Carpe Diem I am Jeff Feur. From the day I was born until now I've specialized in getting fucked over.
The first time life ever fucked me over was on October 15, 1980. That was when my father fucked my mother and her birth control pill didn't work. He begged her to get an abortion but she was a Catholic so nine months later I was born. Yep, that was the first time life ever fucked me over.
On November 1, 1980 my father ran away to who knows where.
On July 15, 1981, I was born. I was born with many impediments. In ascending order, my left leg was longer than my right, I had, and still do have, a small penis, I had jagged teeth, and in addition to all those physical impediments I am dyslexic and homosexual.
Now, don't tell anybody I told you about the penis and the gay things; I've spent the last nine years trying to cover those up.
When I was two years old my mother decided to fix my leg problem. She took me to the doctor and the doctor, trying to fix my legs, hyper-extended my right leg so that I now walk with an profound limp.
When I was four my preschool told my mother that I was dyslexic. She sent me to a tutor to try and fix that problem and the tutor raped me.
A few months later my mother sent me to a dentist to fix my teeth and the dentist, on a whim, decided that I'd be best off if all of my teeth were pulled and then replaced. He pulled all of my teeth out and then realized that my mother couldn't afford to have them replaced. I am now toothless.
Then, when I was five, my mom was about to send me to a public school when she decided that she wanted me to go to a Catholic school being as she's so religious and everything, but since she hadn't yet found a steady job and she couldn't afford to pay for my tuition, any real Catholic school was out of the question. But she decided that she shouldn't take no for an answer and that she should seize the opportunity and she sent me to St. Monkey's.
St. Monkey's was run by a guy named Bob Schumacher. There was no tuition; Bob Schumacher was independently wealthy. One day he just bought a plot of land in New York City and turned it into a free school. He decided to say it was a Catholic school so that he could attract some poor Catholics who wanted their kids to go to Catholic school.
There were monkeys running willy-nilly around the whole entire school. Bob told us that the only thing we could ever be suspended or expelled for was spanking the monkeys. Bob loved his monkeys.
He claimed that this was an anti-masturbatory rule and that it helped him fulfill the school's Catholic requirements.
I often wondered how Bob was independently wealthy. Then one day, when I reached the fifth grade, I realized that he was renting the school out to gangs. The gangs would come on to school grounds and try to sell us students drugs. They paid Bob for the rights to use the school.
Bob rented out the school to many different gangs. So every day those of us who were in the fifth grade and above would go outside for recess. We would be sure to bring money so that we could get high. I smoked my first joint at age 10 and by the end of the week I was already hard into acid and cocaine. Took only another week for the thugs to start dealing heroin.
You might think that there would be a lot of overdoses and deaths on campus. Not so. Every day, along with classes such as English, history, and math, we had a class called RDU (Responsible Drug Use). We would be taught how to use drugs responsibly so as not to die. Because if we died then Bob's whole operation would be busted.
So Bob would hire the school out to multiple gangs and soon enough gang warfare was going on outside of our school. So everyday we would get high and watch thugs shoot each other over who has the right to deal to our school.
Our school wasn't your normal school in that aspect, and in many others. Our classes, while they have the same names as normal classes, were very different.
Take English class, for example. Most students of English read literature and learn grammar. Instead, we studied conversation. We would speak English throughout the whole entire class. We never read; Bob himself had never learned how and neither had the vast majority of our teachers. The teacher would just talk to us in English about what was going on in their personal lives. Bob's theory was that by speaking English we would become better English speakers, which I suppose is a sound theory
Then there was history class. In history class, on every single school day of every single year, we learned about the history of our teachers. Our teacher would teach us about his/her life. Bob didn't think it important to learn about the history of the world; he was more of a people person. Our average history test would look sort of like this: (it was oral, of course, because neither us nor our teacher knew how to write)
1. What year was I born?
2. How old was I when I lost my virginity?
3. When did I start teaching here?

Then there was math class. We counted in math class. Bob didn't know how to multiply, divide, add or subtract. He always said, "why learn things calculators can do for us?" But, he contested, "calculators can't count. Until they can, you need to learn how to count!"
So everyday we would come into class, sit in our desks, and go around in a circle for 45 minutes and count. That was amazingly boring, but I guess we got used to it. And we sure do know how to count now.
