The Real Olive Garden

When I first started dating Lenore she told me I’d know when she fell in love with me. “Trust me,” she said with a small smile while we sat at a fancy French restaurant. It was as if she already knew I’d fallen in love with her, and now it was a matter of waiting for her to catch up. And this was true. I fell in love with Lenore after our second date, her confidence, her conventional beauty, her smile, her sense of humor, but I don’t know how she discovered it. I must’ve given off some pretty obvious vibes for her to make such a self-assured remark. And I kept it in mind. I thought about what she told me every time we met, straining my ears for a hint that the feelings I had for her were reciprocated.

Was she into weird sex stuff? Molested as a child? Maybe a drug addict. Maybe a CIA operative. Hermaphrodite?

Ha. The things I thought.

But she was right. I knew it as soon as she said it because it was beyond whatever I could’ve imagined. When she explained it to me, it reminded me of that joke, The Aristocrats. I told her that and she nodded and laughed.

“Yeah! I always thought of it that way, too.”

And still, despite its bizarreness, there was no shaking in her voice when she told me. No fear of me leaving her. Maybe it was the fact that she showed she was in love with me. Maybe that sort of softened the blow of what she just explained. Because I was happy when she told me; in my mind, she loved me first, and the cat orgies, they were second.

The next week we went over to her parents’ house. The whole family’d be there. We had already talked about marriage at this point. She told me she told them she thought I was the one, and it made me glow.

Before we went over she offered me a tab of ecstacy. Seeing as it was my first time and all.

“They won’t mind?” I asked. “I want to make a good first impression.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re going to make a good first impression. Believe me.”

I was rolling pretty hard by the time we pulled up to the house. I kept grabbing the inside of Lenore’s thigh and she swatted it off.

“Save it for later.”

I asked her if it was ok for me to tell her I was horny. She shrugged and told me it was fine without taking her eyes off the road. “Ok,” I said. “I’m horny. This ecstacy is great. I’m ready to do this Lenore. I love you.”

She nodded in approbation.

“You’ll do fine.”

Her mother opened the door, or I assumed it was the mother, she looked like Lenore but older so I guess it was her, but before I could introduce myself to her her mouth was over mine, tongue counting my fillings, poking the hole where my wisdom tooth had been removed, and I was kissing back, brought her in up against me, and I heard Lenore on her father in the same way. The four of us promenaded into the living room, constantly kissing and groping with occasional glances down the hallway to make sure we didn’t bump into anything, and as we promenaded our partners kept switching. Next it was Lenore, then Lenore’s dad, then Lenore’s mother again, and in the living room was Lenore’s sister and brother on the couch, the sister splayed out with her hands over heard while the brother pleasured her orally.

My jacket was off and so were my pants and someone’s mouth was on my member when we heard a proclamation from the top of stairs, stately, regal, stentorian, your choice.

“Here I come.”

We all removed our mouths and genitalia from whatever mouth and genitalia they were attached to at the moment to listen. We heard the quick steps down the steps, heard his paws click clack over the marble tiles, and then there he was. Mittens the cat. Decked out in a monocle and a top hat, he sauntered in to the living room and took in inventory. Licked his lips.

I’ve never been penetrated before and I’m glad the first time was Mittens. His member was that of a normal cat’s — not very large at all — so that I got more sensation out of his furry body bouncing off of my buttocks than the actual intercourse. While it happened, I thought, This must be what it feels like when a baby gets his bottom powdered.

Lenore explained, much like a toast, these orgies did not finish until mouth and genitalia had connected with everyone’s mouth and genitalia, so obviously it took some time. When it did finish all of us were sweaty, naked, and pleased. We stood up and wiped fluids off our skin and smiled at one another. It felt like the end of a well-played soccer game. I even had the urge to shake everyone’s hands and say, “Nicely done.”

We sat down to a delicious roast beef dinner in the dining room. Mittens didn’t, however. After the orgy he sauntered back out the way he had sauntered in, mewling “A pleasure!” over his shoulder before he turned the hallway and went back up the stairs.

Everyone at dinner seemed to like me. I tried to pay the same amount of attention to each and every member of the family. None of us had put our clothes back on. We’d get dressed while Lenore’s mother made coffee and served dessert, and a month later Lenore would tell me everyone thought I was wonderful, and I was welcome back any time, and I felt very good about this.

