What's Troubling Marjorie

(short story squiblet, best not to read this... I haven't bludgeoned y'all over the head in weeks)

Big asses troubled Marjorie Gold. That was for starters.

For example the 62-inch ass of her cousin Desmond was a source of consternation and regret. His ass glowed in summertime, as a result of sunburns on the superfluous flesh that extruded from Desmond's jeans. This ass made a fool of Desmond - who was presentable but for this troubling fact. To Marjorie, Desmond was more foolish than a toad with a top hat who spoke lousy English (and whose ass was bigger than acceptable). Marjorie wrote notes for Desmond - which she never sent - advice on how to disguise himself with foliage, perhaps twigs, or judicious drapery. But she was much too shy to rebuke her cousin openly about his copious rearage.

The uneasiness over Desmond was not the end of her neurosis. Marjorie was a self-conscious girl who often vomited in public. This made her very shy. She vomited during prayer meetings at her parish; she vomited on strangers on the sidewalk if they moved too quickly from side to side to avoid Marjorie while she returned from the grocer with a large basketful of spinach or plums. She vomited a lot, and her stomach lining was in ruins. She consulted the internet on a thrice-weekly basis to find naturopathic cures for damage due to bilious discharge. Hers was not an easy lot, but then many teenage girls had it difficult. Some girls did not grow very big chests, and had to obtain special brassieres. Other girls had braces which made it impossible to kiss boys. Then there were the girls with embarrassing parents, transitional complexions, braces and small chests who did not want to exist at all. These girls were sometimes sad, yet were often interesting and always had an inner beauty which writers like to mention - because people like an underdog.

Asses and puke were thus the two extremes of Marjorie's exotic teenage life. And yet to call Marjorie 'exotic' is a blatantly sarcastic reference, and Marjorie feared sarcasm most of all.

One day Marjorie was avoiding sarcasm by paddling a canoe along a river. The river was an urban estuary that local activists had revitalized with applause-worthy endeavours like “Wish for the Fish and Switch from Filling the Ditch with Garbage, Bitch!”which had reintroduced salmon spawn to the downtown marshland. Not all such activist endeavours had rhyming names, but most were well-received. The estuary in question had recovered its ecological vigour, and Marjorie saw a turtle flapping its tiny limbs beside her metal canoe. “How I love the simple turtles,” she said to herself, “they remind me of myself – with their tough exterior and soft underbelly... Or is it vice-versa?" And she sighed, continuing this 'canoe of thought', "Not to mention some of the boys have complimented me; they say I have the nose of a tortoise.” This last thought was true: Marjorie had the nose of a tortoise. A strikingly tortoise-nosed, but nervy and puke-prone girl was Marjorie Gold. It was the new millennium, she thought, and Reality TV shows could be made that featured even girls like her.

It was an idea, she thought. Reality television would be an escape from her 'exotic' life. Marjorie had connections in the television industry. She had bought a television once at Radio Shack, now called the Source. “That man who sold me the TV – maybe he knows how to get me a reality show,” she thought. Marjorie was tenacious, like a turtle-nosed wolverine. What she lacked in knowledge she made up for with a turtlish, dogged wolverine-like donkeyheadedness. Marjorie was, indeed, a complex girl.