What it means to be savage

 

 

I sit in the dingiest booth in the dingiest diner God ever put on this dingy earth and I think of you.

People are all laughing around me, even the losers, the greasy-headed geeks and the almost winos who come here night after night for lack of better company.

Since I’m not laughing because I know I’m in deep shit and don’t have a clue as to how to get out of it.

The worst part is that I already know you’re laughing, too, giving that titillating laugh you have as part of foreplay before sex.

I’m in jeans and you’re in some slinky dress; you’re seat at some table dignified enough to have linen table clothing and napkins, not paper place mats printed with brain-teasing puzzles I can never figure out.

You get cloth napkins with a gold monograph, not paper napkins gold only because the clumsy waitress spilled my coffee when she put down my cup of coffee.

People where you are have sophisticated laughs, chuckling over some powerful scene in a play they just attended, or some swank film they don’t need to read subtitles on to enjoy.

Nobody in this place ever saw a play, and probably can’t tell you where France is let alone who its most famous film director is.

I know I’m feeling sorry for myself.

I know I’m just being jealous.

I slurp soup when I sip it, drop vowels when I speak and burst out with curses when I do something or smart.

All those things you claim make me more into a cave man than a civilized citizen of the world.

This didn’t seem to bother you when we had sex. You just didn’t want me savage all of the time, and anywhere else outside the bedroom, as if I could be anyone but whom I am where ever I happen to be.

So I sit in the dingiest booth in the dingiest diner wondering just how I’m supposed to change.

What surgeons do I have to operate on me so that my brows don’t protrude over my eyes and I don’t drool while I drink.

I’m so angry I could spit.

I hate feeling like a loser and I blame you for making me sit here like this.

That’s why I got this gun in my pocket.

That’s why I’m going to get up and walk out that door and down the street to the door of the posh place where you sit and laugh

That’s why when I get there I’m going to turn those cloth napkins red.

With your blood, and his.

That’ll teach you what it means to be savage.