You’re Just Breathing Through Your Wound
I think the reader is aware that I am a writer but what you may not know is that like all good and great writers at the time of this writing I was, well broke. In order not to discontinue documenting the lives and times of these two women, I searched the newspaper for job ads. As I was sipping my coffee I almost spilled it all over myself after reading an ad, “Wanted PAGEBOY to run Atkins diet plate to the President.” The president that they were talking about was Ronald Reagan, he hadn’t been president for almost a couple of decades but was still called Mr. President, this because it is customary to allow, out of respect, the use of the term, President, as if somehow they still retained the title but not the paycheck.
One shouldn’t judge this type of honorary practice; getting to be President must be difficult, perhaps the most difficult job to get in the world. Especially president of the United States; Italy for instance has a tendency to have a new government every six months, this probably gives a lot more Italians the opportunity to participate in their government, but it also increases the chances than anyone, including you and me, could be Prime Minister of Italy. Giving Italy perhaps the greatest possible mass participatory government in the world. But as I was saying getting to be President of the United States of America is very difficult, your timing has to be right, you can only apply for the job once every four years, you have to get the democrats or the republicans to give you a pretty good reference, and even when they do, you still have to ask the American People if they agree that you are the person qualified to hold the highest Office in the land; and even if they agree you still have to get the Electoral College to agree that you are the president of the Untied States; and if you don’t win by an astonishingly large margin, if it is too close to call, then the Supreme Court has to decide if you indeed are the President of the United States. As you can see it is not like being a shoeshine boy or anything like that, you wouldn’t for instance want to continue being called Mr. Trashman if you had just retired from the Waste Management Industry; I think this is because there are a lot of garbage-men, and there’s a lot of garbage and a lot of job openings for the garbage man. People after all run for office but have a tendency to run from garbage.
I got the job as “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” I was told to meet President Reagan at his house for instructions, fortunately I lived rather close to him, this is also unusual most people don’t live close to their presidents. Well in Iceland the Prime minister has a regular house, just like you and I might, and people can pass right by the house like if it were any other house; but The President’s White House is, yes near the street, but in another planet. You don’t think of the White House as some place that you can go for dinner, you can’t, invitations are required, the president only dines with invited guests; you just can’t go up and say I would like to have dinner with My president today, you can’t, your president wont see you, and don’t even ask about sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, the White House is not an Inn you see; it’s instead the place where the most powerful person, usually a man, always has been a man, Antoinette and Lauren have then an even smaller chance of being the next President of the United States; why even a garbage man, if he were a man, has a greater chance of being president. Anyway the president I was working for was a former president, and he lived within walking distance of my house, this was unusual but the city I lived in was just so properly distributed, that you could have million dollar houses, blocks away from $700 dollar a month apartments.
I don’t know why I got the job of “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” I really never applied, it was one of those consummate errors that may happen to a person and one shouldn’t say, no I won’t do it, when one receives the mistaken letter offer. Yeah, I did see the ad in the newspaper but I thought of it rather as propaganda for how open our society was, and thought nothing more of it, especially because I counted, in my mind’s eye, hundreds of thousands of applicants. I supposed this because “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president,” for some odd reason, had more appeal than a steady job as a garbage collector. This is not to say that garbage collection isn’t important, and I apologize to any one collecting trash if I am offending them, no it is not that at all, it is instead that when you get the job of “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” You have an entrance into history, you break the barrier between history and yourself, between history and averageness, between being just a member of the masses and being someone registered in the historicity of the world, and of the most powerful nation on earth.
Yes, “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” Would imply that The Ronald Reagan library would record your name, your address, your social security number, the date that you worked for the president, and could you call it work? Of course not, nothing in the letter that I got in the mail said anything about pay, you aren’t going to be paid to be immaculated into the Annals of American and World history. Can you imagine it, thousands of years from now, when the true analysis of the Ronald Reagan presidency comes into being, there, some scholar, will stumble into my name, served in the ceremony as “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” Something about that makes me feel good, I don’t know what it is, it is not petty though, nope, it is not petty, I can’t tell you why it is not petty, you probably are laughing at me now, but for some reason that some scholar will read about me thousands of years from now, connects me to all of my humanity. You have to think that you don’t die in history and what if that scholar that reads about me goes on to write a book about the Presidency from the perspective of that now gone and dead fellow, “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.”
The truth is I didn’t make it to the president’s house on time for the practice session, “stand on this X” … “do not look at the reporters.” … “do not make eye contact.” “… be sure to wear a tie” … “you just hand the plate” … “you just hand the plate to him, kind of, assisting him, by putting it into his lap like this.” The Atkins diet was something of a miracle diet, it had survived its critics, Dr. Atkins would also be noticed by future scholars, and I was putting all of the Proteins with not an ounce of Grain, not a single Tortilla, on a silver plate on Ronald Reagan’s lap; what would all those Spanish voters think. Yes, the implication to Maize eating Mexicans had to be demoralizing.
