosure at the nearest zoo—in a gorilla suit—to be with my kind. That would have been something.

Before today I had the benefit of an expendable life. It was cheap because it was almost over and I thought that it was better to die doing something daring and fun than laying round and letting the cancer eat me up. But now I know the cancer might have been a fraud. It was all about money—and Dr. Frog was going to prison.

So I got up on the wing of Ned's crop duster and Ned gave a wrinkled thumbs up. I believe he might have thought he was still in Korea. He had a dirt runway on his farm and he taxied the plane to it. Then Stella yelled to stop because I had forgotten the parachute which she ran and chucked at me. I caught it just before we were out of reach and in the air. Thank God for Stella.

"Commies! Cocksucker! Fuck!" Ned yelled. He had Tourette Syndrome, induced by the war, they said.

With knees knocking, I did the wing walk. Not as well as I would have if I still believed I was dying. It mattered, suddenly, if I fell. I did so so the few hundred thousand people who followed me on social media could get the thrill of watching a man who could die at any moment. A man who calls himself Big Balls, but whose figurative balls suddenly got blasted to smithereens like a game of Ateroids.

I held on to the pole and strapped the parachute to my back. Ned gave me the thumbs up indicating we were at the right altitude and the right spot over town.

"Shit! Fuck! Cunt!" he screamed over the roar of the propellers. I looked down and saw the busses lined up on Main Street and a crowd of people who looked like a thousand ants on a popsicle. And I waved at Ned who waved back at me and he dipped his wing so I'd have an easier time clearing the plane. I fell at around 2500 feet and did a quick hop-and-pop. The chute deployed properly and there I coasted to an easy landing very close to my intended target. I had, once more, cheated death.

The crowd cheered as I landed and I was dizzy on my feet like wax Mohammed Ali had given me a beating. Stella and Juliet ran to me like I was some sort of hero and not just a louse who had the false courage of dwindling mortality for a while. But it was almost all over—all but for one last death-defying stunt.

The mayor, prepetual opportunist that he was, congratulated me with a rigorous handshake for the camera which popped, and the fire department lit the busses on fire as I walked to the ramp where my motorcycle waited for me like an ill-fated horse once awaited the other George Custer. And then the local high school band struck up "Big Balls" by AC/DC as I revved the throttle. I suppose they didn't know the score to They Died With Their Boots On, or any 7th Calvary battle music.

And my mind twirled and flipped over like a crusty rotisserie hot dog in a Seven Eleven. I wondered if the other George Custer felt like this when he mounted his horse before Little Big Horn. If he had some fateful premonition as I had. I only asked for ten busses, but the local junkyard ponied up twelve. Twelve fucking busses! At a distance of approximately 122 feet. I would have to hit the ramp at over 90 miles per hour to even have a chance.

Stella put Evel Knievel from the wax museum out under the awning of the lemonade stand and he looked on taunting me, reminding me that he jumped fourteen greyhound busses at King's Island, not far from my hometown. The VFW provided veterans who stood at attention and saluted me as I rolled passed. Of all the wild things I had done, this was the craziest of them all. The worst of them all. I would have rather swam with a shark or dove off a cliff at an extreme height into some body of choppy water. Niagara! Why hadn't I done Niagara in a barrel and left myself to the fate of the current.

I had no confidence that I could make the jump and the new motorcycle Stella bought for me was much bigger and harder to control than the 650 I had before. I hadn't spent enough time practicing on it.
So resigned that I would definitely die, I kissed Stella goodbye and patted Juliet on the head. An old lady, a Daughter of the American Revolution, gave me an American flag and I waved it gloriously as the crowd cheered as I rode around on my bike playfully. Most of America still loves America, I know. Fuck the rest that don't.

An ambulance parked and waved at me and smiled in a weird sort of way. I slowly rolled past the crowd down the road far enough so I could catch speed. I looked at everyone standing along the route, many of whom were snapping what would likely be the last pictures of me. There were school kids. Old ladies and men from the nursing homes. Little league baseball players in their uniforms and their coaches. Police officers. Bakers. Cooks. Walt, the bartender. Even Hannibal Hadley, the ringmaster, was there in the same green velvet coat and peacock-plumed tophat and mustard-yellow pants. There were Indian (feathers) there in their traditional outfits, scowling with moccasins and feather headresses—war bonnets. And there were Indian (dots), as well, from the local motel and gas station watching with their sharp brown eyes.

