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Late Night at the White Castles
Or Talking with Cleesh with Shitface At The Adjacent Table
We had one of those late night cravings, Cleesh and I. You know, those ones that hit you quite late at night. Hence a late night craving. Cleesh, another peculiar friend of mine, happened to be the friend of which I was hanging out with that night - you've already met Shitface. Well you do realize that I only mean that metaphorically, don't you?
So Cleesh - that's what everybody calls him anyway (my other friends say he got that name because he says things that a lot of people had said before and I really have no idea as to what they are talking about) - he gets real hungry and suggests a place to dine at that evening - or, that morning, or... whatever.
"White Castle... it's what I crave!" he exclaimed as he curled his upper lip underwards, revealing his upper row of teeth quite well. He did this often, I never really understood why.
"Some sliders sound good, my man," I replied. "I was going to suggest another game of two-man solitaire here, but I am quite hungry myself." I never really understood why exactly most people were so selfish and never let anybody else play solitaire with them. But I do consider myself of a more generous nature than most amongst the homosnapians.
Once we were at the big white burger palace and had our food we noticed that Shitface was there already. When we sat down at our table, near his, he was busily using his drink straw to snort one of his fries.
"The fry is too big for that straw, Shitface," I said. I am always willing to help out my fellow Man with my keen knowledge of the Laws of Psychics, especially Men that I consider my friend.
Shitface, undaunted by my naysaying, continued his quest to suck the piece of fried potato through the small plastic tube usually used for soft drink delivery.
"He's shooting for the moon," Cleesh said in his deep, slightly raspy voice. He sounded like one of those movie announcer guys and looked like one of those scary gym teachers almost all of us have had at one point or another. He just had this intensity with everything he said, from his cold blue-eyed gaze to his rigid, frowning mouth, that makes people with weaker emotional constitutions to start shrieking like a little Catholic School Girl.
Then he ate a fry like it had killed his dog.
"No, he's trying to suck a fry through a straw," I corrected him, not exactly sure as to what he was getting at.
Cleesh just ignored my pointing out his glaring misdiscrepency and took a bite of one of his cheeseburgers. Then he said: "He's grasping at straws."
I was about to respond to that, but...
"Ferret farts!," Shitface suddenly yelled, startling everybody else in the dining lobby besides me. I was used to Shitface's insightful outbursts by that time. Actually, Cleesh didn't appear to be jarred, either. Perhaps he, like me, was thinking about the remark and how profoundly it pointed out that gas emissions from small rodents could be contributing to global warming.
I asked Cleesh if this was true and expressed my deep desire for somebody to pass a law against global warming.
"Keep your fingers crossed," Cleesh said slowly, each word lurching out of his mouth like every word was more important than the one that had preceeded it.
I looked over at Shitface. He was squeezing a slider in his left fist and grinning, fascinated by the orange and grey goo that was bleeding from between his fingers.
"He has very unusual eating habits," I remarked.
"A man's gotta eat!" Cleesh exclaimed.
"Yeesss," I said slowly and carefully, wondering if there was some deeper meaning to that otherwise obvious statement.
As I devoured one of my steaming, delectable, oniony cheeseburgers, I looked over again at Shitface to see if he had solved whatever scientific puzzle he had in mind as he studied how the burger was squishing between his clenched fingers. He had already moved onto something else, though: flinging the bits of liquefied slider at the nearest window.
"Shit-starved chicken fuckers!" Shitface exclaimed. "How d'ya like my burger now?!"
"He is one fry short of a Happy Meal," Cleesh said before a long sip of his 21-ounce Coca-Cola.
"We are not at McDonald's," I said, again finding myself in the awkward position of having to correct a man I had otherwise enormous respect for.
Cleesh just glared at me, then proceeded to chew on a burger like it had had violent sexual intercourse with his sister.
"I'm givin' it all I can, captain!" Shitface yelled with great consternation on his face. "I think it's gonna blow!" His right hand was under the table doing something I could not see. He was trying to imitate that character from that space show, it sounded like, that McScotty guy. I wondered if that had anything to do with what his right hand was busily doing. I was not sure, though; I rarely watch television or motion pictures. I have always contended that those have great potential to rot away your intellectables, like what bees do to wood.
Shitface suddenly seemed greatly satisfied by something, the way he grinned and laid back into his chair. It was the sliders, of course. What else could it be? Ah, those delicious, steaming, cheesy, meaty culinary masterpieces.
"I absolutely love these, don't you Cleesh?" I asked before making love to another cheeseburger.
"I could eat them until the cows come home," Cleesh responded.
"I did not know that you were a dairy farmer," I said, quite surprised that he had made a foray into that industry. I had only ever known him as an auto parts store clerk.
"I've got a hankerin' for a hunk of cheese, YAHOO!!" Shitface yelled. Ah, apparently they had forgotten the cheese on one or more of his burgers. The lack of a work ethic among young persons of fast food employ is simply atrocious.
As a matter of fact, whilst Cleesh and I were gathering up our trash, ready to depart about five minutes later, several of those young inept workers were trying to coax Shitface down from his table. Apparently they had taken some offense to his dancing half naked on the tabletop and waving his genitals at newly arriving customers. It is a very sad state of affairs in the world of art appreciation where a simple interpretive dance about the beauty of the human reproduction could be seen as a violation of dining policies.
"Don't they know art when they see it?" I asked Cleesh as I tossed my empty soda container into the waste disposal bin.
"Me and you, we see eye to eye," Cleesh said. "But, look at the bright side: the grass is always greener on the other side."
I was stunned at those statements. I almost asked him if he was a gardner, too, but suddenly I interpreted what he had meant. Maybe society was going to turn a corner, discover a world where the grass was greener, where things will be better.
I left that White Castles with renewed hope for humanity as a whole. I looked back on Shitface, who was busy urinating on the angry restaurant employees, and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.
The grass may be greener, indeed.
For Wordmongers' Masque