Anyway I made it to the ceremony, they sort of figured I wouldn’t need to practice; but as I was getting in, I got trounced on by a bunch of secret service men, all well meaning, registered me, they were able to gauge that I was not going to spoil the photo opportunity because this was after all a privilege; they pointed out where I needed to be, and I made my way, there. It was a sunny day so they had moved the reception outdoors, beautiful green grass setting, the white chairs and red, white and blue podium, all well set; and people were converging on the place nicely. I got a bit bored and decided to meander the hallways of power; when I stumbled upon a gathering that was apparently an initiating rights ritual for republicans.
There were all these young men, a couple of staidly pretty women too, all standing almost as if at attention, orderly, and they were listening to a speech about the importance of being a good republican. “big government is for those Kennedys!” there was an approving laugh from the audience, “big government is what is wrong with this country! we can take care of ourselves, the government should just be involved with defending our nation from foreign threats, and subsidized imports!” I wasn’t and ain’t much into politics, but I had seen the guy giving the speech on the television, I can’t right at this moment recall his name, a war hero, former naval officer, now Senator, damn I think it would help you if I thought of his name, if I remember it I will be sure to tell you.
“Them donkeys we are going to ride them.” And having said that marching music blared out and in came a pig covered with democratic garb and a roasted turkey presumably Republican, well placed and belted on the pig’s back. It was time for lunch, and everyone had a big laugh; till unexpectedly the Senator saw me and rushed over and said, “is it time yet?” I crossed my eyes and reared my head, “time?” He grabbed my shoulder and brought his huge face up to mine, “for the Atkins’ diet ceremony.” I immediately reacted knowingly, and looked at my watch, “shit we missed it!” I rushed out the door, only to see my substitute to history, a little blond girl, Shirley Temple like, wearing a white dress with a red ribbon around her waist, black laced shoes, placing the Atkins diet plate on the Presidents Lap.
Oh my, I seem to have gotten so involved with my person that I have forgotten to continue Lauren and Antoinette’s life happenings. I apologize; a writer should never be of relevance in any aspect over those he reports on.
The phone is ringing, it is the former Father Otto, he is calling Lauren, she is relaxing wearing a most comfortable white robe, Antoinette is laying next to her wholly naked. Father’s Otto’s voice consternated, “Lauren, Lauren!” “Yes this is me.” “Lauren I saw the devil, I saw the devil, he is after me now!” “Father Otto please calm yourself.” “How, how do I calm myself, the devil is after me, did you hear what I just said he is after me! No cop is going to help me now.” “Listen to me Otto (she dropped the father bit to bring the man down to earth,) listen to me Otto you need to calm yourself, panicking is the worst thing that you can do now.” Otto does calm down by a few decibels, but he quickly switches to tears, “what am I going to do now, what can I do.” “where did you see him?” a crying Father Otto, “see who?” “The devil, you saw the devil right!.” “Yes, I saw him, he was in the basement, the devil is always in the basement. I was working on a new product, Liquid Coffee, it sounds crazy I know, but there is this company, a couple of entrepreneurs funded it, they are making liquid coffee to sell to hotels and restaurants.” Lauren a bit incredulous, “Otto they already, the hotels and restaurants, already have coffee, it comes grounded, why would anyone want it in liquid form, it would cost more to transport, more to store, NASA has been trying for years to get out of liquids altogether, and someone is trying to make liquid coffee to sell?” Otto had calm down some, “Yes I told them the same thing, I told them it was going to be rough to change all those granular coffee pounds into liquid; and Lauren don’t think I am dumb, I needed a job, they offered to help me out, I work the storage facility and give out free samples to the Hotel Managers that come by to inspect the Liquid Coffee flavor, and the production facility, what else can a former Priest do, I only know how to serve the Lord.” “Well, ok Otto, listen we need to talk, can we meet at Sam’s today?” There was no response from the other end.
We swing in to see Father Otto, his face in his hands, the phone hung up, his cries, those of a man that has just seen the devil. “He was large, human like, huge body, the size of the statue of Lincoln in Washington, all charcoal figure, his body solid, shiny, lucent, smooth, and there are grates in it, that are as open perfect wounds, perfect vagina shaped knife cuts, coming out of them red, fiery red; he seemed, no he was breathing through them, as his face did not have a nose. I remember when I was a child and father would warn me, not to breath through my wounds, “your just breathing through your wounds.” He would say, and now I see the devil does too. And this Lucifer was laughing at me, laughing at the fallen, I am damned. Damned for eternity.”
