What Mr. Frog Running Away From Marilyn Monroe Taught Me About #MeToo

 

In the powder room beside the stairs

 

I keep a portrait of Marilyn.

 

Not a Warhol original but

 

one of those cheap museum prints

 

I bought instead of a magnet.

 

 

 

The tree frog who lives in that room

 

sits on the picture frame and grins,

 

groin chakra exploding. Sometimes he

 

shifts to the book in the window sill

 

so he can give her come hither looks.

 

 

 

At night when the other insects

 

and rodents come out to play

 

Mr Frog uses his skills in camouflage

 

to blend into the blue shadow

 

of Marilyn’s eyes. It’s a kind of love

 

 

 

mirage with sneaky undertones

 

of lust because I’ve heard him emit

 

mating calls – jackhammerish –

 

when he should be out there

 

looking for a pond to cast his frothy net.

 

 

Instead, he’s jerking off to cosmic dust

 

and when other frogs try to enter the chamber

 

Mr Frog squirts them with projectile

 

pee. He’s possessive of his queen.

 

The house understands —

 

 

 

she’s his Norma Jean. But of late

 

Mr Frog has displayed

 

erratic behaviour. I found him

 

by the door making a run for it

 

and yesterday he got as far as the stairs.

 

 

 

He was carrying an edition

 

of the morning papers,

 

his skin a bit droopy and sad,

 

as if all his desires had been purged

 

from him by an evil (female) mortician.

 

 

 

On the veranda consulting

 

with his more colourful cousin —

 

the Malabar gliding frog,

 

he confessed to a kind of confusion

 

about these uneven power equations

 

 

 

but insisted on the purity

 

of his love — how he had never heard

 

her say no, how all of this was so long ago,

 

how career breaking, how humiliating.

 

I’m a good man, really, I am.

 

 

 

And even as Mr Frog escaped

 

into the wilderness – cries of Me Too

 

came from the bushes. Ms Bee-eater,

 

Ms Kingfisher, no one had been spared.

 

Even as we understood the magnitude

 

 

 

of these allegations, the wind blew

 

as decision makers do — knocking down

 

a few trees to appease the crowd

 

and afterward, restored his green kingdom

 

as if nothing had ever happened.