Nurse the Hate: The Elephant

 

We pulled into Rumba Café in Columbus, a part of town that has now transformed into a near parody of hipster chic.  Like most of the ring surrounding the ever expanding Ohio State footprint, it is a part of town that represents a great opportunity to get a “free range organic hemp fixed gear bike” or take a “botanical thrift store double IPA yoga class”.  Set up in the alley behind the club were a series of homemade open tents where groovy versions of 2021 hippies were selling their homemade crafts, or as most people would refer to it as “garbage”.  If you needed a dream catcher, purse made from discarded jeans, or third rate water color painting, this was the spot for you.  It was a group of well intentioned people that have smoked so much weed, they have lost some key threads of the plot.  I might be too critical.  Is there a major difference between a shirtless guy with a long beard and straw hat selling a tie dyed cloth and me selling TV spots?  Not really I guess, except he’s really high.

As soon as we pulled up Sugar exclaimed “It’s a Renaissance Faire!”.  This was an easy mistake to make as there were certainly quite a few girls in peasant dresses and even a guy in what I suppose could be called “a frock”.  There were no turkey legs to eat or pints of mead however.  Just some tents set up in the dirt by the garbage dumpsters, but it was close enough I guess.  This is when I know for sure that Sugar was going to buy something before leaving the area.   She is a sucker for homespun crafts and DIY commerce.  I also knew that Leo would be buying something as well due to his long commerce history of making all major purchase decisions to wherever his path took him.  After an afternoon of a couple beers, a couple edibles and generous hits off his trusty glass pipe one-hitter, he was a prime customer for The Unlimited Temptations Of The Renaissance Faire.     

I wandered off to write the set list and attempt to find a beer that wasn’t an IPA, Double IPA, or Imperial IPA.  I am not sure when craft beer became just another way of saying “IPA”, but that happened.  I was recently staring at a wall of 200 craft beers at a grocery store looking for a pilsner, and discovered my choices were between 194 IPA variations, 4 sours and 2 wheat beers.  I wound up getting a 20 oz can of Heineken, not my ideal choice.  That was when Leo walked into the club to ask me for the van keys, beaming at his find at The Renaissance Faire.  “Dude!  Check it out!  It’s cooool!” 

In his hands was an elephant head bust made of what looked like Raggity Ann costume remnants.  An uneven patchwork of fabric scraps covered what I think was a paper mache sculpture of the elephant, but the fabric had a shabby feel to it, like it might have been left out in the rain once and dried out on a car dashboard in the sun.  “Isn’t it awesome?”.  The blank glass eyes of the elephant head stared at me.  It was decidedly not “awesome”.     

It’s important to note that in the van only an hour earlier we had a discussion where Leo excitedly told us that he recently discovered that his “spirit animal” was an elephant.  He had recently purchased a painting of an elephant for his home and even commissioned an artist (someone that crossed his path I believe) to create an elephant painting.  Now if you’re like me, you might wonder how Leo came to learn that not only that he had a spirit animal but that this animal was an elephant, an animal I had never recalled hearing him mention at any time in the 30 years we have known each other.  Yet here he was, aggressively decorating his home in elephants as tribute to this door of perception being opened for him.  “I found out from a quiz Anne gave me from the internet.” 

As a man that is active in the creation of time wasting click bait digital content, I have my doubts on the accuracy of Leo’s claim of the elephant of being his “spirit animal”.  The internet is not always a gateway to truth.  I do think his enthusiasm for this information is 100% real however, and why steal a man’s belief system if it gives him this much joy?  “Yeah this guy owes me $100 in free tattoo work because of some work I did for him so I was thinking what would be cool if I did that multi armed elephant… Ganesh… but I would put my head on it instead of Ganesh’s!  Wouldn’t that be awesome?”.

I have my suspicions that if any of 1.2 billion Hindus on the planet saw Ganesh defaced with having his head chopped off and Leo’s put on it, there might be some hard feelings.  That being said, I am very interested in seeing how this tattoo might come off.  Would it be Leo’s face on a multi armed body sitting lotus style?  Or would it be Leo’s face with an elephant trunk?  I’m not going to interfere and just let this thing come together organically.  I just wanted to let you all know, if you see some blasphemous Ganesh tattoo on Leo, that’s what the hell happened.