Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“I still don’t see where the reversible error comes in.”

“Patience. When I’m done evacuating the burritos I feel about fifteen pounds lighter with a markedly sunnier disposition. I also realize, however, that the necessary cleanup will not be minor. Of course all that’s available to me at the moment is standard court building one-ply toilet paper. One frigging ply! My God, one would think that by now at least two-ply would be the legally permissible minimum. What I needed then was something like eighty-two-ply. Anyway, mindful of this, and determined at all costs to avoid any fecal epidermal contact, I begin to unroll an obscene amount of toilet paper, in effect creating a toilet-paper catcher’s mitt around my hand.”

“This may be more detail than I can handle.”

“Quiet, I paid good money for this. Continue, Ronald.”

“So I take this catcher’s mitt and I begin my task. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, the mitt has unraveled as I lowered it and about twenty percent of the mitt is currently in the fecal brown water. Now as I raise the mitt in order to fold it, the previously submerged portion comes up and drips its sordid contents on to my lap. Well I panic and immediately take off the mitt, which falls into the pocket of underwear between my feet effectively drenching my underwear in putrid brown aqua-shit. Of course, fate picks this moment to send a bunch of rowdy teens into the previously empty bathroom. These kids are horsing around and wrestling and my new worst fear is that they’ll come tumbling through the door to see me covered in shit and toilet paper with tears streaming down my face.”

“Ha, ha, ha! What do you do? I love it! Ha, ha, ha!”

“What could I do? There was no way I was putting those underwear back on so I threw them to the floor. As for the rest I cleaned up as best I could. It took forever but eventually I made my way back in to the courtroom. When I got there I realized McGarrity had been a prick. He was pissed I’d taken so long so he brought the jury back into the courtroom to show them I was responsible for the delay. Well I saunter in, my pants soaked but relatively shit-free and my shoes so wet they’re squishing as I approach the well, and I decide I’m going to ignore this monumental slap in the face and simply go right up to the jury box and continue my summation. Anyway by now the smell is gone but I notice that one juror in particular still has this look on his face like I kicked his dog. He’s doing that thing where he’s looking at me then looking at the judge as if to say isn’t someone going to do or say something ? I try to ignore it but it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore. Then I notice that he’s not really looking at my face but rather at my waist area. When I look down, God damn it to hell if I don’t see my contaminated underwear hanging from the back of my pants.”

“Noooo!”

“They had somehow become caught in my back pocket button during my panicked ministrations.”

“What the hell did you do?”

“I did the same thing you would do if shit-soaked underwear was on your eight hundred dollar suit, I threw them off. Unfortunately, the fan got a hold of them and sailed them right onto the head of the guy making the face. Well the guy was so horrified that he in effect became catatonic. At this point the underwear, which is really the equivalent of waterlogged cotton shit, is on this guy’s head in a way reminiscent of the way Fat Albert’s friend wore his hat with each of the guy’s eyes perfectly lined up with a corresponding leg hole. Understandably, the guy flips out and the rest of the juror’s aren’t exactly ready to vote me Lawyer of the Year.”

“What the hell do you do?”

“I move for a mistrial but idiot McGarrity won’t give me one. He replaces Fat Albert’s friend with an alternate then smiles while he gives the jury a curative instruction.”

“What kind of curative? Please disregard the shit-soaked underwear incident during your deliberations ?”

“Words to that effect then he had them deliberate.”

“And?”

“And what? They came back in like fifteen minutes and convict my guy.”

“Holy shit.”

“You said it.”

“That thing’s coming back down you can bet on that. Ha, ha, ha!”

“It better after the appellate lawyer made me relive the entire indignity for the sake of his brief. To add insult to injury the Fat Albert guy sued me for Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress!”

“Ha, ha, ha! What happened with that? Did you settle?”

“Fuck that! I impleaded the deep pockets of fucking Señor Smoke as a third party defendant and the case goes to trial in a few months.”

“Maybe you can get McGarrity to preside. Ha, ha, ha!”

Near the end of this I had surreptitiously put on headphones, and now, confident that the misadventures of the fat fifty-year-old fecund defecator were over, I headed Far Beyond The Sun with Yngwie Malmsteen. Listening to music in the courtroom is a major top-of-the-charts-no-no so when the court officer began to approach me I lied 911 tape so I could be left alone.

Yngwie and I were waiting for Richard Hurd. Mr. Hurd was a thirty-three-year-old drug addict with one tooth and three ears. The lonely tooth was an upper tooth and it was located in what seemed like the exact midpoint of his gums. The Third Ear requires further explanation. Although Hurd’s two conventional ears were just that, if admittedly a bit small, his Third Ear never failed to elicit real horror from me and only some of that horror stemmed from the fact that it was, after all, a fucking Third Ear . The Third Ear was not small. It was large, located below the right ear it dwarfed, and oddly resplendent in its full tympanic glory. It was not functional, Mr. Hurd had informed me, having none of the interior hardware — cochlea, ossicles et cetera — required to create bona fide auditory experience yet said ear did interfere with the functioning of its two healthier counterparts and generally compelled Mr. Hurd to yell, presumably in an effort to hear himself. (Still Far Beyond The Sun but now Jens Johansson was on the keyboards). Impotence notwithstanding, The Ear cast a large shadow and was impossible to ignore. The Ear had large flaps of skin and cartilage that threatened to commandeer its owner’s lower neck.

I was not waiting for The Ear to come in through the front door of the courtroom. The Ear was incarcerated in the pens behind the courtroom and I was waiting for corrections and court officers to bring its owner out so Icould do the case. This was my only case for the day and it was going to be a plea. After protracted, soul-draining attempts to get Mr. Hurd and his extra ear into the District Attorney’s Office’s Drug Treatment Alternative Program (“DTAP”) had failed, he had agreed, to my immeasurable pleasure, to take 3 to 6. This decision pleased me because I did not want to try a case where the defense was that the police got the wrong guy and the wrong guy happens to have an extra fucking ear. That would have to be the defense too, because Hurd was adamant he had never made a sale, though that would soon have to change if he wished to take, and he claimed he did, the 3 to 6 currently being offered.

Now, still waiting to be horrified, I raised the volume to a dangerous level and crouched forward to blot out the outside world, only occasionally raising an eye to watch for Hurd. The keyboard interlude was done, the guitar taking over its final lick, and now the comparatively slower playing was beyond tasty. Of course this was all building to Yngwie’s volcanic, inspired, notes-fretted-at-186,000-miles-per-second denouement. But no such luck because just as the music began a rapturous ascension to cataclysmic conclusion I spied Hurd as he actualized in the doorway leading to the pens. The court officer leading Hurd into the courtroom looked as if he’d just been force-fed twelve lemons, doubtlessly a result of ocular contact with aforesaid ear. Hurd sat at the defense table, mercifully to my right, as the case was called into the record: