Jack Pendarvis Talks to Himself

#30

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Yesterday I was taking a nap and I… I woke up and I thought I saw something white flapping… I thought, “Is there something on the roof of the murder house?”

[A cat meows.]

“Next door?”

[Cat meows again.]

Hi, Pan.

[Exhalation.]

Because when I wake up and look through the—over the top of the curtains, I can see the… top of the murder house. Just lying in bed I can gaze upon it.

And…

[Pause. Beard scratching.]

There was a woman sunbathing! A girl, really. Sunbathing on the roof of the murder house. It was not, for a change, a hallucination.

Uh, there was a woman in a bikini sunbathing. It was very cloudy yesterday. Anastasia said there was a break in the clouds at that moment, but it still looked cloudy to me.

Uh…

[Pause.]

There she was, oiling herself up, on the slanting roof, lying on the… scratchy old gray tar… on the old shingles. Sunbathing. In a, in a small bikini. And we couldn’t figure out what window she could’ve possibly… whuh! You know, I still can’t see—she would’ve had to crawl out of… I don’t know! Anastasia and I [laughter] were lookin’ around trying to figure out what window she could’ve come out of! It would’ve taken some… effort. Hmm. Still not sure.

That’s all I have: that image. Is that good for anything?

I emailed it to Carlotta Rhodes and… Johnny Griggs. Not the im—I didn’t [stifled laugh] take a picture. Jesus! I’m not that far gone. But I just emailed them the detail. You know. “Just looked out the window. There’s a girl sunbathing on the roof of the murder house.” Both of them were quite, uh, they liked it! They liked the detail. So maybe it’s worth preserving.

The good thing is I never know what’s worth… preserving…

I wanna relate the story of how I… ruined a nice pair of pajama pants, one of my favorites. It was neither too… hot…

[Piano notes.]

I don’t know why I said “hot.” I was thinking of something else.

It was light! Ah, well, no, yes! It wasn’t overly… i—the—it was, perhaps, flannel, but the… a lighter… more breathable [short laugh]… eh.

Eh—I liked… I liked this pair. Of pajama pants.

A gift from Anastasia.

Uhhhhh…

Comfortable.

Pleasing… on the skin.

But last night, the tag… in the back of the pajamas started to bother me. Have you ever had…? I’m sure you have. Whether on a t-shirt or a pair of pants, a tag that started to… irritate you! Wh—how you can have this tag for… [throat clearing] for years! Let’s say. And never think about it. And then suddenly, I don’t know, maybe, for whatever reason, something changes… is your skin especially… suh-huh! [Short laugh.] Sensitive that day? Who can say? Uhm.

Wonder why the mail’s so late today. Sometimes I think they just decide not to come. I think that’s the kind of town… we live in.

“Nyeh! I’m not gonna deliver the mail today. What are these people gonna get that’s so important?”

And by the way, the mail never is important.

[Throat clearing.]

So maybe they’re onto somethin’.

Let’s see…

Let… me… see…

Oh! So I was in the darkened kitchen. I don’t know why I didn’t turn a light o—well, there’s a lot of things I did wrong. Well, the ki—the scissors [laughter] … the scissors are in the kitchen drawer…

[Drinking something.]

So… that’s why I was in the kitchen.

I could’ve taken the scissors and… gone into somewhere more private so that…

Our kitchen window opens out onto the side—not “opens out.” Our kitchen window has a view of the side street and therefore anyone walking down… [sigh] that sidewalk has a view of… us, if we happen to be in the kitchen.

Uhm…

So…

[Long pause.]

You know. As I… ponder the details of this story… maybe that’s why the light—I didn’t want to turn the light on because I was afraid my pajama pants might come down a little bit in this process, and I didn’t want to expose myself… I was going to use the term “cheeks.” I don’t… like that… term.

Why does that sound more disgusting than any other… euphemism?

It reminds me of a man… [laughter]. Well, I’m really gonna go off the rail. Well, let’s… remind me to get back to that guy.

So…

Anyway, I…

I’m using these scissors in the dark, behind my back, se—do you see all the mistakes I’ve made already?

I think the reason I did it is because…

I’ve… done it successfully before! As foolish as it was, the process as I undertook it.

I’ve done it before, and it worked out great, so… why change? I suppose that was my… unconscious, uh… [long pause] hubris.

I…

I often use “hubris” when I mean to say some other… word.

I should’ve just said “conclusion,” or something like that.

But…

In any case, snip, snip, it seemed to be very difficult to, uh, you know, work in the dark with my hand behind my back.

[Sigh.]

Snipping away at this… offending… label.

This is one of those stories about how you kill the goose that lays the golden egg, I guess. Because… I got rid of the tag at last, after much sawing away, and then I went to bed. I got up this morning, I got out of bed, and my pajama pants just fell to the floor when I stood up. No matter how many times I pulled up my pajama pants, they immediately fell to the floor. And it, uh, turned out that, uh… and I guess this had worsened during the night, because before retiring the pants had seemed fine after I cut the tag off.

Haaaaaahhhhhhh!

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Right this way: There is more to come.

Jack Pendarvis has written five books. He won two Emmys for his work on the TV show Adventure Time. During a period of light employment, he spoke into a digital recorder whenever the mood struck him and transcribed the results, accumulating the two thousand pages from which this column has been extracted.

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