Incompatibility

Incompatibility

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree. "Yeah, right." What she actually gave to me were my walking papers.

I can't say that I blame her. I am a casualty of my own non-conventions . But I can't help it. Given my parentage, my mother was from New Orleans but my father was from Ezixor, a planet on the far edge of the universe in the fourth district of the Dipluqer System, I was destined to be somewhat different from a normal carbon based resident of the earth planet. One of my parents was very strange.

Despite her strangeness, I was able to accommodate my mother's differences and even embraced some of the amazing attributes of her species. Among these were her feeding habits. One of those was the boiling of insect-like creatures scooped up off the bottom of various waterways, ripping them apart in a feeding frenzy, and eating its tail muscle while consuming large quantities of alcohol infused water. Because I was a blend, my body could tolerate such unappetizing sustenance, but my father's body repulsed such foodstuffs and he left my mother after only a seventy-two second entanglement. That was approximately one third of the total of the time he spent on earth on a scientific expedition to collect life samples.

I will always have a fondness for my mother. She sheltered me from other humans for all the six years I was with her. I last saw her when she handcuffed me to a park bench in Jackson Square, told me she was going for coffee and beignets, and never returned.

That is not such a big deal, for I age differently. By age seven, I was fully grown by earth standards.

Had I not been in Jackson Square, I never would have met my true love. She was a young Louisiana native who drifted out of the bayous into New Orleans on a cloud of smoke. She immediately bonded with the street folk, found a busted tambourine in a trash can on Bourbon Street, Gorilla glued a repair, and earned her living tapping her tambourine and singing the cup song to tourists who tossed dimes and quarters into the Mardi Gras cup at her feet.

I was intrigued by her, her song, and her dexterity when she set aside her tambourine and moved plastic cups around like a shell game in accompaniment with the lyrics. I dropped handfuls of quarters into her cup, thereby getting her attention. Initially she tried to shoosh me away but after a week or so I began to grow on her, both figuratively and literally. I have a Spanish moss type hair that is a parasite like Spanish moss is, except that my hair attaches to humans in small patches on their arms instead of to trees. With rubbing alcohol, it is easily controlled, so not a problem.

For some reason Belle, that was her name, Belle, tolerated me and I followed her around like a faithful dog. She did insist, however, that I keep a distance when she was busking because I tended to scare off the tourists who found me a little strange.

This worked all through the summer, fall, and into the lengthened fall that the calendar calls winter.

I was happy with our platonic relationship, but I could tell that Belle was becoming more and more distracted. Often, I would note her staring at me but not seeing me, just staring into space, while twisting her long black hair around her finger. She got so distracted that I had to stop her from crossing Canal Street when traffic had a green light and it was only safe to cross when the cars were stopped on red.

At the same time my father had started synaptically communicating with me, explaining how I came to be me, and asking about life on earth. I told him about Belle. He said he never really got to know my mother, that his entangling with her was an accident. He was swooping down to earth and literally fell into her arms as she was sunbathing on the levee.

When merchants and the city started putting up Christmas decorations, I knew it was Christmas. The weather gave no clues, just the decorations and music changed. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was playing when Belle, with no advanced warning, told me, "It's time for you to go. I'm joining up with an accordion player from Lake Charles, and there's no room for you anymore. Thanks for being my friend, but this is goodbye."

Later, from a distance, I saw her singing in Jackson Square. Her accordion friend accompanied her and did some solos. They made a fine looking couple.

I saw no reason to stay in New Orleans. My father told me to consider Washington, D.C. He said my strangeness would be less unusual there.

I headed toward Washington singing, "I got my ticket for the long way round…."