Prince Charles Didn't Do Shit

ll of England is in a froth this week as rumors circulate about a deliciously dirty secret tucked deep into the cranny-holes of the House of Windsor. What exactly has a former manservant alleged about that most buck-toothed of Casanovas, Prince Charles of Wales? Newspapers all over Britain are bursting at the bylines to gush about this vile and heinous morsel, a tale promised to be so lurid and shocking as to rip the top of your head off and skullfuck to death your children who have still yet to be born.

But one obstacle remains to the commencement of this public orgy of disclosure: nobody can say what Charles is supposed to have done. Nobody; not the press, not your shopkeeper, not even a little talking cricket with an umbrella. Thanks to a lawsuit brought by yet another of Charles' deposed butlers and England's medieval libel laws, the mere mention of the Prince's alleged crime is enough to get a man strung up by his sweetmeats and fed English food intravenously until hell freezes over, or one of the Spice Girls wins the Nobel Peace Prize. In other words: pack your earmuffs, Gary Leon Ridgway.

This strange tale of anonymous denial and dueling ex-butlers has grown bizarre enough to make Charles's possible crimes almost incidental and likely disappointing in comparison, but regardless curiosity dangles an anvil over the cat's cranium with a vengeance this week.

"The Prince of Wales didn't do shit, and any shit it is alleged he may have done, was not done by him, regardless of whatever exactly that shit entails," Charles's private secretary Sir Michael Peat read from a prepared statement. "We won't say what it is he didn't do, but only seek to make it clear he didn't do anything. At all. No matter what you're thinking of, Prince Charles didn't do it. Furthermore, Charles penned this quote he wanted passed on to the general public: 'I ain't done shit, and you sons of bitches can kiss my inbred royal hiney until it shines. Love, Charles.'"

Managing editor for the Times, William Barclay, agreed to speak to the commune after consulting with his lawyers over how the letter of the law looked upon libelous "hints" and "warmer, colder" guidance. After being convinced that no one with a law degree would be caught dead reading the commune, Barclay agreed to evade our questions in an answerlike manner.

Did Charles… fondle a butler?

"No, absolutely not."

Did he have sex with a piece of antique furniture?

"Not that we're aware of."

Fluff a chicken?

"No."

Pork a stork?

"No."

Are we close at all on the sex thing, are we at least warm?

"We're not at liberty to divulge that information."

Nuts. Was that him in Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" video?

"I am certain I don't know."

Further inquiry clarified that the alleged offense did not involve dressing an elephant up like a cheerleader, cannibalizing the corpse of a dead war hero, eating an entire case of crisps in one sitting or drunkenly crashing his car into a whale's vagina. He also never choked on a pretzel, had his body painted to blend in with the London cityscape, or smoked Van Gogh's ear in a hash pipe. It is likely there were several more scenarios in which the heir to the throne did not take part, but this reporter was escorted out the door before he could fully formulate one involving Paddington the bear, marmalade, and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

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There comes a time in the political life of everyone in the public eye where they weigh the value of what they can accomplish in office with the sacrifices made in their personal life. It is with heavy heart I address these concerns in my own life, and I must tell you all that I cannot and will not accept the nomination for president of the United States by my party, and if nominated, I will not run.

This comes as a shock to many of my supporters, I'm sure. Supporters like Betty Hoopmay of Blush, Nevada, who sent a very supportive letter that, while severely criticizing my recent columns as "piss-poor journalism," ended with the very affirming, "I don't wish you dead or anything, but you need to get your shit together." Thank you, Betty. I don't wish you dead either. But despite these outcries of faith in me, I cannot accept the nomination for president.

For one, the timing is bad. I have too many responsibilities at the commune here that I'm currently ducking. I cannot shirk all the required responsibilities of the office of president at the same time—that's more than one man can avoid. I have chosen to devote my energies to the commune at this point in time… or has it chosen me? Either way, we're damned to be intertwined for a while yet. And despite my appearance of worldliness, I fear and mistrust foreigners, which is bound to interfere with my responsibilities of meeting and trying to act like I'm listening to dignitaries from other countries. Other dirty, unwashed countries.

The tireless, thankless job of running for president itself would be more than I could bear at this time. I need constant reassurance and reward for everything I do. I need blind, vacant approval for all that I do and I need people to stay out of my life, to let it remain enigmatic and a beautiful mystery left alone by all reporters. Everyone I work for at this point understands that, if they know what's good for them, and I'm not prepared to give that up just to be president.

