I think it's time people JUST LET HIM EXPLAIN.
Then Russell began to explain himself and a very strange thing happened.
People gathered around to listen.
At first it was just pigeons and other scavenging urban wildlife, who were attracted by the crumbs of drool-softened Olive Garden breadsticks that were periodically dislodged from his unkempt beard.
Then a hooker, dressed in a hot-pink vinyl mini-skirt, sat down cross-legged in front of him, so that you could totally see a glimpse of her panties. Soon she was joined by another hooker, and then another.
They listened to Russell as he told them about the time that he brought flowers to a strip club to protect the workers from a beehive in the rafters. The bees had been bothering the girls during their dances, asking for their phone numbers and attempting to arrange meetings with them after hours. Russell had thought that the blossoms would lure the bees away and that they would go back to gathering pollen. Instead, he was labelled a creep by the strippers. He learned later that the bees had mob ties and were leaning hard on the owners of the club.
Another misunderstanding had occurred when it was reported that he had attempted to change the law, making it legal for him to open a brothel in the state of Utah. The word “pimp” had been banded about by his persecutors in a disparaging and libellous fashion. Russell explained that the establishment that he had been attempting to open was called a “Broathale” – an ancient Mormon word meaning 'a place where woman may gather in safety under the protection of bros'.
He recalled the occasion when he had fallen awkwardly onto this computer keyboard. As he writhed and thrashed about, in a struggle to get himself upright, his body had inadvertently typed-out a succession of lawsuits against the recording artist, Taylor Swift, and also a book that documented these numerous attempts to sue her, which he accidentally published on Amazon after his spasming elbow struck the 'enter' key several times.
While thinking of a way in which he could make amends for the misunderstanding, Russell read an article in
Scientific Armenian magazine, which claimed that cancer could be driven from the body by bombarding the host with coarse personal insults. He immediately composed a tweet that referenced Taylor Swift's cancer survivor mother, branding her a “fat ass pig face”, and supplementing this insult with as many “oinks” as the Twitter character-count would allow. He did this knowing that very few people subscribed to
Scientific Armenian and that the tweet would earn him, not only the lasting contempt of anyone who read it, but also the contempt of both Taylor Swift and her mother – the two people who would benefit from it the most. Despite these far-reaching social consequences, Russell willingly made this sacrifice without giving any pause for thought.
An Uber Eats driver arrived bearing five Subway foot-long meatball sandwiches and a pair of McDonald's Filet-O-Fish. Russell received this bounty and divided it up among his audience, who now numbered in the 5000s, and consisted mostly of pigeons and hookers.
He told them about Riso – a poor Mexican kid from the wrong side of the tracks - who idolised him to the extent that he had undergone extensive facial reconstruction, and painful, deliberately-botched, moustache implant surgery, so that he would look exactly like Russell. Even though Riso was a bad hombre, Russell had taken the troubled boy under his wing. Any event that portrayed Russell in a negative light, that he could not personally explain, could safely be laid at the feet of Riso. It was a kind of evil twin situation.
He spoke of the time traveller who visited him at night with songs from the future – sure fire hits with earning potential in the millions. Rather than recording these songs himself and reaping the benefits, Russell had instead attempted to pass them on to his favourite recording artists, who had spurned his advances and treated him like a creepy stalker.
“I just want to help women,” said Russell, as his slurping monologue entered its eight hour, eclipsing the length of the speech that was delivered to the UN Security Council by V.K. Krishna Menon, of India, in January, 1957.
He spoke of a direct intervention that he had made in an attempt to turn around the life of a young sex worker. The auto-correct function on his phone has changed the content of his social media post, so that instead of stating that the girl needed aid, it claimed that she had AIDS.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, Russell stopped talking. For a moment there was silence. Then everybody stood up and clapped. Even the pigeons purposefully dislocated their wings so they could clap too.
“We are so sorry to have misjudged you, Russell,” said the most beautiful of the hookers who had gathered to listen. “Let us anoint your feet with scented oils and then wipe away the residue with our long hair. And afterwards, let us suck your cock.”
The pigeons and the hookers lined-up in descending order of attractiveness to receive Russell's blessing.
And Russell forgave them all, because he was a nice guy.