MadMadMargo Chimes In
Peeps, I’m flabbergasted. At least, I think I’m flabbergasted. I don’t actually know what that word means, but it sounds about right and I’ve wanted to use it for a long time now.
If you read my last column you know that Marie revealed to Openfly that Marie was pregnant when she left Shalampax. After she returned to America, Marie gave birth to a girl, MadMadMargo, whose father was, obviously, Shalampaxian.
The story might have ended there, but more shocking news followed. Someone claiming to be MadMadMargo posted a couple of comments on my last column. I have to assume that it is the same MadMadMargo that Marie said was her daughter because how many MadMadMargoes can there be in this world?
MadMadMargo claims that she was left in an orphanage near New Orleans when she was a baby. She was adopted, raised by a loving family and never knew her biological parents.
This puzzled me because, in comments on Shalampax Speaks that were written before this story broke, MadMadMargo claimed to be Shalampaxian. If she was left in an orphanage when she was, to use her words, “just a tiny thing,” how did she know about her Shalampaxian heritage?
When I challenged her, MadMadMargo explained that, to quote her, “When I was only 5 years old I overheard a conversation between my adoptive mother and her sister. My ‘mother’ said she had received a letter from a man who lived in Shalampax and that he was certain I was his child. When I asked my ‘mother’ about this later, she was not forthcoming with any information.”
MadMadMargo went on to request that she, Marie, and any Shalampaxian men who might be her father submit to DNA testing as a way to prove her parentage. This sounds to me like a very reasonable request.
After hearing from MadMadMargo and reflecting on Marie’s revelation to Openfly, I found it disturbing that Marie chose to tell Openfly about her daughter, but omitted the fact that that she gave MadMadMargo up for adoption as a baby. Why did Marie leave out that little tidbit?
And what about that letter from the Shalampaxian man who claimed to be MadMadMargo’s father? How can that be explained? Marie claims that she doesn’t have the foggiest idea as to which of at least a dozen Shalampaxian men is MadMadMargo’s father.
What’s more, there was no Internet back when Marie left Shalampax. And, when it came to the electronic communication options that were available then, we were technology morons. We’re still generally morons, but at least we’ve figured out the technology.
In those days, we communicated with the outside world only when, by some miracle, a ship happened to be passing by on the one day in a hundred when the weather was calm enough for us to paddle out to meet it. So how could this mystery man learn of his daughter and then get a letter to her? I can’t figure it out.
Troubled by what I had learned, I passed this information along to Openfly and asked her to confront Marie with it.
The meeting between Openfly and Marie was not pleasant.
As soon as Openfly revealed what MadMadMargo had said, Marie broke down in a flood of tears and a fit of blubbering. Through her sobs she managed to admit that she had given MadMadMargo up for adoption. After calming down somewhat, Marie told Openfly the story of why she had done so.
When Marie left Shalampax and returned stateside she had no money and little more than the clothes on her back. Well, she also had the clothes on her front, legs, and feet, but you get the point.
On her return, she went to the city where she grew up, New Orleans. Not having any money, she took a part-time job and rented the cheapest place she could find, a tiny studio apartment above a small strip joint hidden away on Iberville Street in the French Quarter.
After MadMadMargo was born, Marie worked hard at getting her figure back. Within a couple of months she was stripping in the club downstairs. Marie swears that she was never a prostitute. True, she wasn’t above accepting gifts from her “gentlemen friends,” as she called them, but she says that the gifts were never a precondition for sex. She had few, if any, preconditions for sex.
On her voyage from Shalampax to the States, Marie came up with her idea for a cult business, but she knew she would need a lot capital to get it started. And that’s not the sort of business idea you can take to a loan officer in a respectable bank. Tight-assed bankers don’t understand these things.
Despite staying in that low-rent, bare-bones, seedy apartment, Marie’s stripping gigs and other part-time jobs barely gave her enough money to feed and clothe her and little MadMadMargo, let alone pay the rent. And those jobs certainly didn’t provide any extra cash to put aside for a future business.
