Chapter Three

Horace Aeiouaey knew himself to be a rather unusual man. He was satisfied with this. He took great pleasure in this, actually. Things the world scorned mattered to him. Things he scorned mattered to the world.

He had occasionally cogitated about that, about why his priorities seemed to swim against the tide. He wasn't a sociopath in his own mind, at least, and he flattered himself to think himself not particularly paranoid. It was as if he and the rest of the world were somehow askew, nonintersecting. Independent. This independence was highly pleasing to Horace's understanding of himself. It set him aside from the rabble. It made him better.

Horace mentally composed a theoretically superior intellectual and moral pose to be struck for his monumental commemoration in the infinite gallery. He knew instinctively that he would have no trouble deserving it when his time came. At the same time, he was not so far gone as to think he need give no consideration at all to this the temporal world. He realized that society was incapable of recognizing his superiority, and he magnanimously forgave society for this shortcoming. Awareness of this condescension struck the spark to his enlightenment, and he conceived the possibility that he might actually be an unrestrained egomaniac. Well, thought Horace, no harm in that.

Unless everyone I have to deal with, he realized suddenly, stigmatizes me as an egomaniac. That might make life a tad, er, awkward.

The way around this, he decided, was to present an image to the world that was as meek, cooperative and self-effacing as vertebrally possible. Horace would make himself as pleasant and courteous as he could be to these, these insects, and of course they would love him for what he appeared to be, and he could still love himself for what he knew he was. It would be his own little joke on the world.

In this way Horace willingly became a convert to hypocrisy.

No one would know he was an egomaniac.

No one would know he was a hypocrite.

Some joke.

The world, it must be said, held Horace in the same light as appeared any other individual grain of sand. If this is to become a pearl in time, the world reasoned, it will be no sacrifice - in fact it might be soothing, in a way - to see it swallowed by a mollusk first.

This opinion of Horace prevailed, apparently, in every extant manifestation of physical creation. And with good reason. As a physical specimen, Horace was deficient. At somewhat above average weight for his somewhat below average height, his extreme dearth of comeliness was a characteristic remarked on by every soul who had had occasion to notice Horace.

Which is to say, almost no one.

Horace's hair was neither red, black, brown, nor blond, but rather a vague hue subconsciously reminiscent of sewage from Hell. This debate would soon be moot, however, as the mystery of the color was giving way to the mystery of existence: in plainer words, Horace was rapidly balding. In his defense, it must be said that the rate of forehead expansion would have alarmed a lesser man than he. As a book screams for judgment by its jacket, saith Horace, the thinking man must steadfastly refuse to do any such thing. This maxim had rewarded him with not only a complete disregard for his own personal upkeep, but had freighted his memory with an impressive quantity of bad prose as well.

Being superior to all others of his species, and indeed to all other species, although he carried a well-placed respect for large quadrupeds and all things scaly, Horace found himself burdened lightly by what the world referred to as friends. He had none. What he lacked in companionship, though, he considered was well compensated by his generous supply of ears. Not that he had a greater number of these organs than standard issue - Horace was no freak! probably. It's just that, what matter some potential future intimate might wish added to his chin, was readily to be had from his ears. They were intemperate in their adequacy.

His big ears brought Horace no remorse, however. Taped down in his youth; crimped beneath every manner of toboggan, visor, muff, warmer, cap - even bowler - through the years; covered with varying quantities of hair; thoroughly boxed about by unrepentant subordinates at nursery, elementary, Sunday, grade, junior, high, university and graduate schools, and since: Horace's ears tenaciously and rigidly adhered to their distinctive, if unorthodox, shapes. He finally decided in a fit of passing wisdom to accept his ears as the loyal, if lopsided, servants they were. His only auriculogical regret was that, if they could not protrude from his head at like angles, why could they not at least face the same direction? He vaguely recalled his mother scaring the bejeebies out of him at an early age while trying to explain. Even now, something about forceps always made him swoon, and he never did make it past the part about the block and tackle. Water over the dam, he rationalized.

Why carp on such a subjective quality as appearance, when he was blessed with the best peripheral hearing outside the order of Chiroptera?

For all this, Horace really was not preternaturally repulsive. For instance, he could not compete with, say, mass-grave odors, or cheerful confessing necrophiles, or surgery finds in glass jars on the mantle. In spite of the absence of a chin, our Mr. Aeiouaey could bear scrutiny by the light of day. Clear of eye, with a nose neither larger nor smaller than it was, possessing an aperture filled with what were obviously teeth and completely surrounded by lips, Horace's face technically passed muster. To be blunt, however, once seen, Horace was forever known. Connect to the above bust the requisite quantities of the usual accompanying organs, cover with garments meticulously chosen in order to appear to be flung on at random, and the mirage eclept Horace Aeiouaey shimmereth before thee.

Now, now - relax! Take a deep breath. Don't worry; the apprehension felt at first eyeload of this apparition is curable in a majority of cases. A good stiff belt, ideally preceded by a good stiff belt, rounds off those jangled nerves. The mind unboggles, knuckles recolor, Dali watches, necks flex, and before you know it that hideously intense focus fades to a comfortable familiar blur. Of course. Don't mention it.

What you have just experienced demonstrates the secret behind our Horace's conceit. His acquaintances, to a body, could never shake off that initial recoil. It need not be said that as a result his social life never lost contact with terra firma. Nevertheless, it is true. As a youth, this acharismatic aura plagued him. But this plague went on to steel his psyche to unimaginable hardness as he fermented into manhood and now, at the peak of his game, he wore his antimagnetism as a badge of pride. He displayed it openly, he shared it copiously, to a highly gratifying general dismay. It was, after all, a gift.

