I am not a man who has misconceptions about his own ass. My ass is not particularly appealing, all things considered. It is a bid too broad, my ass. It is not a rock, my ass. It is a bit on the unwieldy side, sometimes. But it is my ass, dammit, and I kind of liked it. It did provide me with years of cushioned sitting if nothing else. So, if by chance you run across my ass, please return it to me. I miss it.

Last I saw my ass was in Little Five Points. I had just come back over from Cr*m*n*l after a weekly buying binge. I meandered into the office, slopped down into ye olde rolly chair, checked the email, checked the voice mail, re-opened the database du juor and settled in for the remainder of the afternoon. My ass was still firmly (well, maybe not firmly, but still) attached at this point. I remember it being there when I sat down.

I reached into the bag of my recent purchases. I randomly selected a disc. I reached across the desk, opened the CD player, unpacked the plastic wrappings and dropped the disc into the deck. This is the last vivid memory I have of my ass.

Thee Machine Gun Elephant are Japanese. They wear black leather over black t-shirts with black jeans. They were cheap black sunglasses as well, even if it's pitch black in the middle of the night. They have guitars, and they're not afraid to use them. They claim The Who as their greatest influence and they're not just name-dropping.

The last time I saw my ass it was being ruthlessly pummeled, tied up, torn down, and so completely and thoroughly kicked at the hands of Thee Machine Gun Elephant that it disconnected and ran the fuck away. It gave me a choice, my ass. It told me that it would stay if I would agree to stop playing Thee Michelle Gun Elephant and thus cease the ruthless pummeling and kicking it was receiving. I thought about it, figured it was bluffing, and told it to stop it's damned whining. It sounded like one of those damned emo kids, mewling about, crying in its "I'm so sensitive" space, whimpering about the big, bad, leather-clad Japanese men who were tearing it, well, a new asshole.

I told it to fuck off. (My penis spoke up and thanked me. Said it had been literally years since it had heard music like this, music that didn't make it want to crawl up and hide from the "pretty, in-touch-with-your-feelings crowd." Said my ass could damn well deal with the kicking like a man and shut the hell up.)

So, if you see my ass, let me know. It's probably just a quivering gelatinous mass of flesh at this point. It's probably still carrying the bruises, weeks later. I'd like to have it back, because I like my ass, more or less. But make sure you tell it that I'm still not giving up Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. If it can't take the ass kicking, it can just stay the hell away. I'll live without my ass. But I'm not giving up this CD. I'm not gonna let this damned CD out of my sight. I can't remember the last time I had a CD hit me in the head as hard and fast as this CD. (The CD is called Gear Blues, for the record.)

My ass can just deal.