El Estupido

A cowboy lives in the deserts of South Argentina, riding a donkey to a horse someone promised him but will never deliver.  El Estupido, riding all the way.  Through thirst and snow and rain, he rides all day, day after day after day.

El Estupido- his mother cares so much: “Why doesn’t he come home?”

El Estupido, riding through the desert, his donkey’s legs like rubber, step, step, step, sweating, groaning, tears from its donkey eyes flowing.  “Onward!” El Estupido’s eyes  are steely, determined.  “I will get what is promised to me!”

“I prove myself on this journey and will deserve my promised horse.  Through thirst and snow and rain, my courage builds.” El Estupido, his bravery has no mind.

This is how his story began, this team of man and donkey:

For one, El Estupido is so estupido that he never claimed his prize horse after it was offered out of pity for his estupido-ness.  His benefactor had it waiting for him on her ranch.  All the while, he savored the thought of his horse beneath his thighs, as it lived waiting for him, growing old, itself, in wait for its new master.

The benefactor fed it every day the hay that it loved, and rode it occasionally so it wouldn’t forget what it’s like, crying out impatiently, “El Estupido is so estupido!  Why doesn’t he come!”  El Estupido dreamed all day and all night of his promised horse.  When someone asked, he told them he will claim it- next week!  But next week comes and goes as does the life of his promised horse.  The bees are hungry- and the grass will not mow itself. Also, the trees are speaking dithyrambs and I can not miss a single word of yet.

“Dithyrambs,” you say.  The trees are speaking dithyrambs, I tell you- and El Estupido should not miss a word.  This is the one thing he got right- however, he was a poor listener, as they were telling him to retrieve the horse he had been promised and stamp its feet on the forest floor.

And the chickens and bees all cry and buzz, because El Estupido begins to affect the mean of a dilettante.  And the horse in his stable, far away, stood up on four straight legs, wasting it’s days of strength and speed, defeated by inaction, in a sphere of love, but unrealized.

“Haha!” El Estupido admitted, finally, twelve years after the horse was promised. Something in his mind gave forth.  “How would I even get there? It’s too far.”  His voice, when he said this, was so dry that the earth did not see rain for over a year, after.

However, his faithful donkey approached him, and bent it’s knee at El Estupido’s feet.  Instantly, El Estupido’s balls blew up like a balloon, and he felt, all of a sudden, like going for it. Thus, their journey began, El Estupido and his donkey, who cried out every day, day after day after day, riding through the merciless desert, step, step, step, as his tender hooves gently crushed the sand.

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Onward he goes through towns and villages to meet his promised reward.  He knows no pain; the saddle does not crush his testicles as they would a normal man.  They lift him up as on a balloon.  He rides balanced on his balloon balls on the back of the donkey who bays, cries, groans each step below him, through the sand hills of Southern Argentinian desert.

“Donkey, why do you continue to serve El Estupido in this way?” you ask.  “All the world cringes to feel your pain!”  The donkey turns his face to you:

“Me encanta.”  And he returns his face to his merciless, excruciating labor, step, step, his hooves groaning atop the Earth.

El Estupido, riding through the desert on his exhausted donkey, who cries each time his hooves press into the sand.  El Estupido is so estupido that he once met a man who frightened him by the claim that he had stolen Estupido’s penis and replaced it with his own.  El Estupido lay in fright for nights without end, aspiring for his penis to return.  “His is large, for sure,” he cried, “but full of evil!”

The donkey cries, only a small moan when he can’t stand the pain.  “Stupid donkey!  Do you not know, my promised horse is still 170 miles yonder, and you have only ridden me 12?”  He scoffs, “I know better than you, how to ride a donkey! So do as I say!”

And the donkey’s heart surges forward, El Estupido riding high upon him, “Me encanta,” says the donkey, as his tender hooves gently crush the sand.  “M-e enca-a-nt-a-a.”

El Estupido, riding all the way, through thirst and heat of day, the desert glowing hot beneath his pitiful donkey’s tender hooves!  The donkey turns his face to you, the reader, tears streaming down his donkey face, opens his mouth as if to speak an existential word, but all his air is choked in his lungs and he can only bay, “M-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!”  M-e-e-e-e-e!”  His head returns to the dust, he pushes his legs onward with his merciless will.

Slowly, the heat shines from the sun upon the two, but a gentle breeze cools their faces.  El Estupido and his faithful donkey feel their aches and pains depart as on angel’s wings.  Suddenly, they ride and feel at one.    El Estupido strokes the donkey’s main.  It feels good.  He wants to hug the donkey and thank him, but it makes his balloon balls shrink to even think about that, and the results of such a deflation occur to El Estupido as catastrophic.   The donkey turns his face back upward to El Estupido as though ready to receive his love at last, but El Estupido’s face, by now, is like a stone grin chiseled by inferior artisans.  The donkey’s heart breaks (for the hundredth time this morning- “I still have at least a million muscle fibers in my heart more,” thinks the donkey, optimistically.  He returns to his passionate surge forward upon the excruciating sand.  “Me encanta,” his voice breaks, as yet another muscle fiber in his heart snaps.

“Buenisimo, burro,” chides El Estupido.  “I will achieve my promised horse,” he grins, his balloon balls re-inflating from the stature they had lost.

 

En fin, the journey complete, the donkey’s heart urges him onward until he falls, gasps, bays a terrible cry!  Dust lifts around him like a cloud of infinitesimal angels; his tongue wags to the dirt.  “Gaaaaaaaaah!” he croaks.  El Estupido steps off from his fallen form as from a broken cart he kicks behind him.

“My horse,” El Estupido spits, his sweat soaking his fancy shirt.  “My promised horse!” He kicks his heels together and salutes the woman he greets, his benefactor from so long ago.

She doesn’t have any horse.

“N-no horse…” says El Estupido, as his donkey coughs blood from his lung upon his white and lace boots.

She is incredulous, “I must have been joking.”

El Estupido turns his heart from himself and looks out toward the horizon behind them.

“Alright, donkey, no time for laziness- we have only to begin our journey home!”