Donia Carey
Six-Hundred and Five Words
I am not a man; I am a logophile. My tongue itches to twitch. I spout nonsequiturs, anecdotes, snatches of memories and songs. When silence threatens, I recite the names of the Seven Dwarfs, The Twelve Days of Christmas, The Wreck of the Hesperus, the entire Bible backwards, parables and paradiddles.
A blabbermouth, some have called me. A stifling bore. Friends have pleaded—at first out of love, politely, patiently, long-sufferingly, then impatiently, with clenched teeth and red faces--at last to explode: Will You Please SHUT UP!! Many have deserted, fled to atolls and mountain caves.
I frequent shopping malls, bus stations and supermarkets; seek the kindness of strangers in grocery store aisles, movie lines and at gas-station pumps. These encounters are brief and unsatisfying.
I spent years consulting shrinks, priests, gypsies, necromancers, Drs. Phil and Laura, bartenders, derelicts and gravediggers, without success. Physicians and psychiatrists offered remedies, leaping to sew up my lips, tie my tongue, bash me with electrodes, banish me to Elba, perform a memory-removal operation (the Gold Standard these days, they assured me).
According to my roommate, I am silent in sleep. He spends his days shuffling from room to room of our cramped bower, tethered to earphones. He utters nary a word himself, only hums. Thus have we coexisted.
Here’s a secret I have revealed to no one: Except for my mother and various aged great-aunts, I have never kissed another human being in my entire life. And those kisses were so long ago, I only remember the clack of dentures and the cloying scent of heliotrope. Yet I cherish those kisses.
Why has no one kissed me or been kissed? I offer clues: My mouth, manly and firm-lipped as it is, is always open, its corners foaming words, an overflowing sundae of blatherings and wisdom, an erupting Vesuvius of rumbles.
I felt this loss of human contact keenly, and wept in my lonely bed. But I became inured to sadness,
accepted it as my lot in life. Yet the wilted flower of hope does spring eternal, and I sometimes imagined
loving and being loved.
One night months ago, unable to sleep, I sought companionship in the streets of lower Manhattan. Passing through the hushed financial district, I set off toward Chinatown, keeping up a lively monologue. A carrot-colored head of hair, followed by a freckled face, peeped out of a nearby dumpster and hailed me. My god! It was the legendary Pompom Fang, elusive as the ivory-billed woodpecker. Only a handful of people around New York had ever spotted her. She beamed her green eyes upon me; even her freckles awarded me full attention.
“You! Eugene! You have problem. I have answer.”
I felt giddy as her eyes pierced my soul.
“You talk too much. Now you stop. Beginning now, you have limit: 605 words per day.” She paused. “You go over limit, you pay consequences.”
Ah, the catch. I waited like a prisoner for his sentence.
“606 words—you die!” She dove into the dumpster and disappeared.
An offer of salvation and doom; but Pompom had imbued me with some of her strength.
The next day I husbanded out words like a skinflint measuring out coins. Subtracting sleep, I allotted myself 37.13 words per hour. Three weeks went by without a slip. I triumphed, determination enhanced by my Sword of Damocles.
Today, happiness invades me. Soon Jessica, whom I have long admired from afar, shall become my wife. Surrounded by stephanotis and roses, we stand at the altar. The minister asks the fateful question and waits for my “I do.”
But I have used up my 605 words.
©2007 by Donia Carey