Then we had to take a "foreign" language, our only choice being Pig Latin. Every single one of us are now fluent in Pig Latin. Sometimes I even think in Pig Latin. Whenever some wiseass thinks he can disguise what he's saying so that I can't hear it and he speaks in Pig Latin, I foil his plan by executing my Pig Latin knowledge! That poor, bewildered little fucker… Of course, that's only happened once before in my entire life… but it was pretty cool when it did and for a moment I actually kind of thought that the thousands of hours we'd spent learning Pig Latin might not have been so great a waste as I originally thought.
And finally, we had to take science class. We learned about monkeys. Yep, for 9 months out of every year for 12 years I studied monkeys. It got a bit excessive after the first two years, but hey, I sure do know a lot about monkeys now.
Every once in a while, when Bob wanted to keep up his reputation as running a Catholic school, he would declare a Catholic Day, which meant that for an entire school day we had to sit in our seats and think Catholic thoughts. On every other day of the year, however, Bob tried to reverse the effects of Catholic Day by telling us that there was no God. Bob didn't think much of Catholicism.
My mother never bothered to ask me how school went. I never bothered to tell her either. By the time I realized how fucked up the school was, which was after the first week of Kindergarten, she had found a full time job as a prostitute and I never wanted to bug her about anything.
Beginning in fifth grade we started having sex ed classes. That meant that this dude named Ed who's a friend of Bob's would come in and talk about sex. He would have us watch some of his favorite porn videos and he would tell us how much fun sex was. So after our first sex ed class the kids in our grade started having sex. I hated it, cuz as I mentioned earlier I'm gay. But don't tell anybody I told you!
So then the next day everybody found out that everybody else had had sex when everybody was thinking that they'd be the first one in the grade to have had sex. I pretended as if I had liked it so that people wouldn't think I was gay, and kept having sex every night.
One day I decided that I shouldn't be afraid; that I should do what's right and have sex with a guy for once. So I found one other guy that had hated sex the day we all started having it and had never had sex since. I had anal sex with him that night and loved it even though he incessantly teased me about my small penis. Since being gay was totally uncool I assumed he wouldn't tell anybody, but then the next day I found out that he had been openly gay all along and he told everybody (and he also spread rumors about my penis size) and I was teased interminably about my sexuality even though I denied it tenfold. I never once admitted I was gay, and they never once stopped teasing me about it. Sucks, doesn't it? So I kept having sex every night with random girls so that nobody would think I was gay and I kept getting teased about my small penis and I kept hating sex with women but it was the best I could do to prove I wasn't gay.
So, yeah, that was my childhood.
When I was 17 I graduated from St. Monkey's. Everybody else was 18 but I was the youngest in my class. That day a lot of things happened.
My mom was out in Times Square and a cop solicited her and after doing her handcuffed her and brought her to jail. The bastard didn't even pay her. So then she became her prison's leading prostitute and she made a fortune and left prison a few years later 10 times as rich as she had ever been.
The second Bob announced that our grade had just graduated and that we could get the fuck off of his property a police car pulled up to the front gate. Bob whimpered and he ran into his office and locked the door. The cops had gotten a tip from an anonymous gang member that there was all kinds of shit going down on school premises, so they came by to check what was going on. Since about half of us were smoking up while Bob was making some weirdass speech for our graduation the cops realized that this tip had been true. Five of the cops guarded the gates so that none of us could leave. Five of them started confiscating our hard-earned pot and handcuffing us. Five of them drove back to the police station to get more handcuffs. Five of them started searching through our backpacks and confiscating more drugs. One of us asked them if they had a warrant and was bludgeoned. The last five of them went to get Bob. Bob was nowhere to be found, however. Apparently he had an intricate series of tunnels that ran from a secret passageway in his office, out of the school, and the police never found out where the tunnels ended. They wanted to get back to the station quick and eat some donuts and celebrate another victory in the drug war which they would summarily be promoted for, so they just declared that the tunnel was too intricate for any man to survive in and that Bob had surely gotten lost and would soon starve.
There were 100 of us graduating that day and we each had possession of some illegal drug or another. The police realized that the public was gonna think something was fishy if every single student was arrested and they might actually doubt the fairness of the war on drugs, so they decided to only incarcerate some of us. They figured that they should pick those of us who would be most easily incarcerated. They told everybody under 18 to leave. That was me, and only me. Then they told everybody who was white to leave. So there were about 20 students left, and they were all incarcerated. My mom wrote me a letter telling me how big some of their penises were. Thanks mom.
They couldn't find any relatives of Bob, so the state confiscated his estate. They turned the school into a rehab center, but there were so many drug stashes left over in various nooks and crannies from the days that it was a school that instead of rehabilitating drug addicts, the center became a place for addicts to come and find free drugs.
