It's been three years since Wally Jakes died, and not a day goes by that I don't think of the old bastard.
The other chumps around this place, well, I'm sure they think of Wally often too-at least the ones who were around during the infamous Jake-obean era-but not as often as I do. And certainly not in the same way as I do.
See, Wally had a personality that was an acquired taste in the same way that sucking vinegar from a mangy sponge is an acquired taste. Nobody could stand the guy. Nobody except me. But then, I have a high tolerance for all things acidic.
I respected Wally, though I could sure see why others had a hard time digesting him. He was loud-mouthed, crass, insensitive, and horribly opinionated. He rarely shaved or showered, and dental hygiene mattered to him about as much as arithmetic matters to a snowman. And if all that weren't enough, Wally Jakes was also uglier than a couple of rats fucking on top of a pile of trash, which was partially due to a horse booting him square in the kisser when he was a kid, and partially due to him just being Wally Jakes. He was a natural pariah, born to be detested.
But as I said, I respected the guy. He wasn't a performer, like me, but I think that once you got right down to it, he and I were pretty much the same. Now, I don't mean to say that I'm a walking aerosolized can of human-repellant, like Wally, but on the inside, on the inside where it really mattered, we were the same. If you were to take a blade and carve us both down to our respective cores, once you scraped off all the pulpy muck and rinsed away the blood, you'd be staring at a matching set. Two of a kind. You see, like me, Wally did whatever needed to be done to keep things running around here. One day you'd see him tearing tickets, the next you'd see him cramming a suppository into an elephant's ass. Whatever the task, if it needed to be done, Wally would do it. He knew damn well that the show mattered more than anything. More than anything at all.