Benjamin Tomes

My twisted path began with a baptism into weirdness and only became more ironic and bizarre with time. A study in contrasts, my roots run deep into small town dysfunction but branched out and blossomed in poverty stricken urban chaos.

The oldest of three, I was born in 1972 to nomadic parents in Milwaukee. My father was an educator. He smoked Middleton Cherry cigars and was the son of the inventor of the modern lie detector test. My mother was a plant murdering housewife who issued religious damnations with frequency, and was the youngest daughter of a bowling magnate. I was raised a Quaker. My youth resonated with a pastoral tranquility. My sister threw phones and steel tipped darts. She was twice institutionalized, but to no avail. My brother quit speaking as a child and communicated through shrugs, grunts and nods. I became an extrovert with societal disconnect. I stole circus buses, burrowed ceiling tunnels at school, and violated McIntosh apples in unspeakable ways. I celebrated failure, gleefully unaware of the undiagnosed impulse control disorder I unwittingly acquiesced to.

After the completion of my compulsory education, I drove my 1964 Fairlane to college but quickly returned to pursue a career in ice making. When that melted I took up civilian work building minesweepers for the Navy. When that blew up I took up late night floor cleaning. Bedraggled and disenchanted with the deceiving allure of failure I rekindled my studies with sights set on teaching disabled children; clearly a natural progression.

While in pursuit of my undergraduate degree, I altercated for sport. Despite this fashionable outlet I adapted to college with an awkward gait. I wore toy fireman's helmets and became fascinated with the Schaefer Brewery. I tackled the signs of fast food restaurants, befriended a local prowler, and took part in American tackle football as the result intoxicated boasting. I was given a radio show but was forcibly removed while on air. For a time, I was sent to Kazakhstan and the former Soviet Union, but returned. I lived in the basement of a disheveled shanty where I hosted large parties, sometimes employing burlesque ideology. This practice led me to fall under the spell of a Madisonian defector in nurse's garb. We ultimately synthesized and moved into a Provincial Tudor and purchased a bulldog hybrid from an emaciated drug house and named it Schaefer.

Following my Bohemian collegiate experience, I furthered the natural progression of my alabaster life and became an urban educator in the city of my birth. I developed a sharp oblivion to my surroundings, and learned I related better to the downtrodden chaos of urban decay than the Quakerian tapestry I was woven into. I thrived in my new found borough, concocting intoxicating games such as "Invalidate the Rodent" and "Kick the Black Kid". The latter became obsolete after my pupils astutely countered with their own variation entitled "Kick the White Man", which I lost in epic fashion.

Our family rapidly expanded in figurative and literal terms. A 16 year old Nubian child was born to us and certificated on a piece of spiral bound notebook paper. It was followed by an alphabetical gamut of offspring. My career was executed with a piper's flair as I achieved the impossible with widespread promulgation. Celebrated in television and print media, word of my successes in the most unlikely of places traveled across the countryside like wildfire. The departure from failure that I initiated and positive publicity sat poorly with the powers that be as well as the roots of my tree, and my precedent setting work was repudiated; as was I.

Disenfranchised in Milwaukee, I hitchhiked to South Florida where I danced in hurricanes and mocked them with aplomb. I took up falconry, and became quite good until developing an allergy to feathers. In my down time, I trained cage fighters. Having left work with predatory birds I took to carnivorous big game cats and mastered them as well. While my
career radiated like the Florida sunshine, a large cloud began to form overhead. I became the nemesis of a pilfering Palm Beach Socialite. The aging millionaire hipster was no match for my scrambled resistance. He was branded a felon and excommunicated from his trade. His thievery however, left us in a mild state of ruin.

The run of misfortune was not over. My rambunctious tendencies were stifled after severing the symmetry of my lumbar spine while carrying a bed up a flight of steps. This put an effective end to my altercating for sport, and inspired me instead to contemplate the conventionality of my existence and need for change. With a spinal column that was rendered as a functional equal to our economic viability, we returned to our home state as financial refugees.

I now reside in Wisconsin, where I celebrate my escape from Fort Windstar after serving out an eight year sentence in its wheeled confines. With the wild ways of my past now impaled by a large metal bolt, I live as a model of malcontented domesticity. I spend most of my time stalking Amish families and caring for my two young children. To pass the time on a daily basis, I utilize a panel of their plush toys for heated round table discussions on how best to solicit a human vehicle who can procure paper publication of my most interesting tales.

Website: http://www.benjamintomes.com
Twitter: @coachtomes
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