Here it goes. I closed my eyes and realized there was no way of getting out of this now. I breathed the deepest breath I had ever breathed in my life which filled my lungs and came alive inside of me like a carnival. The flames of the busses looked like hell ahead and as I began to make my way, it looked like I was riding straight into it, terribly metaphoric, I suppose. I asked for forgiveness once more from God. I hoped he was listening. I got a little faster as I went open throttle. 35, 45, 55, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90...

At last, the jump.

The flames barely had time to lick my boots as I soared overhead. They were like the hands of demons with their fingertips swatting my toes. I had good form off the ramp but the weight of the motorcycle bogged me down and I knew I wasn't going to clear it. Fuck. Shit. Goddamn. I was suddenly Ned Abernathy. And all of Korea was burning below me.

I landed on the last burning bus but took a fortuitous bounce, perfectly to the ramp and straight down—straight as an arrow in the other George Custer's heart. The crowd roared as I sped down the ramp and slowed up on Main Street just beneath the banner that read "Congratulations, Mr. Big Balls!"

Congratulations, indeed. Elated, I dismounted the motorcycle and was swarmed by the crowd who picked me up and held me above their cottonball heads, chanting, "Big Balls! Big Balls! Big Balls! Big Balls!"

If it wasn't for the shocks on the new motorcycle Stella had bought for me, I couldn't have made that final bunny hop from the burning bus to the ramp. I would have sunk down in the fire like a rock and burned to death. I gave Stella a kiss and gave Juliet a hug. Good God, I had made it! It was like the other George Custer being in Little Big Horn and having every bullet and arrow miss him. Riding away, scot-free. 

We watched the fireworks that night from the rooftop of the wax museum with a small gathering of family and friends and some invited guests. The tiki torches whipped back the black night and strings of colorful lights were strung on the pergola where we burned endless sparklers that never seemed to burn out. I had never seen them burn so bright. 

Dr. Frog was a most sinister man. He conned hundreds of people into believing they were dying of cancer and needed chemotherapy and radiation for profit. But if not for him, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have had a second chance at love—true love. I knew this is where I was meant to be. I wouldn't have known Stella, who was, undoubtedly, my soul mate and the love of my life. The universe sometimes pushes and pulls us to exactly the place where we need to be and only when we stop resisting and listen do we finally realize this truth.

A few days later, Stella took me to an Indian (feather) reservation past Tulsa that would treat my non-cancerous tumor. It was full of teepees and Indians in brown suede pants and moccasins with red bareskin chests. They were the kind of Indians that don't sell t-shirts, dream catchers, and torquise jewelry for culture-starved tourists, nor do they own shares in some casino. They made me wait in a teepee for the next available medicine man. The good part was that there was no paperwork or HMO to figure out.

I saw the medicine man on duty who was wearing a rattlesnake skin headband and who had all of four teeth in his head and a cracked red face. He might have been a hundred years-old. His nose looked like a pinecone. I couldn't help but to stare at it. A young girl translated for him. It turned out that my condition was elephantiasis, or scrotal lynphedema. But the Indians called it—far more succinctly—big balls.

He made some drink from snake venom and mushroom and some other ingredients and I drank it. Then he took porcupine needles dipped them into some concoction and stuck them into my balls like acupuncture. Then he filled the teepee with smoke and I passed out, high as a kite. I dreamt of the gorilla sanctuary I often thought about. Harambe was there. In a few hours, I was home. In two days my balls had returned to their normal size and I asked Stella to marry me.

We got married in the wax museum. Everyone who was anyone was there, including Dracula, Evel Knievel, and the other George Custer. Maybe I'd do Niagara Falls in a burning barrel for TikTok. But maybe I'd just live happily ever after in Marvel, Oklahoma.