*

I still hadn’t proposed to Lenore when we moved in together but I told her I would when the time was right, much like she told me I’d know when she was in love with me. We got a lovely house in a lovely suburban gated community that was close to my workplace. We’d go to Lenore’s family’s house every other month to do the same thing we always did. The only thing that differed was Mittens’ entrance and departure speech.

“Hello, you beautiful people!”

“Hasta la vista.”

“Oh, let’s get things started!”

“Time for a nap.”

“It’s Mittens time!”

“Thanks, guys. ‘Til the next one.”

Lenore told me that Mittens was as old as her mother, Marta. Maybe older. Marta got Mittens as a child, and Mittens never aged. Mittens started talking to Marta when she hit puberty. Single sentences much like the ones he said before and after the orgies. And soon Marta found herself enamored with the cat. She hid this from her family but decided when the time came for her to get married and raise a family, they’d learn to love Mittens the same way she did, which was physically.

Lenore admitted to wishing she could bring Mittens to the house, but she knew her mother’d never approve. “They’ve been together too long,” she’d say sadly, one of the only topics she addressed that actually seemed to hurt her. “But I love Mittens just as much as she does.”

I’ll admit, too, that I had developed a strong affection towards Mittens. Something about him made you want him around all the time. He made you want to give yourself up completely to him, let him do with you whatever he pleased. A mysterious, hypnotizing cat. A one-of-a-kind.

So I started to research. I looked up cat orgies online. Ageless cats. Cats who can talk. I finally found a site, an occult site (surprise surprise) that provided folklore about demons manifested in feline form that went back as far as the ancient Egyptians. It was told that only a handful of these cats still existed today, many of them drowned or burned throughout history in a series of what some may call feline pogroms, and it was unclear how these cats came to be, when, or if more could be created through eugenics. I contacted the owner of the website to see whether he had more information but he didn’t. I didn’t let him know about Mittens, seeing as he was apparently such a rare and potentially coveted after commodity.

It pained me to see Lenore sad. I wanted to find a new Mittens for her, as a surprise. I went to her parents’ house for an unscheduled visit alone. I told Lenore I needed to pick up some things.

Over a cup of coffee in the living room where the orgies took place I talked to Marta and Edgar — Lenore’s father — about Mittens. “Your daughter would love a Mittens of her own,” I explained.

They looked at each other uneasily when I told them, mid sip, then supped, and put their coffee mugs down on the porcelain coasters. Edgar cleared his throat.

“We’ve tried,” he explained to me, answering a question I didn’t need to ask. “For a long time we tried. We wanted to give all of our kids one, to pass onto future generations. But Mittens, it seems he’s sterile. We’d find a lady cat in heat for him, they’d go at it, and no results! No litters. He must’ve fucked every cat in town, to be honest. We’re at as much of a loss as you are.”

“And I’d give him up,” Marta said, “but I don’t even think it’s possible. I don’t think he’d approve. Honestly, there are times where if I’m away from him for too long…”

She stopped, looked down, and supped. Edgar finished for her.

“She gets sick. Nausea, headaches, pain all over her body. It seems Mittens and her are attached in some way, spiritually, and they’re gonna be together for the rest of Marta’s life.”

I bowed my head in exasperation, tried to conceal the lightbulb that went off over my head.

*

Mittens watched me as I set up his playroom. I put a scratching post in one corner, food and water dish in another, kitty litter another. Against one of the walls I put a ladder for him to climb with a mousey toy dangling from the ceiling. Also in the room was a button Mittens could step on, calling for more Fancy Feast in his plate any time he pleased.

“It’s a nice place,” he told me.

After the room was put together to satisfaction I put the proposal charm around his neck. He yawned.

“I’ll get used to this,” he said.

And then we waited together for Lenore to get home.

I heard the door open and called for her to come over. When she walked into the room and saw me and Mittens the car keys and shopping bag dropped from her hands and hands shot to mouth in a joyous gasp. “Oh my God!” she said, and the tears were already coming down her cheeks.

I smiled. Mittens licked his lips stoically. I told her to pick him up.

“Oh Sam oh Sam you’re the best Sam oh Sam.” And when she picked him up and saw the proposal etched on the pendant she yelped again and looked at me, laughing, crying, everything. “Oh, Sam!” she said, dropping Mittens and putting my head in her hands.

