Ragnarok, I shall never forget you. Every time I walk by that Amish avacado lady at the farmer's market I'm nearly brought to my knees in tears thinking about you.
Back during that slap bracelet fad in the Delaware Valley / Tristate Area in the Early 1990's it was me and you. We were hot shit. "JOE & RAGNAROK THE HOTPANTSMONKEY ® " was on the front page of the Trentonian for god knows how long. The press, kids, adults, your mom, they were all held fast and tight like a twenty dollar bill at a strip bar...in utter disbelief. "What are they gonna do next??!", "Such superhuman...nay supernatural feats of agility!", "I wanna' be a Rhesuss Monkey when I grow up too!"; that's what they all would say. We were gods among mortals for a good nine months.
When you donned those hot pants you transcended your tiny simian composure and became a true monkey man. Each show would progress along the same sequence. I'd dare one of the local hombres to be a real man and try on some hotpants. There'd allways be one sucker. He'd slip on the pants and look out to the crowd with a smile as they cheered him on. Their cheers soon turned to screams of terror as the unknowing young basher fell to his knees seconds later, his body no longer able to endure the horrendous testicular pressure. His mother would have to come to the stage and help him up as she screamed curses at me in that inconcievable Roma language.
But that's where you came in. You were the star of the show...you were the show. You'd walk out there on your hands like monkies do and nonchalantly pick up the trousers and put them on. The transformation was almost immediate. Standing up straight as an arrow and hands out stretched at both sides, the crowd focused their attention on you in your neon green hotpants. You did three back flips in a row, danced The Charleston, and the crowd begged for more. You ran around shreaking and flailing your tiny hairy arms, gnashing your monkey teeth and spitting, and they loved it. You finished it up by hurling some of your own feces at some of the senior citizens sitting in the first row and masturbating into a dixie cup. We'd get standing ovations every goddamn time. They threw us money, panties, somtimes avacados (you loved avacados the best). Not once did those damned infernal pants cripple your simian strength or human antics. But things would change. We were on top of the world, and the only place to go was down.
I knew somthing was wrong after that show at the VFW in Ewing. Somthing wasn't right. After I finished snorting my last line of coke off of some Filipino hooker's ass, I saw you standing in a corner staring off into outerspace, still wearing your hotpants. It was too late, your mind was already tapioca pudding by the time we rushed to the vet clinic. It was those dagblasted hotpants, you weren't supposed to wear them for so long! Most mortal men would have burst into flames after such a long exposure to the pants, but you are no man, you are a monkey. You submereged your will and endured the pain, your body survived the trauma, but your poor little monkey mind was destroyed in the process. But I refused to let my friend, my blood brother die on that vet's table. You made it through the night, but in the morning you were a mobile vegetable, a zombie
So I did what any good man would do for a loved one, we setup a good space in the Florida Everglades Home for Invalid Monkies. And as I walked out of your comfortable, well padded and electronically monitored room, into the jizzum-sticky Florida Everglades summer afternoon, I looked back at you over my shoulder. There you were smearing your own feces on your face and quietly 'ook-ooking' to yourself. So there he was, reveling in his own feces and he was happy. I'll never forget that day, as I climbed back into my Kane is Able! fleet truck and motored away on that loney back-water rural route. Your old gold plated slap braclet was shimmering in the late afternoon sunset, I shed one final tear. Ragnarok the hotpantsmonkey ® , I salute you.
Joe now resides in the Philippines with his wife Mona and their 11 kids.
Ragnarok escaped in a freak security breach in 1998 at the FEHIM compound and was found wandering somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. Whereabouts of the hotpants are still unknown. | 
