DAY 118:  Wedesday, February 3, 2010:  You always point out that “thin” is a four-letter word.

Severance Pay: continued from Day 117 . . .

5:18 pm:  It was not a good day for Uncle Fiddles, who could care less after scoring a fresh case of Budweiser and nips of Southern Comfort, circling around back of the decrepit brick packy store to check on his special little dancers.

Working with Randy was never a good time, the bandy legged foreman micromanaging from the very first second Fiddles stepped into that van, asking if supplies were replenished and onboard; how all the drafting jobs were getting along; slamming the living shit out of everyone else just like he slammed Uncle Fids, when time and distance allowed.

And Randy’s control of the van radio; nonstop sports talk out of Boston or New York, boring the living hell out of Fiddles with averages and statistics and predictions of games and seasons to come, with call-ins from drunks and freaks and unemployed Monday morning armchair quarterbacks who didn’t know jack shit and never would.  Frustrated losers who spent high school gym classes hanging from metal locker room doors, or maybe getting gagged by stretched jock straps.  Fiddles envisioned them all as the pencil-necked, round bellied geeks in Engineering, tossing nerf footballs at lunch to try and reclaim a little missing manhood.

Uncle Fiddles didn’t give a shit about sports.  He wanted Howard Stern and the drugged-out posse playing anal ring toss with angry dwarfs, or nasty hookers taking their tops off.  He wanted to hear that crazy studio crew hassling some auto mechanic with a foreign accent and the New York patience of a rabid pit bull.  Fiddles was in heaven when they tormented mentally handicapped people or chronic alcoholics.  It was right up there with his DVD collection of bum fights and Jerry Springer shows, but not quite as good as those Bangkok web sites late at night, before his wife intercepted a five-hundred dollar viewing bill.

Woops.

Damn fine print is even finer on a computer screen, but those young Asian boys were rockin’ hard, before the home bitch came down on his little pants party.

But even Bangkok couldn’t compare with that special dance studio, where he was heading right now.

He had spotted the big picture window during a torturous overtime gig in October, packing up tripods and Leica GPS equipment in the lot of a decrepit Bristol packy store, walking around back to freeze at the sight of twelve-year-old ballet students stretching at a long, mounted bar.

The twenty-year-old teacher was nothing to scoff at but way too old for Fiddles, who nearly dropped a small, ribbed radio unit while watching that dancing cornucopia, his mouth hanging open as a young boy struggled to get his long, thin leg up, while a pre-pubescent girl scratched at bright white tights.

The other surveyor helping Fiddles would tell everyone later that week, describing how his perverted crew chief stuttered and stammered, saying how he thought the teacher looked pretty familiar – but he wasn’t quite sure – and everyone hearing the story knew different:

Uncle Fiddles was fucked in the head.

It was bad enough he almost blew their account with a nearby university, getting himself banned for staring at students and asking weird questions, but when he willingly started telling people about some of the bizarre things he had done in life, it was nothing short of complete social suicide.

The most popular involved his time in the National Guard, playing a game where everyone masturbated on a biscuit and tried to answer questions relating to Guard regulations; loser eating the biscuit.

Everyone in Survey knew the story, but also wondered why he admitted to such a thing, before they finally discovered his sick and demented reason by comparing notes:

He was trolling for a very special friend.

Why else would Uncle Fiddles say the same damn thing when working way out in deep woods with other surveyors:

“If I blew you right now, nobody would ever know.”

And then of course the creepy stare and quick swipe to his lap, which duly earned Fiddles his present nickname, often changed to something less subtle.

He wasn’t completely idiotic, however, and refrained from ever asking Ferg, out in the woods where the wrong question could get him beaten to within an inch of his perverted life.   He knew Ferg was kind of funny that way.  The man had shown violent tendencies more than once, and Mark never has fully recovered from that snapping turtle incident, picking up a nasal twang that almost approached Fiddles’ in the “nerve grating” category.    