“Yes!” she said between kisses. “Of course! Yes!”

I’d take her to where I buried them later that night and she’d feign remorse but it would be all too clear she was happy with what I did.

She learned to enjoy the wheelchair after a few months. It brought back vague memories of being a child in a stroller when he pushed her around town on a nice day. Except, she remembered, the stroller, it was more of a home than the wheelchair, it sort of wrapped you up and made you feel safe and protected, and these walks, these strolls, didn’t really make her feel like that. She wished she could have a wheelchair she could sink into, with canvas on either side, and maybe one of those transparent hoods you saw that protected children from rain. She wished those existed but they didn’t because she asked him to check it out online once with no luck.

She could only really go on walks if the pain wasn’t bad that day, and even then it could start while they were going about town and they’d have to rush back home and give her her pain meds. If she was in pain, the slightest bump underneath one of the wheels could travel throughout her whole body, make her shout out, helplessly, causing others around them to turn and look, and give those looks she despised, of pity, sadness, disgust.

If she had the energy the words out of her mouth were typically along the lines of “I would understand if you wanted to leave me,” which hurt him, so she rarely spoke, even if she could.

The doctors warned her against abusing the drugs and she wondered why it mattered if this was going to be this way the rest of her life. It seemed silly to tell someone in her condition not to abuse anything that could help her escape a common and excruciating pain. She tried not to, anyway. Whenever she did take more than she needed he never protested and she was happy he didn’t because it meant he had a good understanding of what she was going through.

He could leave, though. She really wouldn’t hold it against him. She easily could get an aide paid for by the state to take care of her. He knew that, she was sure, but he was still around, and she liked to wonder, how much of it was out of loyalty, how much of it was him trying to be a good person, how much of it was him achieving moral high ground over others. They’d only been together for eight months when it happened. Not for a short period, but not necessarily very long, either. A weird limbo period, and they both knew it, but never discussed it.

She wished she could pay more attention to him, watch him when he wasn’t thinking about being watched, get a better idea of what he was thinking, but her condition kept her from doing so. She could hear him in other rooms preparing meals or cleaning the apartment but she could not see his face, she could not see whether he was happy or trying to be happy. All she could do was sit still and hope he got into her field of vision. Until then, watch the television, though sometimes she liked to sit in the den with a book on tape playing over the stereo with her eyes closed.

And then one day it finally happened. He lifted her out of her wheelchair and sat her down on the soft carpet of the den, propped her body against a mountain of pillows and blankets placed against the foot of the couch, and he sat Indian style in front of her, his hands constantly reaching up at his face to claw rub and massage.

I love you, I don’t want us to not stop seeing each other, but…

She knew it was coming. It made her happy. Tears started coming down her eyes, and it killed her because she knew he wouldn’t be able to tell that she was happy, or maybe he would.

When she started crying he started crying. He fumbled out a small jewelry box. I wanted you to have this, he said. To remember me by. He opened it. A small modest gold ring. He shook his head. I don’t know. I don’t know how I was supposed to go through with this. Everything’s already arranged. I took care of it all. Your parents know, too. I plan on visiting, believe me when I say that, but it’s become too much…

Still crying, she muttered, nodded, It’s ok.

That was all he needed to hear, and for the next five minutes they sat together out of a twisted feeling of relief, happiness, a tension deflated across the entire apartment.

He took her hand in his. It hurt but she made no noise. He took her ring finger like it was air, and that hurt too but she made no noise. It was only until the ring was on, the feeling of the metal sliding against her skin like a knife slicing off the upper level of the skin, that she screamed, a high pitched note held out over the two of them.

I keep praying one day you’ll come back. I think that’s what keeps me going. One day we’ll wake up and you’ll turn over, smile, say “Good morning, honey,” instead of giving me that stare, confused, scared, a little amused, before saying “Who are you?”

But I guess that’s why you get married. So that if something happens to me you take care of me and if something happens to you I take care of you, and it happened to you. That’s what I’m here for, I’m here for you, the same way you’d’ve been there for me, so, ok. Is it really you, though? And at this point — does it even matter? Why bother myself with questions that can’t be answered, excuses that are just a way to rationalize my own selfishness. I won’t go down that road.

