The Ballad Of The Piss Gulper

            Winter always struck Norman as a waste of three months of his life.  When he was young the other children would delight in playing in the snow, skating on the pond and skipping past buried tramps that would not be discovered until the first thaw of spring.  It was the latter that really put Norman off winter.  He couldn’t help but imagine that under every drift lay a preserved alcoholic Vietnam veteran.  His friends had told him they once found one who was frozen mid-stream as he urinated against a tree.  They had shown him a long, thin, shard of ice and told him that they had snapped it from that final piss.  They had then chased Norman for almost a mile, trying to force it into his mouth.  When they had finally caught him, pinning him to the ground, the scene had something of a religious ceremony about it as Tommy had held the ice, two-handed, above Norman’s mouth.  They had waited until he had screamed for help and then down came the dead man’s piss-cicle.  He had brushed his teeth so hard afterwards that his gums bled for two days.

            Norman could still not convince himself that they weren’t telling the truth.  His school days were haunted by Tommy telling all the girls that “Norman drank a dead tramp’s piss”.  Norman was known as “piss-gulper” from that point forth.  At the school dance that year there were seventeen different songs dedicated to “P.G.”, “Gulper” and other, less subtle, variations.  Even his teachers called him P.G. because they never heard anyone call him Norman or Norm any more.  The crowning glory came when his mother called him P.G. one day.  When questioned it was revealed that it was how he was referred to by most of the other children’s mothers.  He half-suspected there had been a letter sent to everyone on the face of the planet telling them he was the Piss Gulper.

            The viral nature of his new nickname and reputation spread.  Mr Walls, the milkman, was the first person not connected with the school to call him P.G., closely followed by the man who ran the corner shop.  The exponential growth of the Piss Gulper’s notoriety was unstoppable.  Norman couldn’t do anything to halt it.  He had tried telling his grandmother that he hadn’t drunk the piss but she had merely nodded but had not looked at all convinced.  She then told her friends the story, lunching for more than three days on the subject.  His grandmother told her friends that it was all Norman’s father’s fault and that her daughter would soon be looking for a new husband if any of their higher-earning sons were interested.   

            His crushing despair at awakening every day to face walking into school doused in anecdotal piss led to a degree of introversion usually reserved for the deformed.  He would never answer questions and worked on edging his desk, already at the back of the class, a few inches further towards the corner every day.  Finally the teacher would notice and order him forward.  Once he’d been forced to advance across no man’s land he would immediately begin his strategic retreat once again.  Tracy, the girl forced to sit beside him, would aid him by moving her desk forwards and to the left.  In the following years the only words she would speak to him were “can you swap with… anyone?” each morning.

            Norman failed his exams.  He wasn’t entirely sure why.  He was fairly sure he had written down the correct answers.  The only thing he could think of that nobody was willing to pick his work up to grade it.  He should have known what his future held when he had seen the teacher carefully lift his paper with a pen and slip it into a clear plastic envelope. 
           

            Norman sat in the tree and hefted the chainsaw.  The remains of his sandwich fluttered to the ground and were immediately set upon by pigeons.  With a sharp tug of the cord the saw kicked into life and the afternoon suburban calm was shattered by the roar of the engine.  He let himself enjoy a moment of revving the engine, closing his eyes to imagine himself both battling… and for a brief moment being… a slasher movie monster before lowering the blade to the branch.  The teeth bit into the bark and, with a little more pressure, deep into the wood.  With a brief tearing and cracking sound the branch feel free and dropped towards the road only to be brought up short when the length of rope fastened to it was pulled tight.  Norman looked down and watched it swinging beneath him.  He noticed a small child watching him from a nearby window and decided to give the chainsaw a victorious revving over his head.  The scream and sharp jerk of the curtain being yanked back across the window showed him that his gesture had not gone down well.

            Norman coaxed the van’s engine to life.  Every part of the van was slowly failing all at once.  The radio no longer picked up FM, the vents would only blow hot air, the glovebox was jammed shut and even the lighter no longer locked in place and had to be held in for over a minute before it finally grew hot enough.  Norman pulled the last cigarette from the crumpled packet and noticed, with little surprise, that it was broken a third of the way above the filter. 

            He’d driven the same streets so many times he didn’t need to pay attention to the road.  In fact he’d driven them with his eyes shut on a couple of occasions in the past, albeit only in the early hours of the morning.  Even in the daytime there wasn’t that much chance of him running someone down now that any young person with even the most basic of qualifications was fleeing the town as soon as they could.  The Piss Gulper had never faced such a quandary, his big move had been from his parents’ house and into their converted garage.  He suspected his next move would be back into the house again in another thirty years or so… maybe fifteen if his mother didn’t cut down on her drinking and his father kept insisting on red meat.
           

            “Gulp any piss today Piss Boy?” shouted Tommy as Norman pulled the van into the yard.
            Norman sighed and got out of the van.
            “No boss” he mumbled.
            “Don’t let me catch you drinking out of there again P.G.” laughed Tommy as he watched Norman trudge slowly into the direction of the company bathroom.
            Norman shut the door behind him and unzipped his fly.  With a sigh he began to slowly unleash the afternoon’s collected waste.  He watched the yellowish stream arcing and began to pursue a cigarette butt.  He placed his elbow on the wall and leaned.  He pondered the stream.  Without even thinking he suddenly angled it upwards until he resembled a pissing fountain that would have so amused a certain kind of European.  He opened his mouth wide and caught a few drops on his tongue. 

            “Enjoy your drink?” asked Tommy, looking up from his Playboy.
            Norman walked over and kissed him deeply before bringing his knee up with great force into Tommy’s crotch before calmly walking out of the office.

            Over the next year or two Norman would find, first local and then national, fame as The Kissing Lumberjack, becoming a beloved figure who brought happiness and love to everyone he met.  He would culminate his career by kissing the President squarely on the lips with breath tinged with asparagus and then retiring, a local hero.