Flash friday 1-17-14 A misunderstanding leads to hostility. in Adjunct to 8/9/2013 flash friday; a trinity of flashs
- Jan. 22, 2014, 8:02 a.m.
- |
- Public
A misunderstanding leads to hostility.
The choir was practicing nearer my god to thee, Jimmy the Saint and Woefully Fat St. Claude were in the back pews. Woefully Fat had a toothpick he was worrying between his teeth. He was always worrying a toothpick. Sometimes he got the flavored ones the kid dipped in cinnamon or spearmint.
“So, Jimmy, how do I walk without being a douchebag about it?”
Jimmy was idly following along in the hymn book.
“You keep your mouth closed, like the saying goes; best to be a quiet douchebag than flap your gums and be a big fucking douchebag.”
Woefully fat shook his head, Jimmy tilted his head. He’d known the guy since they were kids and though no one had ever got toothpicked by accident, Jimmy the saint knew you could put an eye out with one of those things. He didn’t walk on cracks either, not out of superstition, he figured if moms back were always breaking the city would spackle in the cracks, he did it to spite the sidewalk.
“I don’t get chicks,” woefully fat growled, woefully, and fatly, looked around like a ghost just walked over his grave and he was scratching to get out “Women, I don’t get women. Female Americans. Um, the fairer sex who can open doors all on their own.”
The song ended and the echo’s hung around for a minute in the high ceiling of the church, darting in and out of the eaves. The choir director, a deacon, slapped the podium with a ruler and they started up again.
“You’ve got one foot out the door Woe Fat”. Jimmy was the kind of guy who’d shorten anything, if St. Claude were Woe Fat, Jimmy’d drop the silent e. “Unless you meant Douchebag American.”
He walked the toothpick across incisors, fangs, from one side to the other, like he was conducting the choir hymn in three four time. “I love her ya know. Christ,” he crossed himself, “I’m a douchebag.” He crossed himself again just in case the first one didn’t take.
“Whoa, woe,” Jimmy just liked saying that, “So leave it lay, here, where all the secrets and pent up frustrations live. Leave it lay where the good lord flung it.”
“Jimmy the Saint,” Woe fat smiled, frowned, took the toothpick out, examined it, put it back in “Can’t do that.”
They sat there in silence, silence between the two of them, while the kids-in-skirts choir hacked at nearer my god to thee and then, without any reason to stay longer they went out into the street where the pale sun made shadows if not heat.
“Want me to do anything Woe?”
“Yeah, go hug your kids, kiss your old lady, put on your slippers and watch the game Jimmy. If there’s one thing I can do on my own its douchebaggery.”
“’Kay Woe you take it easy.”
“Jimmy the Saint,” he smiled pulling on his gloves. They hugged like men.
Deleted user ⋅ January 22, 2014
If you'd given the fat guy a knife instead of a toothpick, it could have been the finely hammered steel of woe.
I wondered if douche-bags were always male, so I looked it up in the OED. Douche-bag was used only gynecologically til the 60's, when it became "an unattractive co-ed". By the 70's douche-bags were almost universally men.
haredawg drools Deleted user ⋅ January 22, 2014
Was a guy in a Tim Powers book, I wanna say Earthquake Weather or Expiration Date, called Woefully fat. Hmmm, maybe last call. Jimmy the Saint is both from that springsteen song and Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead. I went for double cheese and no red sauce.
Funny that with the douche bag thing, the brits use a word ugly on the american ear, cunt, almost exclusively for males, and yet in neither case does it imply the individual is effeminate.
Ok, so maybe I used triple the cheese and even less red sauce.