Saint Anthony, martyr to the infinite self-indulgence machine, exhaled a plume of salty smoke into the kitchen.
“Fuck,” he thought. “This food is a little salty.”
The embarassed steam rose and tried to obscure the small kitchen. The cook knew he was a proper chef, used to miles-long kitchens full of gleaming and important-flavored appliances, piled high with ingredients unheard-of in this little cook’s philosophy. But here, shining in the slouched light of the conquering empire, stood the two men and shared the one thing that was common to both their experiences. A little too much salt.
He turned to the cameras and scowled. He needed to say something deep about the noodle dish he had crushed a thousand miles beneath the wheels of his corporate chariot to taste, and all he could think of was “it’s a little salty.” The hungry faces down the black tube would never approve. They needed meat on the bones of truth. He had to move quicker, had to call to mind more descriptive words for the fundamentally indescribable sensation of “a little salty.” While tasting, the tongue cannot describe. While speaking, the tongue tastes only lies and truth.
“It’s a little salty,” he said.
The flat affect of the moment rushed in from all sides, shadows gnawing the corners of reality, the sweet tragedy of the mass of humanity staring into his guts and demanding he show them a soul instead of the meat tube full of other, juicier meat tubes making more meat tube that he was, wringing them like a sponge. In his mind, he reached deeper and found the moment, the star that they demanded he cough out daily between the cigarettes and the stress and the insistence that he be more human than he was. He blew another plume of smoke into the languid treakle air.
“Fuck.” The cook relaxed. The crew relaxed.
Good enough.
| Ruth Gibbs | Readin’ |
| Ben Gibbs | &c. |