Saturday, July 25, 2009

Feast and Famine

The ashtray is full. It cannot possibly accommodate another snuffed cigarette butt, though undoubtedly it will. We will cram and pile them into and onto the small mountain that is still accumulating. Nobody will empty it. Nobody will simply pick it up, walk it down to the end of the bar, dump it out into the garbage can, and return it to its resting place. Paralyzed, miserable, and helpless with self-pity, we have elected to make the ashtray share and suffer the burden of our ennui. There is a special on bottles of Yuengling. Everybody is nursing from one, like infants suckling their mothers’ tits. The bartenders are extremely vigilant about removing the empties. Were they less so, the bar would look like somebody had robbed a Yuengling delivery truck and immediately consumed the spoils of their crime. Instead it looks like a commercial for shitty beer and depression. Instead of attractive young people having fun, we have ugly, old-looking young people having misery. We are pigeon-chested, spaghetti-armed, pot-bellied, acne-scarred men, and scowling, hipless, assless, chubby women, with cigarettes and oddly shaped breasts. We all want romance, decadence, and salvation. We are all drunk, desperate, and urgent. We all lack. The ashtray, however, does not lack. Whereas we each have emptiness, the ashtray has overabundance.
 

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