Me, The Last One

There came an almost inaudible knock at my front door. I wasn’t expecting anyone and don’t take kindly to unannounced visitors. I got irritably up from my chair, crossed the room and opened the door. A smallish man with a severely balding head and zucchini-like nose looked up at me.
‘Mr. Son of Incogneato?’
‘How do you know that name? It’s supposed to be incognito.’ I stalled for a moment, confused. ‘Not that I’m admitting that I am this Son of Incogneato’.
‘You are Son of Incogneato, are you not?’ He looked warily over his shoulder. ‘You don’t really expect to be anonymous, do you? You sign your name on blogs, you watermark your paintings. Excuse me for pointing this out, but you are about as incognito as the Statue of Liberty.’
‘Okay, so I’m Son of Incogneato, What do you want?’
‘Mr. Incogneato, I’d very much like to talk to you about tattoos, if you don’t mind.’
Now there’s a conversation opener for you. And I thought he was going to try to bring Jesus into my life.
‘Tattoos? As in body art?’ I felt that dissociative flashback feeling washing in over me, but there weren’t any of the telltale colors or weird noises, no kaleidoscopes or melting reality. Just a small, hairless man asking me if he could talk to me about tattoos. Still, it was a Floydian kind of moment.
‘I don’t have any tattoos,’ I said curtly. ‘And I don’t want any, either.’ I started to close the door. His face brightened considerably.
‘Yes, yes, I know. Or at least, that’s what we’ve heard. That’s why I’m here; to see if the rumors are true.’ Once again he glanced furtively about, as if he were expecting bad company.
‘I’m becoming increasingly perplexed, Mr. . . ?’
‘Wruk.’ The man extended a soft pinkish hand featuring four stubby fingers and an opposable thumb. ‘Wrotsa Wruk’, he said, shaking my own hand vigorously.

‘Wruk. Is that Irish?’
‘Why, yes, it is. How did you guess?’
‘Guessing nationalities based on names is a hobby of mine.’

‘I see. Please, Mr. Incogneato, I can explain everything. May I come in?’
Not without misgivings I made an invitational pass of my hand; Wruk darted in and I shut the door behind him.
‘Mr. Incogneato, we, that is my colleagues and I, believe that you just might be the last of your kind. Absolutely the last. And we are very excited about that. I’m here to verify that fact.’
‘And what endangered manner of kind might I be the last of?’ I asked, intrigued despite myself. Last of the total fools who let strange people enquiring about tattoos in their front doors? A separate part of my brain was simultaneously reviewing which of my so-called friends had organized this silliness. Thus far it had all the main ingredients of a MMM, a minor McCarroll mindfuck.
‘Well, Mr. Incogneato . . .’
‘Please, call me Son.’
‘Thank you. Well, Son, we have very good reasons to believe that you are in all probably the last untattooed man in the world. The world being, you know, the whole planet as such. It’s as simple as that.’ Wruk stood there in my living room, smiling as if he had just informed me that I had won a large money lottery. I wish.
‘Come again?’ I said, not knowing how else to reply to a statement of this sort.
‘May I sit?’
‘By all means,’ I said. Wruk sat, I didn’t. I wanted to be in a proper fight-or-flight body position. Although not exactly scared I felt that a bit of caution would definitely be in order here.
‘As you might have noticed these last couple of years, everybody has been getting tattoos. Everybody. Tattoos aren’t anything new, of course. You’ll find they go back to Neolithic cultures. Take Ötzi, for example.’
‘Ötzi,’ I repeated for no apparent reason.
‘But things have been getting out of control since the 90’s. Let me restate that. Things are out of control. The pot has bubbled over. There is, as of now, not a single living human being on this planet over the age of eighteen who is not sporting at least one chromatic body decoration in some variety or form. Except you.
‘You don’t say,’ I said.
‘Yes, I do. That’s why I’m here; to verify that theory and hopefully to turn it into fact.’
I felt a sudden tinge of squeamishness.
