Fiction: Granular Maravilloso And The Wisdom Of The Ancients

By Eli S. Evans

 

Granular Maravilloso, the retired unofficial Garbage King (“Maravilloso Waste: We Haul it All, With the Exception of Mattresses”) of Central Middlemeadow, Massachusetts, paid a visit to the area acupuncturist, a recent transplant from Northern California who boasted an extremely uniform set of teeth and, according to the brochures she’d distributed around town, “a humble mastery of the wisdom of the ancients.” 

“So, what brings you here?” the acupuncturist asked when she entered the treatment room, where Granular had already stripped down to his undershorts in preparation for being turned into a pincushion.

“Pain,” explained Granular. “My shoulders and neck, especially, but also my lower back from time to time. As you may know, I enjoyed a fruitful career in the local garbage hauling sector, and if I had a nickel for every clawfoot bathtub I humped down a spiral staircase over the last thirty years plus, I’d have at least fifteen cents.” 

“I imagine one could get pretty sore from all that,” replied the acupuncturist. “But while pain is generally the reason people seek out my services, it’s rarely the reason they need them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let me answer your question with a question. Have you by chance been suffering from anxiety and depression lately?”

“Well,” said Granular. “Retirement is often a difficult transition, as I understand it.”  

“How about fatigue?”

“I have been taking an uncharacteristic number of naps,” conceded Granular.

“And what about your erections? A little saggy, I’m guessing.” 

“I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily say saggy, but – ”

“Sort of up and down like those dancing balloons you see out in front of car dealerships?”

“You could put it that way.” 

“Yet, isn’t it also the case that it doesn’t much matter anyway, because lately your wife has been as frigid as an icebox?”

“She hasn’t exactly been fire and brimstone.”

“Do me a favor and stick out your tongue.”

“Aah,” said Granular. 

The acupuncturist took a mobile phone from the pocket of her white coat and snapped a photograph.

“Based on what I’m seeing here,” she said, showing Granular the resulting image, “I’m wondering whether it’s possible that as a child, probably right around the fifth or sixth grade, someone asked you why you had such big nostrils, a question that caused you to become so self-conscious that for several months thereafter, you poked at them with the tips of your fingers in an ill-fated effort to reassure yourself that, big as they may have been, they weren’t getting bigger still?”

“You could figure that out from a picture of my tongue?”

“And looking at the right side here,” she continued, “I see this little protrusion, in contrast to the smoother arc along the left side, which suggests that as a senior in high school you became convinced you’d contracted genital herpes even though your intimate practices had theretofore been limited to heavy petting.”

“Candida of the groin,” said Granular. “It had been an extremely hot and humid summer, and it turns out that Dove Beauty Bars aren’t technically soap.”

“Okay,” said the acupuncturist. “I think we can get started with the procedure, now.”

But as it transpired, there was actually one more thing she should have asked poor Granular before turning down the lights, turning up the soothing spa music, and leaving him to lay there full of needles for the next twenty-five minutes – namely, whether or not he had a tendency to roll over in his sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Eli S. Evans has published two books of small absurdities, Obscure & Irregular and Various Stories About Specific Individuals in Particular Situations, both with Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera.