The Short Happy Life of Craig Allen Brans – Ted Prokash

February 24, 2026

I first encountered Craiggy at the Big Park. Perry Field, officially, but we called it the Big Park because a block from my house was the Little Park, which didn’t have a proper name – though at some point, when I was all grown up, the city actually put up a sign that read “the Little Park,” so I guess the nickname caught on. I could play at the Little Park any time I wanted. The Big Park was many blocks away and so required getting a ride or enduring a long walk. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until an abnormally late age, eleven or twelve, I think.  

The Big Park was where the action was. It was where the high school teams played football and baseball. There were basketball courts and tennis courts and a wading pool known locally as “the Pee Pool.” Craiggy helped out with the daytime park programs in summer. This meant running ball games with the kids, for the most part, organizing and officiating. Breaking up fights. Playing all-time catcher while the guy who was officially in charge played all-time pitcher. 

Craig was a good athlete despite being less than four and a half feet tall. He had been a state baseball champion in 1982. The coach batted him lead off. He employed a low-crouching stance and inevitably got walked. Once he got on base the coach would pinch run for him. It’s a legend with long legs in little Napawaupee. What I didn’t learn until later was that Craig wasn’t technically on the state championship roster. Apparently, right before the playoffs, one of the other guys got a hard on for Craig and started picking on him incessantly. Craiggy couldn’t take it anymore and quit the team. 

Craiggy could spin two basketballs on his fingers at the same time. He could always be counted on to perform this trick when basketball was the sport of the day at the park. The basketball court was the scene of one of my most poignant memories of Craig. I must warn you, your narrator doesn’t come off very well in this one. I was probably eleven or twelve. Maybe I was feeling high on myself because I had finally learned to ride a bike, I don’t know. An older kid named Chris was shooting baskets. Chris had some kind of disorder that caused him to go around with his mouth hanging open and generally not be able to speak properly. He walked in an awkward hunch. He came across most like a discarded Monty Python character. Acting on some nasty adolescent revelation I seized this opportunity to win the admiration of my nasty little adolescent peers by mocking Chris behind his back. The other boys laughed. It egged me on. I was thriving on a talent for cruel mimicry – living my best nasty little life. Suddenly my performance was halted by an explosive blast of pressure roaring through my anal cavity, lighting up my pelvis and rattling my little cock and balls. Craig had come up behind me and kicked me square in the ass – like he was punting a football. The physical pain lasted all day; the lesson proffered would be pondered into middle age at least. Craiggy was a short but strong-ass dude. A strong-ass dude with a penchant for swift, ass-kicking justice. 

Craiggy wasn’t just strong, he was sculpted. Though his physique proved to be a blessing and a curse. He didn’t hail from a prominent clan. His mother was a little person, best known for scavenging publicly what toilet paper could be had from about ground level after the town had been decorated for homecoming week. Craig’s dad was normal sized – originally. By the time I knew who he was, he was confined to a motorized wheelchair that he drove from bar to bar, flying a hopeful orange pennant of caution. The point is, Craig graduated  high school without a lot of prospects. But he cut a striking figure. And somehow he decided he would parlay his compact, rippling physique into a career as a Gold’s Gym body builder on Venice Beach, California. It was a damn romantic notion, and though it got a lot of laughs from a lot of  local folks, I think deep down everyone admired Craig’s courage. I’m sure a lot of people thought it was just talk. But, sure enough, after spending a few years kicking around Napawaupee, bouncing between odd jobs, Craig gathered up his belongings and meager savings and hopped on a Greyhound headed west. He said, California is the place I oughta be. 

Craig didn’t exactly make it as a bodybuilder. I don’t know the whole story, but for whatever reason, he was compelled to look for work in a somewhat adjacent industry. Or perhaps that work found him. 

There was an interim of years where I didn’t hear anything about Craig, other than the popular legends oft repeated: the baseball story, of course; the time he passed out drunk at a stop sign in the Ford Pinto he had fitted with blocks on the pedals and when the cops woke him up, he took off running; the time he sat front row at WrestleMania with some friends and tore off his shirt, leaning out over the railing, flexing and taunting Hacksaw Jim Duggan. “You ain’t shit,” he told Hacksaw repeatedly, “you ain’t shit,” prompting Hacksaw to reply famously, “at least I’m tall.” 

The next time I beheld Craiggy’s visage was not in person. I was a teenager. I was staying with an older brother for a couple days while my parents moved my older sister in to college. I was not trusted to stay home alone. 

My brother Todd happened to be good friends with Craiggy. Todd played center field on that 1982 state champion baseball team. He was right next to Craig at WrestleMania when he got into it with Hacksaw Jim Duggan. And Todd was probably one of the first people in town to hear of the career move by which Craiggy would shock and titillate an entire lakeshore community. 

I’d heard rumors of Craiggy’s new calling, but I came upon tangible proof quite by accident. Bored one night when the rest of Todd’s household was in bed, I was thumbing through the VHS collection in the entertainment center in the basement. Way at the back, stashed behind all the Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme, was a title quite unlike the others. Little Irresistible. The cover featured a trio of models in skimpy black cocktail dresses, their hair pulled back into severe black buns, arranged around a grinning little man in a three-piece suit. Little Irresistible. Like Robert Palmer but twice as tough and half as tall. 

