Book of Questions, 1982 edition

The Fer-de-lance is probably the most poisonous snakes in Costa Rica. And Michelle would know this by sight and color and length if she wasn’t only watching Bear Grillis’ “Survivor” in the parts where he took his shirt off. Not the before parts where they describe the island locations. Not the feeding parts where he eats spiders and half dead racoons and goes home to England to kiss his wife.

Michelle is squirming in the viper pit with Monsier La Clarke. “See! I told you that documentary television was important.”

You cannot learn poison ivey by the desciptions of spikey leaves, you cannot learn the _art_ of survival by reading Renet Jean Marie, or that man who started the boy scouts. It’s in the pictures. Truely.

Now it had been around six minutes until I climbed out of the pit. Ignored that Monsier La Clarke was touching my wife’s ass as he propped her up (because it was an emergency situation and he was probably French and couldn’t help himself.) I have read were the french start entire wars just to touch someone else’s wife or that Le Beck gave the Iranians some nuclear material because he wanted to see that belly dance again…

So I watch Bear Grillus, maybe a hundred episodes and instinctively take off my survival pack, pop the glass vial in the middle and suck down the anti-venom of freedom like it was my normal and natural way to take vitamins to increase the t-cell count.

Then I smiled, “Come on.. ?”

Monsieur La Clarke was still in the tuxedo he used for the captain’s table and my wife had atleast put on some mosquito spray to confuse the flying suckers by her enormously bright skin. But neither one appeared to understand what they should do when they are bitten.

“Jacques” (that french bastard) said we should all take off our clothes to guarantee that we could find bites from the viper pit.

Then he starred at me in a form of seduction and I waved my hand. “Hold on… your an eminent doctor, surely you have seen a thousand naked bodies?”

It was true but he didn’t care. Each undressing reminded him how his family was religious as a child and he so wished to see the human shape up close… well Ecology became an after thought.

“Serious?” (A world famous cancer doctor who still needed to see people naked to get off?)

We must have argued for another four minutes because Michelle said she felt drowsy. “Jacques” caught her as she fell and I yelled that he should take his jungle antidote at once! I didn’t care if he was religious and sought to pray over the taking.

“Pfft…” He enormously shrugged like an actor in a silent film.

“Et?” I couldn’t understand how he couldn’t understand that his long nose wouldn’t protect from the venom circulating in his body. Michelee was looking woozy and I patted her down…

“Are you serious!” I couldn’t help but yelling. It is what married people do when one lost the kids that one time at Mervyns. We yell when we feel and because she has red hair, and because it gives a little feeling of something important. Michelle didn’t have a vila of antidote.

“Le Clarke?”

He “pffft” again and shrugged like he wasn’t expressionate enough the first time I asked. Dumb tuxedos.

I went mumbling back to jungle pack and soon realized that there was only one vial left with two adults. I nearly gaped long enough to swallow a Nicuraguan Horse Fly (which were enlargened by some secret soviet experiments by Castro) but I did not swallow the fly.

So I got up, as “Jacques” kept that stupid look on his face, trembling by the foot like he couldn’t even stand. He was as drunk as a sailor as the viper venom had probably struck his tremendous nose or maybe even slithered into his crotch. You can’t tell with these frenchies.

The problem was obvious: Mother of my children or the man about to cure Cancer?

He had a large honorarium and everything. Was traveling to the rain forest to compare further samples but forgot to change clothes after dancing through the night…

“Tombi?”

Hold on. I’m thinking.

It seemed to me that if I had to go back to civilization, that the authorities would always blame the husband, notice that we had been fighting too much and probably throw me in a cell.

Conversely, if I didn’t save Monsieur assface, then Michelle’s sister would probably die of state 3c ovarian cancer…and we would have to move in her son… and she would bully me without her sister…

Or if I went back and didn’t save her sister by process of the french jackass, then the guilt of her dying sister would haunt our family and it would be like losing a child.

Guilt is huge in a relationship.

Obviously the man was attractive by the very nature of having the actual power to cure something so devastating. What about the mammas and pappas and little bears who don’t want to have ovarian cancer anymore? We have found in it bone fragments of ancestors for over a thousand years. It’s not made by polluting cars or even nuclear fusion. It’s just a splice into the genetic possibility…

“Tombi, I’m dying. Save your wife.”

What a dick. So noble at the end, i love and hate the french. My ancestors were french and I think they came over in 1882 because the Republic of France was going to attack the vatican. Grandpa was still religious back then but couldn’st speak of lick of English and got a free house because dry cleaning (french laundry) was all the rage.

Umm… I mght have caught Michelle cheating. That was a factor. I mean it was an old affair and I was going to challenge that heathen to a dual, even though he was totally Amry.

Monsieur Le Clarke began to wither. He fell down like a crumpled man with his hand on the top of my wife’s breast. Strange how he was still horny in death. Michelle did not move when I kicked her. Her breathing had slowed and I took out some bottled water and blew on her face.

That’s how you get babies to breathe again. You breathe on their face.

(Bear didn’t teach me that)

I got Michelle to wake up just enough to have a fighting chance. The larynx must swallow because I didn’t have 30 minutes to look for a plant with needle like properties for an IV. She had to keep her throat awake.

Did you know people sometimes hiccup when they drink because their throat falls asleep? I find that funny.

Not that it mattered, but i gave “jacques” a little kick to waken up from the dreams about touching my wife and seeing us all naked.

“Ok. You ready?”

They didn’t return my hail but I took out the last vial of anti-venom, through it over my shoulder and let nature take over.

**

Unfortunately , people should never do this. The vial bounced into the snake pit and i had to return with the unfortunate story that cancer wasn’t going to be cured that year.