Harvey Ott Makes an Ass of Himself

           The local tv station had a nightly Animal Hour show, sandwiched between the Game Show Hour and the Nine O’Clock Flick. On this particular night, Harvey Ott guessed all the right answers on the game show hour, and then looked forward to The Animal Hour (his personal favorite), then he had a Rutger Hauer starring-vehicle at nine to check out. The animal show was his favorite, because he never liked to leave the confines of his couch, or one of his several jobs that he has held over his long and not so illustrious career. For one hour a night he was transported to a different world. A dangerous world. A dog-eat-dog world. He never lived dangerously and always practiced a simple and satisfying life.

            That night there was a fascinating little show about the South American Sloth. Harvey could relate.

            A recent college grad, Harvey felt he was ready for the real-world but always felt a strong connection to working normal everyday jobs. The kind he loved to work every summer away from school. He loved all of his past jobs, which included a little of this and a little of that. Jobs like the child’s photography gig at the mall. He never minded all the googly faces and “Say purple potatoes!” in public as long as he could woo the parents to buy big, which they often did.

            Or take his job at the bowling alley as a Snackbar Attendant. League nights were the best. The fatter the bowler, the better the bowler. Thus, he always made sure to stock up on plenty of fried chicken strips, bacon (sautéed then fried in the deep fryer), and plenty of heavy beers borrowed from the bowling alley bar. After all, when you’re in the middle of rolling a turkey you wouldn’t want to wait at the bar in a line with a bunch of kids ordering goofy mixed drinks and always waiting for the bartender to ID some punks. It screwed up with their momentum.

            As satisfying as these jobs were to Harvey, money was getting scarce.  His roommates were having trouble carrying his load as well as their own.

            To supplement his day jobs, Harvey’s roommates set him up with an overnight job at a ritzy downtown hotel.

            On the first night as bellhop, Harvey was asked to take a rich old man’s baggage up to his seventeenth floor room. The old man was sophisticated looking, possibly an Englishman, or a professor, or some kind of politico.

            After a long, and somewhat awkward elevator ride, they arrived at the room, a spacious suite with an amazing view of the city skyline.

            Harvey put down the leather bound luggage in the closet as instructed and then asked the old man is anything else was needed.

            “Well…there is something.”

            “What could I do sir?”

            “Well, I always miss being able to bend over and look at my ass like I could when I was a young man like yourself. Unfortunately my hips aren’t what they used to be, and-“

            “…What are you talking about sir? Is there anything I can do before I leave?”

            “Listen I’ll give you four-hundred dollars if I could just…watch you bend over…and…look at your ass.”

            “Wait. You want me to bend over, between my legs, and look at my own ass?”

            “Yes.”

            “And you’re going to watch?”

            “Ah you drive a hard bargain, OK, one thousand dollars.”

            “You’ve got five minutes Mister.”

            Soon, Harvey was stretching in preparation for his contortion act. He wasn’t in bad shape, but he wasn’t even sure if this was possible. “Oh well” he thought. “One thousand bucks isn’t too bad.”

            After a few moments, the old man took a seat on the edge of the bed. Harvey stood in the doorway to the bathroom, facing the bed directly. Quickly, Harvey bent down and with a little push he managed to get his head between his legs with his feet planted firmly onto the carpet. “It’s like a jungle back there” thought Harvey. He wondered briefly why he never did this before, just out of curiosity. “Oh well. Let’s just get this over with” he thought, with his face mere inches from his scrotum.

            At the same time, his manager, Mr. Knob was racing down the hall. Harvey was running late, and the travelling basketball team, fresh after a shellacking from the home team, arrived and the help was needed. He thought to himself and remembered his first day as a bellhop at this very hotel. A classy, old Italian woman, reminiscent of Sofia Loren asked him to watch “Last Tango in Paris” with her. He then had to rub butter on himself. Since then, he’s converted to margarine spread.

            Mr. Knob was rushing, especially because the hotel is short-staffed during the overnight shift. So when he arrived to the room Harvey was last asked to visit, it slipped his mind to knock or even warn the tenant that he was coming in.

            He dipped his card into the door lock and with a great deal of frustration swung the door open. As he did this, he could feel that he hit something hard with the door. There was an old man sitting on the bed, his jaw hanging low. Mr. Knob then heard a few awkward footsteps on the tile floor in the bathroom and-

            -thunk!-

            Mr. Knob peeked around the corner and saw Harvey, naked, with his face buried deep in his ass. There was a spot of blood on the porcelain sink and a pool of thick crimson was collecting around the head.

            An hour later, the paramedics had Harvey’s body in a black bag, ready for the trip back to the morgue. A policeman, getting statements from the old man and Mr. Knob came to the conclusion that Harvey Ott was “just making an ass of himself.”