Chapter 8

Spiderman and Wolverine were awestruck after the basketball game. On the web-swing home, neither one of them said a word, afraid to ruin the magic of the events that had taken place during those four quarters. By the time they had arrived at Spiderman’s modest one-bedroom apartment, both of them had silently agreed to never speak of that game ever again under any circumstances, not unlike a couple of irresponsible teenage kids who have accidentally hit and killed a person with an automobile.
The superheroes landed on the balcony outside of his humble abode, and Spiderman pulled open the sliding glass door, revealing a living room decorated to hilt with Spiderman memorabilia. The apartment was littered with Spiderman clocks, Spiderman PEZ dispensers, and of course several dozen copies of Time magazine’s “Spiderman of the Year” issue.
“Man, I’d forgotten how much Spiderman shit you have, Spiderman!” moaned Wolverine.
“It’s not shit! It’s stuff. Stuff that reminds me of why I do this: making money off of merchandise bearing my likeness,” replied Spiderman with hint of a sadness in his voice.
“Fair enough! Say, Spidey, why don’t you fix me up a glass of that good, good Spiderman-brand orange juice,” a request which the webslinger happily fulfilled by shooting out a bunch of webs all crazily and pulling things around in his kitchen and yanking things inside those things into his hands and pouring them into each other.
The dudes plopped down into Spiderman’s official Spiderman-brand lawn chairs, each anxiously searching for anything to talk about besides the epic basketbattle between the Portland Trailblazers and Michael Jordan and the Loony Toons. A few moments of awkward silence was broken by a question from Spiderman.
“Wolverine…” he trailed off for a moment, “Do you ever think about…past lives?”
“Yes, I do, in fact!” responded the grizzled X-Man, “I once visited a hypnotherapist and uncovered some spooky things about my spirit. It turns out that in my past life…I was a wolverine.”
“Makes sense,” replied Spiderman. “In my past lives, I was a spider, Julius Caeser, a pilgrim on the Mayflower, and Cleopatra.”
“Sweet, sweet…wanna hear a joke, Spiderman?”
“Sure, why not.”
“Have you ever seen a milkshake?”
“No!”
“Neither have I!” Both men cracked up a bunch at that one.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got one,” said Spiderman, his mask deforming slightly as he spoke. “What’s gay and stands in the middle of the forest?”
“I don’t know…”
“Your dad!” Once again the two grown men in costumes had a fit.
“Okay while we’re telling gay jokes,” said Wolverine, “Here’s one I picked up the other day: Why did the gay guy move to San Francisco?”
“Hmmm…I don’t know, why did he do that?”
“Because he was gay!” Spiderman and Wolverine collapsed in hysterics.
“Okay, okay here’s my favorite joke ever,” moaned Spiderman. “Did you hear about the fat guy who fell off his bicycle?”
“No!”
“He broke his arm!” There was no mistaking the sound of howling laughter that filled Spiderman’s apartment after that punch-line was delivered. The superheroes laughed so violently that a picture of the Virgin Mary in a Spiderman costume was jostled right off the wall. The raucous laughter continued for several minutes, but when it died down, there was once again another awkward silence.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I went scuba-diving?” piped up Wolverine.
“Only a thousand times!” sassed Spiderman, “But it’s a great story; bust it out.”
“Well, it was a dark and stormy night…no wait, it was a beautiful day, and I was in Cancun on a week-long vacation with the rest of the X-Men. Nightcrawler and I decided to go scuba diving because neither of us had ever done so before and it seemed like the perfect time to give it a try. Professor-X wanted to come along, but…well, you know...he's paralyzed. He wouldn't be able to propel himself around in the water with his legs. Anyway, after a couple of hours of training we were ready to “hit the water,” as scuba divers say. The first few minutes were great; I saw lots of coral and fish and shit, and the water was so clear that it was like there was no water at all! I mean, of course there was water, but if I were drunk you probably could have convinced me that there wasn’t. Then again, I wouldn’t have been drunk; that’s the first thing they teach in you scuba training: don’t be drunk while you're scuba-diving, because a drunk scuba-diver is a dead scuba-diver. But I digress. Everything was going great, until, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something…and it was a shark! The shark was coming right for us and my claws don’t work underwater, so I thought we were fucked. Nightcrawler, of course, teleported back to the beach, that fucking pussy. It was just me and the shark at point, and the shark was really scary-looking. The shark continued to swim closer and closer toward me shark-like speed, and things were looking pretty grim until suddenly…a stingray wearing a tuxedo came out of nowhere and side-swiped the shark, knocking him off his collision course with my flesh! An epic struggle ensued between the two masters of the sea; the shark was trying to bite the stingray, and the stingray was trying to sting the shark. The danced around gracefully around in the water like a couple of linebackers going head-to-head. This caused a flurry of bubbles, obscuring my view of the struggle between the two marine mammals. As I stared intently towards the cascade of hollow, gas-filled globules, a huge burst of blood diffused out into the water, and, due to the ambiguity of that event under those circumstances, I didn’t know what to think! If the shark had killed the stingray, I was sure to be next, and I’ll tell you what, I sure didn’t want that! There were a few tense moments when everything seemed to mysteriously become eerily calm and then…the stingray shot out of the cloud of blood and bubbles, unharmed except for a few easily-fixed rips and tears in his tuxedo! Moments later, I watched as the deceased shark floated to the surface belly-up. Why, that crafty stingray had stabbed him right in the temple. I didn’t even know that sharks had temples, but apparently they do. Well, I wanted to thank the stringray, but I was beneath the waves, as scuba divers say, and of course I had the regulator in my mouth. I think the creature understood, though, because he winked at me, tipped his little top hat, and then slowly swam away. It’s a good thing I was underwater and not wearing goggles, because I started to cry. As if on cue, my salty tears flowed into salty ocean, and it was really poetic.”
“Wow, whatta story!” said Spiderman. “Hey, you know how Garth Brooks is pretty fat?”
“Yeah…”
“They should call him Girth Brooks.” The somber atmosphere created by Wolverine’s touching story instantly evaporated as our heroes once again began to laugh a bunch. Spiderman even peed in his pants a little bit. And once again, after the laughter died down, awkwardness filled the room like a big fat cock filling up a woman's vagina.
“Welp, now I’m bored,” sighed Wolverine. “Let’s call up Jerry.”
“Jerry Seinfeld?” asked Spiderman.
“Yes.”