This is an excerpt from N. A. Kay’s newly published illustrated novel Chicken Butt; The Story of a Man, illustrated by Daniel Meisels.
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Through the Chicken Brain
He was not a man, rather a chicken – the biggest chicken the world has ever spawned. Chicken Butt weighed one hundred and forty pounds and stood at six feet, making him the largest chicken that ever lived. He stood on gargantuan chicken legs which devolved into his chicken buttocks – the largest chicken-butt in recorded history – hence the name his parents gave him. The rest of his body seemed like that of a normal human, and, because of the fact, Chicken Butt was able to roam the streets as a regular man.
This peculiarity was his only quality worth mentioning, and, in most parts of the world, it’s a feeble one at best. The interesting thing about this colossal chicken was that he also had a very large ego – even greater than most humans. This chicken had a name for himself; C. B. – not that he knew what an acronym was. He was a fairly bright chicken, but he was a chicken all the same, and this led him into some seriously troublesome situations. C. B. thought he was smart enough to go to university. He wasn’t, but his ego wouldn’t let him believe otherwise. He luckily won the biennual Pathetic Achievement Scholarship Award and received admissions into a small local university.
He squeezed by and received a degree in psychology. He thought to know one’s mind was to know all. It was one of the few clever thoughts Chicken Butt ever had. But an undergraduate degree in psychology is relatively useless, and so C. B. began applying to universities in the hope of earning his masters. At first it seemed like he’d never get into one; his grade point average was too low to compete with the other applicants. His mammoth-like ego invented an explanation; that standardized testing didn’t test C. B.’s intelligence or calculate the knowledge he had obtained from classes. C. B. believed every word of it. He soaked it up and spit it out spitefully at every chance he was given. Then luck stepped in and he was accepted into a program in S_ University. He assumed his acceptance was due to his notoriously brilliant mind. The real reason he received admission was due to a shortage of application submissions to the school that year. He packed up his belongings and was soon settling into his appointed dorm room. He was not assigned a roommate because the university had ample space that year. He assumed he was given his own room owing to his aptitude and singularity.
When C. B. arrived at S_ University, instead of listening to the lectures, he spent most of class time daydreaming. His fondest daydreams always surrounded his greatness. At some points in C. B.’s days, his illusions of grandeur were so absolute that he would picture himself as a professor – not a student. He would craft lectures in his head – some of them quite dizzying. He was particularly fond of his imaginary lectures on creativity; he frequently rehearsed them in his mind.
At times he would even fantasize to such an extent as to envision how he would walk into his classroom and start his lecture. He would wear a pair of charcoal suit pants, a blue pinpoint oxford shirt, a coffee tweed jacket, argyle socks, and a pair of auburn penny loafers. He would walk in languorously, swaggering a bit, sit down, cross his legs, lean back nonchalantly, place his hands gingerly in his lap and begin:
By now you have heard many professors tell you, at least according to Marx and others like him, how we are all part of a system, how that system defines us, how there is no escape from the system and no hope of overthrowing the system. Then they reinforce that system by being an integral part of it. Well, let me tell you something, I may be stuck in this horrible system, but I’ll continuously put my neck on the line for you, all to make sure you actually learn something while you’re here.
Now, I have to give you grades, but I will try to judge you fairly. And another thing, I try to keep in mind that your grades reflect me as a teacher. I remember when I was a student, I used to hate hearing all those beautiful anarchistic thoughts tumble over each other, compiling up to the ceiling. But they were thrown by the wayside so fast it made my head spin a double.
Now, this class is a creativity class, and, when designing this course, the first question I asked myself was how I was going to be able to quantify creativity.
I thought long and hard about it, and the understanding I have come to has shaped the course. Creativity is defined in general terms as: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas. What I’ve decided is that we will all define what we are trying to portray, and the closer our inspired creation is with it, the higher the mark you will receive.
Well, what are you waiting for? Pick up that pen of yours and start writing.
He could go on like this for hours. He would be in class himself, but his mind would slip from his studies and on to bigger and brighter thoughts. It’s not that he was stupid; he just couldn’t really comprehend the more complex and abstract ideas. At a certain point, his chicken instincts struck up a chord within him and he would find himself out of class clucking and pecking sesame seeds from the floor. He couldn’t help it of course, but it still made him feel quite foolish. He was never quite able to digest the material his brain tried to eat. It would sit in his brain-stomach for a year or so when his brain-disposal system would crap it out – whole, as if he had never swallowed it with his brain-throat in the first place.
Chicken Butt tried to remember his childhood, but his ego had gotten rid of the recollections long ago. To make an egotistical jackass out of a man who is in fact a gigantic chicken is just way too hard with such memories always lurking about. When C. B. tried to remember his youth, his brain drew a complete blank; in all honesty, he may have been better off. His infancy had been rough; his parents were cruel, and his owner was even crueller. The first couple months of his existence were spent being dragged all across town as a freak show. After the novelty wore off, everyone wanted to buy him, slaughter him, roast him and then eat him. At some point, C. B. escaped the coop. He was quite large, and with his size came some strength. Till this day C. B. still cannot remember ploughing through one of the wooden walls of the chicken coop. It’s ironic; it really was something to be proud of and was one of the least chicken-like things he had ever done in his life. From there, C. B.’s story gets a bit foggy; he fell off the map for a time.
He resurfaced six years later living with a family of immigrants from Europe. Chicken Butt fit right in; he had the blonde hair and blue eyes camouflaging him into their family. If you asked them about C. B. they would say:
C. B.? Who is C. B.? Who, that tall lanky chicken-butt? Ha. He isn’t our son; he was just so helpless we decided to raise him – like a household pet or something. You must understand; we couldn’t afford a dog.
And if you told the European family that C. B. claimed to be human, this is what they would have said:
Ha. Just look at that chicken-butt! It’s got to be the flattest buttocks ever. It couldn’t be a human butt. And those legs! They are chicken legs I tell you. Ha. Ha. Ha. People are so gullible.
Well, there you have it; they knew he was a chicken and found it hilarious that others believed him to be otherwise.
So, what else is there to know about this pitiable character? Well, not much. Actually, there is plenty, but unfortunately only further evidence of the defective nature of C. B.
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Glossy News has been granted permission to publish a total of four excerpts each Saturday for a month. Check N. A. Kay’s archive page to see everything published so far.