SEMANARIO · de · LITERATURA · RECREATIVA

At first I thought he was a cat, because he always wanted me to scratch his belly. But then I tried to let him fall from the top of a closet to check if he would turn himself when falling to land on his feet. And now I’m pretty sure that he is not a cat.

“I told you,” says Stagg. He talks like someone from “The Muppets Show”.

His name is Stagg. He also told me that.

He has a tattoo with his name in it. “Just in case I get lost.” He seems to like that kind of joke. Maybe it has some meaning; I don’t know, but I must always think of Lee Sheldon a.k.a. Stagger Lee a.k.a. Stagolee the famous murder of the folk songs. “Stagolee killed Billy DeLyon ‘bout a five-dollar Stetson hat”, sang Mississippi John Hurt. It’s nothing you can play with a uke, though.

Playing the first fret of the second string Stagg goes “hmp!” Is it a tic? “You should give up coffee, just like me”, I say. Now I drink a mixture of malt and chicory and it tastes even better.

Then we talk about Julia Nunes.

“I like Molly better,” says Stagg: “she's sarcastic”. Molly Banter a.k.a. Sweet Afton made a legendary version of “Toxic”. The anorak she wears on the video reminds me of Madrid, eating chestnuts in the winter of 1985.

I had already started writing a song for Julia, quoting some lines from Lennon’s and Lennox’, but I gave up when I realized that, since I don’t even have a YouTube account, I had to write it all in staves and sent it to an unknown address.

“What a bummer!”

At that very moment Kathleen enters my room.

“Are you talking about chicks again?”

“Nope... Come on, let’s play for a while.”

Stagg shuffles and deals.

“Texas hold’em?”

“Of course.”

Where does Stagg come from? Nobody knows. Maybe he was a hobo or something; we are too tactful to ask. And anyway, it doesn’t matter: it’s the beauty that’s within him, that we see. Kathleen found him a year ago, and since then we have a lot of fun together —except for that regrettable episode of the closet. Some call us perverts, but I say it’s a social experimenting. “Back off, man, I'm a scientist !” —I learned that from Ghostbusters.  

“OK, Stagg, stay there. Don’t move, I’ll make a photo off you, so I can win a pineapple ukulele.”

“A what?! What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t move!”

“So what’s that?” asks Stagg, “a hat?”

“It’s a ukulele digesting an elephant, indeed.”

Then he feels tired and goes to sleep in his case like a portable vampire.