My sincerest apologies. The writing of Shrimpdick! was interrupted by an unexpected trip to sunny London (see suckahs.org for details).

However, in our ongoing attempts to mollify you, the reader (well, primarily the ever-mysterious Alan), here is Shrimpdick!, part I.
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Handicapped people can be such a pain in the ass.

I was leaving work one night about a week ago. Even before I got to the front door, I had my nose burrowed deep into my book (I'm OK, You're a Douchebag: A Self-Help Guide for the Perpetually Surly) as I geared up for the long walk across the Albanian tundra.

Now, I'm a compulsive read-walker (walk-reader?), so usually I can knock off a chapter by the time I get home, no problem. I was holding my own as I started heading up the hill. My eyes kept jumping from my feet, which were trying to keep a grip on the iced-over sidewalk even though my sneakers were worn-through, to my book, as I also tried to dodge the bajillions of state workers who were off like Greyhounds once 5 o'clock rolled around.

My own didn't hold too long.

As soon as I turned the page from Chapter 7 -- "Is Everyone Here a Fucking Idiot?" -- to Chapter 8 -- "Yep" -- I plowed into the guy. Somehow, I never heard the tap-sweep, tap-sweep of his white cane, and never saw him coming. We both went down to the sidewalk a hundred feet from where the construction workers were repairing the sidewalk in front of the Capitol.

"Why don't you watch where the f...oh. Ha ha. Sorry," I said when I realized he was blind. Between the cane, held together by a wad of duct tape bending one of the joints at a thirty degree angle, and the decayed eyes -- he didn't wear those dark glasses -- it didn't take long to figure.

"Yeah, you're a funny fucking guy. Feel real good knocking down a blind guy, huh? Make you feel tough?"

No, it didn't.

Somehow, he'd managed to hold on to his cane, and was using it to pry himself off the ground. His pry point was my ass.

"Jesus, man. I'm really sorry." I looked around to see how many people were staring, and, trying to be casual, brushed off what little snow there was stuck to me that hadn't already melted from embarrassment. The guy was finally standing again, and he was big. The back of his jacket, which must have covered a hundred square feet of space, was covered in snow. "Let me help you out," I said, as I tried to wipe some of it off. He jumped back.

"Eat me, shrimpdick!"

Shrimpdick? "Shrimpdick?"

"Yeah. You're a dick, and you smell like shrimp. I'd recognize that smell anywhere."

Now I was curious. I'd heard about blind people developing super-sensitive senses. Maybe this guy was like that. Maybe he had some sort of blind-dar.

"My smell specifically, or just, like, nasty shrimp smell?"

"You specifically, stanky. You're out here every day around five, five after, right?"

"Yeah. Just about."

"You better not be, boy. I smell you again and I'll fuck your shit up. I'll fuck your shit up reeeal bad." He tried to lean in toward me on the word 'real' for dramatic effect, but wound up staring (so to speak) over my left shoulder.

"OK, man. I'm sorry. Seriously," I said. He turned, looking as aggressive as possible with a cane, and tap-swept, tap-swept away without saying anything.

As I turned away, too, I realized he already had fucked my shit up real bad. For one thing, I knew I was gonna have to live the rest of my life with slow motion John Madden replays of the tackle in my head ("OK, now, Danno comes from behind the line, head down, and BAM! He levels the guy. Kids, you always gotta keep your heads up. That hit should really be a fine. Now let's see it again from the SkyCam.") to make me feel guilty. Worse than that, though, was the realization that it would cost me an extra mile each way to avoid that route. I'm a fat bastard, so that was out of the question. Maybe, I thought, I could just avoid him from now on.

For the first minute of my walk home the next night, it looked like I was gonna be alright. But by the time I got to the shell of the former Leo China Palace, the third in a strip of seven abandoned and dilapidated buildings, I was anything but.

Man, it was straight out of a movie. All the street sounds faded out. Timpani sounded: DUMMM! He appeared from around the corner a block ahead of me. DUH-DUMMM! He started to tap-sweep toward me. DUMMM! He paused. DUH-DUMMM! He sniffed, then sniffed two more times in quick succession. DUMMM! His eyebrows rose. DUH-DUMMM! He mouthed the word, "Shrimpdick!"

He started at me full bore, only he wasn't tap-sweeping now; he was tap-SWEEEEEPing: tapping perfunctorily, and then, sharp, hard, fast, sweeping his cane eight feet in an arc in front of himself like a scythe. He was locked on like Top Gun. I crossed the street, he crossed the street. I sped up, he came at me faster. I ducked side to side, his face tracked me, led by his nose. In desperation, I took the last evasive move I could think of: I stripped off my shirt and tossed it into the street, hoping he'd follow that and get plowed down by a tour bus. But he kept at me and I resigned myself to my fate. I could hear him mutter "Shrimpdick" as he wailed me in the shin with his cane.