In addition, Marie thought it was wrong to bring MadMadMargo up in such a squalid environment, which was only a few notches above the general conditions in Shalampax. Thus, with deep, deep regret, she put her baby up for adoption.
Marie had always intended to have more children once she got settled, but it took a while to save enough money to start her cult business, which then consumed all of her energies. One thing led to another and she never did have another child.
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like a tall tale and Marie probably made it up. Maybe, but I specifically told Openfly to not tell Marie where MadMadMargo said she was adopted. Unless Marie and MadMadMargo are working in cahoots or Marie reads the comments on this blog (which is not likely because hardly anyone reads this blog), it is highly unlikely that Marie would have guessed that MadMadMargo was adopted near New Orleans. No, their stories do jive.
We should soon enough know for certain whether Marie is MadMadMargo’s mother. Marie has agreed to submit to DNA testing and she has even volunteered to pay for MadMadMargo’s test if MadMadMargo can’t afford it.
Determining MadMadMargo’s father could be more problematic. Marie still claims that she remembers only a couple of the one or two dozen men she had sex with around the time MadMadMargo was conceived. Marie gave Openfly those two names, but we can’t force them to submit to a paternity test. And it’s possible that MadMadMargo is the daughter of one of the men Marie doesn’t remember.
I’m going to send emails to all Shalampaxian men old enough to be MadMadMargo’s father asking them if they had sex with Marie shortly before she fled Shalampax. I don’t think there will be any difficulty getting guys to admit to that. In fact, the problem will be just the opposite. The number of men who claim to have slept with Marie is far larger than even Marie could have handled in the time she was on our island.
Hell, some guys who weren’t even born yet when Marie was here claim they banged her.
It’s not surprising that guys want to make such claims. Marie is reputed to have been drop-dead gorgeous in her younger days. And when I say “drop-dead gorgeous” I’m not talking about the Shalampaxian standard of beauty, which gives trolls and Playboy Playmates the same beauty grade. (Trust me, if you’ve had anything to eat in the past 24 hours you don’t want to know how ugly you’d have to be to be rated as ugly here.) I’m talking about beauty that would put top fashion models and Hollywood starlets to shame.
I’ll ask all men who, based on their boasts, could have fathered MadMadMargo to submit to DNA testing. But, like I said, I can’t force them if they refuse.
What’s more, even if we do get the right guy to submit to DNA testing, that test will not be conclusive unless it looks at the entire genome of MadMadMargo and her father. Because there are only 4,242 people in Shalampax and no Shalampaxian has ever mated with a non-Shalampaxian other than Marie, our gene pool is shallower than a puddle on a fresh piece of perfectly flat asphalt three days after the last rain. We don’t have any well-paved asphalt in Shalampax, nor have we gone even one day in the last several years without rain, but you get my point. If MadMadMargo’s father is a Shalampaxian, the results of MadMadMargo’s DNA test will show a very close relationship with every Shalampaxian.
Keep in mind too that MadMadMargo was conceived about 56 years ago. Her father would have had to have been at least 12 or 13 years old when he fathered MadMadMargo. (We start young here.) This means that he is at least 68 or 69 years old now. And, apart from death, there’s no upper limit to how old her father might have been when she was conceived. So, it’s very possible that her father is no longer alive. And our burial customs do not leave a body to exhume. So if he’s dead there’s probably no DNA to test.
As I see it, our one real hope for discovering the identity of MadMadMargo’s father is the letter MadMadMargo mentioned. Marie has no explanation for it, but it would seem that someone here in Shalampax either knew or suspected that he was MadMadMargo’s father. I don’t see how that could be true, but if it is, and if he’s still alive, maybe he’ll come forward now that the story is out there. Otherwise, it may remain a mystery forever.
That’s all for now, peeps. I’ll stay on top of this and keep you up-to-date as I get more information.
