Once upon a time, sweet, sweet reader, I was strutting around the Everglades in a crisp pair of cut-offs and my best top-hat. I was looking goooooood!!! And in my state of high fashion (entendre intended as I had recently done some bath salts) I heard of the legend of New Guy.
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New Guy, you see, was once a wrasslin’ gator. He lived on the local Indian* reservation, performed in a wrasslin’ show thrice daily for mobs of slack-jawed fat bastard yokels, and lived an unhealthy-underfed-malnourished life.
New Guy was sick of wrasslin’ everyday and never winning the title so he decided to quit his day job. That night, he said goodbye to his friends, busted free of his pen, and vanished into the dark and delicious swamp.
*This tribe calls themselves Indians so call the PC police on them. No, I don’t have the PC police’s phone number. You are going to have to look it up on your own!
Upon hearing of this legend from a potential bath salt phantom named Captain Ozzie, I decided that I wanted to interview New Guy for this highly credible and reputable blog. I mean, I was already wearing my best top-hat so why the flying fuck would I not want to interview New Guy?
We hopped on Captain Ozzie’s fan-boat aptly named Freedom and sped right the fuck off into the swampy oblivion to find New Guy.
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Now, you don’t get to be named Captain Ozzie because you suck. No, you get to be named Captain Ozzie because you are bad-ass and that is exactly what bad-asses are called. Being a bad-ass, Captain Ozzie claimed that in the entire goddamn Everglades he knew exactly where to find New Guy – ten hundred quadrillion acres of land plus about a billion other alligators and this dude knew where to find New Guy. And he did.
Captain Ozzie and I rocked the Freedom for about 35 minutes way the fuck out into the shit. Have you ever tried to wear a top-hat on a fan-boat? Man, what a terrible wardrobe choice by me. Really, wearing it to the swamp in general was a bad idea. I have no idea how voodoo priests do it.
Fuck, sorry for the top-hat tangent.
Anyway, after some fan-boating into the shit we arrived at a cozy fetid muck-hole out in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Captain Ozzie cut the engines and we were adrift amongst the saw-grass and mosquitoes.
As we sat in silence pondering our life choices New Guy floated out of the saw-grass to eye-ball us like I eye-ball women at the bus stop – hard and with a hint of menace…and no pants on.
How did Captain Ozzie know that this gator, out of all of the gators, was New Guy?
- He knew that New Guy had escaped his confines so he was already suspicious of any strange gators.
- New Guy approached the boat. Gators aren’t super shy, but if you creep on them they will disappear on you. How else are they going to attack and eat you? New Guy gave zero fucks about people in a boat. Dude was clearly habituated to bipedal apes, something that I’m still working to get habituated to.
- When Captain Ozzie first discovered New Guy he had no teeth and was rail thin. These were tell-tale signs that this particular alligator was the escapee. No wild gator would be caught dead in that kind of wretched condition.
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Despite having lived his entire life in the wrasslin’ game New Guy was getting the hang of this living in the wild thing. He was holding his own small territory and was getting enough nutrition that he regrew his teeth and started to stack on the weight.
Think about that for a second – this guy escaped life-long captivity, had no teeth and was malnourished, and was thriving in the wild. If I went out into the woods for 5 minutes I would probably have been dead for 4 of those minutes. I was in absolute awe of New Guy’s pure survival bad-assery.
I proceeded to do my interview with New Guy. He provided me with a metric fuck-ton of wisdom about the emptiness of being and how the Void awaits for us all in the end. I thanked him for his time, tried to take a bite out of Captain Ozzie’s face due to the bath salts, peed myself a little, and said goodbye to New Guy. Wow, what an encounter!
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A year after I met New Guy I returned to the Everglades inexplicably wearing the same ridiculous top-hat and completely rocking the bath salts. I met up with Captain Ozzie and inquired about New Guy. New Guy, despite his lack of fear of humans and being thin, had lived in that same swamp-hole until recently. One day in the not too distant past, New Guy packed up his vintage porno collection and moved out of that swamp-hole for good.
I asked Captain Ozzie how he knew that New Guy moved versus hunters getting him or if he fell victim to a larger male alligator (gators being territorial and all). Being bad-ass and quite free-ranging, Captain Ozzie said that he actually bumped into New Guy at his new swamp-hole. He knew that it was New Guy because he again approached the boat and was still thinner than the average gator, but was much fatter than previously.
I ponder all of the challenges that New Guy overcame to live life on his terms. I also ponder why I am writing this blog in a coffee shop completely high on bath salts while buck-naked save for this top hat. If New Guy can take calculated risks to live life on his terms then, damn it, so can I. Take that, baristas!