Horse Jizz

HOW (not an acronym)

Forget about the pronunciation of Bembe; there's a catchy tune for that. MAYBE ONE DAY YOU’LL HEAR IT, HUH COLIN? But let's be honest: his name is just the tip of the iceberg for this lively character. Picture this: tiny gnomes working round the clock in his brain, cranking out the most absurd dreams and beliefs you can imagine.

"What if I eat this entire tub of mayonnaise in one sitting?"

"I should get tights made with a lot of bull skulls on them."

"Women swallow all the time; it can't taste that bad."

"What if you got metal on your feet, like a horseshoe? Then you wouldn't need to buy shoes."

"Do horses ever wish they could walk on two legs like humans?"

"Five dollar footloooooooooooooooooong..."

"See, I knew it wouldn't taste that bad."

"Do horses ever think about tasting their own semen?"

Are you disturbed? Did the little baby think that was grossy-woss? WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Do you want to know true life disruption? Try getting struck by lightning three separate times in your childhood. You could relate to someone who developed tiny gnomes in his head just as he was in the exit stages of puberty.

The upsetting part is that Bembe didn't become an absolute weirdo until the third strike. Those first two? He shrugged it off and chalked it to being dealt a bad hand. Living with a sexually promiscuous mother whose priorities seemed to lie with whoever's jizz she was swallowing at the time, Bembe learned much too young that his life would be far from fair. Developing healthy coping mechanisms before you learn algebra is pretty fucking impressive. And that's precisely what he did.

While his mother couldn't be bothered to pay the rec department fees, the kindness of other adult figures in his life allowed him the outlet to become engrossed in athletics. They were mostly his friends' fathers, who also happened to be coaches -- the people he credits for being there when his real dad was nowhere to be found. Bembe took solace in this, but he often wondered if they would have cared less had he not been birthed with natural talent and discipline for the fundamentals. Still, they visited more than his blood relatives every time he'd been hospitalized from the bolt strikes so that counted for something.

He didn't just lean on this, though. As a lover of the outdoors, the pleasant fragrances he would find in nature also comforted him. This soon extended to the manufactured scents that he'd eventually begin to discover. The smell of something lovely acted as a constant -- tall loblolly pines always smelled like pine trees. Blooming white gardenias always smelled like gardenias. At eight, his awareness of scented shampoos and soaps grew, allowing him to ease his anxieties just by taking a whiff of his skin. Then came the candles. His appreciation for them didn't start as the crippling obsession that it grew into -- the third time he was struck was what kickstarted that love affair. That third strike, this time to his head, not only blistered him physically but had lasting effects on his brain's functioning. Not only causing a permanent speech impediment but soldering the neurons in his amygdala to sound alarm bells as loud as possible at the mere sight of a gray cloud. As he slowly hermitized and found himself going outdoors less often, the candles became the closest thing to mimic the smells otherwise found in nature.

Yes, the third strike ironically brought on three separate residuals: ridiculous thought streams, speed-bump speech patterns, and a moderate case of agoraphobia. There was also the aesthetic consequence of an inability to regrow hair on the top of his head, one of his more renowned physical traits.

His shift in demeanor immediately waned his popularity within his school and community. Due to the constant terror of the brain gnomes, Bembe's risk tolerance for outdoor sports became nonexistent. His newfound stutter embarrassed him to his core, so much so that he limited communication to a minimum, which gradually caused his friends to withdraw completely. His interests morphed, sometimes bordering on the strange and eccentric. He got into both science and needlepoint for the sole purpose of designing lightning-proof clothing. He learned multiple dances to "increase his agility" and avoid future lightning strikes. He started to become interested in professional wrestling. (The third thing didn't really involve a fear of bad weather, it's just fucking weird to get into pro wrestling after going through your entire childhood thinking it was foolish.)

As his fear of bad weather grew, Bembe moved out of his mom and stepfather's house in northern Nevada, working as an assistant dance instructor (and janitor) in Colorado Springs. One would think that he'd have opted for somewhere in the Mojave -- reducing the chances of his biggest worry -- but his scatterbrain rationale was that "that's where the Weather Gods will look to find me first," truly believing that something in the clouds was out to get him. Super-gluing several layers of rubber around his car (a 1994 Astro van) and loading it up with his clothes and candle collection, Bembe drove east to start his new life.

