more like ‘the cultural logic of late CRAPitalism’
scene: public transportation
time: 7:30 pm
characters:
:: tall and fat angry dude wiping his face with a terrycloth hand towel and clutching what appears to be a minute maid lemonade 20 oz in a plastic bag. not like unprecedented fat but fat enough so that he effectively prevents a second person from fitting into the portion of seat he occupies (which usually holds three people)
:: extremely nerdy teen with acne, reminiscent of george michael from arrested development except too meek to wear a neoliberal print shirt. he’s just wearing a well-worn gray t-shirt and like, non-pleated khakis and some kind of offbrand sub-jansport backpack
:: transit yuppie, like huge cornfed rosy-cheeked dude who is dressed like greg norman jr on vacation. some kind of straw hat or synthetic underarmour straw hat. if underarmour made straw hats, he would be wearing it. cannot be sure but i think he had sunglasses worn on his neck.
fat dude sits down. one stop later, nerdy teen squeezes in next to him, his (nerdy teen’s) entire body contorting like his anus is a black hole so as to fit into the space without touching or engaging in any way with the fat guy, who is like emitting visible radio waves of anger before any of this even happened and now that the kid sits there, the fat guy is like muttering murderous oaths to himself like richard iii if richard iii was a sociopathic fat transit user and not the king of england.
the fat dude is not moved by the teen’s effort to avoid contact. his muttering increases to audible, coherent, unpleasant statements like “man don’t even try to lean all the way back” “don’t touch me” etc.
this goes on for approximate ten minutes, until the yuppie dude gets up at his stop and theatrically tells the nerdy teen, here, you can have my seat, this guy here (referring to angry fat man) owns that seat, so we better let him have it (mild sarcasm but also probably more confrontational than is advisable, given that the fat angry guy is like actually bubbling with slightly demented rage by now).
roughly the following exchange takes place:
yuppie: you shouldn’t have been so rude to him
fat guy: fuck you motherfucker
yuppie: you don’t own that seat
fat guy: as far as you are concerned i do own it, fuck you
yuppie: you’re not very nice
fat guy: fuck you
yuppie: (trying to think of something to say other than ‘fuck you’)
fat guy: fuck you
yuppie: well…
fat guy: fuck you
meanwhile the nerdy kid moves to an open seat (immediately across from the angry fat man and proceeds to look more embarrassed than any human ever for the remainder of the scene).
the fat guy goes to sleep, or does a credible impression of going to sleep.
the best part: there were open seats like twenty feet away that the kid could have sat in from the beginning.
“do unto others…” doesn’t really work if everyone involved in the transaction hates themselves.