‘Um, let’s say for the moment that it’s true, that I’m tattooless. How exactly would you intend to do that? Verify, that is.’ I should have asked him why, of course. Why would anyone want to verify such a ridiculous theory? Why would a total stranger knock on my door in the middle of the afternoon and start asking me about tattoos? My mind, however, (admittedly never one of my most dependable organs) had been caught off guard and was once again acting on its own before I could rein it in.
‘By examining you, of course; how else?’ Wruk blinked at me with uncomprehending eyes.
‘As in naked? Me, naked?’
‘Do you know of any other ways?’
I scratched my three-day stubble thoughtfully as I scanned and located escape routes and pain-inflicting blunt objects. My fight-or-flight feelings were now intensifying at an exponential rate.
‘Mr. Wruk, I was wondering at this juncture whom you might be representing. Just who are you and these colleagues of yours?’
‘Of course, how rude of me; I should have presented myself at the door; please forgive me. I represent The Brotherhood of Pure Body, Mind and Soul. We are a grassroots underground organization trying to save the human race from de-evolution and ultimate cultural downfall. You might have heard about us by our commercial name; Evil-Devo? The reason I’m here, Son, is that we’d like you to be our Poster Boy.’
‘I’m fifty-four years old,’ I pointed out to him. A grassroots underground organization? True enough, roots do grow underground; nonetheless this struck me as a grammatical non sequitur.
‘Poster Man. Whatever.’
‘What’s in it for me?’ I asked, still confused but feeling somewhat flattered. I’d never considered myself Poster Person material before.
‘A personal chance to save Homo sapiens from driving off the road of reason into the ditch of abject cultural stupidity.’
‘What else,’ I said, looking at him with mock arched eyebrows.
‘A solid chunk of money, access to beautiful women and a nice ride. We’ve got a line on a mint condition ‘67 Shelby Mustang GT 500 with a 650 CFM four-barrel carburetor, genuine black leather upholstery and a five speed stick shift .’
‘I’m your man,’ I said with no further hesitation. I mean, a man has to rise to the occasion, right? If the human race needed saving, as surely it does, who am I to shun such responsibility? ‘So what do I have to do?’
‘First we have to make sure that you are, in fact, tattoo-free.’
‘I am. Couldn’t you just take my word for it?’
Wruk smiled politely and shook his head. ‘This is serious business, Son. I have to take photos, too.’
‘Photos? What photos?’ My squeamishness became a tad more visceral. Other than Cosmo, nobody was taking any naked pics of moi. Okay, maybe I’d let Bitch do a spread, too, if they asked nicely.
‘For The Brotherhood, of course. We have to have solid documentation here. There must be no doubt. By the way, you’ve never been pierced, have you? Little gold hippie earrings during the ‘80’s? What about scarification?’
‘Scarification? What might that be?’
‘Scars.’
‘Scars? Sure I have scars. Doesn’t everybody have scars?’
‘No, I don’t mean normal scars, I mean decorational scarring. You know, permanent body modification.’
‘Rest assured,’ I said. ‘No piercing, no scarification.’ Jesus.
‘What about designer T-shirts? Got any of those? Or ones with insipid sayings on them, like 'I’m Only Here For The Beer'.’
‘Surely you jest. Flea markets are my prime source of apparel. I do have a bootleg Snoopy T-shirt that a work-mate of mine brought back from a biker bar in Bali.’
‘Snoopy? You wear a Snoopy T-shirt?’ Wruk frowned. Uh-oh, a spanner in the works. I saw my Mustang chock full of voluptuous sex-kittens driving off into the sunset. Without me. ‘Could you elaborate on that, Son?’
‘The Snoopster? Sure. Wearing that T-shirt is my meta-postmodern crypto-facetious trend statement on mass-marketed pop-culture iconography gone amok.’
Wruk’s serious face broke out in a broad smile.
‘You’re our boy. Uh, I mean man. I knew it from the instant you opened that door.’
