There was a man with a hole in his head. He filled it up with water so goldfish could swim around in there. Indispensable at parties, all the pretty girls would put their drinks on his brain. He liked that. So did the goldfish.

There was a woman that liked him once. After putting her drink on his brain they got to talking. It’s always awkward for the first few minutes. They’re standing there and she’s trying her best not to stare at the glass sticking out of his head. So they talk for a while and start to hit it off, but the girl has her concerns—to say the least. I mean, it’s not normal to have a hole in one’s head, let alone use it as a drink holder. She starts asking him questions about everything and anything that doesn’t have to do with the fact that there’s a hole in his head. Her friends stand across the room talking in whispers, using sophisticated hand signals, weighing the situation, planning what to say if she actually decides to give it a go. But after a while she breaks down and starts asking him about his head, which she hasn’t stopped staring at the entire time.

“You live alone?� she asks him.

“Yeah,� he says.

“When you go to bed, do you dream about your pillow?� she says.

“What?� he says.

“Your pillow. Do you dream about your pillow? You know, ’cause of the hole,� she says.

“No. Not usually,� he says.

And that was pretty much it. They stood there for a couple of minutes in one of those uncomfortable silences before her friends came to her rescue.

“Come meet Bill,� they said. “He’s absolutely delightful!�

After that he went home. So did the fish. It’s not easy spending your whole life looking for a girl with a hole in her head. We’ll see.

Halfway around the world there is a tiny country where everyone is red. And by that I’m not implying that they’re Communists, I’m referring to their skin. It’s a small island country that’s turned into quite the tourist hot spot in the past few years. But the indigenous people of this island are still rather primitive. Most of the natives that live in the interior of the island still dwell in huts. But that doesn’t stop people from going to the south coast and staying in fancy hotels.

The tourists act crazily, drink too much, and wear as little clothing as possible. They use the heat as an excuse for such behaviour. But the natives in the interior never see the vacationers. They’ve never even seen the hotels on the southern coast. They just live in the jungle with the monkeys and tigers.

I recently read somewhere that, over a considerable number of years, they’ve taught the monkeys to speak. And by speak I am inferring that they carry on conversations and hold debates and such. The article went on to say that, since the monkeys don’t converse in English, it’s not considered to be all that impressive. The fact that a monkey has the ability to lecture other monkeys about the works of Noam Chomsky in a foreign language doesn’t seem all that exciting to anyone. One must wonder why that same principle is not applied to opera.

The monkeys just sit in the trees casually making off-colour comments about the tourists as they walk by. Having never appeared on That’s Incredible they feel altogether unappreciated I’m afraid.

One of the villages in the interior is ruled by a tribal chief named Hubaru. Hubaru has three children, a son and two daughters. The younger of his two girls has never been seen by anyone, save her parents and siblings. She stays in the family hut all day. There are rumours that she was wooed by a monkey and a damaging scandal ensued. Hubaru thought it best to confine her to the hut. This all happened many years ago, of course, so no one can really recall what actually occurred with any accuracy. Unbeknownst to his subjects, Hubaru’s reasons for condemning his daughter were altogether different.

She has a rather large hole in the top of her head. He thinks she is embarrassing so he confines her to the hut. He fights about it with his wife day in and day out.

She spends her time trying to comfort her daughter, vainly attempting to convince herself that her husband isn’t a tyrant. She keeps trying to convince Hubaru to allow his daughter to leave the hut, but Hubaru won’t have any of it. There’s a hole in her head, end of discussion. He has come to believe that she gets the hole from her mother. His wife’s thinking the same thing. The monkeys, by the way, could care less.

In another part of the world a man is getting on an airplane. He’s leaving on holiday. He’s had it. He’s tired of pretty girls using his head as a drink holder. Especially the stupid ones. He’s discussed it with the fish and the fish agree.

He hadn’t really planned on taking a holiday. Out of curiosity, the day before, he had stepped into a travel agent’s to look at holiday brochures. He started flipping through some of them when a travel agent started in on him about how he deserved to have some fun. He wasn’t looking for fun but he let the travel agent talk anyway.