They confiscated his monkeys and sold them to the Democratic and Republican Parties. Chances are one of those monkeys is now your senator or representative. In 2004 we'll most likely see a monkey president.
So then I came home and there was a message from the police department that my mother had been imprisoned on charges of prostitution. I realized that since I was 17, and technically still a minor, the state was gonna send me somewhere. So I hitchhiked across the country and I settled in LA. I dealt drugs for a living but when the cops started getting suspicious and I turned 18 I hitchhiked back to NYC.
So I was walking the streets trying to find a decent job when one day I passed by a place and it looked kind of lively so I figured, hey, why not try to get a job here?
So I entered the building and I saw a very odd sight. There was a dude dressed up as a piece of steak and a dude dressed up as a hot dog and they were prancing and dancing on this big platform. There were tons of drunk people watching them and these three other dudes were throwing meat at the drunk people. I noticed one man reclining in a large, comfy, sofa who was watching the dancing meat as intently as is humanly possible. Something told me that he was the one I should speak to about getting a job. I approached him and I tapped him on a shoulder. He said, "go away! I'm trying to watch!"
His voice reminded me of somebody. I tapped him again and he reluctantly and irately turned around, and who was he but Bob Schumacher!
"Bob!" I yelled.
"Why, hello Jeff! Fancy meeting you here. Isn't this the greatest thing you've ever seen? Dancing meat! It's absolutely amazing, spellbinding, utterly mesmerizing!"
"Um, yeah, okay Bob. Dude, the police think you're dead, you know?"
"Yes, and good thing too. They might have found me otherwise."
"And they confiscated your monkeys too! You know that?"
"Why, yes, I do. I wouldn't really call it confiscating, though. It was really more of a temporary parting."
"How so? Your monkeys are senators now, Bob…"
"Yes, I know, and I speak to them every time they are about to vote on a bill."
No wonder the government was so screwed up. Bob was running it!
"Yes," he continued, "I've been talking to my monkeys. I think one of them can be president in 2004. All I have to do is pick my best Republican monkey and my best Democrat monkey and make sure no third parties come to power and then in 2004 I will control the majority of all branches of the US Federal Government. Because I will control the president, the majority of both branches of congress, and I figure I'll get to appoint myself some supreme court justice monkeys too… so I will have power beyond all means! I'd better tell the CPD to increase their expectations as to who is allowed to be in the debates though, because I already talked to the Green Party and they refused to buy any of my monkeys. Those goddamn third parties… they could very well ruin my plans of world domination…"
"Wow. So you are the most powerful person in the country?"
"Yes. Isn't it brilliant?"
"Well, Bob, I must say I don’t quite believe you. If you were running our government, drugs would be legal by now, would they not?"
"Nonsense! Jeff, do you realize what will happen if drugs are legalized? I'll tell you! Gangs won't be dealing drugs anymore, pharmacies will! All those nice little boys from that gang… Tha Mothafuckin' Killa Deala's… those nice little boys who pay me to deal drugs here, they won't come by anymore! Because the pharmacies would be dealing drugs! Why, Jeff, if the pharmacies had been dealing drugs you would've never gotten high in your life! You love getting high! Surely you would not want that to have happened? You see, when gangs deal drugs they can come on to school premises and let you get high. Pharmacies, if they have control of drugs, then you'll have to go to them to buy drugs! Do you realize how inconvenient that is? Why go to them when they can come to you, you know? Plus, I believe in people, Jeff, I am a people person, you know that? I think the people should be dealing drugs, not the pharmacies!"
It all made sense now. As long as drugs were illegal, Bob could profit from the gangs who dealt them.
"Why, look, right now, here is one of Tha Mothafuckin' Killa Deala's I was telling you about."
A large man wearing a doo-rag approached Bob. "Hello, Tha Real Mothafucka. How are you today?"
"I'm cool, yo."
"This is Jeff, a former student of mine. Jeff, this is Tha Real Mothafucka. Jeff, Tha Real Mothafucka is the leader of Tha Mothafuckin' Killa Deala's. His hobbies are smoking up, killing people, and rap music. Tha Real Mothafucka, Jeff's hobbies are… well I don't really know what your hobbies are, Jeff, but I remember that you had a small penis."
Fuck.
I was about to say hi to Tha Real Mothafucka but he glared at me and I figured that wouldn't be the best thing to do.
