When Gut-Boys Attack

It turns out that the author of the above screed, comic book artist Tony Harris, was born the same year I was.

I can’t actually conceive of a forty three year old man, particularly one who has presumably functioned reasonably well in the real world, with other actual human beings, writing a paragraph like that one up there.

There has to be an alternate explanation for it.

Perhaps, and I’m just spit-balling here, all these years Mr. Harris has kept, Kuato-like, a maladept fifteen-year-old boy in his gut. Then one day, when Harris sat down at a keyboard to exclaim how much he liked kittens, that gut-boy seized control of his body to have a vent. Perhaps Harris went into a trance when it happened, and by the time he came to, gut-boy had already posted his screed to Facebook. At that point, Harris had no other choice but to stand by it, because to do otherwise would raise too many questions, mostly about the adolescent man-child that lives in Harris’ intestine. I mean, how do you explain that away? How did gut-boy get there? Is this his first eruption? At conventions, when Women of Insufficient Nerdity walk by Harris’ booth in their unearned cosplay, does gut-boy strain at Harris’ abdominal wall, trying to get out, screaming “UNCLEAN” loud enough that Harris has to cover up gut-boy’s muffled howling with a carefully-staged coughing fit? Does Harris exist in a state of existential despair, never really knowing when gut-boy will unfold, like a scrotal origami, to rail at the feminine injustices of this world? And at boobies?

I fear he must. I fear Tony Harris truly has a gut-boy, lodged well into his duodenum. Rationally, it is the only explanation. Indeed, it’s the only explanation for a depressing number of grown men in nerd circles: They suffer from a plague of gut-boys, lashing out while their hosts can only look on, horrified and embarrassed at the misogynistic words and statements they will soon be obliged to own.

In which case, I will pray for Tony Harris in his life-long struggle against his angry, wailing gut-boy. It’s a difficult life he leads. I can only hope one day, he can expel his splenetic parasite and live a freer, fuller life. In the meantime, he should consider staying away from keyboards. You never know when gut-boy will strike again.