Some people have obvious character flaws. Some are rude, some are hot tempered, some are flakes, some tend to lie. The man also had a character flaw: he was too polite. He’d always been too polite. So by the time the travel agent had finished showing him a multitude of brochures and pictures he started to get a sick feeling in his stomach. He couldn’t just walk out, not after this lady had spent an hour of her time going through everything from hotel choices to rental-car agencies. He wasn’t even sure where it was she had him going. It didn’t matter. Before he knew it his credit card was out and he was paying.

Now he’s on a plane going to some small island in the South Pacific that he’s never heard of. He’s not a rich man, he could barely afford the trip, but it’s too late now. A million things are running through his head at once. Everything from how he’s going to survive for two weeks on $193 spending money to how he’s going to explain missing work for fourteen days without any kind of advance notice. He doubts that he’ll get fired.
He’s the most complacent employee in the world.

It’s just that the whole thing feels foreign to him: doing something which is so clearly not the proper thing to do. The feeling that confuses him the most is the tingling sensation running up and down his body. We know it as excitement. As far as he knows, it’s the flu. He does his best not to think about it. He takes out a book and starts reading. 1 Elevator, Silence, Overweight. The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure… The hours pass. The plane slips through the upper atmosphere as night falls over the Pacific. He falls asleep, tingling. The fish play dream games.

You know it’s not all that strange to have a hole in one’s head. Technically we all have several to speak of. So one more shouldn’t be all that big a deal. But obviously it is. People see it as some mark of questionable humanity. Holes are not found atop the human head, it’s a scientific fact. So it automatically implies difference. Difference is not something anyone takes to all that well. We’re much more excited about familiarity. That’s why the majority of hotel rooms appear to be the same. No matter your level of economics, all hotel rooms look alike. Whether they be penthouses or singles, suites or a tiny little bed in an impossibly small room. They’re all the same. Maybe, had we been differently devised, we would have made sure that they were not alike. But too long have we favoured familiarity to do anything about it now. And so they will all remain the same. As will holes atop the head remain anomalous. Even more so if they happen to be the only outlet from which to feed goldfish.

Nevertheless, our friend did his best to conquer his fear of the unknown before arriving at Narita. He would have to change planes there. He did this with surprising accuracy, considering that he had never been in a major airport before. But he found himself over three hours early for his connecting flight, leaving him with little choice but to make his way to the nearest lounge. Once there, he ordered a drink. It cost him a million dollars. Japan is like that. Everything costs a million dollars.

From Japan he would travel south into the wide expanse of the South Seas. Waters in which many Japanese and American sailors and airmen are buried. Waters that are deeper than any other on earth, containing dangers aplenty. Waters that have even been kissed by atomics, thanks to the French. Leave it to the French to make certain that parts of the South Pacific will glow for the next 200 years. Not that they’re alone, mind you, but they’re French and that’s good enough. So south he went, hurled through the air at outrageous speeds towards the mysterious and alluring bosom of paradise. Hopefully, Tattoo would be sober enough to greet him. This was the wish of the fish.

Some hours later, following the always chancy in-flight service of any major airline, the plane landed and he promptly made his way to the hotel. To his surprise the lady at the travel agency had misled him. He remembered being shown pictures of a lavish hotel, the kind that has four pools, two bars, and 24-hour room service. Such hotels did exist on the island, mind you. In fact, from his room he could see most of them across the harbour. There they were, all in a row. He just wasn’t staying in one.

He was staying on the north shore of the harbour in a hotel called the Sea Breeze. It was nice enough, he figured, as he wasn’t one to complain. Nor did he attempt to call the travel agent and demand an explanation. To him it seemed pointless. The fish, who rarely bothered to look out through his eyes, did not care about such things. They were quite upset that Tattoo had not been present when they had deplaned. Fantasy Island was their favourite television program. And when it got cancelled, they agreed never to look through his eyes again.

He was officially on holiday. This of course meant that, after unpacking his clothes and whatnot, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. So he spent the better part of the afternoon looking out across the harbour at the hotels and the water. It didn’t occur to him to go outside. He was content with just being somewhere that offered him a view such as that. Sometimes loneliness has its charm—it being secretive and quite impossible to predict. Most of the time it lacks charm simply because no one else is ever there to bear witness. This is the unsullied beauty of a such a singular and private moment.

