How’s this for discretion:
During my lunch break, I was gassing up at the ghetto Walmart off Jones Maltsburger when a scarecrow-looking white dude approached me and asked me for money. Shameless, both his large filthy mitts cupped, he never let up on his hobo frown. All that was missing from his getup was clown makeup. Regrettable, I thought. If only dopes like you could afford Juilliard.
The homeless man’s dog-sad eyes nonetheless burrowed through my hardened mask, injected my inner gears with a horrible chemical grandmothers call empathy.
But rude hearts such as mine? They aren’t easily won, if ever they can be. In other words, a nasty idea popped into my head, and I was determined to breathe life into the sucker because I could. Because what Edgar Allen Poe had written was true; the sinister spirit of perversity floated around us always, lurking, searching for delicious vessels. And once it chomped down, it clamped to the bone.
Anyway, you know what they say about tan-skinned people—they taste exactly like chicken.
“Under one condition,” I told the homeless white man.
“What’s that?”
“I film you for a quick video for a Twitter account for my part-time job. A short message. I tell you what to say and then you repeat it. Got it?”
“Whatever, man, as long as I get paid.”
Somewhere in the soft Midwestern gut of America, an ethics professor’s waxy ears prickled. Hell, here in the city, the air was ripe with Catholic culpability. For hundreds of years, ruling priests had done what they do: guzzle the wine-blood of our innocent youth, nibble the host-bodies of willing adult sacrifices. (Spoken like a true-blue angsty Catholic schoolboy.)
Me, I was thoroughly going to enjoy reclaiming my time guilt-free.
“This currency,” I said to the homeless man, handing him a $10 bill, “having passed through hands slick, greedy and black-market, is a contract, our agreement, your word made sacred. Do we have an understanding?”
“Okie dokey,” he said, snatching the greenback like a seagull seizing his lunch.
On his second try—yes, he was that good, polished, professional an actor as any I’d witnessed—he stared straight into my microscopic lens and delivered his lines perfectly, powerfully, with no nonsense and the brand of ruggedness evoked by a Hollywood leading man from a bygone era—think Jack Palance or James Coburn—except more emaciated and much more butt-ugly.
“To my esteemed president of this United States of America,” the man recited, “my country, my home, I present to you myself, me, Carson Williams Jr., homeless white man, overlooked garbage, the real pus of this pilfered landfill. Judge me all you want, Holy Emperor, Supreme Commander, Majestic Wig. But open your cataract eyes and see: none of us, especially not pieces of trailer trash like me, live free. I once crawled out of my mother’s ivory womb privileged—and ended up pillaged. God bless you, sir, and God bless America.”
That was all I expected out of my willing participant, but in hindsight—ah, that’s where our true wickedness lies, in hindsight—I’d’ve pumped three more videos out of my dirty little natural.
Driving back to work, to my main job, fighting the insane lunch-hour traffic of fatsos on the loose, I called my ex-wife, put her on speakerphone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, what’s good?” I said.
“Hey. Um—I’m at work right now. What’s up?”
“Oh nothing. Just called to ask you a quick question.”
She stayed quiet so I cut to it.
“Why’d you recommend me for the communications gig at the church?”
“What?”
“The part-time job at our old church. Why? You know I’m not very religious. Very evangelical.”
“Is this really why you’re calling? I have a feeling it’s something else.”
“May you please answer my question? I’ve gotta get going soon.”
“You know I don’t like when you put me on the spot. I figured the extra income would help you pay for … you know … the therapy.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Thank you so much for your honesty. You’ve always had such a big heart. By the way, did you know that therapist with a space after the e spells the rapist? I must be the millionth loon to have figured this out today. Have a fabulous nightfall!”
Five seconds later, predictably, she called back. But I’d already received the push I’d craved. It had stewed and bubbled inside me, the hate, and all I’d needed for it to leap out was a small wind. Got it.
I recall pondering just then the shakily discernible difference between the words dissociate and disassociate, drawing blanks, then settling on the word diss track, a purely distractionary stopgap plugging the futile rift between the etymological diastema. (The last part is thesis-paper-speak for a gap between the teeth—do you fancy punching mine out?)
On Saturday morning, inside the empty administrative office annexed to the church, not only did I post the video from their Twitter account, tag The Donald, I messaged it to other parishes. One by one, I searched, I uploaded and I sent. How easy it was, how satisfying it felt to heat up some monstrous server in a ginormous storage room in Silicon Valley—all the while outside the sun shined, cardinals chirped, Starbucks baristas brewed, hipster engineers sipped, and homeless people—the white ones, especially the whities—shat their already-soiled sewed-in-China-or-Mexico-or-India-or-wherever-the-people-are-dark-and-destitute pants.
Believe it or not, love it or hate it, I’d performed a public service, issued a much-necessitated PSA. Through exploitation, I’d exposed something beyond naming, yet undoubtedly responsible for the woeful wasteland we’d dubbed wonderland, where even in its grease pits the Wi-Fi was free.
The blaze from the fallout was spectacular! You couldn’t fathom, or maybe you could, just how many randos liked my tweet, loved my tweet, retweeted my tweet. Tweet tweet tweet!
The day after I was fired from both jobs, I made the news, was granted a ridiculous platform to speak my case, defend my outrageous actions. I couldn’t help but think: How come someone so stupid, so smart, so brave hasn’t already done this? How come some other dodo from the inside hasn’t already blown a hole in this ancient creaking galleon? Does no one loathe their ex as much as I do mine to produce a stunning cannonball splash in the wide-open ocean of faux civility? In this crumbling city, I suppose not. Disappointing.
A moment of silence, then, please, for you poor souls who allow your poor souls to be pooped on with or without your permission. Amen.
Now for a happy ending. The day after I was canned, effectively turning my ass into a local infamous celebrity, but probably effective only for a couple weeks, I was at home with a mad sweet tooth. I tore open a bag of Double Stuf Oreos and devoured all of them, washed ’em down with half a gallon of milk. It was as if I’d forgotten my age. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d eaten so many cookies, a whole package by myself—probably not since the night of the big reveal about Santa Claus.
For two or three awful seconds, I regretted everything, a huge knot twisting, turning, churning my intestines.
Then I burped. Burped the loudest, slothiest, dragoniest burp one can imagine. I’m certain my upstairs neighbor felt the rumble and shut down his World of Warcraft campaign and called his girlfriend to be comforted by her cutesy anime voice.
As punishment and reward for my blockbuster belch, I re-tasted a thick creaminess—gross, I know, I know, but nonetheless delightful, the satiating full-blast milk-and-Oreo flurry from the just-passed past. I chuckled, patted my fattened belly, and I thought:
Yeah. Ruling priests. Freaks. Captive souls, the lot of you. Do what I want. How’s that for discretion?