Reflections Before And After A Night On The Town

There was magic in the air, and Jasper had all the right moves. He sucked in his stomach, looked in the mirror and adjusted his bowtie, and said aloud to no one, “I am the flyest.”

Jasper had a big date tonight; much more was riding on it than the fate of his horrible shriveled penis for the next six hours. His date was the executive of the production studio he was pitching his new film idea to. In his mind, The Man With Three Legs was a guaranteed blockbuster. In the minds of his peers however, it sounded like a load of, well, dog shit. Jasper was confident. Jasper was fly. Overwhelmingly negative feedback never stopped him from making ideas become reality in the past, anyway.

His scheme to buy eToys after the Internet bubble burst in the early 21st century left one gullible man without a savings account. Back in the 1950s, he discovered that he had ridden the asbestos train far too long: as the chief stockholder of a variety of companies that produced asbestos products, he found himself in the middle of a nationally-reported scandal. Though he claimed no knowledge of the withholding of important medical information that could have saved thousands of asbestos workers lives, he was convicted of a variety of major offenses and thusly received the title of “world's richest felon.” As Jasper reflected on these troubling times and no fewer than fourty other “tricky” situations, including the Gettysburg PTA Hostage Misstep and the Long John Silvers' Workers Union Slight, which he felt was really not an issue at all, he could not help but feel cursed. Jasper was cursed though. He was cursed badly!

He was drunk in the car, as usual. He opened his wallet to look at the picture of his daughter Emily, essentially a newborn at the time the picture was taken. She died from SIDS while with her parents on a transatlantic flight to London. The hysteria in the cabin forced the plane to return to New York – they had not even been in the air for an hour when her mother noticed that she wasn't breathing.

In Jasper's world, money could buy absolutely everything except happiness. He often wondered if his fortune was the root of his misfortune. After all, most of these situations developed because he had the money to be in places that most people would never reach. Or maybe his misfortune was actually the root of his fortune and he could go on to explain that on some cosmic level, causal connection is the reverse of what most people believe it is. Somewhere inside of him, he knew that his dinner date with the executive would never have happened were he not so wealthy. He knew he was talentless when it came to all creative things. His only talent seemed to be making more money out of money, which at the time seemed to him to be a wholly evil and morally reprehensible thing – an alchemy of sorts – some kind of black magic that should not be possible in a world governed by natural laws. Jasper had tried his hand in the realm of philanthropy, where orphanages burned down after being infected by his money and AIDS research centers ended up as the epicenter for Ebola and Marburg outbreaks after he called to arrange a date to formally announce his sizeable donation.

Jasper was confident. He knew he was fly. He knew he was going to get laid by a powerful woman, and he knew that they'd get the biggest names in Hollywood to sign for his new movie idea. What he wasn't so sure about, though, was the effect it might have on the millions who went to see it. No stranger to adversity, Jasper remained optimistic.

Jasper woke up the next morning reflective, as he always was after sleeping with a woman. He thought about his initials, which he was always told were good luck, especially by the nuns at the orphanage where he was raised. Sharing the same initials with Jesus Christ was a good thing in his mind. It stung the first time he got into trouble with the law, but he forgot about it after that first time, until this very morning. He went to the bathroom to look in the mirror at the strange birthmark on his leg – 616.

Jasper thought about all of the big things, good and bad, that he was able to do without even trying. He always felt he was special. Now, somehow, he understood a little better. He sighed and went into the kitchen to make some breakfast.