There once lived a wise and kindly king who ruled over a small island nation somewhere in the South Pacific. Now this king (Waldorf IV was his name, by the way) suffered a hideous deformity which greatly inhibited his ability to perform certain kingly duties: his arms were merely stubs that did not extend past his where his elbows should have been. While he did possess normal and fully functional hands, they did him little good when it came to performing many acts, for example such as the daily cleansing ritual we all take for granted involving the removal of residual feces from the area surround the anus. In other words, he couldn't wipe his own ass.
So he employed a man to do it for him: an ass-wiper.
While being the Royal Ass-Wiper wasn't the most glorious or dignified job in the world, for Thomas Stinkfinger it was a living. The king was well-known for taking very good care of his ass-wipers. They shared a unique bond few men could ever fathom. And though the other member of the royal court (even the jesters!) routinely taunted Thomas whenever the king was not around, the fact remained that Thomas was one of the king's most trusted advisors.
As if often the case in real life, there is a story within a story here. If Thomas had the king wrapped around his proverbial finger (so to speak), Thomas's wife all the more so had Tom in her own clutches so that effectively Rita Stinkfinger was running the entire kingdom. In the privacy of the bedroom she would wile her husband, who would in turn wile His Majesty in the privacy of the Royal Privy.
Rita ran a tight kingdom.
© 1995 Randy Bone