The tattoo check didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. I guess there aren’t that many places one can hide a tattoo, but then again you’d be surprised. Wruk wanted to know if I had any ‘internal tattoos’. Not even knowing – or wanting to know – what that might entail I ensured him that I did not. When I asked him how he was going to substantiate the veracity of this claim (for one horrid moment I envisioned a diabolical procto/gastroscope combo) Wruk merely shook his head and said, ’We’ll have to take your word for it for the time being.’ He then examined my mouth for diamond-bearing or otherwise gaudily crowned teeth and pulled on my hair to determine if it was real and ostensibly my own.
‘Plastic surgery of the purely cosmetic kind?’
‘Never happen.’
‘Penis enlargement?’
‘Not necessary,’ I lied. Not about having had one, but about the necessary part.
‘Dental braces?’
‘Yeah, I had braces when I was a kid,’ I said. Like about a forth of my junior high. Was that a crime? Wruk had flinched. More trouble?
‘Were they merely for enhanced esthetic appearance or was it an orthodontic necessity?’ he asked, looking me in the eye and stressing the word necessity. I got the hint.
‘Absolute necessity. I was suffering from a severe life-quality reducing malocclusion.’ Buck teeth deluxe. My nick back then had been ‘Beaver’.
‘Of course you were. Correctional Laser eye surgery?’
‘Aduh,’ I said, taking off my glasses and waving them in front of his blackhead-covered snout. I was beginning to grow weary of all this personal poking and prodding. I wanted to get back to that Mustang GT 500. Was it a convertible? Did it have hood pins?
‘Artificial implants of any kind?’
‘What?’
‘I had to ask. Okay, what about rings? Chains?’
‘I had a Surfer’s Cross when I was fifteen. Does that count as anything?’
‘The folly of youth. What about now?’
‘I wear a Swatch, that’s it.’
‘Glad to hear it. One last question, Son, and then we’re finished. Have you ever had a permanent, dyed your hair or visited a tanning booth? What about bronzing lotion or spray tanning? Professional manicures? Pedicures?’
‘That’s more than one question. The answer is no to all, unless the Brothers frown on cutting one’s diverse nails, which, on occasion, I have been known to do. And before you ask; I brush my teeth. Twice daily and before dates. However it might be in its place to mention that I use styling foam to keep my hair out of my face’, I stated honestly. I figure it’s better to get it all out in the open asap. I didn’t want to have my title yanked away–to say nothing of the car–at a later date, like some Miss America contestant with a pornographic past. Wruk frowned but merely said, ‘We’ll have to let that slide. Nobody’s perfect. Just make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.’ All this time he had been noting my answers in a small leather-bound book, which he now clapped shut with an audible thwack. ‘And no more blow drying unless you’re in a real big hurry. You know – emergencies only.’
‘How did you know?’ I asked. Were these people watching me? Hidden cameras in my toilet? He motioned towards the open bathroom door. My blow dryer was hanging guiltily on a hook by the mirror.
‘It’s my job to notice these things. Well, Son, that’s about it. We’ll be contacting you soon. Look for secret messages in the comments on your blog.’
‘Secret messages on my blog? Why don’t you just call me or send an e-mail?’ I asked.
‘Too risky. There are forces out there that want to . . . silence us. I took a calculated risk coming here today, but it had to be done. We’ve got scouts outside your house at this very moment to make sure that I wasn’t followed. These are perilous times we live in. Take care of yourself.’ With that Wruk suddenly made a quick exit and was gone. I didn’t even get a secret ring or learn a Brotherhood handshake or anything.
I went back to my chair and logged on the Net to hunt for secret messages. There were many candidates to choose from, but none that seemed to be ‘talking to me’. As I surfed about my blog it suddenly occurred to me that The Brotherhood of Pure Body, Mind and Soul might not be appreciative of that fact that their new Poster Boy/Man was a hamstervore, i.e. that he had consumed his own son’s pet rodent in a tequila-fueled fit of debauchery (graphically chronicled in Why Sparky's treadmill squeaks no more . . .). But Wrotsa Wruk seemed to know quite a bit about me; surely he and his Brethren were aware of this unfortunate incident as well. I mean, it’s posted here on my blog, right?
In any case Wruk’s visit has brought to my plate quite a bit of food for thought. Only time will tell where this fateful turn of events will lead us . . .