My First WhoDunIt

Every time I read a book, I think “I wish I could write like that.” 

It doesn’t seem to matter if it is fiction, non-fiction, or self-help. Essays, columns and articles are also subject to jealousy. Anything in written form, really. 

Not necessarily because I discount myself or my abilities—each of us has a different voice and style—but more out of a respect and reverence for the creative mind from which processes flow. 

When I read “The Age of Innocence”, for example, I adoringly floated in awe for days taking in the richly strung verbiage of Edith Wharton wishing I could write with such smooth elegance and feminine grace.  When I read “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls”, I admired the touching cleverness David Sedaris used to whisk me out of my mundane life into his charming world.  

“What a helpful, practical read!” I thought when I finished “Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life” by Maxwell Maltz. It must have taken quite a bit of planning and organization to lay out chapter-by-chapter complicated ideas deconstructed into simple paths to help others. His was an inspirational mind! 

So, this week, when I finished “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie, I was not in the least surprised by my brain when it said “I wish I could come up with some amazing who-dun-it plot like she does! I wish my mind would fire in that strain too!” 

I like me and... I like my writing and style. But I like everyone else too. 

But here is my mind: 

I have decided there must be a minute sleeping little wicked monkey version of me burrowed deep in my amygdala somewhere on the outer edges of my looney bin. A smartass of a wisp who salvages fragments of my imaginations and words as they are flung out of consciousness into the outer space of my brain, keeping what she likes and trashing the rest. 

And once her heap of needless mind treasures is full, she hits a red thought compactor button, reorders all the chaos and sends it back into the wakeful me in the form of morning ephiphanies. 

It doesn’t happen often, but it happened this morning. 

As my spirit raised itself from the dead of sleeping snaking its way to the edge of alertness, before my eyes even opened, I was given my very own who-dun-it plot! 

I saw details, storylines, and felt character emotions of a man I had never met who begged me to be written. 

Excited, of course, I wanted to stay home, sit in my room with my laptop and write it out but alas! I had to do my diligence, attending to work while my creative soul was sucked from existence. 

The story stayed with me, however. 

And it is with great pleasure I have found the time and creativity to write it now. 

So please bear with me as I present my very first who-dun-it: 

“Hairy-Backed Jack: The Case of the Missing Blow-Up Doll” inspired by every author who ever I read based on my time living on Claremont Street in NYC. 

*** 

“Blimy!” thought Jack turning rustily in his messy bed.  

He had not yet opened his eyes but already his temples hurt with a tremendous throbbing as the dark of sleep was replaced by red lids of light. “I am dying.” 

Grunting, he slowly moved each part of his body testing its abilities despite the scathing pain in his head. Arms, feet, legs, fingers. His fingers were strangely swollen. “Ughhhh” he groaned.  

Everything was tangled around him—a sheet wrapped annoyingly about his legs while the upper half of his body lay on the rough naked mattress, pillows partially under his arms and belly yet missing from under his head, and nary a blanket to be found.   

He was hot, cold, sweaty and freezing. 

His hearing coming into tune with the awake world, he heard the lyrical hoot of little songbirds on the ledge of his bedroom window, the white noise of cars on the street below, and muffled shouts of moving in neighbors down the hall. Two floors up, he could hear the distinctive notes of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” being tapped out on a piano. He heard the artist hit the wrong note and start again. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” 

It hurt to think. It hurt to hear. 

Someone on his floor, he was sure, had made a sauteed garlic sandwich for breakfast.  

It hurt to smell. 

At this point, he wasn’t interested in opening his eyes and covered them with his hand blocking some of the light illuminating the red of his lids. 

He lay there a beached whale victimized by the saltwater that is... Bud Light. 

“Mmmmmmmm.” He let out a long low-toned meditative hum. Out of habit, he reached for his man-parts to begin his daily ritual of unsticking them from his thighs giving them a jiggle and perfunctory morning scratching. 

And sat up instantaneously and quick as a whip when he realized his briefs were missing. 

“What the hell?!” he said aloud. 

Memories of the night before came marching in like mini-ants carrying breadcrumbs of horror. 

Eyes fully open, headache temporarily suspended in the forgetfulness of remembering, he looked around desperately trying to recall what day it was, what he had done last night, where his clothes were and—wait—add to the list, who was here? 

There was a pair of large, lacy dark blue panties scrunched in a bunch on his checked wood floor. 

“Fuck.” 