Like a hockey player taking a dive, he threw his cane away, making it look like it had been knocked out of his hand. He kneed me in the head as I bent to grab my leg. I fell backward and he fell on top of me, taking great care to give me a shot in the junk on the way down.

"OHHHH! I'm blind, you asshole! Look where you're going!" Had he been writing this out, he would've written that scream in 100-point Times New Roman type. He followed in 6-point Arial by saying to me, "Told you not to come this way, Shrimpdick!"

"Why can't I? I'm sorry about yesterday, man. Really. But I gotta get home, too."

In 100-point again, he said, "FUCK! I think you just knocked out hearing in one of my ears!" Six-point: "You don't get it. All I got left are smell and hearing, and they're important to me. This is my street. I walk up and down here every day, and the smell of you and makes me sick. So does the sound of your flat-ass feet flopping around. I'm not gonna have that smell or that sound on my street. SHIT! MY LEG! HE BROKE MY LEG!"

A man ran toward us from the Capitol. Completely bald, 50 pounds overweight, and wearing a $1500 suit, he could only have been a lawyer or an accountant. He was a lawyer and panting heavily.

"Joe Franks, of Franks, Franks and Balz. You may have seen us on TV or the back of the phonebook." I had seen him on TV. When the other lawyers in the ad go through the litany of cases they handle, he chimes in with "And don't forget dog bites, falls down the stairs and hot beverage disfigurements!" When he gets done, you can see a distinct glob of foam in either corner of his mouth.

He handed each of us a business card. "Listen, I saw the whole thing, and I think this is actionable."

"You saw it? Thank God. I ran into this guy yesterday. Now he's coming after me!"

"Shut up, sadist!" He was pointing at me. "Beating up a blind guy? Knocking him down? Trying to steal his cane? What kind of fucking animal does that? What kind of fucking animal beats up a handicapped person?"

"First of all," I said, "I didn't try to steal his cane. Second of all, lions attack the wounded and infirmed all the time."

"Oh, so, what? You just beat the hell out of him? Broke his leg? Does that make you a lion? You think you're the king of State Street? More important than that, you better hope a jury thinks you're the king of State Street."

"Believe me, I'm not the king of anything. Look, if you wanna sue me, sue me. He came after me. I'm not gonna stand around arguing with you. I'm going home."

I lied. I wasn't going home. I went back to work. And stayed there for the next three days, afraid to go outside. I would never have left again if my boss didn't make me. "Y'know what shit smells like?" he asked me on the third day of my imprisonment. "You kinda smell like that, too."

I hate to admit it, but he was right. Poor bowel control. I’d have to change my clothes sometime, plus, I'd just remembered that I had left my car at a meter.

I was gonna have to journey back outside.

Ehhh, I thought, trying to psyche myself up. It's been three days. He won't be around. I'll walk fast.

Walk fast I did. I walked past the boarded-up shops, past the Capitol, past the plaza, past the first two blocks of apartments. It took me three minutes to walk a distance that usually took 15. I was one block away from home and closing the distance fast. And then I heard it.

Tap-sweep-evil giggle. Tap-sweep-evil giggle. This time, though, he had a small army. Accompanying his cane orchestra was the step-drag of an amputee, the whoosh-whoosh of a couple guys in wheelchairs, and the unintelligible war whoops of a woman with no hearing. They were right behind me, having hidden in the church parking lot.

I started to run (well, jog; see reference to fat bastardhood). The deaf woman yelled out what sounded like "Shrimpdick" (it could just as easily have been "ship deck" or "sheep wreck") and the two guys in wheelchairs blew by me, stopping 20 feet further ahead with a 180 degree skid. They crossed their arms and glared, daring me. They both had huge biceps from years of wheeling. I stopped.

The blind guy tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around. As soon as I did, the amputee, plastic leg in hand, swung at my head harder than I would’ve thought possible and I hit the pavement.

The five of them swarmed. The blind guy was tap-sweeping me in the face, first on the left side, then the right. The deaf chick, her blonde hair in an angry knot on top of her head, kicked me hard in the ribs over and over, her aim much better than her blind compatriot’s. The amputee, whose physique said he was 30 but whose face said he was 50, jumped up and down on my chest. The two dudes in wheelchairs ran over my hands and legs, occasionally reaching down to punch me and laughing maniacally. Individually, they may have been missing sight, hearing, a leg and the ability to walk, but collectively they were an ass-pounding force.

“Can’t we all just get alo…” I started to ask.

“No,” they screamed at once.

At that moment, I thought I was gonna die.

.........................................

Will Albany Dan be killed by the raging pack of handicapped people?

Will he go to hell just for writing this?

Stay tuned for the next installment of Shrimpdick!