A Bit Of Family History

I've recently learned something very interesting. My family is cursed.

From what I've been told, it all began with my great-grandfather, Ebeneezer Malachi Jones, back in the early days of last century. Apparently Ebeneezer was a dour, prudish, bible thumping old bastard who hated anything fun as he figured it must be sinful. He preached against dancing, card playing, sex for anything but procreation, and said that God required every bit of extra money go to the church (that he ran). Only by listening to him, he assured the beaten down members of his community, would they ever be allowed entrance into Heaven. Ebeneezer wasn't really all that popular, but considering the only other church in town advocated snake handling and arsenic drinking, he pretty much ran the show.

So when a group of gypsies wandered into his village one day, bringing with them laughter and music, and selling a potent Ecstasy/Viagra-like herbal concoction they saucily named "Kingdom Cum", my great-grandfather didn't like it one bit. He doubled his preaching efforts, calling the gypsies, "Satan's Salesmen", and issuing warnings that drinking their love potion would cause promiscuity, insanity, and baldness.

He really should have thought of a better threat though, as he himself had a huge bald patch that he tried to cover up in a Donald Trump-type comb over, but which, of course, fooled no one. Also, his wife was not quite right in the head (she thought she was a duck) and his daughter was the town slut.

Well, quite a few of the townspeople found this quite amusing as you can imagine. They laughed openly at Ebeneezer and quit attending his church, preferring to spend their free time guzzling gypsy drink and boinking like bunnies.

Humiliated and seeing his income threatened, Ebeneezer tried everything he could to drive the gypsies out of town. He accused them of witchcraft. He called them Socialists. He made fun of their facial hair. He said God was getting really pissed. When none of those things worked, he set their caravans on fire and shot all of their monkeys with a pistol. That worked.

As the angry gypsies left town - with giant bags of gold strapped to the backs of the women and children, since the monkeys were all dead - their ancient king pointed a withered brown finger at my great-grandfather and said, "A curse be upon you, Proctor Jones. Neither you nor any of your descendants shall ever be allowed to forget the way you have wronged my people. Not unless you truly practice what you preach. Muyhahahahaha."

With that, he spit on the ground, made the sign of the evil fork, and then belched three times in a row. The gypsies all cheered and made rude noises, screaming and hooting, "Shit yeah, now you've been cursed, biatch!" as they slowly lumbered away.

Ebeneezer gloated as he watched them go. He paid no attention to their silly voodoo and indeed, forgot all about it, being super busy as he was trying to get the townspeople to quit partying and start fearing Hell again. It took some doing, but luckily for him the corn was a bit moldy that year and he was able to point to this as evidence that God was really, really mad.

Ebeneezer's slutty daughter, Martha, was the first to take notice of the curse. Knowing of her father's punitive attitude towards sex, however, she wisely said nothing. Ebeneezer heard whispers and snickers that the gypsies revenge had come to pass, but saw no evidence of this himself. That is, not until a few weeks later when he found himself a bit frisky and decided to make his wife perform her biblical duty.

He had barely gotten down to business when he heard a strange sound, sort of like a high keening moan.

"Did you hear that?" he asked his wife.

"Quack quack," she muttered, (remember she was completely insane).

He looked around uneasily but didn't see anything unusual. The bedroom was completely dark except for one loan flickering candle that he had forgotten to extinguish before getting freaky. Murmuring a quick apology to Jesus, he blew out the flame and went back to sating his filthy desire.

"Sccccccrrreeeeech," the horrible noise started up again, louder than before. It sounded remarkably like fingernails on a chalkboard, or a passel of screaming monkeys. Ebeneezer was again startled, but he knew all the monkeys were dead and besides he only needed another 15 seconds or so to finish up, so he ignored the commotion and carried on.

But he never did get to bust a nut that night, for the next round of unearthly screechings were so loud the bedroom window pane shattered, spraying glass all over the room.

Ebeneezer jumped up and ran to the door, barely remembering to pull up his special holy underwear with three hundred tiny buttons. Fifteen minutes later, when most of the buttons were closed, he commenced his investigation. Flinging open the door, he fearfully peered out into the night. What he saw out there made what was left of his hair stand on end.

For there in moonlit yard stood a ghostly white caravan hitched up to seven glowing monkeys wearing tiny caps with little bells on them. Gathered around the wagon stood several spectral gypsies, holding tambourines and fiddles. As his mouth dropped open in shock, the transparent gypsies smiled and began to play a hellish tune that could be heard throughout the village. The women beating their breasts and ululating, the men fiddling and banging tin cans together, and the monkeys gnashing their ridiculously long fangs and scratching angrily at the reins, resulting in an ear numbing cacophony.

As Ebeneezer watched in horror, one of the demon monkeys broke free and ate his daughter's cat.

One by one the neighbors timidly appeared, holding candles and torches and gaping at the eerie apparition.

"What is going on, Proctor Jones? What sort of ungodly display is this?" they demanded.

Before Ebeneezer could gather his wits about him to try to form an answer, the phantom gypsies sang out, "Intercourse! The wicked proctor is having intercourse!"

The crowd gasped. "Is this true, sir?"

"No! No, I..." Ebeneezer began, but the gypsies cut him off.

"In the butt!" they sang. "He's putting it in his wife's butt!"

The shocked crowd gasped again. One woman screamed. "Sinner!" they cried.

Ebeneezer hung his head in shame. And as he fell to his knees and admitted his hypocrisy to the townspeople, the ghastly, glowing zombie gypsies slowly began to disappear, their nightmarish song fading quieter and quieter until once again the only sounds heard in the village were the chirping of crickets, and the quacking of Proctor Jones poor, crazy wife.

Now, you might think that the gypsy curse would be ended when Ebeneezer confessed and recanted his sanctimonious ways. He certainly hoped that would be the case, but alas, it was not. Gypsy curses are apparently really hard to get rid of. From then on for the rest of his life whenever he tried to do the nasty, a ghostly Romani band would appear and serenade the neighbors with a blow by blow account of his actions.

Worse, he couldn't even masturbate as that would make one lone monkey appear, hooting derisively and making filthy gestures, and my great-grandfather was far too prudish to give the gossips more reasons to wag their tongues. He spent the rest of his life in bitter, sexual frustration which caused him to become an ardent supporter of the Republican party.

His daughter had no such compunctions though, being a slut and all, so the villagers grew used to wailing of the ghostly gypsy band.

And though the eighteen children she eventually bore all had different fathers, they were bastards who carried the Jones surname, and thus were doomed to the curse.

Growing up, I never heard a word about this bit of family history. I certainly never heard any screaming gypsy songs. (That may be because my parents slept in separate beds.) Although, now that I think about it, I did hear a lot of screeching monkey sounds when my brother hit puberty.

As you can imagine, losing my virginity was quite a shock. When a ululating woman in a kerchief showed up at my date's frat house and sang a song entitled "Prunella's Getting Gang Banged", I figured it had to be a hallucination from all the roofies in my beer bong. Now that I know the real reason, everything makes so much more sense.

I mean, don't get me wrong. It still sucks and all. But the good news is that those horrible squealing noises are not coming from my vibrator. You don't know how much money I've spent trying to get that thing fixed!