The plot thickens; confusion ensues.
As a person who was also adopted as an infant, I can certainly empathize with MadMadMargo’s interest and yet also hesitation with believing unproven parental claims. It may well be quite distressing for her to find that Marie is far beyond being simply a free spirit, it appears she’s the very definition of slut. However, this may be a medical/psychological problem of nymphomania since she doesn’t charge money – which would make her a card-carrying member of the world’s oldest profession.
I will be eagerly anticipating any further news.
@David: Yes, MadMadMargo must be distraught over what she’s learned and her desire to know the truth is understandable.
While there is no question that Marie is certainly, at a minimum, a free spirit, I’m reluctant to label her a slut. You have to understand, if Marie had not been washed up on our island back in 1952 or so we’d probably still be communicating in grunts and lashing ourselves to trees at night to prevent being blown away while we sleep. Marie helped us to realize that housing ourselves in a building is a better way to go. So, despite being a bit of a pain in the butt by continuously correcting people’s spelling and grammar when she was here, we all owe her a deep debt of gratitude and we are reluctant to besmirch her character without proof.
Mr. Stoneupnose – It was interesting to read today about Marie’s return to the states and the struggles she endured. Even more interesting was the fact she lived on Iberville Street. You see, about 30 years ago I visited a friend in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and she, too, lived on Iberville. Her apartment building was just two doors up from a strip joint named Cher-Marie. Could this be the place where Marie once danced?
Anyway, if Marie is truly my mother, I have to applaud her decision to place me in the orphanage, I have had a wonderful life as a result.
I have tried very hard to remember that conversation between my ‘mother’ and her sister. Unfortunately, all I remember is a Shalampaxian was claiming to be my biological father. However, there is one thing I am hoping may be a clue in helping to determine the sender of that letter. Does the name “Hoof” ring any bells? The reason I ask is my older brother from time-to-time would call me “Hoof”, which would really anger my mother. Could it be his teasing was based on the man who sent the letter?
I await your next report.
@Stoneupnose
>>>>we are reluctant to besmirch her character without proof.
Uhmmm….I love sex as much as the next person and I have no reluctance to enjoy a wide variety of partners so I’m not taking any sort of holier-than-thou approach. But, by your own admission, Marie slept with so many men so often that it is impossible to narrow down the list of men who slept with her in her final days on the island (and I’m not suggesting there was much actual dozing-off type sleeping going on) because there were so many of them. So it appears to me that the besmirching has long ago gotten a very strong start.
@MadMadMargo: That’s very interesting about the Cher-Marie club. Marie didn’t tell Openfly the name of the club (I guess she didn’t think it was important). She also didn’t mention anything about having owned the club, so I’m not sure how it would have been, in part, named after her. Maybe it’s not the same place at all. I’m going to get Cher to ask Marie.
“Hoof” doesn’t ring a bell. We don’t have any animals here and back in the days when your biological father was named they ate only coconut and fish, which was all that was available locally. So I doubt that he was named after an animal’s hoof, but, who knows? Far stranger things have happened in Shalampax. I’ll do a little investigating here and see if I come up with anything.
(Just as an aside, it was Marie who named Shalampax. And before Marie arrived, none of the people here had names. People just sort of pointed and grunted the equivalent of “you” or “her”. It wasn’t until Marie taught the people here English that they developed our naming system and chose names for themselves. So the people who were born before Marie arrived, including your father, chose their own names after they learned some rudimentary English.)
@David: It all depends on how you view sex, doesn’t it? We see it as just a very enjoyable physical activity without any special or mystical meaning attached, like watching television or picking your nose. If that is your perspective on sex then, as long as you haven’t pledged to someone that you’d be monogamous, then promiscuity, no matter how extreme, isn’t a blot on your character.
Keep in mind too all that Marie did for us. Also keep in mind that you may be talking about MadMadMargo’s mother. Let’s have a little respect here.