Love, Squid

Stunned by love and stupid from too much sex I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man. Gillian and I were engaged to be married and her troglodyte ex-boyfriend of four years, Marvin Gluck, was heaving his psychosis into our world, sending bow-tied packages, indignant letters and emails, leaving messages on her cell phone to the ominous effect of, “If you marry that jerk, I’ll end all our lives.” These threats were usually followed by some truly sickening pleas for forgiveness, a hundred I’m sorrys in a row. Regret, he said, is an acid; it feasted on his innards. He wanted to be a better “human-type person.” I wanted him dead.

Stunned and stupid though I was, I made the decision with utter calm, almost indifference, chockfull of derring-do. Friends tell me I’m a multipart and silent person who minds his own business as long as you let him, and I like the way that sounds. Nevertheless, I was always sinking into some trouble or other, and mostly because my manly passions surge deep. My love can be the rumble of the earth, the roar of the skies. You best stand clear.

I needed this knucklehead Marvin gone for the sake of our sane life and sweetness, even though he lived five states south, over the Mason-Dixon line, into that dark, woolly heart of Virginia. I could not stand for trying years of threats, apologies, and general interference, though Gillian promised she would once again change her cell phone number and email, and of course when we relocated after the wedding we would try to keep our new address from his slimy tentacles. I’ve known fevered men like Marvin, though: they get a certain idea in their eggheads or, worse yet, a funny feeling in their blood-pumps, and nothing on earth can deter them from their channel. They go agog with havoc and her partner perdition.

Here’s the other end of it, and I have no shame: I couldn’t live with knowing there was a man out there who loved Gillian the way I did, who had swum in her sweet-scented flesh, who had eased apart her liquidy legs and delved into her special center. Also, the maniac had her name tattooed across his muscled pecs, from one side to the other, in large red Gothic letters. If her name were Jennifer or Mary it might not have irked me so; but “Gillian” is a rarity, and those letters on his chest could mean only her, always. It caused all the amino acids in the center of me to swirl off the cliff in my abdomen.

The adjectives don’t bother me one bit: insecure or homicidal. Having to kill a single man for the sake of solace does not make one homicidal. I am a Christian and know the program, but love and sex have their own sacred creed and it burns every bit as much as the ten laws of the Lord. I’ve read the science magazines, too, so I know about my DNA needing to splash itself inside a luscious woman, and the threat of other male DNA to my own eager seed. I was not proud of what I had to do, but I had to do it just the same. Some will understand, and those who do not now one day will.

All I have to offer in my defense is the mathematical truth: I wanted to love my bride in peace and quiet and Marvin was not going to let that happen. The way I see it, he made the decision, not I. He just had to pledge an undying love to Gillian and couldn’t grab hold of the fact that such pledges are made every day and most don’t mean a damn. I’ll give him that: the idiot makes a pledge and sticks to it. Still, his pledge was meddling with my own. What a man feels for his woman can be downright unholy.

Their story is a good one but ours is better...