There was lost resignation in his voice.
Meanwhile, Lauren was on the phone attempting to get a permit to find out where that call came from, fully concentrated on her quest to find Otto.
Eureka! I got it, Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona.
One shouldn’t judge this type of honorary practice; getting to be President must be difficult, perhaps the most difficult job to get in the world. Especially president of the United States; Italy for instance has a tendency to have a new government every six months, this probably gives a lot more Italians the opportunity to participate in their government, but it also increases the chances than anyone, including you and me, could be Prime Minister of Italy. Giving Italy perhaps the greatest possible mass participatory government in the world. But as I was saying getting to be President of the United States of America is very difficult, your timing has to be right, you can only apply for the job once every four years, you have to get the democrats or the republicans to give you a pretty good reference, and even when they do, you still have to ask the American People if they agree that you are the person qualified to hold the highest Office in the land; and even if they agree you still have to get the Electoral College to agree that you are the president of the Untied States; and if you don’t win by an astonishingly large margin, if it is too close to call, then the Supreme Court has to decide if you indeed are the President of the United States. As you can see it is not like being a shoeshine boy or anything like that, you wouldn’t for instance want to continue being called Mr. Trashman if you had just retired from the Waste Management Industry; I think this is because there are a lot of garbage-men, and there’s a lot of garbage and a lot of job openings for the garbage man. People after all run for office but have a tendency to run from garbage.
I got the job as “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” I was told to meet President Reagan at his house for instructions, fortunately I lived rather close to him, this is also unusual most people don’t live close to their presidents. Well in Iceland the Prime minister has a regular house, just like you and I might, and people can pass right by the house like if it were any other house; but The President’s White House is, yes near the street, but in another planet. You don’t think of the White House as some place that you can go for dinner, you can’t, invitations are required, the president only dines with invited guests; you just can’t go up and say I would like to have dinner with My president today, you can’t, your president wont see you, and don’t even ask about sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, the White House is not an Inn you see; it’s instead the place where the most powerful person, usually a man, always has been a man, Antoinette and Lauren have then an even smaller chance of being the next President of the United States; why even a garbage man, if he were a man, has a greater chance of being president. Anyway the president I was working for was a former president, and he lived within walking distance of my house, this was unusual but the city I lived in was just so properly distributed, that you could have million dollar houses, blocks away from $700 dollar a month apartments.
I don’t know why I got the job of “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” I really never applied, it was one of those consummate errors that may happen to a person and one shouldn’t say, no I won’t do it, when one receives the mistaken letter offer. Yeah, I did see the ad in the newspaper but I thought of it rather as propaganda for how open our society was, and thought nothing more of it, especially because I counted, in my mind’s eye, hundreds of thousands of applicants. I supposed this because “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president,” for some odd reason, had more appeal than a steady job as a garbage collector. This is not to say that garbage collection isn’t important, and I apologize to any one collecting trash if I am offending them, no it is not that at all, it is instead that when you get the job of “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” You have an entrance into history, you break the barrier between history and yourself, between history and averageness, between being just a member of the masses and being someone registered in the historicity of the world, and of the most powerful nation on earth.
Yes, “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” Would imply that The Ronald Reagan library would record your name, your address, your social security number, the date that you worked for the president, and could you call it work? Of course not, nothing in the letter that I got in the mail said anything about pay, you aren’t going to be paid to be immaculated into the Annals of American and World history. Can you imagine it, thousands of years from now, when the true analysis of the Ronald Reagan presidency comes into being, there, some scholar, will stumble into my name, served in the ceremony as “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.” Something about that makes me feel good, I don’t know what it is, it is not petty though, nope, it is not petty, I can’t tell you why it is not petty, you probably are laughing at me now, but for some reason that some scholar will read about me thousands of years from now, connects me to all of my humanity. You have to think that you don’t die in history and what if that scholar that reads about me goes on to write a book about the Presidency from the perspective of that now gone and dead fellow, “runner of the Atkins diet plate for the president.”
The truth is I didn’t make it to the president’s house on time for the practice session, “stand on this X” … “do not look at the reporters.” … “do not make eye contact.” “… be sure to wear a tie” … “you just hand the plate” … “you just hand the plate to him, kind of, assisting him, by putting it into his lap like this.” The Atkins diet was something of a miracle diet, it had survived its critics, Dr. Atkins would also be noticed by future scholars, and I was putting all of the Proteins with not an ounce of Grain, not a single Tortilla, on a silver plate on Ronald Reagan’s lap; what would all those Spanish voters think. Yes, the implication to Maize eating Mexicans had to be demoralizing.
