THIS IS AN UNEDITED FIRST DRAFT:

A VERY SPECIAL PARROT
20 years ago, my friend, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts and I started dating and we thought it would be good idea to spend Spring Break together off of Hampshire’s incestuous campus and hang out at his grandfather’s home conveniently located in the same town, three or four miles away. His grandfather decided to take his own vacation opting to revisit his hometown of Peoria, Illinois. He lived alone so we had the whole place to ourselves.
It was a huge house; three floors (not including the basement), five bedrooms, a study, a den, a family room a kitchen as large as three dorm rooms put together, a two-car garage and a guest house in the back right behind the pool. I didn’t think there were “estates” in Amherst. Sure, I was aware of such things, and had been in a couple, but those were in more stereotypically affluent parts of the state/country. By comparison, my parent’s home was approximately one third the size (a liberal estimate) and always felt it was large enough for the three of us to go days without seeing each other, if necessary. I remember asking Azuma, half American, half Japanese, why didn’t he just live at home.
“Because up until two years ago that’s all I did was spend all my fucking time here.” He was home-schooled and had very open minded borderline Hippy parents who, despite all the best intentions, were nonetheless very possessive, and even more so after the accidental death of his older brother when Azuma was just 8 years-old.
Apart from being large…what the fuck, GIGANTIC, this house was over furnished. Every available space was filled with something, and this was at the time when fung shuei was not yet fashionable in America so hardly anything was properly organized, it was all just thrown together; as if the movers came in emptied all the boxes then scattered their contents randomly. The entire house was like this.
With the exception of one room.
It was the attic which had been converted into a kind of second master bedroom, only much larger than the original. It was neatly organized and littered with bookcases stuffed to the gills with all sorts of novels, texts and textbooks, in an array of languages but mostly English, German and Japanese. Being a bibliophile I couldn’t resist staking my claim that this would be the ideal place to lay my head at night whether the boyfriend wanted to join me, or not. Besides, it had large windows and an enormous skylight, and turned out to be well ventilated during the day, and warm at night.
The screech emanating from the metal cage just over my left shoulder made me jump out of my skin. It was covered with (of all things) a purple, green and yellow tie-dyed cotton cloth, and stood about five inches taller than me. It was right next to the door, so I hadn’t noticed it when I walked in, either that or I was too distracted by the books. The screech was then followed by a series of garglings and whistles. No doubt it had to be some kind of bird.
I removed to cloth to see this beautiful, spry parrot. I can’t remember its’ exact colors but he did blend in perfectly with the tie-dye. He stood on his perch and looked me over a few times, not seeming skittish, or fearful like your typical caged bird would upon seeing a stranger for the first time. In fact he gave me this look like, “you’re a human, can you take me out of this cage, please? I’ll play with you.” Azuma and I already started drinking vodka at 2 in the afternoon, so with inhibitions down and curiosity at full peak, I opened the cage door and slowly extended my index finger after saying a little prayer hoping that this gorgeous creature wouldn’t bite it off.
To my surprise he hoped on my finger like an overpaid stripper on a rich client in the VIP-room, and with enthusiasm climbed all the way up my arm and on to my shoulder where I couldn’t see, but heard and felt him preening in my ear as if we were long-lost buddies reconnecting for the first time in ages. At the time I wore two small golden looped earrings; one in each ear. The parrot was fond of the one on my right ear and tugged on it with his beak which at first made me fearful that he would accidentally yank it off, but in the end he seemed to know just how much to tug without hurting me. It seemed like a convenient oral fixation.
Wanting to get a better look at him, I got the parrot to sit on my index finger again, only this time I positioned him to look directly at me. He loved having his plumage stroked and his head scratched. We looked at each other for a good 30 seconds, me in a drunk and stoned wonder, him just happy to be liberated from the cage, it seemed. The look on his face was that of dumb elation. He looked refreshingly stupid.
And then it came out of nowhere.
“BRAAAAAAPF, Nigger.”
“??????????”
The parrot climbed back up my arm and reclaimed his comfortable position on my right shoulder.
“BRAAAAAAPF, Nigger! Nigger! Dyke! Nigger!” When he was done, he went back to tugging on my earring, making gurgle-ish sounding sounds.
‘Did THAT just happen?’ was all I could think of. I placed the parrot back in his cage, then tried to transcend the shock and make sense of the previous two minutes.
I found Azuma in the Family room flipping through TV channels. He landed on the local news.
“Dude, you’ve got the coolest parrot upstairs.”
Azuma blushed, and shifted gears from indifferent to overly-apologetic.
“Oh my God, you met Victor! Saad, I’m so sorry.”
“For what.”
“Victor. I hate that fucking bird.”
“It’s all OK, it looks to stupid to understand, or mean what it’s saying, if you ask me.”
“It’s my grandfathers. That bird is just fuckin’ retarded.”
He kissed me on the forehead, said he’ll be right back and returned a couple of minutes later with a 1.75 liter bottle of Old Grandad which was nice because I was in no condition to walk to the liquor store and couldn’t find my ID, anyway. Turns out they were very well stocked.
Over the following three nights we both slept upstairs, in the library/second master bedroom while Victor periodically repeated the following words: nigger, dyke, Betsy, spook, who’s there, and something that sounded like bitch, but was too garbled to be accurate. There were other utterances, but my drunken memory won’t allow access to what they were. Ocasionally I took him out and we walked around the house. We enjoyed each other’s company. Not bad for a creature who liked to spit out racial epithets while sitting on my shoulder. He wouldn’t go near Azuma.
The next day, over our favored brunch of scrambled eggs and whiskey, the meteorologist on channel 22 announced it was going to be an unusually warm day with temps in the mid 60’s, and Azuma made it clear that he wanted us to be a part of that action. It hadn’t been that warm in ages. In fact, not two weeks before we had one of our signature Western Mass snow blizzards (ironically, classes weren’t officially cancelled). I was all up for it and told him, “Let’s do it…oh, and another thing.”
“What.” Azuma knew I had some caustic motive and gave me that ‘look’. “What else?”
“Let’s bring Victor.”

