Bob, The Cannibal William I. Lengeman III |
It should go without saying that his name is not Bob, but since his real name is not one that trips lightly from the tongue he has decided to compromise again. He hails from a tiny island in the South Pacific. It is a place where the old ways are disappearing. It is still relatively unspoiled, though a cruise line has considered putting it on their itinerary and a fast food franchise has been making overtures.
Bob left there years ago, with the assistance of a church stateside, who helped him get a small apartment in the Bay area. He attended classes at a community college. He found English quite troublesome and never learned to read well, but he took to computer programming like he had been born to it. After a few years he met his future wife in a coffee shop. Sparks flew and they eloped, defying the wishes of her father, a wealthy and prominent figure in the local community. They live humbly on her small allowance and the sporadic income he picked up from consulting jobs. He has adjusted reasonably well and their life is good, but not without problems. There is the night he smears excrement on his face and stalks the neighborhood, spearing the neighbor's Pomeranian and roasting it over a slow fire. This precipitates a tense moment when the landlord appears, pointing out the clause in the lease that prohibits open flames on balconies. There is the incident in the Costco parking lot—a disagreement over a parking space that becomes heated and goes rapidly downhill when he makes the mistake of brandishing the ceremonial spear he carries with him at all times. There is the faux paus he commits at a dinner party hosted by her mother—her overture toward reconciliation. He loses all reason for a moment and tries to gnaw on the rather inviting flap of loose skin and flesh that hangs from the flabby upper arm of a well to do high society matron. He still dresses in traditional garb—there are some compromises he will not make. He wears a loincloth, plates in his ears and a bone through his nose. Fortunately for him, he resides in California, a land with a more or less relaxed attitude toward alternative lifestyles. His daughter's friends are totally impressed with his piercings. He and his wife save diligently and eventually buy a modest house in a small town about an hour inland. The children grow up and go off to school. He settles into a reasonably comfortable and happy existence, but as it turns out he has never quite lost his taste for heart, liver, brains and various other tasty bits of human. There are a series of disappearances. An investigation leads to what some would say was an inevitable conclusion. The neighbors remark that he was a friendly enough fellow—kept mostly to himself—but claim not to have seen anything like this coming.
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