They're Strapping Me to a Chair and Beating Me With Hammers Later on Today...

Yup, that’s right, folks. They got me. They finally got me. Later today, they're all coming together to strap me to a chair and beat me with hammers.

I’m not sure when they’re doing it. Four, maybe five o’clock perhaps. I can’t say for certain, but they’ve already let me know it’s going to happen, and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do to stop them.

But I knew this day would come. I figured that eventually they’d get fed up, march down to my place, pull me out of bed, and collectively assault me in some grand fashion. “It’ll be with hammers,” he said. And when I asked when, or why, he hung up. So I’ve just been sitting here waiting, I guess.

You’re probably saying, “Why aren’t you running? Why aren’t you calling the police? Don’t you have something, anything to protect yourself with when they come for you?” Blah. What is the point? The society in which I live has made up its mind. If I am to be strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers, then I must be strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers. Moreover, who's to say they aren’t hoping that I panic and attempt to flee? The moment I step outside of my apartment might very well be the precise moment they’ve been waiting, providing them the perfect opportunity to abduct me and carry me off, thus expediting the process of being strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers. How do you know the police aren’t also involved in this grand conspiracy to strap me to a chair and beat me with hammers? And what weapon could I possibly purchase to defend myself against an unknown number of people whose chief desire, above all else, is to strap me to a chair and beat me with hammers?

I suppose I could remove all the chairs from my apartment. Throw away my own hammers as well. After all, they will need a chair and numerous hammers if they intend to strap me to a chair and beat me with hammers. Never provide your enemy with the tools they need to destroy you. But what if they bring their own specialized chair? And what if they each bring their own hammers? Who’s to say they haven’t done this before? Maybe they already own a chair specifically designed to withstand the repeated blows of several people wielding hammers. Perhaps the state will issue everyone a hammer in the event that some participants don’t have hammers of their own. To each according to his or her needs, I suppose. But perhaps there is only one hammer and maybe they’ll wait in a single file line to share this hammer, and each of them will be allotted a predetermined number of swings at government approved areas of my body. Perhaps they’ll take turns in groups of equal size, maybe multiples of three or four.

I’ve thought through all the possible ways to escape this. You’re thinking as well, certainly you are. But you aren’t thinking critically enough. Perhaps that’s why they want to strap me to the chair and beat me with hammers. Because I think too much. And because I make a point of informing other people how much I think, and how little they do. I suppose that might make me want to beat someone with a hammer too. But who’s to say?

It is easy to judge a man who is currently scheduled to be strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers for his perceived actions, or inaction, if you will. But you have never been in this situation before, have you? Has your community ever come together and spent several years developing a comprehensive plan that will culminate the attachment of your person to a piece of furniture then striking you repeatedly with a specific object? Have there been council meetings? Public hearings? Subcommittees? Have neighbors stood at podiums and argued over the logistics of how they will beat you with hammers? Will child care be provided while the adults are doing this? And children even invited? Will parking be validated?

Have you ever attempted to attend one of these meetings yourself, hoping to plead for some modest amount of due process, only to be turned away at the door after being told the room was too full? Have you ever stood in the hallway and peered through that little rectangular window in the door only to see a young African American man clicking through a PowerPoint presentation complete with pie charts and schematics and san serif fonts, each meticulously designed to persuade the state to permit a mob of perverse and probably horny citizens to strap you to a chair and beat you with hammers? Have you ever been hated or discriminated against? I have. I’ve been protested and demonstrated against. Picket signs for my wicked rhymes, look at the times!

Speaking of time, I don’t even know when or where this will be happening. He did say later today. It’s currently nine in the morning. If they don’t start soon, this could last all night. But again, I don’t know. All I know is what I have always known: that someday, somehow, somewhere, I would be strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers.

The most obvious question is also the one I’ve been avoiding: why? Why, exactly, do my neighbors want to strap me to a chair and beat me with hammers? I haven’t the slightest clue. I’ve lived here for four years. I’ve always been kind, courteous, respectful. I know the people in this town. They are simple people with simple ambitions. They want steady work, and for the city’s football team to prevail on Sundays, and, apparently, the occasional opportunity to restrain a neighbor and beat him with hammers.

I’m not exactly sure why they want to strap me to a chair and beat me with hammers. But I guess it’s not really up to me to know why. Nor is it a particularly good use of my time. Questioning the why of something that is already happening is rarely a productive use of one’s limited amount of time on this god forsaken earth.

About a year ago, I began hearing rumblings that a certain someone in town was going to be strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers. When I asked who, they told me they couldn’t say. Whenever I went to the store, I’d ask strangers if I could come along and help beat this mysterious individual who had apparently done something worthy of such treatment. I was always told there was no need. All the spots had already been filled. After months of deduction, questioning, manipulation, and eventually abducting a local teenager and torturing him for several hours using gay conversion and reverse gay conversion therapy, shocking the young boy with various voltages resulting in him becoming a homosexual then heterosexual then gay again then straight again until finally he broke, exposing the true nature of the community’s intentions with my body, their hammers and someone's chair. Such an injustice. But, I suppose, my injustice to carry. “Surely they wouldn’t do this to me,” you may be thinking. But your thoughts and prayers are useless in a world devoid of compassion, a world in which an ordinary man can simply be strapped to a chair and beaten with hammers. If me, why not you What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I suppose. But for now, we wait.

I think I may watch Steve Harvey act shocked whenever one of the families gives an overtly sexual answer to a question he has very deliberately engineered to produce an overtly sexual answer. God, I love that. I love whenever one of the families gives an overtly sexual answer to a question he has very deliberately engineered to produce an overtly sexual answer.