Jack Pendarvis Talks to Himself

#31

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Believe It Or Not
He Isn’t Done
With the Story of How He Ruined His Pajama Pants
Which Had Seemingly Reached a Natural Conclusion Last Week

But during the night, uh, some sort of a tear I had made in the—whoa! Pan, are you okay? Pan just, uh… are you gonna have a hairball or somethin’?

[Stomach growling? Cat purring?]

Well, what I’m trying to say is that I…

[Cat purring.]

My pants fell down because I had opened up a rift [laughter] in them.

[Cat purring.]

That whuh… expanded during the night.

[Cat purring.]

You know, the… waistband no longer held. What it—maybe I had… you know, that little part of the waistband, that… that elastic portion, I suppose… the…

[Cat purring.]

It—I had severed something vital and the pants would no longer stay up.

So I had to throw ‘em away.

And, you know, and I couldn’t even give ‘em to Goodwill or anything because they’re trash now! I made them into garbage. They were beautifully made… uh… wonderfully comfortable… uh… of the finest… fabric… and I… made them into trash. You know, when I could have easily gone into the bathroom—gotten the scissors out of the… kitchen drawer—gone into the bathroom, cut the tag off… taken my, uh, pants off first! So I could see what I was doing, and then cut the tag off.

Another thing I could’ve done…

Thanks, Pan! Pan just licked me on the… back of the hand as a sign of affection.

[Cat purring.]

She has so many… gray hairs now.

[Cat purring.]

Look at all those little white hairs.

[Cat purring.]

White hairs do not become a black cat.

Paraphrasing something.

Oh, I know, probably something from Hamlet.

[Cat purring.]

About gray hairs… Thank you, Pan! She did it again.

Not becoming a fool. Or whatever it is.

[Cat purring.]

I’m no… genius.

[Rattling sigh merges into throat clearing.]

I think I interrupted my own hypothetical, uh, alternative history, in which I —oh! Yes. I know what I was going to say. I was going to say another thing I could’ve done is live with the minor irritation of that tag, which, you know… I may have… not even experienced subsequently. Maybe the next time I put on the pajamas, I wouldn’t have felt the same—it wouldn’t have scratched me in the same… way. What am I, the Princess and the Pea?

But no, I chose to destroy that which [stifled laugh] gave me pleasure.

“Every man… kills the thing he loves.” What is that from? First of all, it’s total crap. Isn’t it? What…? I need to… I’m gonna Google that up real good. Because…

[Sigh.]

Oh! Now to tell you the story of a man…

We’re getting back to my dislike of a certain word I was telling you about.

I’ll use his… ah… he must be long deceased.

I don’t know why I think that.

[Pause.]

His name was **** *****.

Is that a humorous name?

And he… ran a storage facility out in, you know, Hollywood, USA.

And this is many, many years ago when my friend Darby and I were making a… oh, and Dirk was involved with this, too. It was packaging. That’s what we call… this is just… the lowest form of… televised entertainment.

But we had a set that needed to be stored… you know… rrrrruh, we would come out and shoot once a month for a week or so, I think, and then the rest of the time the s—the props and the set would be in storage. And we had this guy who ran the storage company, his name was ****… *****. And he would, uh, one thing I recall… is he told… quite obscene, a, a terribly off-color story about Chuck Connors, the… I’m sure you won’t know who Chuck Connors is. Who are you? [Laughter.]

But Chuck Connors starred in a television series called The Rifleman. He was a big TV star.

And, d-uh…

Boy, **** ***** knew some, some… first of all, some striking personal details about Chuck Connors, which shouldn’t be related outside of the boudoir. And then he also told really—not just an off-color story, but a… brutal… I thought, an ugly story… involving accidental—the accidental death of a poodle during the tender act of love.

Let’s leave it at that.

Nothing… you know, nothing untoward, sexually, happened with the poodle, but the… crass and offhand manner in which the… uh… dispatch of the poodle was… the punch line of the story… involved the cruel… uh… demise, however… you know, however… it was not premeditated is what I’m trying to say. There was no… animosity toward the poodle… [laughter] God!

Let’s just skip over th—all this h—horror. And, and get onto the thing that made me… reminded me of this guy… is that…

[Throat clearing.]

Is that he would always say… okay. After… and remember, this is a guy who was capable of… he was strangely… prudish in some… way… considering the content of some of his conversation.

[Long pause.]

Oh, his, his delight in describing the [stomach growling] length and girth of Chuck Connors’s, uh, manly, manly attributes [laughter] was breathtaking. He… uh, nuh, in not only verbal but, you know, a lot of hand and arm gestures went into that, uh… unforgettable portrait of a man and his genitals. But…

He was concerned about the… what he saw as the small amount we were willing to pay to store our sets, and… the way he put it… [laughter] He would always say, “I’m takin’ it in the cheeks! I’m takin’ it in the cheeks!” And… perhaps that’s where my aversion began for that word, “cheeks.” It… it seemed… it seemed… worse.

---

This way, please, for the next part.

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.