Bob asked him what he had come for.
"Yo, I just heard word that you was givin' up yo dealin' rights to tha NIB. What the fuck is this man, I thought we was the only ones!"
"Oh, you mean those nice little boys from the Niggaz in Black? Yes, I gave them dealing rights. I thought that your gang was, you know, getting kind of lonely being the only gang dealing here."
"Yo, you gotta take them dealin' rights back, yo!"
"But, Tha Real Mothafucka, I can't do that! I gave them my word!"
"Shit. Well I guess we's gonna have to bust their ass tonight."
"Okay, do what you must. Just tell them not to expect any refunds!"
So Tha Real Mothafucka left and Bob turned back to me.
"Isn't he the nicest man you ever met?"
"Um… Bob?"
"Well, sure, he may be a bit… bellicose… but underneath he's a wonderful person!"
"Yeah, okay, sure. Well, anyway, I was just passing by and I'm looking for a job and I wondered if you had any openings."
"Why, funny you asked! I do! You see that booth over there?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Yes. That is a fortune tellers booth. You can be a fortune teller."
"Um, I don't think I'm too good at telling fortunes. I don't know any of that metaphysical shit."
"Oh, don't you worry! It's not like it takes any skill or anything! This is what you do. Here, have a beer, it's free."
"Thanks."
"Well, I have four attractions here. There's the meat dancing. Everybody loves the meat dancing."
"I’m sure they do."
"Then there's the Tattoo Salon. You see, I give out free beer and then everybody indulges. Indulgence is good, is it not? It's fun to indulge. You have to live for the moment, you know? Because life is just a series of moments and you have to enjoy each moment to its fullest in order to be truly happy."
"Yeah, yeah, Bob, cut the propaganda. You get people drunk, and then they go tattoo their asses with something like 'I love Wanda' or whatever the name of the girl they just met is."
"Well, yes, after indulging in beer they indulge in tattoos! They say you express yourself in the way you dress. It works the same way for tattoos. I'm allowing people to express themselves here, for a very small fee."
"Okay. What else is there?"
"There's a Chinese restaurant."
"Oh."
"And then there's the fortune tellers booth in which you will work. This is what you will do. You will make small chat at first; don't try to be intellectual or anything, I mean please, they're drunk. Not that you should have any trouble with that. Then you will ask them if they want to know their future. You will stare into the crystal ball and do all of that hanky panky hocus pocus balderdash and tell them something that is sure to depress them."
"Depress them?"
"Precisely. Tell them their mother's going to die, I always get a kick out of that!"
"Why am I depressing them, might I ask?"
"If they are depressed they will get very drunk and get tattoos. Plus, they'll enjoy the meat dancing more."
"Okay, how much does it pay?"
"Well we open at 8 of the clock every evening. We close at 4 of the clock every morning. You will tell fortunes from 8 to 10 PM and 12 to 2 AM. You get to do whatever you might like in between then; just stay somewhat sober and don't get high because that might make you ineffective. I highly recommend you watch the meat dancers; they're oh so fascinating. You will be paid $50 every day. It's 11 of the clock right now; be back here in an hour to start your job."
I thanked him and I told fortunes for the rest of that week. I was saddened, however, by the misery I caused. I would tell the depressing fortunes that I had been told to tell and subsequently watch my customers get so drunk as to probably shave a few years off of their life and then tattoo their ass.
So one day I was walking to work and I'm walking by this fish store, and I see this sign in the window that says "carp". Next to the fish store is a carpet store. Then I notice this dude yelling at a friend on a cellular phone next to me and he's screaming into it saying "die!!!!!" and then this kid walking on the other side of me is reciting the alphabet and I look at him and he says "m".
Suddenly it hits me that fate was trying to tell me something. I put the four things together… and I come up with Carpe Diem. That's a Latin saying for "seize the day". Shit! I ran all the way to my place of work and I scrambled up to Bob. I had a conversation with him about switching my line of work.
“Bob,” I asked, “I don’t like this fortune telling shit. I was wondering if you could employ me in a different field.”
“Are you Chinese?” he asked of me.
“Shit, dude, you can tell I'm not!”
“Can you tattoo people?”
“No. I can’t.”
“Well, then, keep telling fortunes. Or learn how to speak Chinese.”
“Bob, you know that I’m not smart enough to learn Chinese. I had enough trouble throughout my 12 years of Pig Latin.”
“Keep telling fortunes.”
“I don’t want to tell fortunes, though.”