One of the perks of the gig was that the owner had fashioned a small living space in the studio's basement. As long as he agreed to pull double duty as a custodian of the place, the rent was dirt cheap. Bembe could go to work and come home without ever leaving, only enabling his avoidant behavior. The only reasons he ever hopped in the van to go anywhere? Candle shopping (as simply buying them online was "too risky," it was vital for him to be able to smell before purchase), and his pursuit of a wrestling career. And to be clear, wrestling wasn't really for the "love" of the sport. It was a means to an end for his idea of wealth: being able to one day purchase a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home made entirely out of rubber and afford high-end wigs so that he no longer had to go through life with a bald head. Unfortunately, there wasn't truckloads of money being dumped on top of you for teaching dance. (Not even ballet, even if you could find a bear and train it to drive around in one of those little cars.)

He was a quick study. His natural athleticism and grasp of choreography* quickly got him contracted to debut at one of the most significant events of all time, put together by one of wrestling's most brilliant minds. It had been a red-carpet affair for Bembe since the beginning, with bright lights and parade-like fanfare. It truly defied all logic that a greenhorn like him would make his start competing for a packed audience at Danny Stevenson Chevrolet during its Carmageddon Fall Sales Event.

NOW

"Are you still with me, Bembe?"

Ever since she hit adolescence, Judith Framm was destined to be either an insurance salesperson or a counselor. Her voice was low and tranquil, like verbal aloe on a sunburned cerebrum. She had a natural gift of telling you what you needed to hear while sprinkling in things you wanted to hear. So, Judith eventually melded both of these career paths into one: a dishonest therapist.

"Yeah," Bembe responds, lying face up, eyelids revealing only a hint of white as he gradually liquifies into the soft fabric of the couch.

It's not fair to call her a dishonest therapist. She was entirely on the straight and narrow with her other clients and was often very helpful; her four 1/2-star Google rating was validated. Bembe was the only one whose mental and emotional state she actively manipulated by way of hypnotherapy. How does one sleep at night knowing they have this type of power over their patient who trusts them implicitly? On a nice GelFlex from the fine folks at Purple Mattress, while listening to the sounds of "Boat Swaying in Water" on her white noise app, that's how.

"Good. Are you nestled in your place, resting in your hammock, looking upwards at nothing but the blue, blue sky?"

"...yeah..." he replies, nose ejecting air like a popped tire.

Judith nods, a smirk beginning to form. "OK then. I'll count backward now from three...two...one..."

It's not like she lacked morality, though. Using mesmerism to implant ideas into Bembe's head was something she'd just started doing about a month ago. When they first started their relationship, Judith took a lot of pity on his situation. He was one of her odder cases, and as she began to peel back more layers of his psyche, she became more determined to help him mend his trauma. Sure, he had developed a disposition to use others to get what he wanted, but much of that blame lay on his upbringing. His short temper could be directly traced to the impact of the last lightning strike. The negative qualities stemmed from circumstances beyond his control.

"There's a seventy percent chance of thunderstorms tomorrow. How are you feeling about that?"

Bembe sighs contently amidst his haze. "No biggie." Under Judith's trance, the gnomes hid behind the pinkish tissue, almost as if Bembe's susceptibility to fear was disseminated to them. She was their version of Gargamel, frightened that she would eat them or set up a roadside tourist trap to display them in some sort of troll zoo. There was never any trace of a stutter in his responses.

"Have you met any new friends since the last time we talked?"

Almost hesitant to answer, Bembe forms a stupid grin behind the mask's hole. "Yeah, but I can't remember her name."

"I see," Judith says. She knows the answer to the next question but is compelled to ask it anyway. "Where does she work?"

"...Anthropologie," he sighs, unable to conceal the truth in his present state.

This was why the devil consistently popped up on Judith's shoulder. His negative traits were all things that he could potentially improve. But he refused to put in any work whatsoever. Bembe Brightwell was not going to become a better person on his own. He needed the guiding hand of someone who could change his ways.

"How many candles have you swindled out of her so far?"

Judith needed her own therapist. Perhaps then she wouldn't have made the initial decision to put him under and convince him that his muscles had been replaced with rubber so that he no longer had to be scared of the grey demons that lived in the clouds. While that may have been a positive thing she'd done for him, it was still highly unethical. That's where she'd planned to stop, though.

