Mr. Potato Head Visits His Mother
After a long day without work because Mr. Potato Head had recently graduated from college, and lived in a small university town, where the jobs available were already taken and not given up, Mr. Potato Head received a call from his mother, Mama Potato Head, who resided in the Caribbean. Once, long ago, when Mr. Potato Head’s family was intact, they lived in the northeast of America, Mr. Potato Head enjoying a happy, comfortable childhood under the wages his father, the Pastor Potato Head, made, and his mother, Mama Potato Head would stay organizing the dwelling and home-schooling, the then, young Potato Head. Young Potato Head was just becoming aware of his talents, his ability to store possessions inside his butt. He kept his G.I. Joes inside his butt, and when in school, in the back of the class, he’d pull them out and entertain himself while the rest of the students were taught about the great deeds America had committed. In middle school, he’d pull out dice from his butt, beginning his days as a male of vice. At dinner, when he’d become fulfilled from eating, but Mama Potato Head would not excuse him until he had finished all of his servings, he’d store his leftovers inside his butt as well. This would produce a discomfort inside himself, and he would look forward with great anticipation to taking a shower. Mama Potato Head never questioned why young Potato Head was the only child of the neighborhood who looked forward to showering. But all of that changed, the comfort. Pastor Potato Head became involved with local politics and began to drink more and more. Mama Potato Head eventually left him, and with time, Pastor Potato Head was consumed by his drinking, and he died.
When Mama Potato Head called Mr. Potato Head this day, she informed him that he would be coming to visit her in the Caribbean. She needed him to sign some documents pertaining Pastor Potato Head’s life policy. Though they were divorced, Mama Potato Head still cared for Pastor Potato Head, though she definitely no longer loved him. She had faith in his incapacity to take care of himself, so throughout the rest of his life, she maintained him on her insurance policy, and paid every month, for years, his policy fee. She said it was required that Mr. Potato Head sign these documents in person, and Mama Potato Head definitely hated America.
Mr. Potato Head did not become too excited about this news. Mama Potato Head had been living in the Caribbean for about six years now. At first, when she had realized she could no longer tolerate Pastor Potato Head’s nightly, drunken outbursts, she had lived with several of her sisters, moving from one to another at intervals of three months, to not be a drain on her sisters’ existences. But then she was awarded a settlement as a consequence of her and the Pastor Potato Head’s divorce, giving her a large sum of money. During those years of living in America, never having a place to call her home, she became disillusioned. She no longer wanted to live in America. She wanted to be warm all the time. She moved to the Caribbean, the warmest spot she had ever known, learning this from the cruises she’d jump on each time she felt the stress of her world bearing too heavily on her. In the Caribbean, she lived in the historic city, above narrow, adobe-tiled streets, in a two-story building designed in an art deco fashion. Now, living in the Caribbean, in the historic city, she spent her nights drinking wine with artists and bohemians she met at the restaurants she patronized. She loved her new life, and was constantly offering it to her Mr. Potato Head, the one she would forever call, young Potato Head. And Mr. Potato Head would visit Mama Potato Head in her new Caribbean life. But the Caribbean was different than America. It was intensely warmer, and people lived in a postcolonial rush, everyone anxious because they thought they were late, but none had any jobs to arrive to. While Mama Potato Head was able to control her drinking, Mr. Potato Head’s predisposition would kick in, and every time he went out into the Caribbean night, he’d end up bingeing. He’d consume his drinks quickly, while inside himself he maintained more beer on ice in preparation for more drinking. Though the feeling of coolness allowed him to suffer the Caribbean heat with more ease, he was constantly drunk.
The day Mr. Potato head arrived to the Caribbean city, Mama Potato Head picked him up at the airport. She was very happy, and looked younger than the last time Mr. Potato Head saw her. Her curly hair shined a bit. She was very excited.
“How was your trip?,” she said.
“The flight was full of tourists,” he said.
“Oh, tourists. It’s been so long since I’ve felt like a tourist. Sometimes I miss it. Yet, they are so annoying,” she said. “Here, I am at home.”
Mr. Potato Head was already planning his drinking. He’d spend some hours as Mama Potato Head’s lapdog, following her around the historic city as she introduced her recently college graduated son to all her new friends. At the airport Mr. Potato Head had bought a pint of inexpensive rum, which he would keep inside his butt, and each time he had to use the bathroom, he’d take a sip.
“I’ve been taking lots of vitamins lately, and I’ve been hydrating myself a lot. It’s helped my complexion. I don’t like it when my potato-face becomes pale,” he said. “I’m also less sad than I used to be.”
