A tombstone with a banana in front of it for Maxwell Garmon. Illustration by Bianca Oppedisano (She/Her) / Mass Media Staff.
Ripples were sent through the scientific community when word broke that Maxwell Garmon, the human who volunteered to have his butt transplanted with that of a baboon, passed away. It has been public knowledge that Maxwell’s condition continued to deteriorate following Professor Edgar Glute’s failed showcase where the patient was observed making baboon cries, rampaging violently around the stage and throwing his own fecal matter. Now, in the wake of Maxwell’s death, the dark truths of Glute’s awful experiment have finally come to light.
First, it was the bananas. Then it was the hair. Long and bristly. It covered the floor of Maxwell’s small Dorchester apartment. His friends report that he started to become more irritable, especially if they mentioned the hair.
According to his childhood friend, Larry Potatotime, “He became a complete hermit, just shut himself up in his dingy apartment. I went over one day with some food. It took a lot of convincing to get him to let me in and when he did, there was just hair everywhere…and razors. It was like he was constantly shaving.”
Garmon was slowly, but surely, turning into a human-baboon-butt monster. The transplanted rump was taking over his body, engulfing his mind and permanently altering his personality. It was only a matter of time before his family had to take matters into their own hands and do what was best for their son. His father, Luciano Garmon, provided us with details of Maxwell’s final moments.
“He was an idiot. Human-baboon butt transplant? Throwing his own s— around? He didn’t learn that from me! You should’ve seen him, it was like that movie, ‘The Fly’ with Boom Jeffgold or whatever his name is. His face was just two giant butt cheeks with a tiny hole in the middle to insert the bananas. We called it his banana hole. It was no way to live and he was begging for death. At least that’s what I think. I don’t know, I don’t speak butt monkey. Anyways, I shot him straight between the eyes—I mean cheeks—with a 12-gauge.”
Shortly following the news of the grotesque transformation that resulted in Maxwell’s demise, Professor Glute was officially fired by UMass Boston and condemned by the larger scientific community of the world for his crimes against humanity. Glute has since been admitted to the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane; however, reports have been surfacing that claim Glute is still attempting to carry out his “research” from behind bars. In one especially grisly report from a guard, it appears that nobody is safe from Glute’s booty-centric scientific aspirations.
“I walked into his cell one day and it was like a massacre. Blood everywhere! He cut off the butts of his two cellmates with a spoon and switched them up, sewing them together with dental floss. I’ll tell you what, if you drop the soap around this guy, you can kiss your hiney sayonara. The guy gives me the willies!”
While justice has been served to the mad professor, the atrocities committed through his wicked experimentation have left many members of the UMass Boston community deeply disturbed. Despite the trauma, the University wants to assure that it is actively working to right the wrongs caused by Glute’s work. First and foremost, Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is proud to announce the addition of a new professor who is to take Glute’s old position. This is none other than Lola the baboon.
Lola is perhaps the only individual who benefited from the procedure. While Maxwell was slowly overtaken by the baboon butt, morphed into a terrible Cronenberg abomination and shot dead by his own father, Lola began to exhibit human-level intelligence. It wasn’t long before she had constructed a translator out of trash that could convert Babooneese to English. This allowed her to freely converse with humans and let her true intellect shine. As it turns out, she’s a real genius when it comes to biology, anatomy and physiology which made her a prime candidate for filling Glute’s position. Ironically enough, she’s even begun to dip her toes in the water of humorology.
“I was bestowed this intelligence against my will, and I am still grappling with that fact to this day.” Arrays of LED lights flickered on Lola’s translator while she delicately peeled a banana. “Edgar Glute was a madman who hid his true motivations behind the veil of scientific discovery. He was a human being that sought to play God. To tame what cannot be tamed is the common folly of intelligent life, and the conquest for control can only ever leave one writhing in the cold darkness of reality. That reality being the fact that one cannot command the cosmos and the attempt to do so will only ever result in the cosmos commanding you.”
Lola’s insights certainly seem correct when looking back on Glute’s procedure. He had hoped that by being able to transplant the butts of two creatures, the sense of humor would in turn be transferred as well. In his efforts to manipulate humor, he was the one who was manipulated, becoming a hollow husk of the great scientist he once was. But the central question remains: was Glute’s theory that humor could be transferred by way of the butt correct, or were these just the musings of a hopeful fool? Lola provided her thoughts on this matter as well.
“What is humor truly? What is intelligence? Some argue that a strong sense of humor is a sign of higher intelligence; however, are these things not both subjective? Are humor and intelligence one in the same, or are they separate entities? This I do not know. However…”
Lola took a bite of her banana, chewing carefully while seemingly pondering a difficult question. She swallowed and wiped her mouth with a handkerchief before finishing her thought.
“What I do know is that butts are funny.”