Just Another Saturday Morning.

 

Usually on Saturday mornings I'm stationed behind a two-way mirror for a bit of sullen observation as they bring them in, mostly two-by-two, but once in a while a solo act makes the grade and I'll be up to my ears in foreign fluids, as well as forms in triplicate to be poured over in my normally dainty approach. When I look down and notice, to my astonishment, that a brace has been applied to my left ankle without anyone becoming any the wiser, I, ever-so-briefly, hesitate in the continuance of my habitual arm motion. This is the one where I make believe that I'm tossing a baseball-sized rock at a decrepit gravestone in a run-down cemetary about a mile from where I was born. No one has ever seen me do that in 'real life', but they can dream too, can't they?

Everyone agrees that it's just too damned soon to carry you over the finish line and declare you the winner by default. For that you'd have to defame the corporate marketplace for all it's worth. No one is certain what kind of childhood you REALLY had. That's not to say, however, that most of us don't enjoy nursing a set of fairly likely suspicions, especially where your cross-pollination with other extractions is concerned. Please don't get me wrong, it's not that we're particularly concerned at all. It's just that we can't stop worrying about your fitness to resume your duties in time to avoid a telltale mark being put next to your name. And look, even if it's the phony name that you originally gave us, that won't stop certain very large and ambiguous vagabonds from making a home in your most private of areas. But, we don't have to go into that now, as it seems there are a number of nutjobs listening in from the far court and irretrievably counting the days until we can find a way to get in touch with those who, prior to now, regarded themselves as virtually untouchable. And I do mean that quite literally, as well.

As I motion to the waitress to bring me off in the cleanest way possible, I have no idea that she's about to press a glass of mineral water into my hands and then make a gesture that any sufficiently grown person would instantly recognize. Whenever they do that, I tell them that I'll take a little off the top, do a fade on the sides and apply a natural curative powder to the back. If they're still standing near my desk in fifteen seconds, I make discreet animal sounds. If they don't flinch (and most do, by the way), they're given the 'royal heave-ho' and issued an ultimatum, answerable in Federal District Court in all kinds of daffy ways. Assuming that my advice for newcomers has any standing at all, in this, the third decade of the twenty-first century, then, MY GOD!, just what the fuck do we have here anyway? Isn't it enough that I had to back out of the Heffenclurt deal? Or, is that not considered 'fair play' anymore? You tell me. I'm waiting.

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