The Miracle of Marvin Monro

Marvin, by Lohbado

Marvin Monro took pride in his good looks. Every morning he spent fifteen-minutes combing his thick, shiny brown hair, in front of the full length mirror in his bedroom. Then he would take a shave, starting with his jaw, then moving down to his chest and finishing with the armpits. He did his pubic hair with a pair of scissors. He was thirty years old and still attractive enough to earn a living as a model. 

One day a crisis happened when a fellow model, Dork Ladle made a vanity-wounding snide remark about a mole on Marvin’s right cheek. The mole mysteriously appeared one morning when Marvin got up to admire his body. He suffered agonizing hours over that mole. The dermatologist refused to remove it. He was too busy for such trifles.

One afternoon Dork said a true professional would do whatever it takes to keep the body perfect, even if it meant flying to Mexico. Models who walked around at the age of thirty were certainly on the road to being has-beens. Dork didn’t come right out and criticize Marvin for having a mole. But the meaning was clear. It was a direct, indirect attack, a blatant put-down remark. Marvin was furious.

He couldn’t sleep, his mind was in such turmoil over this wound to his vanity. Then one day, as he flipped through a free newspaper on the bus, he noticed an ad for mole removal, using the Boris Beandowsi removal technique. As soon as he got home Marvin contacted Boris to set up an appointment. The instructions of Boris were simple, but guaranteed to work, as long as the customer paid in advance. For one hundred dollars, Marvin got a can of Boris Baked Beans and a pass to the Temple of Madness. 

Boris Beandowski was on the temple board of directors. He received a cash bonus for each referral. At the temple, Marvin would be shown to a private room, where he would eat the beans, then undergo an enema, enabling him to void into an enamel pot. He would spear a table spoon of digested beans on the mole, wait fifteen minutes, then do a Club Morono Stomp Dance, three times around the padded room. He would beat his chest and urinate on a picture of Dork Ladle, placed in the bottom of a jar. In this way, Marvin Monro would punish Dork Ladle for the vanity-wounding remark.

Marvin did as instructed. He went to the Temple of Madness, ate the beans, applied the fecal poultice and urinated into the jar containing a photo of Dork Ladle. A brief description of the temple is in order. 

In the temple, self-absorbed individuals could proclaim their ego without restraint. Devotees of ego were given small, padded cells. In the cells, self-absorbed people were free to shout, bang the head against the rubber walls, without fear of serious injury, beat the chest, stomp about, or collapse on the floor and writhe about in agony. As long as one didn’t lacerate one’s flesh with fingernails, one would not receive an injection of sedative. The only rule was to not grind teeth, to not bite oneself, to not lacerate one’s flesh and to not play with bodily fluids or waste matter. The rooms were sound proof, so one could shout until one’s voice burst and nothing but hot air came out.

In this way, a person had the opportunity to proclaim one’s devotion to one’s self, how one is more important than all the inhabitants of planet earth, how one has special insights into the mysteries of existence, how one knows what is best for everyone, if only people would listen. 

The fact that people didn’t listen proved their ignorance. They deserved to be severely punished. The approaching end of the world was all their fault. The only way to save the planet would be for foolish people to listen to the wisdom coming out of the self-proclaimed saviour’s mouth. 

The self-absorbed proclamations, along with opinions on every subject from abortion to zoophilia, could be made on local radio emissions, for those residing in the temple. Swollen ego could speak into a small microphone recessed into the rubber wall. They could free associate, make huge leaps in logic, rant and rave in a flood of confused, selfish and negative gibberish, endless testimonials to the importance of oneself and the special treatment one felt one deserved.

After rinsing his face with urine from the jar containing the photograph of Dork Ladle, Marvin looked in a mirror. To his amazement, the mole was gone. It was a miracle. The miracle mole removal technique of Boris Beandowski did the trick. Marvin eagerly returned to the photo studio to flaunt his mole-free face in front of Dork Ladle.

There was just one catch. When he got back to the studio, Dork Ladle had a mole on his cheek. Suddenly, moles were in style and Marvin Monroe didn't have one. He strongly regretted having gotten rid of his mole.