cavalier

1.


I've been boarding a delightful calico kitty I've named Hafez. She's a girl, but her fur and our new aquaintanceship reminds me of a story by Paul Bowls. Paul was a kinky sensualist, obviously the connection between that and Hafez should be clear. And then the need to talk wouldn't be a yellow thirty story building crane owned by city works if that doesn't also beg some explaining. In plain terms. All right.

The cat followed me at an outdoor rummage sale near the McKees Rocks Plaza. A long single story casbah containing trashy chain stores, this plaza is for paramilitary bargain hunters. Also just poor folk. There's a view from the asphalt of a tremendous chrome plate shop. Its acres of cinder blocks are laid so square you'd say it was a midwestern grandfather's chin. Hafez was visiting the parking lot at McKees Rocks Plaza. I was chosen. Followed. I got nervous, like a farmer with his tractor imporperly geared for spring dampness. Soon we were nuzzling beneath a cafeteria table loaded with fake designer jeans. Also there were Rolex watches, cheap. The scent of sweating garments mingled with cat. We bonded.

2.

Drat! People at work have been calling me 'Snidely.' Mostly they are embittered middle aged slackers who just took their first job. After their third divorce. They sleep four to a bunk in an SRO. More clearly than Bowls and the cat adoption, the role of numbers in people's lives can be a swarthy determining influence. We say wives and girlfriends are the foreign bankers of the crotch. Yet another type of man transacts young men and other breeds of kitties. Have I convinced you I am honest? Yet I am called a vile, dastardly cartoon from Bullwinkle. Pissed.

3.



I was gifted an adding machine at my confirmation and told to sit down. The benches had 'Property of Urban Zealots' stenciled. On Wednesdays they throw out the empty spray paint cans. I've attended this church since prepubescence.

"You will cook the books," the avuncular regicide said, with this look of hope.

Post Script:

These things might not have happenened had the government not found either dippy socialism and/or smart-A capitalism. I feel like a tiny plastic rabbit inside an series of ever smaller plastic eggs. The injection molded blue trip through casings gives up the moment of sunlight before returning a puny green carrot eating, paper shredding bunny in the middle of dark fetal containment. Sometime we will be manufacturing gum machine prizes for our foreign superiors.