We did have, what, 25 good years together? Great years even. Most people don’t even get that. They get divorced, they get cheated on, they die, they get bored. 25 years is good. It’s great. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’d even take you just remembering our walks in the park long enough for you to tell me at the end of them that You had a good time. These days, I’d take you remembering a single entire pleasant moment with me. Just a simple squeeze of the arm and a smile and a Thank you. If I could just have that I’d be happy. Before you forget again.

We have a house and the house is filled with memories, photos, souvenirs, newspaper clippings, and sometimes after you’re asleep I’ll go downstairs, maybe with a glass of scotch, and walk the halls like it’s a museum, picking up things, studying them, recalling their moments, remembering enough for the two of us. At least I’d like to hope so.

Your parents visit once a week. We play Scrabble while keeping an eye out for you. They make me feel better, too. Your mother, she looks just like you sometimes, and talking to her, remembering, I can trick myself into believing that it’s you I’m talking to, like you never disappeared, and the way they are so happy with me, appreciative of what I’m doing, helps a lot. I think I’d ask them to move in with us if I didn’t think it’d sound so weird. But they’re retired. They’re enjoying their free time. And as much as I hate to say it the doctors said maybe seven years, tops, so it’s not like the rest of my life’s with you, unfortunately, maybe not so unfortunately, I loved you and I miss you, but You now is not the same, it’s a moral obligation, sometimes I imagine lighting the house on fire and the two of us burning alive together, it feels like it’d be the right way to handle things some times, as if, if you’re not going to remember, what’s the point of remembering myself, why not cut to the chase.

For now, though, for now I’ll cling out to my hope, and it might be a fruitless hope, but crazier things have happened, right, people disappear, reappear, people predict tremendous events, are predicted to die and then miraculously recover, so Why Not You, who says it can’t happen to You, maybe it’d be enough to make me convert, ahem, God, ha ha, I’m just joking though, who am I writing to, I’m writing to you when you come back, I guess.

Dude, I don’t even know. It’s so fucking retarded. No, it really is, bro, and let me tell you why — she knew I had practice. She knew, bro. We talked about it, like, so many fucking times, I’m not even lying. Like, I’ve told her, literally, a million times I have practice after class during spring season. And it’s, like, when she was doing field hockey in the fall, did I forget? Did I fucking give her a hard time about it? It’s just so… fuck, man. So fucking retarded.

Ok, yeah, so you want the whole story? You want to know the whole thing? Ok, so, like, you know, school’s over, I meet up with Chrissy at my locker, and we talk a little. So she’s, like, What are you up to now? And I’m like, Oh, you know, I gotta go to bio extra help, if I don’t go Simmons is gonna fail me for the quarter, you know? so she’s like Ok, and I’m like Ok, and, you know, we say I love you and kiss and shit. I don’t ask her what she’s up to because I got lax after extra help, and, like, I figure she knows this because I’ve, like, like I said already, told her so many times.

So, you know, whatever, extra help, whatever, Simmons is his usually douchey self, and he almost busted me because I was laughing so much…

What?

Yeah, ok.

So, like, yeah. I forgot that part. My bad.

Ok. So, like, before extra help, ha, yeah, because I know it’s gonna suck so much, I meet up with Jared, and we blaze. But, like, that’s not exactly an issue, you know? Ha! Yeah, bro, standard procedure. So, anyway, yeah, I was stoned at extra help and kept like fucking giggling, whatever whatever. Doesn’t really matter. I’m high, Simmons is a douche, what else is new, right? Ha.

So yeah, extra help ends around, like, 3:30, and I told coach I’d get to practice at 3:30, so, like, you know, it takes time to get ready and shit, and it’s the first day of practice, so I haul ass to the gym, get changed get my equipment on. Like, I don’t have time to check my phone. And, like, anyway, I’m not expecting any calls, so, like, whatever.

So practice is over at 5:30. I’m getting changed in the locker room, once I’m finished changing I check my phone. And, bro. I shit you not. Like, 20 missed calls from her, bro. And then there are, like texts, too. “Hey where are you?” “What are you doing?” “What’s up?” And, like, as I’m reading through them, they’re getting more and more angry, like, at the end, she’s like “You’re an asshole,” “You better not be with Brittney.”