By the time we arrived, downtown Amherst was packed with all types; students and local residents, both young and old, almost all sporting spring wear. We parked by the Commons at the lip of Amherst College and slowly made our way towards Russel’s Liquors, a few blocks away, staring at hot young jocks in shorts and flip-flops, local farmer studs, and other cute guys. Women (chicks) were showing off their breasts as if they appeared for the first time (do those things refill themselves seasonally, or something?) Couples were strolling down the street with a look of genuine mutual contentment, for once. And the local “Townie” youth, of which I was still kind of a part, were blowing off whatever responsibility, either to work, home, school, or anger management class, in the same vein as their college counterparts.
Victor got lots of attention from passing gum-chewing freshmen babes, but I was amazed he didn’t say anything. It’s not like he doesn’t have anything to say, and he’s proven himself too dumb to be shy. Azuma had never seen him fly and doubted he could, “When they were passing out instincts I think he got skipped over.”
And Amherst, Massachusetts, being the boiling caulderon of faux-, and over excited liberalism that it is, it’s easy to offend people with conservative ethics, let alone racist ones. Which is exactly why I wanted to take Victor out and show him off on the town’s main strip, but he wouldn’t say a word.
In the liquor store, all sorts kept inquiring about Victor; definitely a magnite, this bird is. And he was so well behaved. I felt like that sucker in the Loony Tunes production that features a frog who can talk, but only to the poor sap who found him. I wanted him to say something, anything. Even the dimmest of jocks and jockettes slipped me the quizzical look as they, too, were expecting him to talk, “Braaaaaaapf”, fly, sneeze, something. And then this one graduate-level-looking student asked if she could hold him. I said ‘yes’, not because she wanted to hold him, but because her boyfriend was fuckin’ hot as shit.
“Let me hand him to you. His name is Victor, by the way.”
“Really? No shit, that’s my step-dad’s name.”
I extended my right index finger to the corresponding shoulder (for some reason he refused the offer of the left; seemed to have an aversion to the left…hmmmm, how telling!) He hopped on the finger as was usual. The glassy eyed fowl had the glare of an over-stoned Deadhead; head cocked to one side at a slight angle, mouth agape, brain cell(s?) not even attempting to self-convince. No one expected…
“BRAAAAAAAAPF, nigger! Nigger! Nigger! Nigger! Nigger! Betsy. Who’s there? Who’s there?....BRAAAAAAPF, NIGGER!” Then he repositioned himself on my shoulder, again.
You could hear it over the shitty music, and ‘I’m-gonna-get-so-wasted-tonight’ conversations in the line behind us. Mr. Russel, the owner laughed his ass off, the young co-woker did the same because he didn’t know what else to do. But the poor grad student shot me a look suggesting I was deliberately raising satanic kids. Azuma just slipped me a Twenty dollar bill. “I’ll see you outside.”
“Oh my god, what did that bird just say?”
“I think it was…the ‘N-Word’”, said the hot-as-fuck boyfriend.
“What gives you the right to teach…teach an innocent creature that kind of shit? What the fuck are you some kind of sicko?”
“Depends on who you talk to,” I answered. “And besides, I didn’t teach him that, the parrot’s previous owner did.”
“??????!!!!!!!”
“Sorry, but I didn’t! But I’m working on him. I’m an…Ornithological Therapist specializing in disturbed birds, and today is his maiden outing in the real world.”
Mr. Russel just laughed and laughed.
“But what giv…….”
“…the fact that he’s in my possession…”
“…BRAAAAAAAAAAPF, Nigger! Nigger!”
She immediately got in front of me to pay for her/hot-as-fuck guy’s booze then leave. She had no intention of continuing the conversation. Don’t blame her. If I was that bereft of humor I’d’ve done the same thing.

I bought a fifth of Bushmills and walked out the door with parrot on finger, and confidence in hand.
There was nothing left for him to utter but the ‘N-Word’, and various sundry offensive items from his vocabulary. How much innudation could this poor creature endure with the task of trying to process it all in the face of what now would be called a flash-mob of anti-admireres?
Great!

“BRAAAAAAAAAPF, Nigger! Betsy!”
That’s all Victor was victorious at vituperating at just about everyone coming his way. Not on my shoulder, but while standing perch on my finger.
The look on people’s faces, especially those who knew me, was, for lack of a better word, “classic”. So many turned their heads, some just pretended it wasn’t Victor. But all were curious.
At Bart’s, a local ice cream shop on the verge of unadmittable failure, the owner threatened to treasspass us. At Classé Café, a waitress refused to serve us. A few feminists asked where my morals were.
Point is, I didn’t care.

The end!

©2012, Saad Hopkins
All rights reserved.