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When Guillermo was born, the midwife blanched and attempted to kill him. She took him from the birthing room, strode down the path to the washing place with stiff legs and was about to throw his squalling body into the river, but the wife of Alphonse was there and she snatched Guillermo back from the death that would have blessed him at that time.
When his mother saw him she shrieked in horror and promptly gave him to the Church for adoption. So it was that Guillermo started life quite dubiously and as an unwanted orphan. Our Mother, the Holy Church, loves all things that are twisted and filled with pain and so Guillermo found a place for himself among the castaways and cripples of the earth.
He grew to no more than four and a half feet in height, and never did any hair take root upon his cone-shaped head but a few straggly black hairs which he could cut or not as the presence or absence did little to alter his gnomish appearance. His features emerged from the womb fully developed, with the gnarled wrinkles of an old man which never changed from year to year as if carved of wood. In other respects he was relatively well proportioned and so presented all the appearance of a beardless garden gnome.
His relationships with women were, well, never developed. No one wanted him and this he learned as a fact of life for himself, long before that odious episode known to many as “high school”.
He was gifted with moderate intelligence and only limited musical ability. In all respects, other than appearance, he remained an average human being on the inside, which can be considered remarkable in that he never revealed a single trace of cynicism or bitterness.
Of course the nature of his disabilities enforced a sort of monastic existence which he devoted for a time, like all creatures of his sort, to mathematics and science. This palled on him, eventually, for he was by nature a more free spirit than allowed by scientific method. Eventually he turned his mind and his abilities to the making of things that are beautiful.
And because no woman would have anything to do with something like Guillermo, he poured forth all the heart and soul of that time into learning the arts of making beautiful things. And he became adept at his craft and his work was much praised for its intricate work. But then, one must have bread in one’s mouth and praise does little to feed one’s belly.
Those of you who have suffered through similar experiences may relate to some degree to these events for it seems that these things are not uncommon among youth of all nations.
So as to learn a trade that would serve him in the world the Church taught him the arts of metal working and so he learned the ability to work with metal of all kinds.
This skill he turned to use by making jewelry of cunning design which he sold on the Avenue on weekends and at Fairs around the County. There he would sit on a metal cafeteria chair with an old children’s hat of Inca manufacture covering his naked head while working metal wires with a blowtorch.
This hat, which must have been very old, had faded over the years. Many previous owners had added little embellishments, such as rows of plastic buttons and nylon ribbons. Purchased at a garage sale for five dollars it now kept the cone of Guillermo warm and invisible from scoffing eyes and it probably was no less than five hundred years old but he wore it nevertheless day in and day out. And to tell the truth, it made him look a bit charming perhaps. Not handsome of course, nothing could ever do that outside of some very serious facial surgery, but charming nevertheless.
Now it came to pass that Guillermo came across a lot of newfangled LED bulbs, which are little lights that are used to light up computer keyboards, stereo consoles, and other such instrument devices. These LEDs he worked into a set of jewelry which possessed particularly sharp points that ordinarily would make such things unsellable, as he would have to round off the ends somehow to make them comfortable. He placed one of these upon his head as a sort of whim in his home workshop. To his surprise, the LED lit up with a curious glow. A glow he somehow understood without explanation.
In popped the head of Maria, the servant girl of the House.
“Ah, I see you are hungry. I shall bring you a plate.”
So it was born. The Magical Jewelry of Guillermo.
It turned out that Guillermo had discovered, quite by accident, a way of making jewelry that revealed the dominant emotion of the wearer. The fine electrodes entered the bloodstream and picked up these nerve impulses and communicated them directly to these new LED’s and thereby produced light that reflected the feelings of the wearer.
Now what do you think of that?
Well, Guillermo took to visiting the discos and the raves and other places where people gathered, and managed, by dint of his magic jewelry to turn these affairs into raging successes. For all of these events always had promised “booty and booty and sheik yar booty” beyond your wildest dreams, but had heretofore fallen far short of promises. Person after single person had wandered home, as usual, alone, somewhat intoxicated and ravished by the most intense feelings of self-loathing. Unbedded and unwon. In fact, frustration became more the rule than the reality. Really no different from the reality of twisted, dwarfed Guillermo, but most of these ravers did not know of people like Guillermo in their world and so each believed him or herself to be alone on a canoe in a sea of wild successes.
But all that failure became something of the past.
With the help of Guillermo’s special jewelry there were no longer any of these ambiguities to interfere with the mating rituals. It became completely obvious what the dominant emotion was at any given moment for anybody. Yes I like you. Fuck off you ugly toad. I want to hump you right now in the men’s restroom! You are an ice cube, dude! I am filled with the heat of a thousand amoratas and I will screw anyone, even you, upon the plains outside of Bismarck North Dakota in the snow while yelping like a coyote. And so on.
With the help of the magic jewelry, the message became direct, instantaneous, clear and precise.
Well, Guillermo became fabulously successful. People just could not get enough. For it is true that people just cannot get enough of sex when it comes unencumbered. Throngs came to him to get one of his special pieces of art.
Guillermo became quite wealthy and women would fight to ride in his car down the street.
Well, Guillermo was no fool and so he sold his business to a group of dot-commers from Palo Alto for a good price and so gave up the practice of making magic jewelry. He bought a blue house on the Island of Kawai in Hawaii and lived well until the end of his days designing footwear for fashion models in his off hours. He became quite famous for his philanthropy, for he gave quite lavishly to medical clinics, Planned Parenthood and, of course, the local Churches of all denominations. Before he died in his sleep after living quite a long time, he had become well loved by all who knew him and one can say he had fared quite well.
Not so the buyers of his business for they could not leave well enough alone.. They changed the production of the jewelry a bit which made it a bit tweaky. And then they began to market to the business community and to local civic associations and to marital counselors. They discovered to their dismay that people in every day lives, at home, at school, in the business workplace, did not really want to reveal their real emotions – they preferred he illusion and the lies and the pretend. Even when eternal frustration was the result. Instead of celebrating this liberation of their feelings, they held burning parties in which the jewelry was destroyed in bonfires and a number of factories were destroyed along with the design plans.
Eventually things went back to the way things were before. But in this time, Guillermo lounged in a hammock in Hawaii, sipping a drink with an umbrella in it. He was loved by many, and he did not refuse his own love. And that is how this story ends.
Copyright 2003 by owen mould. All rights reserved. Conditional permission to download this material is granted provided this material is printed, copied and/or stored on electronic media for personal use only. Additional information can be obtained by contacting the address listed below.
OWEN MOULD
PO BOX 1303
ALAMEDA, CA
94501
OMOULD@EARTHLINK.NET
ALL CHARACTERS DEPICTED HEREIN ARE ENTIRELY
FICTIONAL. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS
OR DWARVES, WHETHER LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
