Sweaty’s mother sweeps into town to break it up, reminding her son of loftier callings
The wheelchair whirs into the grieving, traumatized post-revolutionary crowd in Kyiv’s Independence Square. It is a crowd that now knows their revolution may not have been the end of their long-suffered totalitarian ordeal, but with the prospect of war raising its enraged burning mien over the East horizon, rather the start of their headlong plummet into Hell.
People make way as they hear the whine of the wheelchair’s battery-powered motor coming up behind them. And as they step aside, they see an old man bent forward, clearly a foreigner, gritting his false teeth, long wisps of un-groomed white hair lashing his puckered forehead against the wind, melanoma-like liver spots covering his upper cheeks. A superhero cape with the words Media Man emblazoned on it flutters from his shoulders.
As he drives his chair insistently through the crowd, unambiguously projecting the attitude that the crowd owes him something – recognition, praise, honor – he thinks:
‘Yes, the Ukrainian people finally heard my cries of freedom in the great, leading, and only English-language newspaper of which I was and remain the chief editor, the Kyiv Poster, the world’s undisputed window on Ukraine.’
However, as he motors forward, forcing people to jump out of his way, without realizing it, Bret Boner begins to voice his thoughts out loud:
“After long, hard scrutiny of my articles, they finally understood that freedom must be fought for, and sometimes died for; that freedom isn’t free; that it comes with a price, not in lunch paper boxes with different colors you can choose from.”
Meanwhile, a raw-faced and drunken Sweaty Tank Top, the erstwhile owner of the now defunct What’s Off, formerly Kyiv’s only English-language entertainment rag, is walking down the street in the opposite direction.
He is trying very hard to figure out what had just happened, and the alcohol sloshing around in his scarecrow-sack head is not making the process any easier.
He is stunned, shell-shocked, absolutely dumbfounded that the revolution, which he so vigorously supported week after week in a special private column of his magazine, has had the effect of closing down his publishing gig. There’s still the saloon, called Sweaty’s Place, but that’s also been closed down by the new authorities on the pretext that heinous crimes, foremost among which are mass murder, have allegedly recently been committed within.
But Sweaty knows that the shuttering of his joint is itself a pretext for housing there top dangerous members of shady heavily armed radical militant groups spawned of the revolution*, all of whom now have free and unlimited access to Sweaty’s vast store of booze, especially his extensive and highly prized collection of Scotch whiskies, whose assemblage by Sweaty had been a painstaking labor of love over many thankless years.
“All lost, by gar,” Sweaty keeps repeating, on the verge of tears, as he hurtles himself down the street, sniffling and shaking his scarecrow-sack head.
But perhaps more than his lost businesses, what hurts Sweaty most is being forced to get drunk at a competitor’s bar, and having to pay for the privilege.
“Why don’t you just get drunk at home, instead of paying all that extra money, which we don’t have, to do it in someone else’s place,” Sweaty’s ugly wife, who now wants a divorce, keeps nagging him, to which Sweaty replies, “Shet yar fookin’ meyooth, ya stupid fookin’ twoont.”
But Sweaty stops in his tracks, his hysterical thoughts suddenly interrupted by the shaky voice of Bret Boner, talking to himself as he passes Sweaty by in his wheelchair, saying:
“These inalienable rights, universal ideals, expounded by the great thinkers of the Enlightenment and enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution – all that work I did paid off.”
To which, highly annoyed, Sweaty responds:
“Wha’ the fook you gang on ‘bout?! Shet yar fookin’ ol’ man’s meyouth, afore ich shet it fer ye!”
“I’d rather die free than live like a slave!”
“Boy the look o’ ye, yar dead already.”
“Yeah?! Look who’s talking, bag face!”
“Aye, yar the un ooze ‘ead ich pounded all oop ‘n’ down the Kyiv Administration Building, tarnin’ yar fookin’ arrogant foice into a blooody palp. Boot e’en atter tate, y’ere lookin’ batter then than y’are lookin’ na.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Aye, thaz roight – atter all yar blooody lippin’ ‘gainst me chief editor, Lava Encole.”
“What? That stupid bitch! Yeah, that’s right, Sweat Stain, except you no longer have a chief editor. You no longer have much of anything – ha, ha, ha, ha…”
“Oim gang toik you an’ broik evry fookin’ bowne i’ yar rottin’, steenkin’ ol’ man’s boody oonteel you an’ yar fookin’ whoilchar are one!”
“You just do that, bag face” – Boner struggles to get out of his wheelchair, but can’t, and is reduced to shaking his fists and whipping his legs out and banging them back against the chair repeatedly, as though throwing a tantrum – “that’s right, you just go ahead and fucking do that!!!”
“Now, now, Sweaty…”
Sweaty is shocked, warmed, and humbled to hear the familiar voice. He turns, and tears well up in his eyes at the sight.
“Mum! What the fook ye dang here?!”
“A mother can hear the cries o’ her child across the world. Me heart was breakin’, an’ I coom ta help ye, me wee li’l’ boy.”
“Hey, you old hag! Is that burned scarecrow your son? Boy – you couldn’t have given birth to an uglier son of a bitch – ha, ha, ha, ha…”
“Woy, Oim gang rip yar blooody ‘ead offen yar fookin’ – ”
“Now, now, me baby boy. Leave the poor, misfortunate man alone an’ take yar ol’ Mum under the arm an’ to yar proprietorship.”
“Sweaty’s Place? But Mum!”
“But me no buts, son. They say yar friend, The Highlander Slob, is steeped seven Scotsmen or eight deep (they’re still not sure about the Jew) in murder, but yar Mum says her wee boy ran such a lively and successful saloon, that it could make the clientele’s imaginations run away wi’ ‘em, gang a wee bit wild, make ‘em see tings tat arn’t thar.”
“But wha’ ‘bout the dangrous radicals ‘oled oop i’soid?”
“Yar ol’ Mum ‘ill throw ‘em at. No son o’ mine is gang ta be bullied by no common riffraff, underclass rabble, dregs o’ society, an’ gutter scum!”
“That’s me Mum!”
“An’ war’s yar friend na, me son.”
“The Highlander Slob? Ee’s bein’ ‘eld i’ a cage suspeended o’er Kyiv’s ancient Golden Gates.”
“Well, me l’il’ boy, let’s go open yar business back oop again and take down yar friend.”
“Oh, Ma…”
Filed by John Smith, March 27, 2014
*These include but are not limited to Ukrainian extremists, anarchists, terrorists, ultranationalists, homosexuals, neo-Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, and Russophobes, as well as Jews, Americans, EU members, Western exceptionalists, Negros, losers, degenerates, undifferentiated depraved types, drug addicts, thugs, goons, and assorted criminals.