And it’s like, yeah, Brittney and I hooked up, but the thing is she doesn’t know. Like it happened two weekends ago or whatever, but it was, like, we agreed to be secret about it, so, I mean, has she told you she knows? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The way she said it, like, you could tell she was just jealous, like, she had no fucking idea whether I actually hooked up with Brittney, so it’s, like, totally uncalled for.

So I’m reading these texts, and, like, on top of coach giving me a hard time for being late to the first practice of the season I get fucking shit from this psycho bitch, and, you know, it pisses me off. Like, I can’t even think, you know what I mean? And that’s, like, why I didn’t even wait to get outside. I call her, like, in the locker room, in front of the team, I mean, you saw this part. And I’m like shouting, What the fuck is wrong with you I told you I have practice are you mental and she’s like, Fuck you you never said anything about practice and I’m like, I fucking told you so many times about lacrosse Chrissy, and she’s like, Yeah well you just mentioned extra help today and I’m like, Because I assumed you already knew I had practice and she’s like, Well you shouldn’t assume and, like at that point, you remember when I stopped and just like stared at the phone, right before I threw it against the wall? Yeah. That’s the last fucking thing she said to me. It’s like, what the fuck, bro. How many times do I have to tell someone something.

Like, seriously? I’m worried for her, if she can’t remember something like that. It’s not a good sign. Idunno, I feel like maybe she needs to see a shrink or something, but it’s, like, I don’t even, like, feel I could say that to her, because she’d, like, flip out. So it’s like, what else can I do? Fuck it. We’re probably through. I guess.

Idunno, bro. That’s it. Is the bowl packed, though? Yeah, fuck it, let’s enjoy ourselves. Haha! It’s a celebration, bitches! Man, Chappelle Show, so funny, bro.

What did you say? What did you just let leave out your mouth? Repeat it, please. I dare you. Say it again. I want to hear it. I want to hear you say it again — to, for a second time, entertain the notion that you would ever want to leave me.

Look at my face. Look at my hair. Look at how perfect I am. You don’t fucking leave me. You can’t leave me. You do not leave this. You fucking bitch cunt. You stay right here where you are and never leave me until I’m through with you. Arrogant fucking worm.

I can use those words, don’t pretend like I can’t, and don’t even fucking think of disobeying me. When did this idea pop into your tiny fucking brain? While you were sleeping in a bed that all your stupid pathetic cow girlfriends dream of sleeping in, sleeping next to a man all your stupid panting bracelet-wearing hags dream of sleeping next to, with? You ungrateful shit. Tomorrow I’ll change the locks so if you ever again come to the idiotic conclusion that you should leave you couldn’t. How’s that? You are mine. You stay here. Because you love me. Don’t try and deny it. Why try and deny it? Why burden yourself with that denial. You do not leave me. Look at this house I afford. I afford it because I am Perfection. I have blessed you with the fucking opportunity to be near Perfection, so guess what? You, do not, fucking, leave.

I’ll change the locks, and I’ll get them changed for free because I am disarmingly handsome. And you even think of leaving me. You don’t know what you’re thinking. Clearly. You need me, to slap you back to reality, before you make a mistake. Fucking pathetic. It makes me second-guess having you around.

You leave and everyone around you will resent you for leaving This. They’ll think you are selfish and arrogant. They’ll turn their backs on you and come flocking to me, and they’ll show their true colors, true preferences, and you wouldn’t want that. You wouldn’t want to discover that everyone you know you know because they want to be near me, would you? How could you even think you could leave. How could that thought have ever crossed your mind.

I treat you well. You’re lucky I don’t make you eat meals on all fours, out of a bowl. I could make you. You’d do it. You could tell yourself you wouldn’t but you would and if you wouldn’t, there are thousands behind you, in line, who would do it for me. Who would be a dog for you? Anyone? Again: look at this face, this hair, this house, these proportions, and then think to yourself: how could I ever leave such a wonderfully perfect thing.

Do you know how fast I can run the 400? How many push-ups I can do? How many more of these houses I could afford? How many of these stupid fucking necklaces I could buy whenever I felt like it? Do you know that in the past five minutes I have made one hundred thousand dollars? Just by being alive? What have you done? Starved yourself for a flat belly? Used the right product that I paid for so your complexion’d be spotless? Hey: let’s compare your accomplishments versus mine, and then let’s decide who, if ever, gets to leave whom.

