[Nathanael]

I wrote this last night at AM while I was bored out of my skull. I haven't made any real revisions, it was just to exercises the cranial muscles. All comments/critisisms are apreciated.

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The real truth of the matter is that when you look at anything from a certain number of angles, the easiest route will always stand out the most to a carnal eye.

I first discovered this when I was eating a baked potato in a diner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The potato was loaded with cheese and bacon and a garnish of green vegetables that I would scoop out and leave on the ceramic dish. The potato would kill me, or so doctors had said, but anyone who's had to abstain from a favorite food knows that sometimes you can make it, and sometimes you'd eat ice cream even if it was laced with cyanide.

I was in one of my favorite diners in the city, a homey place that had a humid, sticky feel to it, an eating establishment where the think coat of dirt and grease under the counters was comforting along with the warm faces who knew my name but none of my business, where you could enjoy a comfortable, anonymous relationship with people who would only talk about the most unimportant things.

The somewhat dingy nature of the diner was the reason I was perturbed when a man entered, dressed in a creamy suit nearly shining with his orange tie and white shoes, and approached my table and sat down, sharply turning an eye to me.

With a sage smile he said, "I can eliminate the problems you're experiencing in your relationship with your employee, Mr. Jordans."

I looked across the table and quickly said, "I don't believe that's any of your business stranger", but he interrupted me.

"Your life is in a turmoil right now because you're being blackmailed by a man with no scruples when you're used to believing everyone has some limit of crooked behavior they'll reach before they ever deal with you. You're disappointing yourself with your own naivety and you're a fool if you think you can come out of this on top on your own. Your own father no longer respects you because of how you were cheated before, and you're running out of people who consider you any more than a timid mark."

He threw me for a loop and drew stares from the room. I choked on a piece of brown, rubbery skin. "Look, since you know so much about me maybe you wouldn't mind if I asked you something - how am I supposed to know that you're not another person looking for a 'mark'?"

He grinned wolfishly and drew his hands onto the lap of his beautifully suit. "I'm the only one who can solve your predicament, and the only way I can convince you of this is if you can show me that you're interested in my offers."

Money was no object, while I had been conned before, I hadn't felt infraction to my wellbeing, just a stab to my pride. So I offered him some and he quickly refused.

"I'm going to ask you for a simple thing, and once it's done, I'll believe you to be convinced and deal with my part of the deal.".

I was still distracted by the novelty of the scene, but I somehow managed to mumble a meek confirmation, and upon this, the stranger reached into his cream colored jacket and pulled out a piece of manila colored paper. When he handed it to me I hastily took it and cut my finger along the slender edge.

He smirked at the blood and then looked straight at me and said quickly, "Read that, everything I want is there. If you need more details, I can meet you tomorrow at the time written there. I know what you want, and when you're taking care of my concerns, I'll be following up on yours."

At this he stood up sharply, flicked a mediocre piece of dust off of his gleaming jacket and turned stiffly, striding toward the door.

The problems I had with my employee are something of a modern day marvel, of a instance that could only happen in this day and age and would have never touched the imagination of the creative in the past. Mr. Jordans was a middle aged black man who recently drifted apart from his wife when he discovered he could buy everything he thought would bring him happiness, all the vices that he should have quit a decade ago for a better life. But now he was in the throes of a second childhood, or at least a period of rampant irresponsibility that his wife was disgusted with.

However, I had taken it upon myself to become the moral lighthouse of the office and confronted my him about it. I made two mistakes laced with good intentions; I confronted my employee, and I confronted my employee while he was high behind his office door. For this he summoned a new kind of temperament I had never known and threw me against the wall. He then bent down, and knelt on my skull, hissing in my ear about how he would accuse me of racism, sexual harassment (he declared he would say I was a homosexual and that I had demanded favors of him or else I would fire and destroy him) as well as a host of other nefarious deeds.

Since then I'd been terrorized by Mr. Jordans, who began to encroach on my authority with growing confidence, and I would guess, growing highs. He would trap me behind shutters and scream violence and threats at me, which I humbly swallowed.

I couldn't fight back against him because of a personal history that was already tarnished with the very things he accused me of. In 1998 I had been enamored with a younger female coworker and had asked her out on a date several times... and then I went so far as to send her flowers and a gag gift - "How to Date Sucessful Men". She was a high strung personality and I hadn't captured this impression yet, so I was naturally shocked when she screamed she was a lesbian and began to hysterical accuse me of forcing her into a subservient position by asking her out. She went so far as to bring it to court, where the judge, a large supporter of the feminist movement and a distant relation of the woman herself, gave me a stern talking to about respecting those I was responsible to .

My father never seemed to care for his son and I learned not to care if he did or not, but it was difficult when he was a man who's generation believed in love and peace and he ran against the grain by joining the Ku Klux Klan and signing up for the Army so that he could "slaughter those dirty gooks". Especialy when I had to explain it to anyone who asked me why I sent a percentage of my paycheck home to a man who didn't give a care about me but couldn't wipe his own rear now.

Those two things didn't have anything to do with me really, but linked to Mr. Jordans, it would paint me as a man with racist and macho roots, and a history of subjecting those under my supervision to my personal interests.

All through my life people had taken advantage of me because I felt it was not worth my trouble to bother with them, and they had managed to convince others that I was whatever they wanted me to be. And when I had tried to reverse the course with Mr. Jennings, it had wound up slapping me in the face reminiscent of all the other times I had been stepped on. It bothered me, and enough so that I wouldn't be bothered by what was on the manila paper.

I smeared the blood onto my napkin and tossed enough money at the table to cover my potato. Then I walked out to the street, lingered in the sounds of Philly at 4 AM, and made my way back to my house in New Jersey to sleep. I still hadn't thought about how the cream colored man had tracked me here, where I was hiding out for the weekend.

[Nathanael]

comments

are

apreciated

[.torrin.]

i usually don't read long pieces like this, but I kept scrolling down. I liked it, my only disappointment is that it isn't finished.

[Nathanael]

I'll try to get back to it in the future, it may take awhile though.