by Kindra Meyer
Jules Doyle was born July 13, 1973. It was a balmy day in Queens, and the scent of hot dogs and polyester stung the nostrils of the passersby. Jules was born 4 days late to the proud parents of two Turkish immigrants, Frau and Hanz Doyle, each carved of a fine sturdy brood who could carry over 37 crated chickens over 17 kilometers (which is consequently how they met in Bavaria at the annual chicken carrying contest, where Frau beat Hanz by one chicken, thus proving her wife-worthy). Frau spent her days making chicken giblet gravy, which she would sell with day old biscuits at 3am to drunken sailors after the pubs would close. Hanz busied himself with muttering.
Jules, the youngest of 7, had a vivid imagination as a child and often found himself living in a dream world, frolicking with medieval space knights across fields of unicorn horns. Sometimes he would defeat Napoleon and share in the glory of women and wine, and sometimes the two would just share a hoagie. He also had a fascination with doorknobs, and would collect them by the hundreds in his woodland tree house. Jules believed from a young age that he was invincible, and proved to be so when he dodged a stray machete from a magic trick gone horribly wrong at age three. The blade?? deadly wrath grazed only his left buttock, creating an impressive lightning bolt scar. Afterwards the townsfolk believed him to be a mini-messiah, and dubbed him "golden bearded one" because of his thick bushy chin growth from the time he was 11 months old. Not trusting such a young child with a razor, his parents simply allowed nature to take its course and figured it was simply a hormonal imbalance that would right itself. They couldn?? have been more wrong. Although he did receive endless amounts of torment throughout his formative years the beard proved worthy when it came to wooing the ladies, and Jules had his first kiss at age 5, bestowed upon him by a raven-haired beauty named Nadia who was in for the summer from Spain. Although he loved her dearly, she was betrothed to a 49-year-old rare cat breeder on her 7th birthday, and their love could not be. They stayed pen pals for a few more years, but eventually the letters stopped coming, and he knew he must move on.
There were very few happy memories of his childhood, Mother Frau was quick to wield a rolling pin and didn?? like to be bothered, especially during Days of Our Lives. Jules and his 7 brothers and sisters would do tumbling routines and act up skits about the Holocaust to garner her attention, but she could not be bothered. Gravy was her calling, and gravy was her life. Sometimes, when she had sold a large number of gravy batches the night before, she would give each of them a shiny nickel and drop them off at the carnival, which was really quite sad because it cost $2.75 to even get into the carnival, so all the children with their dirty faces and matching burlap frocks would look longingly through the barbed wire fence and pool together their money for one turn at the binoculars, so they could see the rides they were not on. Birthdays were a lone beacon of light in the year however, as the birthday boy or girl got to put each of their siblings in a giant potato sack and beat them without repercussion for 15 minutes with a sturdy Willow reed. Afterwards everyone ate deep fried pickles and Neapolitan ice cream well past its due date.
In the sticky summers, while other children were playing t-ball and riding bikes, Jules was busy experimenting in the basement with a new technology his father had invented called the "The Hand-switch" which he thought very clever because of how it played on the word "sandwich." His father, a man of few audible words but much to say, believed it to be the most important invention of the 20th century. Think of the convenience! Not having to get up out of your bed to turn off the lights! All through the night they would tinker and eat Chinese noodles with a spoon, because his father believed "to think of things differently you must live differently." Jules, however, knew it was because they couldn?? afford forks, but humored his father anyway. Sadly Hanz?? stubbornness led to an untimely death, and he passed away when Jules was 9 from an overactive bladder, which he believed he could overcome by simply "holding it." Jules promised to make his father proud and carry on his life?? work, and in 1984 finally packaged "The Hand-switch" which he sold at local fairs and church bazaars. He and his lifetime long pal, a Pet platypus named "Salty" would ramble from town to town in a 71 Plymouth touting the obvious benefits of this new and oh so needed amenity. Although he was only 11, his beard made it so no one ever questioned him driving a car, or going to special lady lounges. Salty and Jules had some good times, and some bad times, but most importantly they had each other. When Jules had a bad bout of scurvy Salty rubbed salve on him and hummed his favorite song, "Wind beneath my wings." And when Salty had his heart broken by a Taiwanese platytramp named Ginger Jules got him nice and drunk on boxed wine and took him to the Old Country Buffet to laugh at all the old people. They were pals.
