Eye for an Eye

Ah, yes, it is no problem for asking! You know, many people, they are looking at the different colors of my skin, and they asking themselves “what is this?” and “is he being sick?” and they are just staring and staring and making me to be very uncomfortable, and I would rather they are to be just asking.

My right arm, she is coming from Greece. I am traveling there when I am being much, much younger—I am not being ashamed to say that I am being very old now!—and I am being in the country, minding my own company, when I am meeting a farmer. And I am walking in his field, and he is taking his, ah, pitchfork, and he is just stabbing me with it, and he is putting terrible holes into my arm. And of course I am being very put-out, but I am not speaking Greek, and he is waving his pitchfork at me again, so I am to be just leaving with my poor arm full of the holes, and of course I am losing him. So I am going back to the farmer’s house when he is sleeping, and I am seeing that he is having a wife, very strong of limb, and so I am taking her arm as a fair replacement, you see? She has been a good arm for me all these years, even better than my own arm was being, and I am being sure that this farmer is being kinder to innocent strangers now! He was to be learning his lesson. And perhaps they were not being a good couple, because they were not sleeping in the same bed, so that he is not hearing when I am slitting her throat. Perhaps she was being of the snorer, ha-ha!

No, no, I am not hearing this! How can you be being ready to go already? The night is being young—though I am not being so, ha-ha!—the bar is being, ah, “open,” and you are wanting to know more of my many, many history. I am being able to tell this. So! Of course you can be seeing that this is my very own left arm, but the hand is being from this sweet little boy who was being so unlucky as to have been being in a car accident with myself, terrible, ah, crash-up. This is being in the year—oh, I am forgetting, but many, many years ago. I am thinking the car, she was a Model T? Not so very long ago, really—not when you are an, ah, “old-fogey” like myself, ha-ha!—but how quickly one forgets even so. But the poor sweet boy is being killed and I am being lost of a hand, and his are being so smooth, so soft—feel, feel!—and I am thinking that it is, ah, being a lucky fate for me that he will no longer to be using him for himself, so I am being replacing my poor crushed one. He, too, has served me very, very well, and I am being very careful with him, with the gloves, and the lotion, and the virgin’s blood, all to be keeping him as sweet as his previous owner.

Another drink! I am insisting. Please, it will be being such a comfort to a poor old man like myself, if you were to be staying just a little longer. Alas, it is no longer being a custom for the young to be giving respect for their elders, and it is getting more and more difficult for me to be getting around. These legs are being from a young man—this is being a very long story, and I am waiting for my drink before I am telling it, but I will be saying that he should not have been shooting his arrows into the bushes, and I was giving him back to his family only a week later, and I was being very generous and allowing him to live—but they are being now also old with me.

And my poor eyes, they are going as well! I should be being replacing them soon, do you think? Perhaps I should be looking for the blue eyes; I am thinking that they are going with my skin color, ha-ha!

It is being too bad that yours are brown. That would be being so convenient! Ah well.