26 June 2011

"Self-Actualization"

The line stretches on, an endless mumbling stream of people waiting for their turn to buy tickets from the teller at the kiosk.  But the line hasn’t lurched forward in five minutes or more, and Gerald is starting to feel aggravated.  For one thing, the line keeps absorbing the odd person like a human sponge.  Teenagers and assorted mallrats, mothers and children returned from the bathroom, clever fat men from the Wall Drug with cheap candy and soda hidden in their pockets.  One by one in twos and threes, approaching, subverting, and melting into the expanding bloating line.
It is quite infuriating, and Gerald wonders what’s in a line?  If not they, why me, he thinks to himself.  For of course a line is a human construct, a device of politeness and civility and order.  Once respect for the line is gone there is no order, no line at all.  It becomes a rabble, a riot, another fucking day in Baghdad.
Gerald clenches his fists which make that rubbing sound, like two pieces of leather each squelching against the other.  He cannot help but chuckle, and the tension eases up.  What’s in a line then, if everybody ends up at the same place, same time?  If not they, why not he?  The same rules apply to pot and pauper.  Gerald is a big guy, a veteran of the world; he asks himself why he feels held back by an ineffectual little queue.  He considers his options, resisting every urge to the contrary that holds him back at the line – by now a bloated trapezoid – ‘s end.
He lurches forward with a terse “Pardon me,” though in fact he means it earnestly as his actions trample his ingrained sense of courtesy.  But soon he’s ahead, he’s moving forward! and no man is his obstacle.  “Excuse me, pardon me.  Watch it, you.  Pardon- Excuse-” down and along the line it goes, every excuse become a meaningless mumble, a haughty mockery of the empty action.  Gerald is enjoying this as he physically draws back a tangle of stupid-looking mall brats.  He at last reaches the ticket kiosk, hardened to the meek complaints and directionless whingeing going on behind him.
Horrible Bosses, please,” he says to the freckled girl who looks far too old to be wearing braces.  She stands there behind her smudged glass divide, indecisively frozen and looking like a blank-eyed carp.  Gerald has his wallet in his hand, waiting.  Waiting, thinking about the money he’s about to pay out, wondering why we even use it.  Money and lines, mere frontage for the affable construction we’ve set about ourselves, like walls around a cell. 
Gerald is a big guy, a veteran of the world, the conqueror of piddling lines and such.  Pocketing his wallet he sidesteps the kiosk and heads into the greasy tacky lobby with the vaulted ceilings and too many movie posters.  There’s a life size cutout of the Green Lantern, asking folk to purchase refreshments at the snack bar.  Nuts to that, Gerald thinks to himself.  What’s in a bag of theater popcorn, if not the industrialized mimicry of what popcorn should be?  Certainly not seven dollars’ worth of anything.  No, first rule of survival.  Secure a source of water.
The theater lacking a water fountain, Gerald steps into the men’s room and wonders why they’ve even made the distinction of men and women’s lavatories.  It’s all just piss and shit, in the end.  He steps up to the sink and runs some cold, cold water from the tap.  He puts his head in and sucks from the stream, like a deer lapping from a cool brook.  This is freedom, this is self-actualization! Gerald exults to himself.  He drinks to saturation and, thinking ahead, decides to go ahead and have a piss before the show.
A mighty eyebrow is raised at the piddling urinals evenly strung across the wall.  Lines, money, and urinals, the deceptive trappings of a society of morons.  He positions himself at the far wall between the urinals and stalls and lets forth a torrent of urine and adjectives and expressions, leaving behind a dripping stinking puddle in his wake.  “This place is mine,” he declares with a laugh.  Not that he’d actually spend any time here, being dingy and urine-sodden. 
Relieved, released, quenched and ready to be entertained, Gerald bursts back into the lobby.  Some of the people from the line are giving him looks; let them look, he thinks.  They look upon a free man, a writer of his own destiny.  Veteran of the world, of Iraq and lines and mountains.  A super-man, if one were so inclined to say.  He paces up to the maze of velvet cord and brass stanchions and humors it, zigging and zagging his way to its cheese, in this case a spotty fat slug in a burgundy vest precariously propped up on a high stool.  “Tickets, please,” the great wheezy turd tells him. 
What gall!  Gerald shakes his head.  “Fraid not,” he informs the turd, though he actually fears nothing.  “Tickets are a misconception.  Now let me pass.”  But the turd does not.  Instead, he unperches himself and stands - in defiance! – of Gerald’s way.  Glowering, he knows conflict is imminent.  The peon does not know what he’s interfered in.  With a hearty shove, the fat attendant flumps down onto the stain-resistant bristly carpeting.  More attendants are approaching from behind, and one is already sputtering something into a walkie-talkie.  Baghdad, chaos, conflict.
Tearing a cord from its stanchion Gerald wields the dreadful bronze phallus above him.  They want to fight, so be it.  “I am the Ubermensch!” he bellows, and that stops them back a bit as he waves his makeshift weapon about his head in threatening circles.  Some people head out but most gape on as mall cops rush into the lobby, armed with their silly tazers and wearing their daft plastic badges.  No man can remain free if he is unwilling to fight for it, Gerald grimaces to himself.
I am the Ubermensch!!” he roars, “Fucking fear me!!”  And he could see they very much did as he charged at them despite the velvet corded maze .  Perhaps they weren’t so moronic after all.

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