This is a beautiful fucking night, this is a beautiful fucking storm, it is a storm I willed to happen, this is a beautiful fucking house, I am presenting you with a beautiful fucking necklace, and this is beautiful fucking lighting, beautiful fucking architecture, beautiful fucking foliage seen through these beautiful fucking floor-to-ceiling windows, and I am a beautiful fucking man, and you are going to be fucking happy, forever, surrounded by this fucking beauty, and you are not going to be an insouciant soft-minded infant who thinks she has any idea what is best for herself. Now apologize, say you’re sorry, and re-pledge allegiance. Unfuckingbelievable.

Dear Mr. Adams,

I hope you know I wouldn’t send you a letter just to go through the tired ritual of praise. You are a very busy man, I’m sure, and your time is valuable, and a man of your intellect does not need to be burdened by thoughtless, one-dimensional fans, telling you what you already know - that Dilbert is genius, hilarious in its dry approach at humor, relatable in content, addressing the silly day-to-day minutiae that everyone who ever worked in an office encounters - so I will try my best to keep this brief.

I am one of your biggest fans. I grew up on your comic, which says a lot to the universal appeal of its humor. As a young boy poring over the funnies every morning before leaving for school I would save Dilbert last in order of reading, a minor act of deference to the strength of its material. I found something in the characters that transcended the environment in which they existed. The Pointy-Haired boss, his stupidity, it was present even when he talked in a language I had yet to learn. It did not matter that I did not fully appreciate the meaning of words like “outsource” and “administrative assistant” – the humor shone through, a quality all great work is wont to do, and the inanity of the white-collar office environment, to me, slowly, it became an obsession of sorts, even a goal, you might say.

My infatuation with Dilbert led to fantasies of becoming a part of the Dilbert world. I dreamed of the day I would have a cubicle; I dreamed of the day I would have an incompetent boss at whom I could roll my eyes regularly in utter exasperation; I dreamed of having a friend like Wally, and the satisfaction that no matter how difficult my lot in life was, I could always look at Asok’s perpetually worse lot to help me feel better. At school I tried to fit my classmates and teachers into these roles. It never worked too well – clearly, the classroom is nothing like an office, I know that now – but I never gave up, and the frustration from my failures fueled my desire to get an engineering degree and employment at a nameless faceless corporation as soon I graduated from college.

It took me two years and five jobs to finally find a satisfactory niche for my fantasy. I do not think it is possible for my situation to get any closer in similarity to what your comic elucidates. My boss is fat, stupid, and oblivious; my coworker is intelligent but lazy and disillusioned, he exerts more energy into avoiding work than in doing it; we get a new intern every year, and every year I find creative ways to lock him or her into the paradoxical snares that exist in the bureacracy of our workspace; there is a fiery woman who cannot tolerate any of her coworkers’ errors; we even do business with a small Eastern European nation whose name at the moment eludes me. At home I have a pet pug as I have always felt that is the breed Dogbert most resembles, and, for Bob the Dinosaur, since we all know it’s not actually possible to employ or reanimate any dinosaur at present, I have a stuffed stegosaurus I ordered online. I talk to Dogbert and it seems like he understands but is too absorbed in his own ambitions to care, much like the Dogbert that graces your comic.

What concerns me now, Mr. Adams, is the future, or lack thereof. Dilbert lives in a vacuum. He doesn’t age. I could try and predict where his life might go from here, but the unpredictability of life inhibits me from confidently doing so.

Like most of the greatest minds of our generation, he is forever single, flummoxed by his own social shortcomings and the unsophisticated dribble he encounters when confronted with possible female companionship. But couldn’t he eventually find someone? A someone like him? Say, for example, a librarian, quiet and meek in public, but in person, that is, when in a one-on-one conversation with someone whom she respects, cannot help but lament over the idiocy and shortsightedness of the company she is forced to keep at her job. Could this be a possibility? While I have up till now enjoyed playing the ever-unsuccessful bachelor, there are nights, nights where I step out of character, against my will, and suffer, and the reasons I suffer are clear. They are directly related to the desire for companionship; and there are some areas of companionship, unfortunately, that Dogbert is simply not equipped to fulfill.

There are other issues but I do not want to overwhelm you. If you think you can help me with this problem and would be willing to look at additional concerns of mine over time I would be very, very grateful. Any response at all would be something to treasure.

