manitarium.com
A retreat for men to act and do like men

well, i’ll be going back to school. a little arrangement my dad and i made when i worked for him. this business just doesn’t work for me.

what will you be going to school for?

…

what kind of job?

oh. something medical, i think. but i might teach.

something medical i hope to change your dad’s diaper h heh! when he’s really old!

he laughed like he was coughing something up.

…  let me stop you right there, your mirth. that wasn’t funny.

oh,

the sillybilly comic sneering businessguy laugh and wink to his idiot mr. quicktomanufacture alaughsoyouthinkithinkyou’recoolsweetinnocentplayfulniceguybuti’llfuckyourwifeintheassandgetawaywithit croney, then quick to the whoops face, then his tone changes and he speaksslowly, with pathos manufactured by fear, fear old as time among his people, surely. fear and a pampered puny cretin’s sycophantic salesmanship. the fucking worm…

that was in bad taste and i ap

looking at everyone else, then down at the scalding hot, crinkle fries i’m fingering, salt graining just past the first joint-line: it’s just a very poor choice of words, you painting the picture of my prostate cancer suffering dad helpless and behaving like you two think that’s funny.

i absently eat some fries.  they’re really good.  hot and pale gold and crispy and salty and moist at teena mia’s.  such a pretty day for january.  these guys have never heard me speak about my father.  they never asked me a fucking thing about my origins.

the two youngest executives looking around and humming, start on two different topics simultaneously as if they had just been talking about it. then laughing when they realized they were busted, but still looking around as if expecting somebody until they find something uninteresting enough to discuss. the other two, more senior, long-time colleagues, doing the same, but on a topic they had been discussing perhaps several nights ago, in a pretty sweet loft apartment in what used to be a great neighborhood before too many people like them moved in; or perhaps it’s a routine with these idiots, practiced for years, with a predestined subject. they were seasoned at this people game: how to fluctuate tenor, just so nobody notices change, but so composed that it almost seems they are interested in what they are hearing and saying.

i labor the point in the loud trattoria — nobody’s listening to me anyway: because, if you think that’s funny, let me speak of my indifference, for instance, to the possibility of your infant son being struck by a degenerative nerve condition, or you, of your home being broken into by a rapist while your wife is there and you are acting like this at lunch, with the guys, at work…  it’s just. you know, what you said is kind of like that to me.

everybody kinda quickly kinda slowy quiets and eats, but struggles to not be part of a scene, maintaining conversation noises, and sound, refusing to be the group of 5 men in suits at this pleasant, charming lunch spot not talking to each other. trying to drown out the psychic echo of the man booing this fucking comedian and his one man gigglesnort, just so.

apparently, i must look like i’m about to start ripping faces off as i stuff in several more of these fucking great fries, but that’s not how i feel, not close to my thoughts at all.  it’s a sunbright day in january and i just spoke my peace.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.