Steve Lowe - King of the Perverts

“Hi,” he says.

I consider ignoring him, but that will probably just anger him. He’s got the look of your typical suburban serial killer, just waiting for someone to rudely snub him and set him off. I don’t really want to end up in pieces, stuffed in this guy’s chest freezer, so I respond with a very stiff-sounding, “Hey.”

“My name is Jack Mehoff.”

Shit. Of course it is. “Hi, Jack.”

“I’m your biggest fan.”

I turn to look at the guy. “What?”

He repeats, in the exact same tone, like his response is a prerecorded message, “I’m your biggest fan.”

I’m not sure how to respond. That’s not a problem because he doesn’t bother to wait for one anyway.

“I picked you from the beginning. I think you have the perfect blend of charm, desperation, and compromised morals to be the King.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Jack looks around, but no one is listening to us. “The show.”

How the hell can he know about that? The show won’t even begin to air for weeks, well after the game is over. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. King of the Perverts ? A reality-based game show built around the idea of a sexcathlon pitting ten contestants against each other in increasingly difficult –”

I cut him off. “Yeah, OK, just stop.” I eyeball the guy a little closer. He talks with a strange inflection and I’m reminded of a robot. There’s no emotion in his words, very monotone. “How do you know about that?”

“I was in the audience for the taping of the show’s first episode. But it’s not really a secret at this point. The Dixar website has begun posting short teaser trailers. Just brief bytes pumping a new game show. You’re prominently featured in the latest one. Nice alligator fuckhouse, by the way.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, though you can’t really see your face. They made sure not to reveal what any of the contestants look like. But I knew it was you.”

I look around for Mongo but he’s lost in a sea of drinkers. “You realize the game isn’t over yet, right? I’m not supposed to talk to anyone about it.”

“I know. But I couldn’t help myself. I want to see you win.”

“Well, thanks for the support, but –”

“You look like you could use a little assistance tonight.”

“Thanks, but I’m doing just fine on my own.”

“No you’re not. At this rate, you’ll never get the donkey punch in.”

I can’t help it and gape at the guy. “How the hell do you know about that?”

“It’s my hobby.” He pushes his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “You can probably tell by my voice that I’m different. I have something called Asperger’s. It’s a form of high-functioning autism. I tend to get very focused on things and obsess over them. It can seem to be weird to other people.”

Again, he sounds like he’s reading a cue card, or reciting something he’s memorized and uttered many times before. I feel bad for thinking he was a weirdo now. “No, I didn’t notice anything.”

“It’s OK. I’m used to it. And it’s pretty much true. To most people, the way I act seems very much out of the ordinary, but I rarely realize it until it’s too late. The hard part is not being weird. The hard part is the realization that you are weird and there really isn’t much you can do about it.”

I don’t feel bad anymore. Now I’m feeling uncomfortable. “Yeah…” What the hell do I say next?

“And now you’re probably uncomfortable with how open and candid I’m being because until five minutes ago you didn’t know me, but now you know me more than some people you’ve known for five years, and that’s pretty strange as well, having a complete stranger come up to you and unload all of their deficiencies on you, though I don’t look at my Asperger’s as a deficiency. It’s more of a quirk, and sometimes it’s a gift because of my ability to hyper-focus on problems and ideas and figure out complex issues rapidly. I think it has something to do with the fact that I use about forty-three percent more of my brain than most people do.”

OK, fuck, now I’m scared again. It’s creepy the way this dude is reading my mind.

“And now you’re probably getting freaked out because I can tell exactly what you’re thinking like I can read your mind, but really it comes down to prior experience with similar social situations, as well as my uncanny ability to predict what people will do in –”

“OK, fuck, just stop doing that!”

Jack Mehoff pushes his glasses up his nose. It’s such a cliché nerd thing to do. I wonder if he’s doing it on purpose just to fuck with me. He opens his mouth to speak again and I cut him off quick before he can repeat my thoughts back to me one more time.

“Look, I’m sorry for yelling at you. I didn’t mean to do it because I was mad, you were just starting to … well, you were starting to creep me out a little bit.”

“I know. I have that effect on people. I’ll try to stop doing that, but I won’t notice when you’re getting uncomfortable so you’ll have to tell me. Don’t worry about offending me. I actually prefer when people tell me things like that, because I can’t process it on my own.”

“OK, Jack. I will make sure to tell you from now on when you’re creeping me the fuck out. Jack? Right now, you’re sort of creeping me the fuck out.”

“OK.” Jack faces the bar and sips his drink. It looks like a glass of Coke. I have a feeling there’s nothing other than that in the glass. He says, “I’ll leave you alone now, but I actually came over here to point out the lady at the far end of the bar.”

I look, searching the far end and I spot her right away. Forty-ish looking cougar with bad hair, worse skin, and a scowl pointed in my direction. She’s sipping her drinks through a black straw, drawing hard enough that her cheeks collapse. She looks like she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose and find such a thing enjoyable. She releases her straw and licks her upper lip, all the while boring a hole right through me with her stare.

“Oh, yeah. I see her.”

Jack says, “She’s probably your best bet at this point. I even dropped your name to her. That’s probably why she’s watching you and doing odd things with her straw that she evidently thinks are attractive to the opposite sex. She’s been married four times, had three abortions and a miscarriage, been to jail, and suffers from an acute addiction to methamphetamines in its gaseous form.”

“Damn, you learned all that about her already?”

“Yes. It’s not hard to get desperate women talking, as long as it’s about themselves. It’s part of their self-destructive nature to try to transfer their problems onto those around them.”

“OK, understood, Jack. I don’t need the psych lesson here.”

“Ten-four. Like I said, she has your name, likes your appearance, and would make a very viable candidate for receiving the donkey punch. There’s even a decent chance she might enjoy such rough handling. But I would strongly suggest using a very reliable form of protection from sexually transmitted diseases, because there is a high probability that her vagina is teeming with them.”

I turn away from the walking spirochete at the end of the bar to look at Jack. Once you get past the pedophile spectacles and the unsettling cadence of his voice, he’s really not a bad guy. I extend my hand and say, “Good thinking. Thanks Jack, it was a pleasure meeting you and I appreciate the assist.”

Jack turns away from my hand. He says, “Sorry, but I don’t do well with physical contact. And you’re welcome. Go get her, Your Highness.”