Anyway I made it to the ceremony, they sort of figured I wouldn’t need to practice; but as I was getting in, I got trounced on by a bunch of secret service men, all well meaning, registered me, they were able to gauge that I was not going to spoil the photo opportunity because this was after all a privilege; they pointed out where I needed to be, and I made my way, there. It was a sunny day so they had moved the reception outdoors, beautiful green grass setting, the white chairs and red, white and blue podium, all well set; and people were converging on the place nicely. I got a bit bored and decided to meander the hallways of power; when I stumbled upon a gathering that was apparently an initiating rights ritual for republicans.
There were all these young men, a couple of staidly pretty women too, all standing almost as if at attention, orderly, and they were listening to a speech about the importance of being a good republican. “big government is for those Kennedys!” there was an approving laugh from the audience, “big government is what is wrong with this country! we can take care of ourselves, the government should just be involved with defending our nation from foreign threats, and subsidized imports!” I wasn’t and ain’t much into politics, but I had seen the guy giving the speech on the television, I can’t right at this moment recall his name, a war hero, former naval officer, now Senator, damn I think it would help you if I thought of his name, if I remember it I will be sure to tell you.
“Them donkeys we are going to ride them.” And having said that marching music blared out and in came a pig covered with democratic garb and a roasted turkey presumably Republican, well placed and belted on the pig’s back. It was time for lunch, and everyone had a big laugh; till unexpectedly the Senator saw me and rushed over and said, “is it time yet?” I crossed my eyes and reared my head, “time?” He grabbed my shoulder and brought his huge face up to mine, “for the Atkins’ diet ceremony.” I immediately reacted knowingly, and looked at my watch, “shit we missed it!” I rushed out the door, only to see my substitute to history, a little blond girl, Shirley Temple like, wearing a white dress with a red ribbon around her waist, black laced shoes, placing the Atkins diet plate on the Presidents Lap.
Oh my, I seem to have gotten so involved with my person that I have forgotten to continue Lauren and Antoinette’s life happenings. I apologize; a writer should never be of relevance in any aspect over those he reports on.
The phone is ringing, it is the former Father Otto, he is calling Lauren, she is relaxing wearing a most comfortable white robe, Antoinette is laying next to her wholly naked. Father’s Otto’s voice consternated, “Lauren, Lauren!” “Yes this is me.” “Lauren I saw the devil, I saw the devil, he is after me now!” “Father Otto please calm yourself.” “How, how do I calm myself, the devil is after me, did you hear what I just said he is after me! No cop is going to help me now.” “Listen to me Otto (she dropped the father bit to bring the man down to earth,) listen to me Otto you need to calm yourself, panicking is the worst thing that you can do now.” Otto does calm down by a few decibels, but he quickly switches to tears, “what am I going to do now, what can I do.” “where did you see him?” a crying Father Otto, “see who?” “The devil, you saw the devil right!.” “Yes, I saw him, he was in the basement, the devil is always in the basement. I was working on a new product, Liquid Coffee, it sounds crazy I know, but there is this company, a couple of entrepreneurs funded it, they are making liquid coffee to sell to hotels and restaurants.” Lauren a bit incredulous, “Otto they already, the hotels and restaurants, already have coffee, it comes grounded, why would anyone want it in liquid form, it would cost more to transport, more to store, NASA has been trying for years to get out of liquids altogether, and someone is trying to make liquid coffee to sell?” Otto had calm down some, “Yes I told them the same thing, I told them it was going to be rough to change all those granular coffee pounds into liquid; and Lauren don’t think I am dumb, I needed a job, they offered to help me out, I work the storage facility and give out free samples to the Hotel Managers that come by to inspect the Liquid Coffee flavor, and the production facility, what else can a former Priest do, I only know how to serve the Lord.” “Well, ok Otto, listen we need to talk, can we meet at Sam’s today?” There was no response from the other end.
We swing in to see Father Otto, his face in his hands, the phone hung up, his cries, those of a man that has just seen the devil. “He was large, human like, huge body, the size of the statue of Lincoln in Washington, all charcoal figure, his body solid, shiny, lucent, smooth, and there are grates in it, that are as open perfect wounds, perfect vagina shaped knife cuts, coming out of them red, fiery red; he seemed, no he was breathing through them, as his face did not have a nose. I remember when I was a child and father would warn me, not to breath through my wounds, “your just breathing through your wounds.” He would say, and now I see the devil does too. And this Lucifer was laughing at me, laughing at the fallen, I am damned. Damned for eternity.”
There was lost resignation in his voice.
Meanwhile, Lauren was on the phone attempting to get a permit to find out where that call came from, fully concentrated on her quest to find Otto.
Eureka! I got it, Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona.
posted by Ricardo Correa at
8/31/2006 05:49:00 PM
