Mikey in the Ground

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Mikey is not the kind of man that you would choose to meet. First of all, he’s a paraplegic; and even today that’s a turnoff for most people. Second, Mikey doesn’t like people very much. He makes sure that everyone around him knows of this opinion. Third, Mikey is a thief. He doesn’t take much, a silver spoon here, and an iPod there, and any money left out anywhere.

The fourth thing about Mikey that turns almost everyone off is that he look like raw meat. His face is heavily scarred from fighting, accidents, and most importantly, from a severe and continuing case of acne. His mother, in one of her sober moments, told Mikey that he would grow out of his acne. But as often was the case, his mother lied. At 45, Mikey’s face was as red and white with pustules as when he was 15 and in the throws of a terrible pubescence.

It would seem that the testosterone that caused his acne at age 14 was still with him at age 45. And as was the case at age 14, the 45-year-old Mikey was not at all successful with the opposite sex. At 45 it no longer mattered. His paraplegia left him virtually neutered, a fact that drove Mikey to anxious and disruptive anger. And this is the fifth thing that drives people away from Mikey: he’s badly oversexed and at the same time unequipped. So he talks about sex all the time, hits on women all the time, but can never go beyond talk, even with the most hearty and daringly sympathetic.

Very few people knew how Mikey made a living. It didn’t seem that disability payments from Social Security could support his lifestyle. He had a decent apartment that was well furnished. He had an outrageous vehicle -- an oversized pickup truck with a complicated folding ramp that allowed Mikey to power his electric wheelchair up to take the place of the drivers seat.

He drove maliciously. He ran red lights, daring the oncoming traffic to hit him. On the Parkway or on the Turnpike he weaved his great truck through traffic as if it were a Ferrari. But as much as he induced fear and anger in the drivers he sideswiped or forced onto the median, he seemed to have a magical ability to avoid damage to his truck or to himself.

At the funeral home, Mikey was laid out in an open coffin of polished bronze with silver tracery. His face was covered with pink foundation and ugly rouge, in an attempt to cover his acne. The room had a faded pink carpet. The walls suffered silently under red and white striped wallpaper. The colors suited Mikey.

Only three people went to his funeral. Surprisingly, all of them were women. Sandy told the mortician that Mikey was always generous with the tip when she was bartending. She said he was mean, but only because everyone was mean to him. She felt sorry for him.

The other two women just turned away when the mortician came near. Neither of them signed the guest book.

At the cemetery, Mikey was interred without ceremony. He was buried in a plain cardboard box. The mortician, who like Mikey was an unrepentant thief,  saw no sense in wasting a good coffin.

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