"Out and About:" (What I spent the evening of 9/10/01 writing)

Out and About
With Shelia Mankovitch

I can’t enjoy a meal anymore. I go out, and there is always someone making a scene. Sometimes it’s interesting. That’s why I follow them around. Its like Jerry Springer, but I have front row tickets. I had thought I had seen it all from romance and intrigue to various back stabbing plots. People seem to be getting more and more petty. Fifteen years ago, I could get two or three good stories from a single meal, now, I can eat out for a week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I’m lucky to hear one worth repeating.
My editor thinks that I’ve become complacent. I have to run “Best of” columns at least once a month now. The columns used to write themselves. All I needed was to sit by a couple that had an obvious difference. Money, class, race, everyone thought that they could fall for someone different than them; they pretended to be open-minded. You don’t have to be a writer to find the fallacy in that belief system. Humans by nature are closed-minded. After years of deluding each ourselves of the inherent equality of all humanity, people are finally accepting the truth that we are all different. I don’t have as much money as the Rockefellers, and I know the brothers on the corner don’t have Joann Sebastian Bach blaring on their speakers at home.
I hate to be called a bigot or a racist, but observing is my job. I’m out, amongst the people. I have seen the fallacy of the equality myth, the failure of the realization of Dr. King’s “dream.” I have personally aired this issue before, and I have had my detractors. Landers said of me recently, “…she is the manifestation of what is wrong with society.” I just call them as I see them.
And what is am seeing is society falling into the gutters. I can excuse sticking with those like you, those who share a common background and a common belief system. However, people are withdrawing in a shell, even being against those with who they share everything, even their wedding vows. People are caring more about appearances than I have seen in my more than fifty years on this planet. I have seen people make themselves look horribly ignorant trying to rectify something that no one would have noticed in the first place.
Case in point. I was enjoying my dinner, at an unnamed restaurant, when I heard a heated discussion brewing. Naturally, my attentions became aroused. There was a young couple, early thirties I’d say, disagreeing on some point. Listening closer, I learned that the whole argument stemmed from which fork the young woman was using to eat a salad. I know there are rules on etiquette and such, but trust me, this was no state dinner. Eventually the argument elevated to the point where the entire restaurant, customers and wait staff, were audience to this crude spectacle. Thankfully, the hostess ushered the young woman to the door, and we all returned to our meals, the background noise of the low mummer of conversations and the muzak not entirely soothing my ears from the recent shouting in my ears.
The point is, no one would see that woman on the street, and no immediately recognize her as she who ate salad with the wrong fork, but I have a feeling that she will have to avert her eyes more than from people who were in attendance that night. The sad thing is that it wasn’t even her fault. Her husband was the one who chided her in the first place. I could give you many more examples of people acting petty, but that one sticks in my mind. I have seen it too much, and I hear it all the time. “Don’t do that, what will people think of you?” Why is that such an important question? What we really be asking ourselves is, “What do I think of myself?” Apparently, that is a question too seldom asked, and that is why I can’t enjoy a meal anymore

On Veritas

Truth is elusive. But the hunt is more than worth the effort.

We all know that truth is relative, and that in the search for it, each man may find a different object that signifies what is eternally correct to him. I have been on this search but a few years, and I have yet to come to a final understanding upon what the truth is to me. It has many shades, but they are all of gray, subject to examination. Neither white nor black has been seen. The closest thing I have found is the art of the written word. It may not be finite, but the words and the works of written art are too, subject to evaluation. In the end, I would rather leave the question of meaning open to each individual reader. I have to be aware of my audience, but not so aware that it stifles the pursuit of truth. If I come off as irreverent, it is only because I can find no reverence for the subject, be it something as deep and powerful as the aftermath of the Holocaust, or something as trivial as the disposal of used socks in Mesopotamian culture. My tone, truthfully, is irrelevant, as I feel the same contempt for most subjects presented in the world. I am dissatisfied. I long for some change, but the degree is the driving force. My drive for the change is best evaluated by the passion I write with.

Oddly enough (1999)

I am the main suspect in an international terrorist plot that says that I put chow mien noodles in airport restrooms. The police have no reason to suspect me in the crimes, but they arrested me anyway. I gladly turned myself in, but they beat me like I was in a Turkish prison. The food wasn’t bad, but the daily anal rapes were too much to stand. I seemed to like it, but after a while I could no longer move my bowels in a timely manner. About that time I turned to the Black Panthers for help. My Aryan upbringing notwithstanding, they were the nicest group of militant African Americans the world has ever seen. They had my back; I could finally shower without my anal plug. Being a Black Panther alienated me from the Arab terrorist circles that I once ran with. One day I woke up in my cell. Lying next to me was the head of a pack of camel cigarettes. This scared me, so I told Big George, my Panther Protector. Using his connections in the mess hall, he poisoned all the Arabs with a compound made up of barium salts.
With all that trouble going on, I wasn’t able to concern myself with defending my rights at the trial. My once-solid alibi was shattered, as Jerome pleaded guilty to charges of failure to distribute cocaine to white Yuppies. Apparently he was selling crack to his own people, and the law in Alberta looks down on it. The judge told him that if he were selling to nerds and welders it would have been ok, but he drove his pimped-out Audi all around the ghettos of Edmonton. Anyway, he was in the hole, and I was too. I felt hopeless. The situation escalated when my cellmate tried to escape. He gave the plan’s credit to me, so I soon became the guard’s favorite punching bag. The warden gave me mercy, so he threw me into solitary confinement.
I sat there, in the hole. I thought that I shouldn’t be here, but as I flashback, I realize that I was finally getting what I deserved. All the petty crimes I though I got away with I was finally paying for: the shoplifting, the jaywalking, the parking tickets, and the political assignation of Muhat El-Hamein. It was all coming back to haunt me.
My trial date was fast approaching. I knew that I was not guilty, but the circumstantial evidence weighed heavily against me. My court-appointed lawyer was no help, so I had to go back and beg for help from an ex-girlfriend. (We had good times, but after she came out of the closet, it just didn’t work out.) I called the house that Lisa shared with her partner, Sally. Talking to Lisa, I gained new insight on lesbians and their pals. She said she would represent me, but sadly, she wouldn’t let me watch. The love interest finally made it into the story, but sadly it’s a challenge because of the dyke factor.
To make a long story short, I got free and married a lesbian. The Black Panthers are nice guys. Yes, and never trust an Arab.