Bongo Boy And Butt Girl - An In Chanting Couple (Another gem from Scott Black)

Seems that the skinny white guy who wears a Rastafarian hat and plays the bongos, has decided to expand his horizons. He has taken up chanting to add to the various musical things he can’t do. I was sitting here in a quiet repose and the thwapping sound of someone smacking an innocent bongo started up. It’s not a problem really, for I possess industrial strength earplugs for such things as train wrecks, asteroids, new age music, rap and neighbours who play bongos. But after a few minutes, he started bellowing out what sounded like an impersonation of a wounded steer to me. Or perhaps a Great Dane with an infected tooth, but you get the idea. It wasn’t in any language that I’ve ever heard of before, it made no sense and had no sense of pitch to it, or talent for that matter.

His girlfriend is a short and very cute blonde of college age I suspect, with one slight flaw. I think she was born with two asses. Either that or she uses that caboose for shoplifting. It’s hard to say. Because she seems rather slender until you reach the naval region and it blossoms from there. But we met earlier for the first time today while waiting for the eternal elevator to arrive. They know I live next to them and that’s all they know. He didn’t look at me and she looked and gave a half smile. “Hello.” I offered. “Hello.” she offered back. Now one would think that would be the end of it, we would wait for the elevator, take it to the bottom floor and each go their own way, right? But noooooooo! The girl with the party sized pooper just had to say something that made me bite my tongue, think of sick babies, the Kardashians joining a road company of “The Sound Of Music”, or even waking up to discover that I was in some hotel room and still on the road with Redbone. All it took was two simple words to put me through one of greatest attempts of showing restraint in my life. That’s it…two words. And they were said with a straight face and in a very smug manner as well.

“We’re musicians.” The knees started to buckle. That built in sarcasm gene that I was born with was fighting the rest of my body that was working overtime trying to suppress it with everything from bribes to threats. Then I caught myself just in time from adding two more words to the conversation that very well could have eventually ended in a homicide. I started to say “Me too”, but caught it in the “M” stage and left it there. I could easily imagine the knocks on the door and invites for a “jam session” with wooden flute, bongo and chanting at all hours of the day and night. I was going to say that they sound like a teenage garage band in India, but having spent time there years ago, I don’t recall ever seeing a single garage in India. A stable band perhaps? But I guess that’s what made those two words sound surreal. The totally smug way she said it! Almost with a sneer in fact. As I was holding myself back from jumping down the elevator shaft, Bongo Boy hit a home run and cleared the bases. He removed his Jiffy Pop Rastafarian Hat and he had just gotten his reddish dreadlocks shaved down to the bone. He looked like the Krishna guys who used to dance at the airports before the TSA and good taste drove them away. But he still wore the hat. It looked pretty damned dumb before when he had it stuffed full of red dreadlocks. Now it looked like a huge multi-coloured tongue flapping from the back of his head.

Finally, the elevator arrived and once the door closed, it was easy to see that deodorant wasn’t very high on their shopping list either. My eyes were watering. I wanted to fart just to improve the air quality in the elevator. I still have pretty good lungs and held my breath for the rest of the ride after that first near fatal inhale. We arrived at the bottom floor and there was the usual crowd waiting to get in. As they did, I could hear different languages groaning about the smell. I just hope they didn’t think it was me. I'm clean. Very clean.

Rast A. Farian