Stubby joined him then. A grey tabby with white paws and chest, she soundlessly jumped up on the bed, looked at him accusingly, with almost disgust as most cats usually do, and found a piece of mattress on which to start her morning knead. 

It was then, as his mind began to fully engage with reality he noticed his favorite Baltimore Orioles t-shirt on the floor by the white paint-peeling door, his dark denim stonewashed jeans hanging by one leg from his bedroom desk chair and a suspicious inside-out sock on his bedside stand. 

“Bar” he thought.  

Last night, he had met Cain and Azad at the bar on the corner--BeeKeep’s, where the “buzz was in the beer”.  The NY Rangers were in the playoffs. They had won game four, and if they won tonight, the cup would be theirs. They celebrated; Bud Light, the official sponsor of the Stanley cup, was half-off. 

“There was a woman” he strained to think. “Yes, there was a woman. A big one. Cute nose, though.” 

He fell back on the bed, scaring Stubby who quickly exited down. 

Headache returning, he put one hand back over his eyes while rubbing his carpeted chest with the other trying to recount the events.  

Jack, being a bigger guy, was girl-shy. “Big and Tall” the shops dubbed the section of clothes in which he shopped. He was neither particularly handsome nor ugly but rather average, his most distinctive feature being his sharp blue eyes given him by his mother. His bark-brown hair thick and wavy was overgrown, crowding his rotund face with its softly curved angles.  

He hated his nose - it was too little for his face. Which is why he recalled hers. Perfectly set, straightly pointed it now occurred to him he had kissed it at some point. 

Given the fact there were undies on the floor, he guessed he kissed much more than her nose. 

BELINDA! 

Ouch! His head. The memory of her name jolted the ache. 

Belinda. Pretty name, pretty lady. He remembered a bit more. 

Behind the curtain of unrestrained alcoholic inhibitions, he had become a ladies’ man. A veritable middle-class NYC Prince Charming. And she a damsel to be courted, won and bedded all in a night. 

“Oooooph” he thought. “I hope I performed well.” 

He lifted his head and looked at his sleeping member all tucked back into the folds of its turtle hive. Snippets came in small waves of puzzle pieces floating on clouds of thin mist. Kissing, faint sounds of laughter. She was soft. Her skin. Her lips. 

A flower smell. “Jasmine”, she said. He remembered the word “jasmine”. 

She was on top. He was on top. Scenes slid in and out of his mind like he apparently had in her. 

He reached through the wooly hair of his chest. His gold chain was there. He lifted and looked at it. Blonde hair. She had blonde hair. There was a strand wound in the necklace starkly contrasting the brown of his own. “Ow!” she had exclaimed when their tousling had managed to mesh hair and chain together.  

She had left a piece of herself behind. 

He rolled over.  

Stubby was near her underpants, bobbing her head to the ground repeatedly, sniffing.  

“Bro! No.” He moved quickly. “Ew. Gross. Don’t do that.” Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, Jack sat up, then leaned over grabbing the panties off the floor only to nearly pass out at the sudden trauma of movement. Stubby darted out of the room. 

“Oooph.” 

Head-down, re-orientating himself, he tossed the drawers on the bed and thought it would be best to take a long, hot shower. He would feel better, was certain he would remember more as the day wore on. Not to mention there was Tylenol in the cabinet above the bathroom sink. 

Rising slowly, he made his way through his apartment, using walls, chairs, doorknobs, casings and towel bars to keep himself steady. 

Traipsing into his small bathroom, he did not bother turning on the light deciding the bit of brightness coming from the mini window in the shower would be sufficient not wanting to further aggravate his head. He downed three Tylenol and inspected himself in the mirror. 

Ladies man, ha.  

He hadn’t yet checked his phone; he wondered if he had gotten her number or if she was simply a fly-by-night mirage? He did not know how he felt about either. If the former, should he call her? If the latter, should he feel used? Or was he the user? 

His eyes were bloodshot. What time had they fallen asleep? What time was it now? What time had she left? Oh! Too many questions. He looked like crap.  

“Just take a shower and figure it out later.” 

He took a pit stop at the toilet to let loose what Bud Light still remained. 

Pulling back his plain, frosted, stiff moldy shower curtain strung with silver beaded hooks racing across the silver spring rod, Jack suddenly froze at what he did not see. Mortification filled him from the inside-out, from the top-down. The pain in his head, which was at a level three, shot to a defcon level twelve as blood suddenly pounded through his system, alarm bells ringing in his mind. 

