In
film, the wayward, stodgy protagonist finds his pragmatic, joyless existence
upended by some sort of free spirited member of the opposite sex. Typically, one learns from another; there is
some sort of spat where one’s free spiritedness leads to let’s say a blown
meeting for the other, or someone is entirely too doggedly dry for some sort of
hot yoga convention, or a soufflé is horribly burned when a work associate is
coming over, or Dharma gets AIDS, somehow.
Maybe Dharma gets AIDS from Greg’s stationary, somehow. I don’t write television, but it could
happen? McWorld? It’s a bit bleak, but people tend to enjoy
that sort of relatable impact, a digestible form of current strife. The horror of this befuddling modern world
through the lens that is situational comedy is a fairly well-worn trope.
Anyway, this is bullshit, utter rubbish as our compatriots across the pond
would call it.
For my own tale, as convention would dictate, it was a mildly dreary
afternoon, and I was feeling the intolerable weight of my, predictably, drab
existence. I had left the sterile
confines of my one bedroom apartment with institutional décor of white walls
and nothing and ventured into the hazy, confounding, pointless miasma of
another work day. The only fundamental
shift really was from the white walls and institutional décor, nothing, of my
one bedroom apartment to the white walls and institutional décor, nothing, of
my office space. Actually that’s
inaccurate; there was also the ideological shift from being on the giving end
to the receiving end of petulant phone calls.
Fortunately though, most of my telecom abusers are believers in the
theory of word economy, which I am not.
When they limit it to merely, “Die cunt”, I imagine that they’re talking
about radishes, exceptional radishes, the most marvelous radishes ever, the
kind of radishes that a grown, vocally porcine man would scream about.
Needless
to say, it was an excellent day for radishes. As my horticultural experience
wound down, I made my way out of the building and on to the streets of my
illusory and nebulously defined city.
Past the bank, the marijuana dispensary, and the animal clinic there is
a small bar that I frequent. It is a
nice shift from the institutional décor of a sanitarium to the institutional
décor of a small dive bar. There are a
jukebox and some pictures. Normally, I slink
in, think hellos to the patrons, and slump in a booth near the back. As such, today was appropriately normal. I sat with my tumbler of rail rye and my pint
of domestic lager and watched a judge show, shown silently, and imagined what
was being litigated. It was usually,
“Shuckie Duckie, Quack, Quack.” I would only do this for white plaintiffs
though, as to free my inner monologue from accusations of racism from my
superego.
As I
was sitting, mired in deep thoughts of punitive damages and freedom, I was
aurally accosted by a young woman. This
was not normal. I have now surmised that
she had mistaken my deliberate Old Hollywood style stoicism for crippling
depression which she oddly reacted to with sympathy, women. Visually, she was not unattractive. There was a certain reddish discoloration to
her skin that connoted girlishness to a modern person and bawdiness to 13th
century British authors. Her facial
features were those of a catalogue model for something practical like parkas or
possibly dinettes, nothing gaudy, but pleasing on a Rockwell level or like the
more restrained Playboy cartoons of
the 70’s. She stated that her name was
Apple, and noting her severe lack of a British accent, I postulated that her
parents had merely hated her due to some sort of prenatal transgression.
After a
brief intermission of platitudes and exposition, she had a suggestion for me
and improving my mood. She said plainly,
“You need to do the Charlie Brown.” My
first reaction was a slight, yet palpable, turgidity in my swimsuit area. As it had only led me wrong a slim
percentage of the time, I went with it. The first step
on this adventure was to get into my Ford Fiesta, which had been sold to me
under the pretense that it was a Quince on wheels, without the transition into Hispanic
womanhood. As we entered the car, my
heart sank slightly as I realized that “Charlie Brown” was not a euphemism for
heterosexual sodomy or heroin. No, the
first step of the “Charlie Brown” was to drive forty five minutes into a pastoral
hamlet outside of the city. The second
step was to meander through our bucolic confines to find a small hill.
It was
with the third step that things grew odder.
As we sat and waited on this hill exchanging pleasantries and belying
our trepidation related to accompanying a stranger to a small town on a whim on
a Wednesday, I saw it. I saw why she had
brought me here. It was a Klan rally.
While I thought the synergy between unassuming attractive women leading
strangers to kKan rallies was odd, it had worked in this case. Noticing my obvious confusion, Apple
reassured me that, no she was not a headhunter for the klan which was a mild
relief. What came next was slightly less
relieving.
Apple,
to this point an archetype of improbable male fantasies related to the crushing
skull drudgery of American male adulthood for the middle class non meth
addicted segment of the country borne into reality, picked up a surprisingly large, softball size,
rock. She made the international sign
for being quiet and then led me closer to the congregation of white supremacists. Fortunately, our innate whiteness allowed us
to blend in. As we stood in the back of
this mass of irked Caucasians, Apple began to motion. She began to spin the rock as a softball
pitcher would. As her centrifuge of
descent whirred, I was mildly distracted by licentious Sapphic thoughts that
have mired the perception of women’s sports in this country. As that second transitioned to the next, I
was startled by the striking rapidity the rock had now taken when released. I marveled at the wet damp thud that it made
on the back of that Klansman’s head. As
the crowd noticed the crumpling of the Klansman, all eyes shifted back to
us. Apple then yelled out, “All I got
was a rock!” We started running, really fucking fast. My only thoughts at the time were that Apple
had done this frequently enough to have a term for it and Sweet Jesus; I do not
want to die.
