“Ugh, Mike…shut the door. That’s disgusting.” Mike’s raspy hyena-laugh cackled from the bathroom. My protests amused him. His stout torso jiggled in mirth as he let out another fart. From the living room Bryan and I could see, and smell, everything.
“God Mike, close the door. Is that too hard to understand?” This time, Bryan was the one shouting. Mike had started shitting with the door open almost as soon as he and my mother tied the knot. We weren’t quite used to it. All we wanted to do was watch a movie.
Reaching back to wipe his ass, Mike proceeded to lecture us on the inferiority of our culture. “You guys are stuck up here in America. Back on Ponape, everything is natural, man. We all just chill out. No one freaks out over this kind of stuff.” Before depositing the used paper in the bowl of the toilet, Mike briefly examined its contents. Bryan and I groaned in disgust. “What?! This is how I make sure I’m healthy!”
At that point, deciding that letting it pass was worse than getting up, I quickly walked to the bathroom door and slammed it shut. Mike’s furious protests suddenly became muted and distant.
For a brief three minutes, Bryan and I were able to watch Braveheart in peace. Mike then emerged, walked in front of the television, loudly cleared his throat and–partly because he could, but mostly because he is a prick–turned off the television. “Well, well boys… looks like we need to have a chat.”
“Come on Mike! It was just getting to the best part!” William Wallace was in the process of being executed.
“We didn’t have any television in Ponape, you two will be just fine.” Coming from Mike, a man who spent at least fourteen hours of every day on a couch with a bag of chips watching television, the words were intolerable. Bryan and I groaned like Scottish bagpipes.
“I think it’s time I told you two a story.”
“Mike, we don’t want to hear any more made-up stories about Ponape,” I declared.
“None of my stories are made-up.”
“What about the one where your uncle was a witch doctor, and he died saving a dog from a whirlpool?”
“That happened!”
“No it didn’t, Mike. I asked my science teacher about whirlpools and he said they don’t work like that.” I actually spent an amusing five minutes of every science class debunking Mike’s stories with my teacher. I think everyone thought I had made Mike up… until he chaperoned for a field trip and repeated the same stories to all my classmates.
“What does he know about Ponape?”
“Nothing Mike, but whirlpools are the same everywhere.” This time it was Bryan who piped up.
“Hah! Whirlpools are different in Ponape, now shut up and listen.”
“Fine!” Bryan and I shouted in unison.
“No one on Ponape has anything, and that’s why everyone there is happy.”
“Bryan and I will both get paper routes to buy you a plane ticket back there.”
“Shut up! I’m trying to tell you a story. You two probably don’t know this, but I’m almost a prince.”
I rolled my eyes, “I don’t know. I saw you on a throne a little bit ago.”
“Brandon!”
“Go on… tell us about how you’re a prince.”
“I said ‘almost!’”
Bryan leaned back against the sofa and closed his eyes, as I continued to argue with Mike. “Why ‘almost?’”
“Because my Uncle Esa sold the island where we were royalty.”
“Then why aren’t you rich? That doesn’t make any sense, Mike. Even a tiny island costs millions of dollars.”
“Typical Americans! When will you learn that money isn’t everything?”
“When your people become relevant.”
“Uncle Esa didn’t sell it for money. You’re so stupid.”
“Who the hell bought it anyway?”
“The Air Force, estupido!” Sometimes Mike likes to pretend he’s Mexican.
“And if the Air Force didn’t give him money for it, what did they give him?”
“Esa doesn’t even need money. He lives a simple, happy life.” I’ve seen pictures of Esa. His ribs show through his skin, most of his teeth are missing, and he has the glazed eyes of a complete retard.
“Just tell us what they paid him so we can watch this goddamn movie.”
Mike looked at me smugly. “Jeans.”
I paused. I had expected cattle. I had even been prepared for chickens. “Jeans? Fuck… how many pairs of jeans did they give him? A thousand? Ten thousand? I mean… a whole fucking island?”
Bryan’s eyes flipped open like window shades suddenly set free on their spring. “Did you just say jeans?”
“Six pairs. Half blue, half black.” My brother and I looked at Mike. Then we looked at each other. Then we started laughing.
“No wonder you fucking retards are still bouncing sticks for fun!”
“What’s so funny? Do you guys not get it? Money doesn’t matter to him.”
My brother and I kept laughing. Mike suddenly felt as if the story had spiraled out of his control.
“Shut up, you two!”
“What an idiot!”
“You could have a million dollars right now!” I could no longer contain my laughter. I felt like I was about to split open. “You’d never have had to work again.” Hot tears streamed down my face.
Bryan’s laughter was no less intense. “Fucking retarded pygmy! A whole island for six pairs of jeans?!” We both fell to the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
Angered that my brother and I were not taken in by his jungle wisdom, Mike promptly threw the remote control at us and left.
We couldn’t stop laughing at the wisdom of uncle Esa.