Things were going swimmingly until February 23, 1987, when, in a motel near Saskatoon while getting some needed R&R they saw an infomercial for "The Clapper." Time stood still. They simply could not believe their eyes! "The Clapper" looked exactly like "The Hand-switch!" Salty immediately began to molt, and it was then Jules remember he had forgotten to send in the patent before they had left. Their life?? dreams, dashed in one moment. The next two years were dark. They smelled of Dickle and polyurethane. What little I can tell you without permanently scarring you is that Salty became despondent, first just quiet, and then suddenly and aggressively violent, screaming "CLAP ON!!! CLAP OFF!!! THE CLAPPER!!! at the most inopportune times. Then one night he was gone. Jules was lost in a sea of despair and corn nuts and sank into a deep deep depression. He was forced to sell mini key flashlights to get himself from town to town. Finally he arrived in Salt Lake City, where he was abruptly sucked into the seedy underbelly of Utah?? dirty little secret, Strip Bingo.
Night after night Jules would perform on the Strip Bingo circuit, to hordes of elderly plus-sized women who stuffed money and occasionally yarn and bits of jerky into his red vinyl codpeice. The money was good, and the ladies were very nice and smelled like baby powder and cabbage. One especially exuberant customer, Margie, nicknamed him "Throbbin Hood" because, well, I suppose that?? none of your business. Anyhoo Jules knew that he couldn?? be a dancing bingo man-whore forever. He had dreams. And his man flesh couldn?? stay taut for long, no matter how many protein badger milk shakes he drank. Finally, after a stint in rehab for a nasty Olestra addiction, Jules cleaned up his act and began pursuing his true calling, yodeling. I know what you??e thinking "No way, now this is going too far, now we??e getting into some Forest Gump nonsense here. I??e been with you all the way but this is getting ridiculous." But I couldn?? be more serious if I was talking about the conjoined twins from Omaha, you know, the ones where one of them died and the other lived and they couldn?? be cut apart so the one twin had to drag his dead brother around with him the rest of his life. Now that, that people you can?? make up. So stick with me, I promise you won?? be disappointed.
Now Jules had no formal yodeling training but just had a knack for it. It was like he was born to yodel. Everywhere he would go he would yodel, and people would say, "that man was born to yodel." You would have thought he would have picked up on that long ago and went ahead and pursued it instead of all that other nonsense but that?? life now isn?? it, a lot of times you don?? see what?? directly in front of you until it sits on your face. So. Jules went to world renowned yodeling and life coach Sanka Eidelhouser, who led him on a journey deep into himself, to find the pain that for so long he had masked by huffing Pam and taking in with unclean women friends. It was the pain of his childhood, it was the pain of never knowing his mother?? love, and of letting his father?? dream die. Jules knew it was time to let the pain go. Deep in the Himalayas of Michigan he opened all of his charkas to Sanka and Sanka in turn opened his vocal chords like a child opening their first Chanukah gift. Gingerly, full of hope and moist fingers. And the chords opened, slowly at first and then further and further, until they were splayed wide as Paris Hilton?? thighs. And oh how Jules yodeled, he yodeled like you could never imagine anyone could yodel. His yodeling could make you slap your own grandmother square in the face, it was that good. If he looked into your eyes unblinking and yodeled for 15 seconds you would abort your 10 year old daughter. Seriously. That?? some serious motherfuckin yodeling. Until Jules yodeled yodeling was an art form scoffed upon by modern society. By the end of his 5-year career there was an entire aisle at Best Buy devoted solely to yodeling artists. Hillary Duff had him yodel the chorus on her #1 single "I, like, totally love Youdoo-loodee-doooo! Seriously." And the Rolling Stones asked for his autograph backstage at Conan O??rien. He had 13 triple platinum albums and toured the entire world.
P.S. Jules is also an excellent photographer.
