HAZING THE MONKEY

HAZING THE MONKEY, by Marcus A. Hennessy.  Sally, a young unhappy wife in Iowa.

SALLY.  Two years ago, you begged me to marry you.  I’m the one who made the commitment to stick with you for the long haul.  Because I believed in you.  I had faith in your ability to provide as a man, even though at the time you were just some drunk singer in a dead-end band.  Look, we are in this thing together.  TOGETHER!  You know what I mean?  This is a partnership.  You know how much time and energy and love I’ve spent on this partnership?  A butt-load pardon my French.  I got you off the bottle.  I save you from the perils of liquor.  And I pulled you out of your hopeless dreams.  That took one helluva lot of work, pardon my French.  And I helped you to get a job.  A real job.  You don’t know what I went through with Fred and that pig of a sister-in-law to get you that first interview two years ago.  She hates you.  But I convinced her to give your application to the right people, and you got the job.  Because of me.  BECAUSE OF ME!

There’s a lot of crap you don’t know, Roger, pardon my French.  So here we are, hun, living in a mobile home in a mobile home park in the middle of Iowa, and I hate it!  I absolutely hate it!  I said I liked it because you liked it.  Maybe I fudged with the truth, forgive me dear Lord.  Think about it, Roger.  A mobile home in a mobile home park in Iowa!  You know what we are?  Do you? 

WE ARE A BULLSEYE FOR TORNADOES!  That’s what we are! Tornadoes will go out of their way to hit us here.  We’re easy pickin’s.  You never see a high-class neighborhood ravaged by a twister.  Those houses are built solid.  No, no, it’s always a swath of destruction through some mobile home park where everything’s built cheap and flimsy.  I can’t tell you how many stormy nights I just prayed and prayed that the twisters would stay clear of this place long enough for us to get out and into a solid home.  And my friends, people I know from the church, they see me working at the store and they smile at me and I can just see those thought balloons over their heads like in the comic books . . . “Oh look, there’s pretty Sally Youngblood.  She’s such a nice girl and she has such a nice husband but they live in a mobile home.  They’ll be gone soon.  Such a pity.”