Dinner With Deandre

 

I preferred the comfort of anonymous metropolitan areas, bustling with lives of strangers, interlinked, entwined.

But he simply sighed and said, "You'll never know real rest 'til the grass is your mattress, the stars are your blanket, and the sun is your alarm clock."

I never sleep much anyhow, so that didn't pique my interest so much. Regardless, I humored him; but he knew it, and he told me, "Good lord, stop being condescending."

I'm not.

 "Oh yes you are, you're pretending. Life isn't a practice round, who is going to grant you a do over?"

I thought about this and I did it earnestly, I swear it, and he hummed a tune from, "The Sound of Music."

"Not bein' dead's whatever you make it, how you wield it, the way you use it..." as he spoke, I nodded, "...cuz you know, eventually, you'll lose it."

I concentrated as best I could, but, shame to say it, it was evident he hadn't washed his clothes or body in some time. I'm embarrassed to admit that that could obstruct his words from entering my ears. The train's derailed, the plane has crashed, the building's comin’ down.

"Use the life given you or return it to the box at the lost and found."

Who was he to judge whether I'm effectively using my life, or if I'm simply idling, going derelict?

"I'm just a guy, same as you, livin' to my means. I've won a few, but I've also gotten licked. But never give up, never surrender."

Okay, Winston Churchill. At least I'm fairly confident that it was he who said that at one point.

"That redcoat had his moments, but he's dead as dirt now."

Yes, he is. And I'm not. Not yet, at any rate. But dead people know all, have infinite wisdom about all things, and will gladly share if one asks nicely. Just simply read their words.

"Them bein' dead kinda saps their relevance, or their revelance. Tomato tomato. Carrot carrot."

And other double vegetables.

"Or fruit or rocks or stars or hamburgers. Everything's the same. A priest, a killer, a Jew and a gambler. Whatever."

There's no place for racism in casual conversation.

"There are places for everything. All things'll fit snugly as a fat a*s in a comfy chair. A cup with a coffee and a cave with a bear."

Bears are mean. And they sleep half a year. Nice way to reference a mammal as lazy as any to lecture about laziness.

"I must have overlooked that. I often get distracted during all this craziness."

I looked around; it's calm as a tomb. Hell, a catacomb, a sarcophagus. A mouse, even.

"I'm reachin' to you," he told me, "grabbin' out with fists waggin'."

I just bought this coat, keep your mitts off of me.

"It's just a coat. No better or worse than any other coat. Consider that. Think about you as a coat."

I'm not a coat, not a parka, not whipped cream in a root beer float. I'm a person.

"Fair enough. Don't consider hypotheticals for the sake of friendly argument. Be logical. Be terse. Be, dare I say..." He dares, he dares. "...boring."

Everything's boring when one doesn't consider the enthusiastic beauty in everything.

"Ah! Now you consider."

Of course I consider. If consideration were a post office, I'd mail and deliver.

"But to whom are your letters sent?"

To myself of course, for warning, for warning.

"Your warnings are for the sharks, my friend. For the bees, the birds, the ants, the moose."

Is that a single, solitary moose, or just several mouses?

"Don't speak in semantics when we speak in theoreticals. Your belligerence is givin' me a headache."

Have a sabbatical, or perhaps also an aspirin.

"I don't self-medicate. We're getting away from our root conversation."

I'm not even sure at this point that I can remember what that root is. Perhaps cypress?

"Perhaps. Or more likely it was the truth. The fact, the light in the darkness that is persistent idleness."

Ah, idleness. Running in place, screaming silently to oneself, yet smiling to everyone else. That certainly is the crux.

"Indeed it is. The crux of everything. To be alive is to constantly need something to do, some activity to placate our sense of uselessness."

I prefer my sense of sight. I try not to dwell in senses with abstract nouns.

"My friend, I'll feed you to the hounds."

I'd probably taste not unlike faded dreams, and panicked stillness. Patterned chaotic flapping-about.

"Well, I'm sure they'd eat enough of you to devour your self-righteousness."

I doubt it.

"Doubt's a heavy word. It's filled with lead and dirt and hate. It piles up around you until you know nothing else."

Maybe there isn't really anything else but doubt. That's all I seem to know sometimes, at least.

"Then obviously you need to get out more."