Lukewarm Hotdogs... (Part II)

Marc was in a dead end job as an underwriter with a local insurance business.  He would sit at his desk day dream the most amazing stories.  Sometimes they were so elaborate and long that if he could manage to work less than a few minutes a day, spending the rest of it in a hypnotic daze imagining the wonders of India, or the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.  After several years he started writing down his day dreams and found that they were entertaining.  He’d show them to his wife and some to his friends and they enjoyed his writing.  Before he wrote down a story, though, he had a ritual.  He would sit at his type writer and type whatever came to his brain.  He was a pretty fast typist and sometimes this helped him gather his thoughts, keeping it organized, so he could reference it later. 

 

This unbelievably awkward looking man stunned Marc and he knew that he would be the epicenter of a perfect story.  He couldn’t wait to come up with a plot but he needed to go through his ritual and let his brain dump out whatever it was that it wanted to say.  After arriving at home from the airport and rushing through a take out dinner in four and half minutes flat he ran upstairs and loaded his typewriter with a clean blank sheet ready for his story.

 

Modern day…

 

James Bailey started his job as night manager of the South Dakota All-Stars minor league football arena…

 

The story shouldn’t be told here, this is how we will come up with the story, so who knows what the guy’s name is.

 

But we are going to put him in a situation where he needs to meet the most pathetic man in the world.  That’s what we need him to do!  This most pathetic man who I desperately want to write about is one whom you can’t look away from.  Just stealing one look at him will burn his image in your mind’s eye forever. 

 

Not the kind of pathetic that has someone on the city streets dumpster diving but that kind of pathetic that only a rich American can appreciate.  The pathetic man that has no style.  No style is what we find most pathetic.  Why?  Maybe because we try so hard for our style.  Why do we try for style?  We want to be accepted.  We want to be loved, to have sex.  To procreate!  So this single man’s departure from style has in effect made us all realize that while this man has the ways and means to join the group, be loved and procreate he chooses not to.  This goes against our very understanding and beliefs in logic.  We must look and must remember because this can not actually be happening.  No, no that’s cheesy, keep going, what else…

 

We then jump to the first and foremost obvious conclusion about men with no style that have the ways and means to achieve it.  They must be mentally retarded, or in some way mentally hindered by some schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder that prevents them from understanding reality.  The reality that we, as humans, were meant to form groups.   To love and be loved, to have sex and procreate.  Have I made that part clear?

 

So this story is not about the man with no style but how the man with no style affects our average Joe.  Our James Bailey who started his job as the night manager of the South Dakota All-Stars minor league football arena! 

 

What’s a man with no style doing at this arena?  Well, he for some reason has the deep and ingrained love for the team.  He’s followed them since his childhood and has made an effort to actually sleep in the stadium.  Kind of Rudy like!  He goes to games and he also has an obsession with hot dogs.  So he loves eating the hot dogs at the games, so much so that he will stuff himself up through his own esophagus with hot dogs. After the games he wanders the bleachers looking for the left over hot dog remains of fans who couldn’t finish the hot and tasty treat.  He even loves them cold or lukewarm as they seem to come after the game.  Their fatty grease flows a little slower off his lips when he bites into them and he actually enjoys that feeling a little more. 

 

Did he actually have a conscience?  Would he look around before picking up the morsel?  Did he EVER have a conscience for that matter?  Did he know the terrible importance of style and what it means to our very society?  It is the very reason we are!  It is what binds us like a common language.  Deviating from it means you are somehow against humanity!  Even those that differed did so in groups. The punks, the mods, the beatnicks.  All of them in groups together leaving the larger group. 

 

But this man

Out on his island alone. 

With no knowledge of the patterns evolving from the larger herd, or perhaps complete knowledge, follows only his own drum. 

 

At first he’s disgusting, then inspiring, and finally we find ourselves looking right back inwardly and realizing that we are the pathetic ones.  We are so pathetic as to follow the styles and patterns around us because deviating from it might make life difficult?  Maybe?  It’s hard to say what deviating from it really would do.  What would it do?!

 

What would it do?

 

~--------------~

Part III: Marc, decides to find out just what it would do!

Coming Next Week!

Lukewarm Hotdogs and the Man with No Style (Part I)

Lukewarm Hotdogs and the Man with No Style

Part I

Marcus Trentworthy and his family made it to Gate 21 at Houston Hobby Airport on their way back home from Christmas with his in-laws.  His daughter Jeanette sat down first and immediately pulled out her new DS and was lost in a daze of video games.  Kim fondled through her purse as she sat down looking for her compact.

Marcus sat between them, on the black vinyl chair, and realizing he had everything in place to go home, thought the last calm and serine thought he would have for some time.

At first it was a glance.

“Who is that?”  He thought to himself.  Marc did not say anything and looked down at his pants.  He raised his eyes again and looked towards the windows of the gate.  Sitting in a similar vinyl chair 20 feet away, peering off into the runway was something shocking.

