Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

sunny, semi-informational self help books gang-raped me. Broke my nose
in the gravel while Jimmy Buffet sang about his broken fucking flip-flop.
Afterwards, over drinks, one of the barbarians asked me what I dreamt
of. I, of course, was taken aback. They say barbarians don’t dream. But I
told him… “I dream of tangible nothing,” I said.
“So you mean nothing as something, then?” the barbarian replied
over the rim of his gin-and-tonic.
“I mean unity, dissolving into non-self,” I said, just to be confusing.
He looked as if he was following, but his beeper suddenly came alive,
vibrating and playing “Ode to Joy”, but in a minor key. “Gotta go,” the
barbarian gruffed. “I’ve got to pick my daughter up from squash at
eight, and then I’ve got therapy.”
Before I could get a word in, he left. Just as well, I thought, as I sniffled
to keep any more blood from winding up in my martini. It was darkening
toward translucence, and had picked up a coppery tang. I took a
sip, sat back, and sighed. Things aren’t what they used to be. I asked the
head of the barbarian tribe, an attractive man with an attractive briefcase,
for a quarter to drop in the jukebox. He grunted, and gave me forty
cents. I swaggered over, apologizing to whoever I bled on, and selected
the Jimmy Buffet single. Then I finished my martini…
Inside the Lenny’s, all of the patrons were answering the cop’s questions
so they could fill out their reports. The workers too were assisting
as best as they could, except for Jay, the shift cook, who was sitting in
the back room, blaring Jimmy Buffet. He stared blankly at the wall, a
grease spattered spatula in his limp hands. He had seen the entire
incident from behind the window in the door that led to the kitchen. I am
going to die, he thought. He felt the harsh certainty of the statement, felt
the gravity of it in every cell of his organism. No one gets out alive. You
cannot win, and no amount of shrewdness on your part will keep you
from passing those gates. This realization negated time for him, and he
suddenly was drawn to ask what his effect on the environment around
him was, rather than what he could get from it. You are a part of your
environment and cannot take anything away from it. You simply cheat
yourself in the process. Now he was brought to consider his present
condition, and the way he had been living his life. What the fuck am I
doing? He wondered, staring at the spatula. $6 an hour? What good does
my existence serve? Who goes home thinking, “that Jay, he makes one
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