There is a dragon in my living room.

I've been trying to work on this column all week but it's difficult to concentrate with a dragon tearing up your house. Actually, I finally got some work done because the dragon was unconscious on the couch for a while. But I knocked over a coffee cup and it shattered on the floor. After a moment of terrifying silence, I heard the she-beast rustling and groaning as it slowly began to rise.

There is a dragon in my living room and now the dragon is awake.

Until now, I have gotten through this life without ever having to say those 7 terrible words. Through all the things that went wrong with me over the years – busted knee, fractured foot, bashed in teeth, ruptured eardrums, high arches – I was always grateful for never having problems with my penis or surrounding penile areas: Nary a crab has hiked across my murky grasslands, no herpes boil ever bubbled on my glans, no gonococcus has wriggled through my urethra, nor wart, nor chancroid, nor stalk of Chlamydia ever found purchase in the garden of my groinhouse.

[Author's note: The Possum King originally appeared as 3 separate columns because of space constraints. I posted them together here as one story because that's really what it was].

Part 1: First Encounter
The following is a tale of a great war. It was an epic war. The following is an epic tale of an epic war that was totally and utterly epic and as such, can not be relayed within the confines of a single column. Indeed this week’s column isn’t even about the war. Rather, it is about the events that preceded it. I will do my best to refrain from embellishing.

Saturday, August 24: 2:00 p.m.

It was a sweltering afternoon on the Venice Beach boardwalk. I was cruising around, absorbing the artists and performers and the cosmic crusader, when I accidentally noticed a stunning, sweet-sixteen, bikini bambini who was sparkling in the center of a small crowd of onlookers who were watching a boardwalk artist spray painting another cosmic moonscape masterpiece.121" />

This story is totally and utterly true.

In the spring of 1994, I fell in love with an extraordinary woman. She worked in a local coffeehouse owned by the owner of the bar I worked in at the time. The two venues were adjacent, connected by a shared backroom door.

Michelle had brains, beauty, gusto, and grace. She had Newcastle hair and coffee-bean eyes. She also had leukemia, though it had been in remission for two years.

Before each bartending shift, I used to come through the backroom door into the coffeehouse and request her special triple mocha mint masterpiece -- as well as a few moments of her enlightened, enthusiastic conversation. My heart fluttered from espresso and infatuation.

“Dear Mr. Decker, after doing an [Internet] search on ‘the real’ Ed Decker, I stumbled onto your website and I must say, as a Christian, I find you and your work to be quite offensive.”
—J.L., Seattle

I received the above e-mail today. I’ve been getting letters like this from all over the country for about two years now. They started arriving shortly after my [first] website debuted on the Internet. initially, I couldn’t explain how all these people were finding my website, why so many were Christians and just who is this “Real Ed Decker” they kept referring to?

This past Christmas my wife and I visited my family in New York. We had a merry time hanging with the parents, siblings, nephews and in-laws for 10 solid days of Christmas tidings. It was such successful visit that there was only one notable family argument.

See, my parents bought me an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and, because I am a raging geek, I promptly hooked it up to the TV in their den and flitted on up to Xbox Heaven.

Now, my sister Barbara Jean has two boys: Little Michael, 10, and James the Barbarian, 7. Like most boys their age, they love video games. The minute I hooked up the console, they were bugging me to play. The problem was, the only Xbox games I had were all about death, and screams, and murder, and, worst of all, blood splatter—especially on head shots that, in one particular game, shatter your victim’s brains like an M-80 in a can of red paint. The game is called “Call of Duty 4", but it should be renamed to, “I Murdered You in the Face with Lots of Blood Splashing 5: The Sickening.”

I was flipping through the TV channels the other night and came across The Ring 2. I tuned in just before the scene where the horse flips out on the boat. It is, for me, the scariest part of the movie.

In the scene, Rachel is traveling by ferry to the house where Samara, the creepy, dark-haired, damp girl, lives. At one point, Rachel notices a horse in a trailer and approaches the animal, which, as if it sensed something malevolent living inside Rachel, goes utterly berserk. The horse kicks its way out of the trailer, rises on two legs, stomps a car, chases Rachel to the edge of the craft and leaps over the rail into the black water.

The reason the horse scene scared me so much, even more than evil Samara herself, is because I can relate. Horses hate me, too. There have been multiple incidents in my life when a member of the equus caballus species has tried to hurt or murder me. It’s a great mystery because animals usually love me: Dogs like me. Cats like me. Hamsters totally dig me. Goldfish and I go way back. Iguanas don’t get me, but we maintain a civilized rapport. Even piranhas are kinder to me than equines.

Today, while working in my home office, I heard the sweetest sound of my life. It was my wife, howling from the kitchen.

“Where’s my goddamn brownie!?” she shouted. “I will slice your gizzard into bite-sized meat snacks if I find out you touched my brownie!”

I knew, right then, everything was going to be OK.

Allow me to explain:

My wife and I dodged a large bullet recently. It’s a delicate subject, so let’s just say we had an accident. And by “accident” I mean I forgot to put on a condom. And by “forgot” I mean that I was too drunk to realize I hadn’t.