He stumbled back sitting sideways on the open toilet seat almost falling in.  

“Oh my God.” In disbelief, he said that out loud. 

“My doll” he thought, “is gone.” 

As he said it in his head, he realized how stupid he sounded. He realized, also, that he could never repeat those words to a single soul. Like ever. 

Being a big guy with an average tub, Jack had grown weary of traditional bathroom accoutrement used to wash his overtly fluffy back. Scrub brushes on ends of bamboo sticks did not work for him. First of all, they were simply not long enough and secondly, he almost fell once when he bumped his elbow on the wall craning to reach the middle of his torso. 

He hated being “big and tall”. Short people didn’t have this problem. 

He had tried everything. Everything! From long loofahs with handles to oversized wet beach towels to tying sponges on yardsticks, his backside never felt clean enough. And because Jack was somewhat sensitive to the forest of hair he carried, the least he could do to feel like a man was to keep himself groomed and fluffy.  

...For occasions like last night. 

Cain and Azad had bought him a blow-up doll for his birthday in January. Men being boys, they thought it great fun as a prank. 

But Jack, being practical, eventually came up with a more useful plan for it after watching Stubby take a pass at her scratching post hitting on an idea he thought pretty darn ingenious.  

He bought a pack of green scratch sponges, a roll of heavy-duty water-resistant duct tape, blew up the doll and outfitted her in a vest much like a fly fisherman going out in the river for a week. 

She looked ridiculous.  

Adhering her to the corner of the shower with Dollar General clothesline rope and eight suction cups making use of his Boy Scout tying skills, she looked like a kind of sad victim of abuse hanging there. He added a smiley face with a Sharpie which somewhat softened the shock of the scene but, admittedly, using the open mouth for a washcloth holder kind of doubled-down on the violation of it all. 

But she was practical and got the job done. Jack would shower, rub up against her plastic body using the scratch pads much in the same way Stubby would use her scratching post to snuff her rump.  

He felt cleaner than he had in years. “It was a respectable use of a prank toy”, he thought. 

Only... now it was missing. 

The suction cups were there though two of them were hanging with the drooping string which seemed to be mainly left intact. The pale green-and-white striped washcloth from her mouth suspiciously lay on the ceramic tub floor.  

But the doll—scratchpads, duct tape and all—was gone. 

And Jack stared, befuddled, at the crime scene before him feeling strangely violated having been robbed of his makeshift clean machine wondering who would have done such a brutal, cruel thing. 

*** 

Well, that’s all I have.  

By the time my own eyes opened to the “redness of my lids”, I was cracking up in laughter thinking “Where does this shit come from?” 

I do not recall, in recent days, having met anyone named “Jack”. I have no recollection of recently seeing outlandish body hair and I am certainly not obsessed with my own given the small amount I actually have on my head. As for blow up dolls, my boyfriend will have his birthday next month yet it has not crossed my mind to buy such a gift.  

I have not had to use duct tape in a several years. 

Hence my suspicion as to there being some little monkey far in the ravine of my consciousness who is immensely enjoying his life rooting through the garbage of my knowledge only to spit it back out at me in the form of wonky creativity. 

Which, by the way, I love. And have learned to accept and embrace. 

After all, who took the doll? Don’t you want to know? 

Even I want to know.  

Did Belinda see it, feel offense, rip it down and destroy it? Did perhaps all four persons come back to the apartment for a nightcap after the bar closed? Did Cain and Azad find it? Or was it a conspiracy by all? 

And what about Stubby? I read Pet Sematary. Scorned animals wreaking havoc on their owners. Did she, seeing the intimacy between Jack and Belinda, find her jealousy boundary and seek to lash out against her owner by destroying the one thing he loved next to her getting back at him for the physical love he now showed another woman? 

WHODUNIT? 

I don’t know.  

But this I do know: 

I may not be as eloquent as Edith Wharton, as clever as David Sedaris, as smart as Maxwell Maltz, or as intriguing as Agatha Christie but I am as unique and imaginative as Shane has been blessed to be.  

And therein lies my own sense of creativity and my own wacky voice. 

And who knows... Maybe tomorrow or next week or next month or even next year, that tiny pimple of a person in my head will figure out the mystery, pack it up in a jumble of lunacy and send it back through the pipe and I will again laugh before I wake. 

And I promise when I know, you will know. 

But, in the meantime, beware of cats.