He looked down once more at his pants and raising his eyebrows and blinking his eyes he tried to shake it off.  That feeling.  Oh, that feeling was coming on strong.  The feeling that he absolutely had to stare.  He had to stare at this man.

He raised his eyes again and stared, and his brain began to analyze.

The man sitting down against the window was wearing the most incredible outfit.  Starting from his feet, he had on no socks and one dress shoe.  The other foot was covered in a paper bag and appeared to be barefoot.  It was held on by a pink fluffly scrunchy.  He had on a bright pink warm-ups with a smear of, hopefully, mud down one side.  They must’ve been too big for him so he hiked them up around his, protruding stomach. 

“Oh he’s standing up, good Lord!” Marc thought to himself.  The anomaly stood up and looking around walked closer to the window and put his hands on his hips.

The man was bloated to a point of looking pregnant and his pink warm ups said, LOVE on his butt which, despite the size of his rotund belly was the size of a large orange.  Tucked into this man’s pink warm ups was a Rodeo-style cowboy shirt, pressed with neat creases down his arms and complete with an obnoxious rhinestone outline of the State of Texas.

His hair was a mess and his beard was coming in patchy, awkwardly longer than a shadow, and glistening with sweat along his upper lip, which was short and seemed to curl up under his nose.  He was chewing gum, most likely, and with each bite his upper lip would drop and curl back up to his nose, with his whole jaw jutting forward, reminding mark of a baby animal sucking on a teat.

“Honey, did you hear me?” Kim, Marc’s wife, leaned in. 

“Huh?  What?”  He shook his head but couldn’t look away.

“Honey, what are you staring at?”

“I, uh, nothing, nothing.  What did you ask?”  He turned his head so it was facing hers but his eyes stayed locked on the man.

“I asked if you wouldn’t mind if Jeanie and I went and got some ice cream.”  She leaned in closer and whispered, “Marc I see you staring at that poor man and you are not setting a good example for Jeanette.”

“No, no I wasn’t, I mean, yeah, ice cream.  Go for it.”  Marc shook his head, blinked his eyes and smiled at his wife.  As they walked off, Kim shot Marc a ‘get-your-act-straight’ look and he waited what seemed like a lifetime for them to turn the corner towards the ice cream shop. 

As soon as they turned he whipped his head back to see the man now sitting in front of him, close enough to lean over and touch.

“Shit!”  Marc yelped in a high pitched voice.  Marc slapped his mouth and the woman sitting next to the awkwardly dressed man clapped her hands around her son’s ears.  The young man smiled and chanted, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”  She picked him up and carried him off around the corner where he would latter be heard crying.

The awkward man did not notice Marc’s faux pas.  He had head phones on.  Marc’s heart jumped but settled as he realized the man’s eyes were closed as well.  On his lap was a 1990’s style CD player, and a CD case of what looked like Jeff Foxworthy’s greatest hits.

Marc leaned forward, with one eye on the man’s eyes and another on his lap.

“Yep, Jeff Foxworthy.” Marc thought to himself.

Cuddled up next to the man between his skinny ass and the arm of the chair was a bag of batteries.  Not just any bag though, a gallon sized bag.  And it was full too, bursting like the man’s porcine stomach, with AA batteries.

“Stop looking Marc.  This poor man must be handicapped.  You should be ashamed.”  He chided himself

Marc felt terrible for staring and sorry for the handicapped man and managed to shake his need to stare. 

“Sir, excuse me, sir?” Marc’s heart jumped, his head stayed looking at his crotch.  “Sir, excuse me?” 

Marc looked up, and the awkward man had taken off his head phones and was looking directly at him.

“Sir, do you happen to have a pen on you?”  The awkward man spoke perfect flawless English with a non-regional accent and he looked Marc right in the eyes as he said it.  His mouth then closed and began its teat sucking motion again.

“Um, uh, yeah.” Marc didn’t have the guts to look him in the eyes and kept looking down at the ground as he fumbled for the pen in his jacket pocket.  Marc handed him the pen.   The man rolled up his left sleeve and wrote ‘Q&A with Barbara, 8:30’ on the inside of his wrist.

“Thanks very much.” He handed the pen back.

“No, no, problem.” Marc’s hand shook a bit as he grabbed the pen and it dropped to the carpet.  “Oh excuse me.”  Marc picked up the pen and stood up walking away from the gate towards the restroom. 

“He’s not handicapped at all!” Marc thought to himself, splashing water on his face.  “Why is this man in my head?  Just move on, Marc.  He’s dressed silly, so what?”

When he returned to the gate the man was gone.  Nowhere to be seen!  Marc looked everywhere and reluctantly boarded the flight stealing looks back up the jetway as he entered the plane and flew home. 

~--------------~

Part II: Marc’s life changes dramatically, all because of this one awkward man.