Later that night he went to dinner, after which he returned to his room and organized his toiletries in the bathroom. If anything he was orderly. It’s a condition of loneliness. It drives you to constantly clean things and make sure that they’re in the proper place. He placed his things in their proper places and proceeded to clean the sink. It wasn’t until he accidentally hit the light switch with his elbow that he saw the moon reflected in the bathroom mirror.

Captivated by its light, he left the sink and wandered over to the window. And that’s how he spent his evening. Some hours later his eyes grew heavy and he decided to turn in. Having been completely dazzled by the prospect of such an immense body of water, the fish talked excitedly into the night. The man dreamed of the ocean, like a sailor lost to his love.

Many miles to the north of the Sea Breeze Hotel a young, red woman was making her way through the jungle. She was, to the embarrassment of her ancestors, completely lost. In her defense she had spent most of her life confined to a hut, so she could not be counted on to uphold centuries of miraculous woodland navigation.

She had been planning this night for almost four months. She had water, food, a spear, and what she thought was a pretty good idea of which direction the coast lay. This last factor was, of course, the weak link in her plan. And, after hours of tromping through the bushes, she found herself right back where she had started. But this only heightened her resolve. She set out again, deciding to rely on the worst possible thing that one could ever rely on, talking monkeys.

Sometimes talking monkeys can come in handy. Always ones to gossip incessantly, their chatter could be heard in the surrounding trees. Two such monkeys, Albert and Cosmo, made a habit of taking some shade under a tree quite near to the hut of the chief. The girl would sit there for hours and listen to Albert and Cosmo talk. Most of the time they babbled on about monkey business. But some of the time they would talk about a magical place far to the south where the trees were made of diamonds and no one ever died. They did this on purpose, of course.

Talking monkeys are smart, much smarter than most believe them to be. Both Albert and Cosmo knew that the girl was listening to them, because she would laugh at their silly jokes on occasion. Instead of bad-mouthing the tourists, as they commonly did twenty hours of each day, they decided to breathe a little life into the girl’s imagination.

As the girl ventured back into the jungle she came across several monkeys sitting under a tree. They were drinking vodka martinis and wearing smoking jackets. None of them noticed her approaching, for they were all half-cut and in a bit of a verbal tizzy about the Euro. Of course the girl had no idea what Euro were, but they sounded important enough. She thought it best to ask the monkeys for some directions, as they seemed rather intelligent. This was her undoing. The monkeys didn’t notice her until she was almost upon them. But, because they were talking monkeys, they didn’t respond to being startled like the average monkey would. They did not make for the nearest tree to seek refuge in its heights. They just casually turned their heads in a drunken wave of imbalance, as one of them stood up, pointed a finger, and said with the utmost inebriation, “Who goes there?�

For the next five minutes the girl just stood watching them while the monkeys rolled around on the ground in hysterics. Martini glasses were crushed, smoking jackets sullied, lungs heaved in an attempt to maximize the vocalization of hilarity. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The monkeys sat up, attempted to straighten themselves, and turned to the girl. The monkey that had initiated the laughter spoke first.
“What, may I ask, are you doing wandering the wilds at this hour child?�

The girl, having never spoken with a monkey before, decided to skip the pleasantries and get straight to the point.

“I’m looking for the land of diamond trees,� she said.

She thought he was rude, to say the least.

“I see. Well, you might try going that way,� and pointed off into the darkness with a long finger.

She followed the finger. And the monkeys went on to a new topic, the possible sale of arms to Taiwan.

As morning broke the girl was still wandering the jungle. Having stopped to ask several other monkeys for assistance, she had been sent off in a variety of directions. She was exhausted. She found a clearing and decided to get some sleep.

The man woke up in his hotel room. He washed, ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and returned to his room. As he was sitting there gazing out at the bay, he noticed a car-rental agency brochure on a nearby table. He picked it up. And that’s all it took. A 1976 Honda Civic was at the front door of the hotel in less than twenty minutes. Because it was a rather cheap rental agency, he could actually afford it. He spent the better part of that day driving around the south coast. He drove past nice hotels and white sand beaches filled with sunbathers. He drove past a variety of tropical gardens and golf courses. And then, as if it were any surprise, he decided to go back to the hotel.