Reclusion was not without its rewards. Horace had the opportunity to mull the caprices of nature, the intransigence of time, the cogwork of the cosmos. He cast rationalism, cynicism, nihilism, and metaphysics into the blender, set to chop for a year, switched to puree for two more, liquified for six months, boiled, tossed in a spritz of vulgarity and drank without cooling. Little wonder, then, our boy is so well-adjusted.

This is not to imply that Horace carked not over his studies as a youth. Cark he did, with bells on. His tomes were so well cracked they resembled him in invertebracy before he was through. His career at university as narrated only by transcript was blinding. His life there by all other measures, though, was immeasurable. Nutshellologically speaking: nil.

But upon eruption from higher learning, the boil Horace Aeiouaey found the world to be his oyster, and not vice-versa. Measures of life, he discovered, tipped the economic scales in equal ballast to the pre-war mark, while his transcript was received with homage more fittingly reserved for the Magna Charta. His price named, Horace leaned back to despise at leisure.

Four pink slips subsequently, Horace began to suspect he was not cut from the corporate cloth. His dismissals had been so diaphanously provoked as to engender incredulity. "Incompatibility." With those people - are they serious? "Insubordination." How dare those worms? "Inability to politely communicate necessary office niceties as well as important business intelligences." Bullshit! And the last, delivered with a straight-forwardness he could appreciate: "Horace, you are the one and genuine grand-daddy of the assholes. I stand in awe of genius. You're fired."

"It takes one to know one," Horace told her.

It was out of this blissful state of rejection that Willie Smith first awoke, blearily shaking his stupid head. Seven numbing novels later, Horace was now shaking that same stupid head with fingers locked firmly about its throat and a shotgun indenting the roof of its mouth. The door to Ed's building closed itself behind him, and the noise of the street welcomed him home, nagging.

As the pavements glitter with fools, as the markets teem in dotards, as the stadia roil like so many buckets of grunion, so is life blessed with assholes. No other demograhic group spans all the barriers, is so universal, so denigrated, or so undefined in its own collective mind.

Mankind, in its embarrassing immaturity, is mired in the fens of barbarity. Perceived superiority is adored, supposed inferiority abhorred. Weakness, as a class, is declasse'. The world yearns to engorge the mighty with the midget's carcass, but is emasculated in the attempt by the giant himself, who, dreaming of ennobling society through mercy, dilutes it with irresolution. The great, manfully stroking through the fetid groaning morasses of despised humanity, read the lurid handwriting, leap to the bridge, lash themselves to the mast, and calculate the ruggedness of the keel, hoping to weather the inclemency. The deluge of ignorance may periodically wane, the seas of stupidity may becalm, but the waxing tide of assholedom shall never ebb.

Nothing can be so well evidenced as this assertion. No sooner has an asshole been vanquished, educated, rehabilitated, or murdered, at any point in history, than ten assholes have arisen to fill the gap. The world thus geometrically regressing throughout all time has brought us to the glorious prospect we now behold, this veritable Golden Age of Assholeness. Only one thing can result if nature takes its course from here - that is to say, if totally chaotic and random events govern, which have never failed in the past - and that is, that the new order of assholes shall surely divide into subphylla, and begin to self-stratify.

This, of course, means disaster.

For somewhere, snaking through the catacombs of derision, finding the clammy maw of the subterranean chasm of imbecility, spelunking the netherworld strata of idiotic contentment, in the infernal sulphurous glow of invincible cruelty will inexorably evolve the epitomical, the quintessential, the ultimate force of all creation:

Super-Asshole!

That such a fiend would soon come to world domination can not be doubted by rational beings. Humanity, however, will never buy it, and so will be caught defenseless. Super-Asshole will quash with impunity all forms of sanity; without salt will hungrily devour freedom, joy, and prosperity; will belch oppression and garlic, and smile. "Life," Super-Asshole will attempt to think, "is a nap on a fire-ant hill! How fine!”

What can be done to prevent the ghastly realization of this nightmarish scenario? Where can the true believer turn to avert the inevitable? How -

"Hey! You!" A burly person in heavy boots and no shirt raised his voice.

Horace blinked at him.

"Yeah, YOU!, asshole!" The worker pointed his trowel at Horace. "Get the FUCK outa my SEEment!"

As Horace wondered what the preferred method for extracting that element from cement might be, an idea came to him in a rush, an idea which would change his life. He noticed he was standing ankle-deep in a newly screeded concrete sidewalk.

That was not the idea.

This was:

Horace Aeiouaey would serve the cause of humanity. It would be beneath him, but he'd do it.

He'd serve the cause of humanity by initiating the fight against the subclassification of assholes.

He'd reverse the division of assholes by uniting them.

He'd bring them together by identifying them.

He'd recognize them by their own admissions.

They would admit to being assholes because Horace would make it possible - nay, even attractive - to do so.

He'd found an asshole support group.

He'd publish a newsletter.

He'd appeal to every jerk, miscreant, deviate, boor, bitch, snob, and geek.

Nearly everyone.

They'd have bumper stickers: "Honk If You're An Asshole!"

They'd have a cheer.

They'd have a secret gesture.

A bloody flag.

An initiation ceremony.

An initiation fee.

Dues!

Horace Aeiouaey would be one rich asshole.

The blinding force of this inspiration struck Horace absolutely dumb. It was a religious experience. The plans overwhelmed his mind in a divine flood. He wasn't able to control his line of thought as the entire structure and administration of Assholes Unanimous, snappily attired, ran onto the parade grounds of his mind's eye, deftly struck formation, and snapped to attention awaiting his command.

The mud man, however, did not await Horace's command. The flat trajectory of the heavy trowel intersected the point occupied by the back of Horace's head with a dull metallic thud, and Horace immediately responded by performing his imitation of a sack of potatoes.

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