Hydrox Spurs

My esteemed colleague, Mr. Sherbet, is as disoriented as usual. His coarse interpretation of the Nice Guy Syndrome is absolutely nutty, and he knows it. And the bizarre squeakings of Minerva "Sizzler" Plankton only add to this swirling farrago of nonsense. It was a summer evening in my home town of October Settlement, and the back yard was peppered with the pastel lights of paper lanterns. I was thirty-five years old. From a Victrola beneath a palm tree, the tune "Ranch of My Dreams" lilted. Handsome in linen, artiste Hydrox Spurs stood cradling a jelly jar of cognac in his piano-like hands. The summer scent of the perfume of surrendering blossoms permeated the atmosphere around him, along with the sharp tang of freshly squeezed limeade and the floral fragrances of Minerva "Sizzler" Plankton. The dusk of evening had come and gone, and now the summer night had descended on October Settlement like an embroidered hood on a bird cage, stifling the maddening jabberings of the maniacal mynah of day. Hydrox sipped at his cognac, watching bitterly as Minerva flirted with Hydrox's nemesis, Morty "Botanical" Sherbet. Minerva looked splendid tonight in chiffon, and she had no eyes for anyone tonight but Morty. Sherbet, expansive and silly, had a huge stogie stuck between his animalistic teeth like a lead pipe. He was gesturing wildly with his hands, an idiotic grin spread across his cube-like face. And Minerva was eating it all up! What on earth could she possibly see in him? And so when I read the crude commentary of Morty "Botanical" Sherbet on the question of the Nice Guy Syndrome, I know better than to pay any attention whatsoever to what that blowhard is bloviating about. I would sooner listen to Morty's opinions on verse as pay mind to his analysis of so complex a topic as this acutely painful condition. And remind me some day to give you the lowdown on Mr. Sherbet's nickname. "Botanical" indeed! The story behind that one will really send your socks over Saturn, I can assure you. And now he's setting himself up as some kind of relationship expert? He is really a piece of work. Morty, you need to calm down and eat some sprouts or something, because you're really flipping your lid. And the nerve of someone who practically invented the whole basis of this syndrome, the gall of someone like that being willfully naive and pretending he doesn't even know what it's all about, well--that simply cannot be borne. And when I read of Minerva "Sizzler" Plankton--and let me tell you, her nickname has more to do with her appetite for rare beef than any description of her charms--when I read of Minerva plaintively whimpering about how she yearns to meet a real "nice guy," and I recall that balmy evening in October Settlement, when she gave herself to Morty...and spurned me, Hydrox Spurs...the phoniness of it all is truly depressing. And I don't believe for a minute that millions of young men are looking up these phrases on the internet. From what I've heard about the internet, they're trying to find free pictures of Raquel Welch, or whoever the young men are slathering for nowadays. But I'm just Hydrox Spurs, a friendly beacon on this confusing path you walk.