I Mean
I’m not sure what you mean?
That was what he said.
I mean, if you were me… well, first you’d be thanking your lucky stars you got out of that bullsharkian life you were living and morphed into this jackpot, superstar quarterback of a chisel faced, ironicized specimen over here! You’re damn right you’d want to take a moment, take a knee, take a victory lap, or take cover and settle down for a spell. Watch the busy bees buzz on over and tip your visor to the flyest of the flies. I mean… not for nothin’, but we got fanta-class.
If you were me, I mean, after your initial drinking in of all this handsome devilry, you’d have smacked that fool and his moronic question for a loop! How many times do I (you, us, whoever) have to tell him where we’re coming from? I mean does this spiritual soldier really think I’ve got all the time in the world to over-explain myself? What do I look like, one of those barstool-sitting, toe-tapping jag offs from down the block who haven’t got one thing better to do than bust my humpchas regaling every Tom, Dick, and Astro with my quirky misadventures? I’ve got bills, Jack! I’ve got six or seven mouths to feed, depending on who you ask and what time of day it is and whether or not that mangy cat is still kicking around out there under the porch. I got people to meet and places to be. I can’t just repeat every damn word I just said to you because you don’t understand a zee king’s English! Where’d you go to school anyway, chief? Lemme guess? Your a Harvick peppercorn, aren’t ya? Yeah, I got you pegged for a number. I mean, what what pal? Could you be anymore transparent?
Now of course I didn’t say these things to him. The guy would have passed a brick and cried “Foul Play!” on me and walked right on up outta here. So naw, I had to play it cool like Cicero, you know? I had to engage in his thin, little game and bite my fat, lower lip and start on over up the top. Because… and you’ve probably guessed this part by now if you’re worth your oysters in honey… he had something I wanted. And the only way to get at it was to comply. I mean, for now anyway.
So instead of making with the insults and degradations I could have so easily slung, I took that route less traversed and spoke calm and soft and used a lot of mono-cymballic words with this jokester; just so he’d be more likely to slide on over to my side of the table and offer me some of his precious rum dug duggers.
I said, “I mean, surely a man of your stature and purpose can understand the vitality of my statements, if not their purpose. I only want for us to come to some agreement that leaves both parties basking our obscene wealths in the black. We should strive to be brutally mutual, sir. Not the opposite.”
“And what, pray tell is the opposite?” He asked, as was his right.
“Butchered and mutated,” I answered without pausing a beat. “Bemused and mulled.”
“That’s too much,” he struck back. “Partially contrary even.”
His unruly eyebrows were sparking the twitch and distracting from the true show: his kitchy kitchy tambourine hands.
“What have you got there, Sparky?” I motioned to his gesticulating hooks. “I mean, what are you intending to do with those?”
“Don’t quite know, really,” he stated. “My bloodfists got minds of their own, yeah? I never know what they’re up to before it’s too late. Why? They look nervous to you?”
They did but I wasn’t concerned. If need be, I’d simply revert to my clutch dominion and twist his 20 knuckles to the spin.
“My cause is the cause of the many, sanctified by the few,” I repeated my initial proposal verbatim, as if a slower, more docile speaking voice might have a shot of breaking through. “I desire peace…”
“Peace!” he huffed. “Don’t make me huff! Your kind chokes on peace as if it were raw sugar snot mucking up your throat.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” I said. “Not this time nor the first. A third will find you dead.”
He waited. Message delivered. I mean, finally.
“I desire peace… of mind,” I told him. “The rest of the whole damn universe can go take the eternal nap for all I care. Just give me that one sanctuary.”
This man — this so-called holy seer could see no further than his own ruinous machinations. As his own mind throttled, his bloodfists at least tampered down. Tension carries through the body on golden vein lines. It goes zoom through the heart if you’re not careful. It busts open up your face and shocks your Know Receptors to action. Like lazy lightning, it can trigger the worst of a man to eschew his primal form. I’ve seen it happen before and I’ll see it happen again. Because we’re all just as susceptible; we’re all rot blends of suspectible. I mean gosh, just consider the king.
“I know,” the man of cloth whispered. The electric storm slipped unnoticed, down his spine. “I know we’re a long way from any satisfactory end. But we should, at the ultimate least, make sense of one another. Because otherwise, why even share our bum rum duggers?”
All right then, I’ll admit it, he got me. And for a time, I even thought he might be on to something. So we sat there on and on until the second quarter of the half evening, spilling tales and mincing fictions. I kept my true feelings about the whole of it locked within the ego chamber, though. So I suppose that, technically speaking, we didn’t get anywhere at all. But I mean, at least we didn’t kill each other that fetid day.
