Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Friday, August 08, 2008 )

Chad The Dictator, Part IV

An ongoing serial by Eric Rasmussen

Chad had started me on military basic training in the Knucklers’ dorm room to prepare me for my upcoming trip where we would go back and retake his father’s government in Krazikistan from the rebels.

We did calisthenics every morning, followed by a six-mile run. He had me go to the firing range and learn how to draw beads on black rags and soda cans that were supposed to be the enemy. He gave me a C+ for marksmanship.

“Well what do you expect?” I said. “I was supposed to go to Goldman Sachs, not invade Suckistan.”

“It’s Krazikistan. And show a little pride, Ghazi Hunsacker.”

“Ghazi? What’s that?”

“You’re a warrior of the true faith.”

“A holy warrior? I’m not sure …”

“Look, it’s just for PR purposes. Don’t sweat it. It’ll sound cool to a stripper anyway.”

“Oh.”

“Front and center!”

I knew what that meant. Stand up ramrod straight. I jumped up out of the bunk and stood at attention.

“This is one of the most important disciplines for a ghazi warrior,” he said. “I want you to stand in this position for 20 hours.”

“Stand here?”

“Yes. Don’t move. You can’t even swat a fly or wipe sweat off your face or pee.”

“Wha? I got AB calculus coming up.”

“Did you disobey a direct order from your commanding officer?”

“No sir.”

“When you’re on the mountains of the province of Al-Baha alone and naked with nothing to eat but rats, dog face, you’ll learn to love your commanding officer so much you want to fuck his aching sphincter for hours and beg for mercy, rat killer. I won’t spare the rod….”

“Yes sir. Thank you sir.”

So he left and I stood there like that for 12 hours straight in my room at the Tomb. I stood there like that from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. About four of my fellow Knucklers came in and asked me what I was doing and I didn’t answer, except to say that I was there under direct orders from my commanding officer, the president, caliph, Caesar and sublime porte of Krazikistan whose style is “Your Excellency,” the great Chad the Dictator.

One of these swells finally gets wise to the idea that I’m not moving under any circumstances and that’s when people start putting post-it notes, toilet paper, “kick me” signs and sandwich boards on me. One wisenheimer even pulls my pants down and puts underwear on over my head.

“Dude,” one of the Knucklers, Brian, finally tells me, laughing hysterically. “Chad’s got you on a closed-circuit camera. He’s broadcasting you all over the Internet.”

That fucker. I’d been owned, tricked and tucked up. Bastige!

I raced through the Tomb shouting “Chad your ass is mine! I’ll shag your mum six ways till Sunday!”

I found him in the cafeteria with half a dozen honeys and a TV set, where they had honed in on me and my deeply shameful display. A few of the girls tried to calm me down and cozy up to me, telling me how cute it reall was to see me so helpless, but I was already hell for leather after that fucker, who was climbing out the window laughing his ass off. All this after I’d taken a fraternal oath to help him save his backwards ass country.

Later, we were lying in our bunks smoking cigarettes, both our mouths covered with blood from the multiple rabbit punches we’d given each other about the face and neck.

“I’ve already been hazed to become a Knuckler. I don’t need it again to get into the Krazikistan Army.”

“Hunsacker,” Chad says. “I was thinking tonight, when I was getting a hand job in the cafeteria and watching your ignominious closed-circuit display, that we have it easy here in America. I just wanted you to get a taste of real total pain that my people feel every day when they don’t have a strong president. Any day now my father’s regime will fall. And that’s when you and I are going to be there, guns blazing, getting it back. And then, when you’re on the cusp of glory, looking out over Mount Ghazi with all the gold of Krazikistan at your feet and a group of hot houris on your arm, you’ll thank me.”

I thought about this for a while.

“I’m not doing it for the gold or the pussy,” I said.

“Then why are you doing it?”

“I’m doing it for the glory. And to give your mother a golden shower.”

“You keep dreaming, Ace.”

Then he fell asleep with a cigarette dangling in his puckering mouth, as sweet as a four-year-old girl’s. This was the leader of men. A man whose people’s future was invested in his person. A man whose story was the story of a people itself.

I shaved off his eyebrows and superglued them to his cheeks. Then I went to bed.

You can read Part III of this short story here.