Sincerely,

A Fucking Idiot

Why are you here, she asks, and I laugh. He looks at me while chomping the linguine up into his mouth in a reverse cascade, his mouth aflutter like a bunny rabbit’s, and I laugh. Didn’t I tell you not to come? she asks, and I laugh. Look at me, she says. I laugh and look at the unlimited salad bowl in front of me, untouched, glistening in oil, the cherry tomatoes floating over mesclun mix like irritated whale humps surfacing spouts. Hey, he says. She asked you to do something. She’s the only reason you’re here, right? So why not listen to her, huh? Tony, please. I watch out of the corner of my downturned eyes as she reaches a hand out to perch on his bicep. The hand moves a little, softly, affectionately, sensually, and I laugh again after my mind turns to the word “sensually.” The only reason we let you sit with us is because we didn’t want a scene, she says. I hoped all three of us could work this out like adults. We’re all adults, aren’t we? I take my fork and prod a cherry tomato. I cannot pierce into the cherry tomato because the cherry tomato sinks into the mesclun if I press too hard. Are you listening? she asks. Jared? Jared, says Tony, the lady’s talking to you. I’m getting frustrated by the cherry tomato’s resilience toward being picked up with a fork but because I don’t know how to frown I laugh some more and shake my head a little. Then I take my free hand, hold the cherry tomato steady with thumb and forefinger, and the fork goes through one side and exits the other. I told you it was over, she says. What more do you want me to say? Tony swallows some linguine and clears his throat. Idunno, says Tony. I’m trying to be patient right now, Ellen, for you, but I mean, Idunno, Idunno how much longer I can take this. From my vantage point all I can see is Tony’s dimpled chin swing back and forth over his linguine with clam sauce. Tony, says Ellen. All I know, says Tony, is this guy over here shows up uninvited, sits down at our table, won’t even talk to us, when all I want was to have a nice dinner with you. Idunno, it just seems this guy thinks he can do whatever he wants without any consequences, like no one else matters but him. He’s just hurt, Tony, she says. I know how he gets. I don’t care if you know how he gets. I took you out to dinner. I wanted to have a nice little romantic evening with you. And he knows it, but he wants to ruin our night because sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we want it to, and he can’t handle it. Tony, if you want to go home and reschedule, we can do that. No, says Tony, his voice sharpening, I’m not going to just reschedule my events every time some fucking wackjob ruins them. We shouldn’t have to go through this. Well, I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Tony, she says. I hear Tony laugh, I see a napkin plop down in front of his bowl of pasta. You know what? I don’t want to get into a fight with you over this worm. I love you. You wanna go home? Let’s go home. We’ll rent a movie and have some popcorn.

I hear Tony ask the waiter for the check. I’m still looking down at the cherry tomato on my fork. Tony asks the waiter to get his card back to him quickly because he and Ellen would like to get out of there. I got a stupid smile on my face, I know I do, but I don’t know what other face to make. Tony tells me I’m paid for as I hear his and Ellen’s chairs scrape back, and they’re gone. I count to 60 before I look up to make sure they’ve actually left, drop the fork and the cherry tomato, and think how the tomato is some sort of metaphor for life or some stupid thing, like if you really want something you need to make it to want you back by way of force.

The film ended, and when it ended the audience filed out of the theatre in anger, shouting and cursing up into the domed air over them, demanding their money back.

Upon reentering the lobby they stood in tightly knit hate groups listing all the ways they wanted to find the director and torture and kill him while his wife watched. They talked about their newfound hate for actors they had previously loved, and how this made them hate the director even more, as his vision made demons out of Hollywood’s hottest young talents. The film was obscene offensive and deplorable and they wondered how it ever got green-lit. One man would not stop cursing. Every time he tried to offer a cogent opinion on the film he fell into a paroxysm of vulgarity, his face turned red and swollen.

Then one of them threw a molotov cocktail at the ticket counter. The assailant in question had snuck in a pint of whiskey to share with his date and at the end of the movie there was some left over. In an effort to impress her, the assailant in question gave his date a quick glance and head nod, said “Watch this” with raised eyebrows, and started constructing the cocktail, but in retrospect wished he had told her to “Watch this” after the ripped sleeve of his tee shirt had already been placed into the mouth of the pint bottle, since his date’s interest waned by the time he was trying to ignite the fucking thing.