“Nonsense. Everybody wants to tell fortunes. Back to the booth.”
“Only a sadist would want to tell the fortunes you have me tell. The people leave my booth depressed.”
“That’s an absurd allegation! Why, it’s a sweet sorrow. So what, you tell them that their father’s going to die. Their father most likely beat them as a child. Temporarily you bring sorrow, true, but ultimately you bring happiness.”
“Well even if they do want their father to die, their father doesn’t die. The fortunes don’t come true.”
“Yes they do. Go back to the booth.”
“And they get so drunk as a result of their depression that it probably shaves a few years off of their life…”
“Ah, a little bit of beer never hurt anybody. Back to the booth.”
“A little bit of beer might not hurt them, but they don’t drink their beer in small amounts after they leave my booth.”
“Yes they do. Go back to the booth.”
“How about the meat dancers? Can I be one of them?”
“You are not experienced enough.”
“What?”
“You are not yet worthy of being a meat dancer.”
“Are you kidding? Not worthy? Bob, you and I go way back!” I asked.
“The art of meat dancing is very difficult to learn,” he told me.
“What do you mean? You put on a steak costume and walk around that platform.”
“There is more to it than you know. It is a sacred art. An unskilled meat dancer is offensive to the art of meat dancing.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
“I am not kidding, and the fact that you think that I am kidding shows that you do not respect the art of meat dancing. I shall have no meat dancers that disrespect the art that they perform. Ehtkaets, he is a wonderful meat dancer! You can not possibly mean to tell me that you can betterly dance!"
"Fuck you, dude," I said. I went back to the booth fuming. I was pissed.
A man entered my booth. He was high, I could tell, and when I saw his scarred arms I realized he was a heroin addict. He was definitely on something… I wasn't quite sure what though.
"Yo, man, what's my future?" he asked in a wasted voice.
"We'll get to that, dude. First of all, what's your name?"
"Ah my name's… Greg yeah. Greg Costoplis." He was a bit incomprehensible. I had a plan. He would be my last depressed customer.
"So, how old are you?"
"I'm…" he started counting on his fingers, "33. Yeah. Fuck hurry yo man!"
"Yeah okay. I'm looking into the crystal ball now."
"Ew. Ball. Hehe."
"Yeah, you're sure a funny one. Okay, I see something. Dude! I have some bad news!"
"Yo, man, what's gonna happen?"
"Are you close with your mother?"
"Well yeah man, yeah!"
"Okay. Did you see the dude dressed up as a steak dancing on that platform when you came in?"
"Uh yeah."
"Yeah. His name is Ehtkaets Recnad and he's planning on killing your mother tonight after he goes home."
"What!"
"Yeah. The only way for you to stop him is to kill him."
The dude ran out of the booth. I stepped out to watch him. He approached Tha Real Mothafucka and I saw both money and a gun change hands. Suddenly Greg Costoplis screamed at the top of his lungs, "DON'T KILL MY MOTHER!"
Everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at him. Then he shot Ehtkaets Recnad twice.
As the gunshots were fired, Charlie, the addicted smoker who dresses up in the hot dog costume, jumped, gawking, his mouth open. His cigarette fell out of his mouth and onto his hotdog costume. His costume immediately lit on fire, and Charlie began running circles around the platform screaming as he was burning. As Charlie did so, he bumped into the platform, which burst into flames. That was when smoke alarms began to signal deafeningly, and all of the intoxicated onlookers began to evacuate the building in hordes, spilling beer and dropping joints as they went. The alcohol made the flames increase, and the discarded joints created even more flames. Most of the visitors were too drunk to so much as walk straight. Many people were trampled on the way out, and many people didn't get out.
I did get out, and when I did I saw that Bob was frantic. After the few survivors had evacuated, he ran up to me and, in a frenzy, yelled, "you fucking shithead! I know what you did! Ehtkaets himself did the same thing some time ago! Well, I suppose you know what they say. What goes around comes around… and brings a few friends."
He approached Tha Real Mothafucka and told him to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible. Then he himself ran off into the mist.
The fire department was there within 15 minutes and they put out the fire before it could burn the entire block down. The hospital came within 20 minutes and took the trampled bodies to the hospital. Within 30 minutes, the police arrived. They had no idea that there had been a scene of drugs going on inside; they did, however, ask me where the proprietor was so that they could ask him a few questions.
I told them, "he was killed in the fire. His body is burnt beyond recognition, most likely," and I thought to myself, "who knows?"