On the other hand, there was that very fateful day when fucked Uncle Fiddles finally spoke before thinking to Randy, pausing beside a bubbling brook with tripods and a shiny chrome prism rod, spring bursting into full bloom with birds chirping and tree frogs peeping when Randy came alive, dropping trou to pump into that bald, hook-nosed head like Elvis dancing stupid. 

Randy kind of snapped out of it later and swore Fiddles to secrecy, so the waddling stalker kept on trolling and tried a quick change-up, going through what many called his “ass pat” phase.  That’s when fears about Ferg were strongly confirmed.

Uncle Fiddles was even less aware of sports protocol than the armchair dweebs in Engineering, having never experienced the quick pat coaches often gave athletes in appreciation of performing outstanding feats.   In his usual demented manner, Fiddles misread the entire protocol and innocent intentions, believing the gesture universally accepted like Visa – MasterCard, offering a special door to quick, cheap thrills.  He wasn’t a complete idiot, but he usually came pretty damn close.

He started patting other men’s asses in the office – lightly at first – quickly graduating to what some regarded as copping a feel, with crews soon alerted and comparing notes once again.

Enter Fergus, leaning over a drafting table to check plans when Fiddles made his move like most cowardly bullies of creepy intensions, banking on a busy office to keep his deft patting move safe from a violent response, but that stupid assumption were greatly misguided.

Fergus spun with the trained grace of a man fully prepared, punching Fiddles so hard in the face that the waddling freak went horizontal before anyone knew what happened; his long, angular nose spouting blood like water at Ceaesar’s Palace, sporting a weird new beak hooking to the south, when shattered bone finally healed.

Ferg was secretly cheered behind closed doors for that one, but like most genetically twisted pedophiles, it didn’t do a damn thing to change Uncle Fiddles’ sexual hang-ups, just curbing ass pats while moving him on to something new and exciting.

The dance studio. 

Children were something else, and even fucked-up Randy tried to distance himself after the gay love episode, blaming Percocet for his “weird” explosion of passion, prescribed for a severe rugby injury sustained over the past weekend, including all weekends before and after.  If Randy came in with miles of white tape wrapped around his baby fat extremities, people were supposed to ask him about rugby.  They rarely did.

Meanwhile, Fiddles was disappointed by Randy’s quick retreat, still working an inside angle to get better treatment, and Randy backed off a little on bully tactics.  Not that Fiddles got hurt much anyway; his brain wasn’t wired that way.  His entire creepy life had been spent adapting to one disappointment after another, while chasing cheap thrills in a sexually structured world. 

First there was the biscuit episodes, which were very popular with certain troop members till Fiddles finally suspected how odds were stacked against him, like, every single time.

“What was the name of our first president?” someone would ask of a soldier, passing him the semen biscuit.

“George Washington.”

The biscuit would be passed along.

“Where’s the White House?” came the next question.

“Washington D.C.”

The biscuit would come to Uncle Fiddles.

“What’s the average number of babies for a Buffy-tufted Marmoset?”

Fiddles would study the biscuit intently.

“Loser jerks on the next one, right in front of us,” someone would say, sparking laughter but total commitment.

Fiddles would kind of smile, creeping them all out.  “Three.  The Buddy Whatever has three babies.”

“Close, Fiddles.  It’s usually gonna be twins.”

Smile.

Groans and covered faces.

Crunch . . .

Then there was his first wife. 

Fiddles knew she was bisexual when they married at a swap group, eagerly anticipating kinky group sex to last for the rest of their twisted and unnatural lives.  Her pregnancy changed all that, and after deciding how Uncle Fiddles was far too creepy as a potential father figure, she divorced him for one of her girlfriends, proving his scary side in a court of law to gain full custody of their little baby boy.

Lots of people breathed a sigh of relief on that one.

Then there was Mark of snapping turtle fame, the rich kid buddy who once woke up next to Fiddles with a tube hooked into one side of his open mouth; leading over to a small nitrous tank, nestled in a pair of sweatpants pulled down around hairy ankles.

Fiddle’s ankles.

The big freak had struck again, and Mark was easily scared into pretending friendship, even at the workplace.

To be continued . . .