The molotov cocktail burst against the wall next to the ticket counter’s window, at which point the vendor stuck his head out through the small opening at the bottom of the glass pane protecting him from spit, popcorn, whatever, to see what had happened.

The flame extinguished relatively quickly, there was nothing near the ticket counter’s window to which it could catch, but the sound of glass shattering awoke in all the hate groups a new level of rage. While the vendor had his head stuck out the window, gaping at the burn stains the small fire left on the wall, a man in the nearest hate group reached into the window pane’s opening and grabbed the vendor from underneath his armpits in an attempt to yank him through. The vendor shouted for help and tried to fight off the man but could not find a solid enough vantage point on the man’s body off of which he could push. This was when the hate groups exploded into a single giant hate mob. The men and women of the hate mob moved quickly and erratically through the lobby like molecules in an unstable gas. They punched and kicked at those they passed, shouted and spat and sneered at those they passed, and then one man tackled another into a garbage pail, spilling empty candy boxes and popcorn everywhere, which led every man and woman in the mob to latch onto a partner for direct expression of their hate.

Once two members of the mob came together they began fighting and abusing each other, encouraging each other, and in the cloud of sound up above in the space between them and the ceiling one could hear voices begging to be kicked, hit, burned, and then there were the hate-fucks, men and women bent over with pants down looking back at their hate partner with wild red eyes, shouting “Do it, fucking stick something in me, you cunt,” and the hate partners more than willing to oblige, one person inflicting pain, the other receiving it, all to serve the same purpose, the same goal of forgetting the thing they had just seen, replacing the fury it caused with another, more vivid and distracting sensation.

Our little prodigy. Clip those coupons. Save us thousands a year. Our little prodigy. The attic is cold, so his nose is always stuffy, often he whistles when he breathes. When I go up there at night I see him folded on his side asleep. I turn off his reading lamp for him and collect the coupons and whatever mess he’s made. I’ll stand over him and watch him sometimes. He smells like raw tuna and looks more alive asleep than awake.

Every morning we provide him with a copy of the newspaper, two servings of Bumble Bee chunk light in water, whatever sample-size cereal boxes come with the newspaper, a liter of seltzer. He’s asleep by 2 AM, at which point we collect the clippings, the coupons, the empty plates, the bedpan. It’s been four years now and there’s never been a cryptoquote he hasn’t guessed. In his sloppy manic handwriting. Keep them in a scrapbook the way others keep newspaper articles about their children’s athletic achievements. Our little prodigy.

The stacks of coupons he makes for us are separated by domestic, electronic, and food. We sit at the table together every morning before we give him his food for the day and comment on his work. If we get that tv we’ve been talking about for a while now, we’d save fifty dollars. I’ve never had lamb chops before, want to try them? Oh, we should stock up on lightbulbs. I’d like to say we know just how much we’ve saved over time, but I couldn’t. I could tell you that we were able to afford to redo the bathroom last year. And purchased an above-ground pool for the backyard. So at least I could tell you it’s clearly helping.

We tried to love him. We tried so hard. As a child, he was tended to and waited on like a prince. He started preferring the attic around twelve. Spent more and more time up there. We’d find wadded yellow tissues of semen lying about the ground. We’d hear his belt buckle jingle rhythmically for hours, marathon jack-off sessions by himself. Soon he stopped coming down. Derek grew upset. He opened the hatch after not seeing him for two days, climbed up the ladder and tried to drag him out. I watched while Derek struggled and attempted to reason with him, and heard our son screaming as if his life was at stake, one of his legs in Derek’s grasp, the other stomping down on his head. By the time he was down Derek had a bloody nose. Our son was wild-eyed and wouldn’t stop screaming. He looked at us like destroyers of his world. Part of the condition, our doctor told us. He can’t emote the same way we can.

But he’s happy in the attic. Sometimes we hear him pacing. Sometimes we hear him talking to himself. Muttering prices and product names. Completely peaceful so long as he’s in the attic. Sometimes Derek and I go up there and watch him. We watch as he acts like we’re not even there, crouched over the newspaper with the reading lamp next to him, slowly, carefully clipping coupons so that the sound of paper being snipped is slowed down to a creak. Derek with his arm around me. Completely still. Out of fear and horror. And when I’ve had enough I tell him and we go back downstairs.