el duce owns me
After spending my whole life thinking slavery was a thing of the past, I find out El Duce owns me.
You can imagine my alarm. The notice I received from one of his agents included no legal details, only an authoritative assertion of his possession of me, leaving me with a host of worrisome questions. How long has he owned me? Will this affect the rest of my life? Is there a process by which I can secure ownership of myself, and if so, what does it entail?
In light of El Duce’s title over me, I’d better brace myself for some changes. Before the Civil War, people owned as human chattel were split apart from their families and forced to do manual labor. I hope El Duce is more humane than that – I’d hate to see my university degrees wasted, and to be separated from the wife of my dreams.
Then again, El Duce may have owned me all my life without my knowledge, I suppose through some kind of long-standing lien. If that’s true, he’s been an exemplary owner: hands-off, invisible, allowing me complete freedom. As far as I can tell he doesn’t expect anything from me – no garnishment of my wages, no demands on my time. If I hadn’t been informed I belonged to someone else, I’d’ve never guessed!
That makes me a bit nervous, though. Perhaps El Duce is siphoning something from my life that I don’t realize I’m missing – freedoms or resources enjoyed by other people who own themselves, but that I’ve never known. And I hate to be critical, but I have to question El Duce’s sense of responsibility. I take care of the things I own – changing the oil in my Civic, fixing plumbing problems in my house, fertilizing and pruning my plants. What attention do I receive from El Duce? Where was he when I was cash-strapped in ‘95, or going through an emotional roller coaster in ‘91? He hasn’t even cared to know about me, unless it’s through undercover observation. Maybe he’s at least run a credit report on me, or Googled me.
It could be silly, but I feel that if El Duce owns me, I have a right to know him – it would help me anticipate any changes he might make in my life. Unfortunately, the notice I received contained no contact information.
So I turned to the internet. I was a bit concerned about what I might learn – I had a lurking suspicion that “El Duce” might be a Spanish euphemism for the devil. Did El Duce own my soul? At some point in life did I make a deal with the devil that I subsequently forgot? (Maybe during that Anthropology final exam – is that how I got an A without doing all the readings?) A bit of websurfing, however, proved otherwise.
I would not suggest following my Google trail, because it’s a nasty ride. Buried on the second and third pages of search results, a few links reveal that Benito Mussolini, Italy’s World War II fascist leader, was the original “Il Duce,” but evidently he’s not the same as “El Duce.” And let me say ahead of time that, as far as owners go, I’d prefer Mussolini.
Heck, I’d almost prefer the devil.
Described by one of his fan websites as a “first degree beer gut,” El Duce is the pioneer of a genre of music quaintly known as “rape rock.” His group, the Mentors, wears black Ku Klux Klan-style hoods when they perform (an apparent nod to Mussolini’s “black shirt” battalion); their most popular album is Perverts on Parade. On one website, above the caption “Duce with an unidentified slut,” a photo splays across the screen his fat bald head, bulldog face, handlebar mustache, beer-glazed eyes, and celebrated gut. He is widely listed as the creator of the “patented pervert stare” …
… and for the sake of decency, I’ll withhold the rest of what I learned about him.
Suffice to say, it suddenly makes sense why El Duce’s agent contacted me via his chosen method: scribbling above a urinal at work (click for facsimile). It’s the perfect medium for a message from a pigheaded scumbag.
Somehow he found out enough about me to target the urinal I always use, so that I receive regular reminders of the fact that I am owned. It’s a bit vexing. In the middle of every hectic day I rush for a quick rest stop between classes, assume my stance, look up, and boom: “El Duce owns you.”
I did glean a bit of relief, however, from the internet: back in 1997, El Duce “went on to that great outhouse in the sky,” as one website put it – he died drunk, hit by a train. (Donations in his memory can still be sent to the Salvation Army.) But I’m not positive this lets me off the hook. The message in the restroom appeared only recently, several years after El Duce’s death. Perhaps his ownership of me is entailed in his estate, or tied up in some patented pervert conglomerate. That would be just like a corporation, wouldn’t it? – perpetuating perversions that outlive their originators.
The perversions of this “rape rocker” certainly live on, easily outgoogling those of Mussolini. Something about his putrescence reminds me of a character in The Green Mile: William “Billy the Kid” Wharton, a death row convict whose on-screen time is spent drooling, crying, peeing, vomiting, hocking loogies and spewing out chewed-up moon pies. A textbook anal expulsive personality, Wharton’s body fluids are everywhere except inside him. “Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?” the Bible asks. “Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers” (Proverbs 5). Of course this passage is not meant literally – it’s a metaphor for sexuality. But then, Wharton’s excretions are also a metaphor: through the film we learn that he has raped and murdered two young girls, expelling another body fluid where it’s not wanted.
The heinous crimes that vomit forth from Wharton’s mind smell all too much like the moral pus oozing through El Duce’s music, infecting the hearts of those who love his propensity for letting it all out – all the smut, all the filth, every consumptive dehumanizing twitch he ever felt. Go into the restroom and take a big whiff. That stench of urine and feces is a reminder of El Duce’s enduring legacy.
I’m actually starting to wonder if that restroom message wasn’t intended for me after all. It may not have been intended for anyone.
More likely, “El Duce owns you” was blazoned by someone who swallows whole the moral flatulence El Duce left behind. It’s a mental form of anal expulsion – the subconscious, self-reflective scribbling of a brain that serves as an anus, collecting refuse in order to direct it outward.
And as a dog returns to its own vomit, whenever that person returns to the restroom – perhaps humming El Duce’s “Slave to Thy Master” – he looks with mischievous pride at the dirty, disgusting enslavement of his own mind, reflected back at him from the urinal wall.
El Duce does own somebody. Thank God it’s not me.