The girl awoke to the sound of two voices. Opening her eyes, she immediately realized that the voices were those of monkeys. They seemed to be discussing whether or not she was dead. One thought she was, the other did not. Just as the girl opened her eyes, the two monkeys were debating whether or not to poke her with a stick in an attempt to ascertain her condition. The girl, fearing what might happen, thought it best to get to her feet. Their reaction to this was split.

One yelled “Ha! I told you so!� and the other yelled “shit.�

The girl yelled “Shut up,� and so they did. But her attempt to get accurate directions from them was just as pointless as it had been from the other monkeys. They sent her northwest instead of south, figuring she might wander into Abunta territory and be eaten.

The Abunta were the last remaining cannibals. Although few in number, they held a section of the jungle along the northwest coast of the island, some distance from the girl’s own village.
She headed off, leaving the two monkeys arguing. Having walked for the better part of the evening towards certain death and digestion, the girl once again made the mistake of stopping to ask for directions. Only this time the monkey that she encountered wasn’t interested in playing games with her.

He simply said, “You see that big star up there?� pointing skyward. “Walk towards it.�

The girl thanked the monkey and went on her way. The monkey shook his head and muttered to himself. The star in question was known as the Big Nunga Nunga. No one knows why it was named that, but that’s what they’ve called it for centuries. The Nunga, which is its shortened name, is the largest star in the night sky. The ancients believed that if you were to get in a boat and sail towards the Nunga then you would burst into flames and be destroyed for being stupid enough to travel that far out to sea.

The islanders never sailed south in fear of its wrath. Of course, the girl was relatively safe because she was on land. Or so you would think.
In the tropics there is nothing more enrapturing than the moon. But the man, and the fish, were both captivated by the light that it cast on the water below. How it made the sea seem mysterious and altogether alluring. Under this spell the man decided to go for a drive, which was very much out of character for him. This was very much against himself. Then again, so was going on a vacation with absolutely no preparation or planning. Nevertheless, he walked out to his rented Honda Civic, got in, and hit the highway. The drive across the southern coast was quite beautiful according to the brochure, perhaps even more so with the moon in play.

Four miles down the road there was a blind corner. In his newfound state of unfamiliar excitement the man sped towards this corner free of concern. Some distance to the north of that curve, a girl was angrily tromping through the jungle, convinced that the Land Of Diamond Trees was an elaborate lie. I would love to tell you that the man and the girl did not arrive at that corner at the same time. Life is mostly cruel, you see. She didn’t feel anything. Neither of them did.

The explosion was seen across the bay by hundreds of people sitting out on their lavish hotel balconies. Some even thought it was some kind of traditional island-fire-ceremony-thing. Americans, most likely. Eventually a Dutch couple had the common sense to pick up the phone and tell someone.

As an aside, fire ceremonies had been banned in the 1920s after half of the island was consumed by flames. Strangely enough, the fire was caused by a village idiot who wandered into the jungle with a torch and fell asleep. You see, the crazy bastard actually thought he could teach monkeys how to speak.

Emergency crews were alerted and those with a taste for the macabre decided to go have a look. After hitting the girl, the man lost control of the car and went straight off the road’s shoulder. Having burst through a flimsy wooden guard rail, the Civic plummeted several hundred feet to the rocks below. It sat there, crushed upside down into the rocks, and exploded. The man’s body was blown out of the wreck into the sea. The ocean water flooded through the hole in our friend’s head. Miraculously the fish survived the accident, and though elated that their captor had the decency to perish in such a grand body of water, they were nonetheless killed by its salty contents.

The girl, on the other hand, was discovered by a monkey in the bushes on the side of the road. Left with little choice, as he was a decent sort of fellow, he did the only thing he could do. He walked out of the bushes and over to a group of bystanders. He then stopped, cleared his throat, and said:

“Excuse me, but there happens to be a young woman over there in the bushes and I believe her to be quite dead.�

All of that, by the way, in perfect English. This phenomenal event in human history was, of course, never reported simply because the people that the monkey chose to address were members of a Korean tour group. All of whom cared only to speak Korean.

For a fleeting moment in time the only two people on earth with holes in their heads found each other. They just got the timing wrong is all.

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