"Wouldn't call it that," Bembe replies, very sure of himself.

Judith was prepared for a response like this. Yes, it was genuine, but only because he believed it wasn't manipulation. "That's not what I asked you," she responds sharply. "How many?"

"Just four...so far."

The plan to stop changed when he met one of her best friends from grade school who owned a small boutique downtown. While predominately a women's clothing store, it also had a wide selection of homemade aromatherapy products.

Judith thought she knew Evelyn better than actually to fall for someone like Bembe. Sure, behind the mask lay a conventionally attractive young man who could pull off being hairless on the dome. He was in fantastic shape, too. But Evelyn usually leaned into the slightly chubby and extremely geeky guys, finding their awkwardness endearing. Bembe manifested confidence, but he would always lie to them all that he was "usually too scared to approach women because of my stutter, but I couldn't resist at least trying with you." It was his go-to pick-up line and had an alarming success rate.

Judith found out about the fling about two weeks after he'd met Evelyn—not because they'd gotten to the stage where they wanted to begin introducing one another to their friends, though. Bembe never stuck around long enough to get to that point. It was never brought up in her and Evelyn's text exchanges, as it was pretty on par for her to refrain from talking about her dating life until she thought it was developing into something serious.

Bembe was the one who told Judith during his therapy session. Of course, he did not know their existing friendship. She was so caught off guard and angry when he mentioned her name and where she worked that she faked diarrhea to end the appointment prematurely. Her instinct was to call Evelyn immediately and warn her. The only problem is that even though Bembe was now a pro bono patient, it would violate confidentiality—Evelyn was in no physical danger that would justify that breach. After reflecting on it more, Judith concluded that while it pissed her off, her friend had yet to even mention his existence to her. Since Bembe was the antithesis of the type Evelyn usually went for, Judith assumed she might be using him, too.

"Have you gone out of your way to do anything nice for her yet?" Judith continued questioning her entranced patient.

"No," Bembe responds.

"Well, I think we need to change that, don't you?"

His mouth immediately shifts down to a frown, stammering a childish objection. "I don't wanna."

She tuts, clicking her tongue. "You're already getting what you want. This is about her now. Today, you'll ask what kind of coffee she likes. Then, you'll buy it and bring it to her every morning for the entire week."

A couple of days later, Judith's phone rang. It was Evelyn. It was surprising to see. Her friend's preferred line of communication was usually text, but the guts spilling was too much for her to type. She was in tears over this guy who she thought was so wonderful, that she felt she had such a real connection with, who was just vulnerable with her right from the start, who wasn't scared of expressing his feelings, which she didn't want to tell anyone about because she was trying to determine if it was too good to be true...was.

Judith stopped her from going on too long, interrupting her to tell her she would be at her house as quickly as possible. Between the driving distance and a stop at the grocery store for a few bottles of red, it gave her time to contemplate exactly what she wanted to do to remedy this situation for one of her best girlfriends. He’d be paying her back with interest for those brand-new candles he’d gotten.

Bembe couldn’t decipher why he had the sudden inclination to place a random order on Zappos for several pairs of shoes that were a size 7, send them to Evelyn by way of her store’s address, and address the gift receipt from a “secret admirer.” Evelyn herself thought it was a little creepy at first, assuming that some weirdo had a thing for her feet and happened to guess her shoe size correctly. However, when she texted Judith about the surprise, Judith responded with, “I guess someone wonderful in your life just thought you could use a bunch of cute new shoes. They must be really great, and you should love them forever ;) ;)”

Judith knew going into the first attempt that manipulation through hypnosis wouldn’t work on minds that hadn’t experienced physical trauma. It was a long shot that it would work on one that had. But it did and continues to this day. Bembe had even stopped questioning why he’d become physically ill if he didn’t randomly ask to detail Judith’s car every week or volunteer to be the sparring target for the local “Self-Defense and Proper Pepper Spray Aiming Techniques for Women” class.

“And you will not question why. You will think that you have to do it, or you will die.”

That’s why he didn’t question it. And why he never will.

*Sorry for alluding that wrestling is fake. However, I was trained by Bryan Danielson, and I beat John Cena 15 times for the WWE World Title, so I have a real insider's knowledge of "the biz." Also, my buddy the Rock said you're a jabroni.