“That’s so exciting,” she said. “I love hearing that another member of the Potato Head family is taking care of himself.”
In a restaurant in the Caribbean, they ate white rice with black beans. The beans had red peppers and were cooked with brown sugar. They ate amarillos, sweet plantains. Later on that night they went to Mama Potato Head’s home in the historic city, and Mr. Potato Head signed the documents he was required to sign.
“Now I can get some more money,” Mama Potato Head said. “I can help you out with your rent this month. I know you’re having trouble finding jobs where you’re living.”
Later on, Mr. Potato Head went out into the streets. He had called some of the acquaintances he had made in this Caribbean city on his previous visits. Some of these were local, young artists; some were ex-coworkers from an employment he had had one summer he spent completely in this Caribbean country. None of them answered his calls, so he walked the night alone. By this time, the pint of rum he had bought at the airport was drunk. He bought some more rum at a corner store, and placed it into his butt. He thought about how he had heard that in Asia, men took shots of liquors up through their anuses and got drunk very quickly, but then saddened with the realization that he was not human, but just a potato head. He took a swig of rum. He walked through the historic city, and eventually the night became orange due to the artificial lights glowing in the darkness. He saw junkies nodded out on the stoops of homes, still able to vertically hold their cups with change. He saw tourists wandering around in a lost manner. He saw cute girls, dressed up sexily, on their way to the clubs, and smiled at them, but they ignored him. He got drunk and stumbled into the bed in Mama Potato Head’s guest room.
The night before Mr. Potato Head returned to America, he went to an art opening. Because Mama Potato Head lived in the capital city of this Caribbean country, she knew many of the local artists of her own age. Likewise, Mr. Potato Head knew the artists of his age. He hung out at a theatre bar, where on Sundays, there were open mics, followed by Salsa dancing. The employees were musicians from the local indie scene, and they would have their friends’ bands play twice a week. Mr. Potato Head, one summer he spent the entirety of it in the Caribbean, sleeping in Mama Potato Head’s guest room, worked at this theater bar. Each night after work, he’d down a bottle of rum. His employment was to bartend and afterwards be the greeter of a student hospice above the theatre bar. That summer he thought himself a poet and maintained a notebook and a pen inside his butt. He’d give poems to young girls he’d meet at the hospice. Sometimes he got laid. Sex between a Potato Head and a college student is very similar to sex between two human beings. Mr. Potato Head would wear his balls and cock, and thrust at the female student until she made happy faces. But none satisfied Mr. Potato Head as had sex with Mrs. Potato Head. Each time Mr. Potato Head had sex with a college student, he thought of Mrs. Potato Head. At the art convention, he searched for his friend’s pieces. They were in between the pieces of older, more prestigious artists’ pieces. Mr. Potato Head’s friend’s pieces were drawings of deformed people. There was one of a man whose left arm was extremely long and his hand swollen, his head shrunken, his feet flat, his clothes torn. There was one of a thin man, tall, and his head balloonly inflamed. Mr. Potato Head walked through all of the art being exhibited. There was a naked man being pulled around the space on a cart, his body painted.
Afterwards, there was a party at his artist-friend’s home, on the roof of a building in the inner city, about ten minutes away from the historic city where Mama Potato Head resided. There was a local, punk rock girl playing music on her laptop. Eventually, a pop singer from a South American country sang, a local guitarist backing her up, having just learned the songs at sunrise, them drunk in her hotel room. Mr. Potato Head drank a lot, and danced to 80’s post-punk music. He realized that in half an hour, he’d need to be on his way to the airport to arrive home. He pulled out his cellular phone from out of his butt and called a taxi.
When he arrived home from this long Caribbean night, Mama Potato Head said, “You smell of drink. You’re just like your father! Preaching all day long and drinking all night!” But this was not true. Mr. Potato Head did not believe in God, and he drank all day, and all night. He never imposed his beliefs on others. He felt everyone was resigned to confusion. Mr. Potato Head did not reply, and got his stuff ready, stuck it into his butt, but left his deodorant, toothbrush, and potato-head-size buttoned-up shirt at Mama Potato Head’s home. At the gate he fell asleep, and when his flight departed, he did not hear the announcement over the intercom. The announcement went, “Mr. Potato Head, please arrive at your gate.” When he woke up, he had to wait three hours for the next flight.
Andy Riverbed is the author of Damaged (Coatlism Press, 2008), Afternoon Drinking is Okay (EveryDayYeah, 2009), and Missed Connections (read some words, 2009).
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