How to Pronounce the Word "Orgy"

Do you remember that Happy Guy from back when we were out on the streets? Daniel Johnston-looking dude? Lived up on Woodhead and West Alabama? Rode his bike everywhere? Worked down at the Bookstop and down at the Cactus Records & Tapes?

Yeah?

I ran into him the other night.

At Adri’s, matter of fact.

We were both mostly naked at the time.

You know about this Annual Orgy Night thing that Adri has. Her Festival of the Freshwater Squid or Naked Summer Porch Party, I don’t know. Hot bacchanalian decadence packed with straight, white up-and-comers, all six-pack-abed and rich and drunk and throbbing.

Not my scene/I got invited/whatever. I could have gone anywhere and I went there.

I stuck to the margins of the debauchery. I was out on the deck – sitting alone, people-watching, sipping a glass of Jack, smoking what I assumed to be a Cuban cigar, and as close to clothed as I could get away with – when out clomped our old friend, Happy Guy. Now, you remember him, Happy Guy’s got twenty years and eighty-five pounds on anyone else around, minimum, and here he came: naked but for a smile and a pair of old Crocs, ass like the body of a grub worm.

And me, I did not know what to say to him – small talk’s never been my thing and it had been years since I’d seen Happy – but there is  one thing I can tell you. There are things in this world that cannot be unseen. I took pains to maintain eye contact.

Alas, Happy Guy did not extend the same courtesy to me.

Small talk is all about shared interests, right? So I tried to find common ground. I said, “You know something I’ve always wondered about? John Cale’s ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Afford to Orgy’.”

I guess it seemed like an appropriate topic at the time.

I said, “I’ve never heard anyone else pronounce ‘orgy’ with a hard ‘g’ like he does in that song. Like ‘orghy’ instead of ‘orjee’.”

And Happy Guy was still sort of… leering.

I said, “Is the hard ‘g’ a Welsh thing? A New York thing? A Seventies thing? I-I-I just don’t know.”

And, well, what happened next was-

Look, there is going to come a day – if that day hasn’t come already, if this day is not that day – when you are going to want to insult me. Need to insult me, even.

That is okay!

That is alright. Truly it is.

I will not blame you for it. I will not attempt to dissuade you. I bet you will have one hell of an impeccably good reason for it when the time comes. I mean, you oughta hear some of the things I say about myself inside of my own head sometimes.

(Like did you hear that one? Just now?)

The perfect insult cuts to the bone in a heartbeat and then it hides a little while. Sometimes it goes dormant for years. Decades. It sleeps under your skin in daylight hours and then wakes up to chew on you in the night. You can hear the teeth, gnawing as you try and sleep, munching on muscles going necrotic. Tendons, ligaments wasting, putrefying.

This is no exaggeration.

The perfect insult will not happen online. People hurl words out at me online all of the time. Names (fat? commie dyke? homo-nazi?), accusations, impossible suggestions. None of it survives the hour. None of it sticks. None of it gets below the skin.

The perfect insult confirms your deepest fear. It smiles back at you from the mirror and it waves.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: You are going to insult me someday, and when you do, make it worth my while. Your while. Make it something I will remember.

Everybody’s gets one free insult.

Just like Happy Guy, who got his. His was his involuntary shudder of disgust while leering at me that night. I believe an involuntary shudder of disgust might just be the perfect insult. I don’t know yet.

Am I hurt? Ask me again in a year.

Am I mad?

Yes, I am mad. I am very, very angry. Steaming, boiling, flaming. Even if it doesn’t show. I’ve just got one of those faces, you can’t tell. 

----------------------------------------------------------

*** Fantastically twisted visions by Maruhana Bachi ***