The plot was pretty straightforward. Little Napolean – Craiggy’s rather redundant stage name – was vying for female talent with big shot agent Eddie Toon. In an opening scene Craig had one of his few speaking lines, asking one of two bikini-clad models frolicking in a swimming pool, “can you touch your ears?” The brunette dutifully took her earlobes between thumbs and forefingers. “No,” said Little Napolean, “I didn’t mean with your hands.” You can guess where it went from there. 

It was the first time I’d viewed hardcore pornography. I suppose it’s like seeing invasive surgery for the first time, or seeing a game animal dressed and liking it, despite the queasy feeling in your stomach. But then judging by the all the statistics, arrived at by anonymous studies, this isn’t a subject that needs deep delving into – not for our purposes, anyway. You already know what I’m talking about. 

Little Irresistible wasn’t even Craiggy’s biggest hit. That had to be Santa’s Little Helper, a holiday-themed romp that produced Little Napolean’s most famous catch phrase: do-whacka-do-whacka-do-whacka-do! You can’t make this stuff up, you might say. But, after all, somebody  had to write do-whacka-do-whacka-do-whacka-do. 

Soon after his breakout VHS success, Craiggy made his triumphant return tour of Napawaupee. He showed up with two women who claimed to be making a documentary for the BBC. They did have a camera. They walked through a couple of the places Craiggy worked after high school, took some footage at local landmarks, interviewed some local dignitaries. Those interviewed stammered out giddy effusions, like yokels on the nightly news who had witnessed something so magical it defied their already limited powers of elucidation. The tour culminated in a bar crawl through  downtown Napawaupee that took on the character of a mini Mardi Gras. At the head of the parade was Craig, strutting and beaming like a man who had been exiled from his homeland, only to return as conqueror and king. Or emperor, I guess. 

Someone had the gall to ask Little Napolean if he ever yanked it to his own movies. He replied with a shrug, “you gotta clean the pipe out once in a while.” 

And he made other admissions. It turned out the life of a little porn star wasn’t all snorting cocaine and fucking tall bitches. He actually spent a good amount of time working in the warehouse, sweeping floors, stocking shelves and filling orders. Like a gig in Satan’s workshop has heady benefits, but the Christmas season never ends. 

Some years went by and the news on Craig grew less and less glossy. Things changed. The internet happened. We all got older. The next project I heard about Little Napolean lending his talents to was a web reality show called Freak House. He was installed in a house with a double amputee, a bearded lady, a 7-foot tall transsexual, etc. Their sex lives were filmed. All dialogue was presumably improvised. 

His last famous turn was an appearance on the Maury Povich Show. It was one of those paternity reveal episodes where Craig was vying with another little man to be freed from obligation to the children of a mortified-looking fat lady named Beth. He put his acting experience to good use. His elocution hadn’t gotten much better, but his energy, as always, was electric. He was not the father. 

A couple years later he was back in Napawaupee, sleeping on a mattress in his mother’s basement, his luck more or less run out. He wasn’t in the best shape by that point. An ex-athlete who had let himself go. A waddling, corpulent package, with a big, unmistakable, leonine head. I would see him occasionally at the grocery store, buying jumex and vodka. He got around on a BMX bike and it was a common sight to see Craig chugging home with a bag of groceries hanging from each handle bar. If there happened to be a baseball game going on at the park, he’d stop and watch a few innings, always finding someone to talk to. 

The last time I ran into him was at the grocery store. He’d gotten in the habit of dawdling by the sliding front doors and waiting for someone to chat up. I was an adult by then, fully domesticated. I needed to pick something up quick – probably milk or eggs or something equally mundane. As I pulled up I spotted Craig, putzing around with his bags and his bike, not in any hurry. I went around the block a couple times, hoping he’d be on his way. He was not in any hurry. Finally I said fuck it and parked the car. 

As I approached the store I saw the hazy recognition come over Craig’s face. Hey…you’re a Prokash, he said, pointing. It happens in small towns; you recognize family features even if you can’t recall a name. I’m the youngest one, I said. Todd’s little brother, he crowed happily.

We talked for maybe five minutes. He was on a familiar rap about how there’s nothing going on in this town, man. And…where are you working at now? Are they hiring? It was a little tedious, but I humored the guy for as long as I could. You know, had to get home to the wife’s meatloaf or whatever. 

Craiggy died a couple months later. Of what, I’m not sure. Something like general neglect of preventative maintenance, probably. There was no public memorial service. Presumably there was nobody to pay for one. His family was all gone by then. And the fact of his paternal standing had of course been debunked. 

I don’t know if Craiggy’s story is a sad one, necessarily. I don’t know if his life was harder than others’. I didn’t live it. Few have. I do know Craiggy left big smiles on the faces of everyone in his immediate vicinity – unless maybe you were looking for a quick time at the grocery store. I know he took a look at the tricky hand he was dealt in the game of life and said, with a cocky grin and stilted delivery, all in, baby. Hit me. Craiggy did things most red-blooded American boys only dream about. The little man with the big stick. And if all lives end in tragedy, at least Craiggy was the hero of his own.