As much as I hate to mention this, too, my party is virtually powerless to make any significant headway in an election. My party, the Sandwich-Socialist party, is only on the ballot in two states, and one of those is the state of mellow, which is a mood rather than an actual state. This owes to many factors, not the least of which is that it's a very bad idea to hold all your meetings while heavily intoxicated, but the very fact that I would have little chance of accomplishing anything other than wasting my modest fortune on a bid for the presidency, makes it imperative that I decline the nomination, if offered to me.

Which brings me to another point—I don't even get the nomination to be our presidential candidate? Fellow Sandwich-Socialists, I have to say I'm pretty offended by this. Yes, I'm not going to accept the nomination, and if nominated I will not run, but it is just plain ridiculous that we've gone this far without myself being nominated for the position. For Christ's sake, I started the party, I developed our elaborate platform of all sales tax going to build sacred temples and liquor replacing bathwater in homeless shelters, the least you could do is throw me the bone of nomination. It was my idea to call us the Sandwich-Socialists. Is that why you're pissed? It's not a great name, I admit, but I'd like to see you do better buried under 132 mini-bottles of Kahlúa. It's not too bad, really. At least I got "socialist" in there, as per Gary's suggestion.

So for those reasons, and no more, I will happily remain a civilian during this upcoming election. Though, now that I think about it, the next presidential election isn't until 2004. I still have next year to start campaigning, if anyone wants to nominate me. I'm not saying I will… just… it would be nice to get the nomination.

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My God, sir, the future is in jeopardy! And not the good kind, like Celebrity Jeopardy.

I found this out most recently, with my keen inductive powers, and a little help from my ham radio. Longtime commune readers, a species rarer than the bald eagle, are familiar that we frequently receive transmissions from Future Bob—it's this constant flow of information that keeps us reassured our actions in this time period don't louse up the future for generations to come. We've upheld this burden well for a long time. But then guess what happened.

That's right. The future's gone flunky on us. Well, not all of us, perhaps, but flunky on me, and that's more than enough. I was sharing a delightful conversation with Future Bob most recently, discussing the various odors of cheeses and our favorites, when I asked him about the Bagel clan of his time. He was puzzled, and told me he hadn't met any Bagels in his time. What a disaster! Only a few years ago, when we first met, he assured me the Bagels were around and quite prominent in his time. Either he was a complete fake, not in the future at all, or the future had been devastated by our actions in their past. Being a huge fan of The Terminator movies, the obvious choice was the latter.

I could hardly believe it, but it wasn't quite the first time. Other incidents reported by Future Bob, such as the Fruit Famine of 2003, or the complete nuclear annihilation of the world in 2004, have failed to come true. Not without a great amount of work on our part, I assure you—everyone at the commune reported these incidents and made major changes to their lifestyles to make these possible futures not come true. Omar Bricks gave up eating genetically-altered nuclear apples altogether. Future Bob himself, for his part, was quite happy to hear we had made his stories become complete works of fiction. But it's been a constant battle, needless to say, and all the stories he's reported on so far have never hit so close to home as this apparently innocent remark.

No Bagels in the future? What's gone wrong? Where have I failed? Was it not asking out that checkout girl at One-Stop? The mole put me off a little, that's all. Good lord, what if that was the future mother of the Bagel dynasty? I would ask Future Bob if the matriarch of the Bagel clan was a Rosie Bagel, as the girl's name tag read, but unfortunately, he's not been shielded from the time transition by a quantum bubble. Damn that Star Trek technology! Where are easy-to-use, low-cost quantum bubbles to protect us from ripples in the timeline? If the future doesn't have them, we're screwed. Maybe it's another thing one of my offspring would have invented, had I bothered to boink them out already.

It's quite depressing, to realize you're as old as I am (let's not deal in numbers here) and have inadvertently doomed your name to extinction. Who's supposed to carry on the Bagel legacy? My brother Gay? He will never have children, for quite obvious reasons—he despises them. So is this truly the end of the Bagels? Once and for all, the gene pool dries up here?

I will not allow it. Sir, I must make it my personal mission to go out into the world this very night and have as much unprotected sex as humanly possible. But this time it's not to win a wager, although I do enjoy the small TV/VCR combo I won from all that. No, this is to save the Bagel name, and perhaps time itself, from disappearing into history's cornhole. Wish me luck, and many coupling experiences.

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