Why did you come here? You have a lot of expectations, but you wouldn’t be here, probably, … probably, if there were any particular thing you would be expected to expect. Some of you are probably here because you’re expecting to see someone you know. You, your mother, your girlfriend, and your friend from work, sitting at a table, fingering your wristbands, looking for a way to tell the waitress that you’ll take a second diet coke only if it refills for free. Is the friend from work the one who will take a turn at the open mic or is it you?
Your situation is more delicate than you think and it reminds me of the story of a friend. Of mine. He was late for work one day, and realizing that it was primary day and that he didn’t want to go to work anyway, he decided to go vote at random for some judges and maybe a city controller. With any luck there would be a ballot initiative and he could feel important by dissecting the language. What could it mean, for example, to require the city council to specify the sources for any parks appropriation before approving said appropriation? What could it mean that a certain kind of normally harmless business should be kept a said distance from schools and churches?
Maybe it was a reaction to last year’s budget fiasco. Or maybe just a favor to a particular business. It’s quite an experience to consider all the possible ramifications. It’s like being a Supreme Court Justice for just a moment, except that you have to imagine that you are a strict constructionalist without political bias. In other words, you are a non-conservative, non-liberal Antonin Scalia. For example: Is the “crop” in the initiative cannabis? Well, it doesn’t matter. You should be a just, wise, legal-minded and considerately dispassionate individual considering the implications for *all* crops. This is great fun.
The point of the story is that my friend left the polling place, full of thoughts about nothing, pulled out a cigarette, and realized he didn’t have a light. So he stepped across the street to where 3 smokers, in cleaning uniforms, were sitting at an outdoor table at a breakfast café. All women, but very possibly in one or two couples. That is to say, it seemed likely that one of the three women was straight, but only one, and it was hard to say which. And she might also be coupled. My friend asked for the light, and all three giggled. But, he was sure he was sure, they were still not all straight. They said, okay, we’ll give you the light, but you’re the third person to ask so we should charge you something. A joke.
He stammered something about not having a joke ready, and indeed he couldn’t think of one. Silence. No good, not friendly enough, not engaging. Still lacking a joke, he went into ham. “Oh, I am a weary and ignorant traveler in much need. But as I have no joke, perhaps you should take pity on me and give me one, as I will swear to pass it on to as many people as I can and always credit you.” This answer had the advantage of being so pathetic that only the straight girl would bother laughing and then he would know which one she was. But the three, who were exchanging glances, maintained their united front and all laughed. And, what’s more, they didn’t offer the light, which means they all liked my friend and wanted to talk more.
One spoke up, and if there was a straight one it was definitely not her, because she was speaking *for* somebody. “Okay, tell us a funny story from your life.” So my friend told the story of a pen pal who was back in prison after having been in a halfway house. He was close to release, but during the visit of a social worker to the halfway house he had given her oral sex in the bathroom, costing her her job. Of course, seducing the social worker was not the problem; the problem was that this friend (the pen pal of my friend who’s story reminds me of you there, at the table at the open mic) had used the *guest* bathroom. No residents. Again, his situation calls to mind the predicament of the ballot initiative. Does the prohibition against entering a halfway house’s guest bathroom exist because of possible drug exchange? Or just because the rules are the rules? Or does it exist because we can’t be promoting prison fetishes? Because we simply can’t have people continuing to romanticize bad boys and bad girls?
The advantage of *this* story was that it was likely to either end the conversation or establish the three breakfast-eating cleaners as real knowables.
So why did you come here? And if you’re going to withhold your laughter or your applause, maybe you might at least give me something, some place to start? Or, at the very least, you could make an effort to be a little harder to place. Maybe you should make out with your coworker or your mom.
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