The Banquet

So I grew tired of organizing the banquet every year. It's not as if I'd volunteered the first time. It was a thankless task and no one ever helped out. This year, however, I could not bring myself to do it. I'd wake up in the morning, bent on organizing the dreaded event but a perpetual lethargy would linger over me throughout the day. By late evening, I would find myself completely exhausted from a day of doing absolutely nothing. The whole ordeal reminded me of graduate school.

I HATED graduate school. It haunted me like a bad case of herpes. At least with herpes, there's the initial bliss of erotic pleasure but with grad school, it was one long drawn out prison rape.

Thus I began to loathe my existence as the date of the banquet loomed on the calendar. The phone rang daily. Charity people, anxious and curious about the status of the un-mailed invitations. Some were curious about who this year's guest speaker would be. I could hear them blabbing to my answering machine as I cowered, naked in the floor of my closet, illuminated by a thin slice of yellow light that accentuated my jaundice.

It is now day 39, I am nearly catatonic. I have exhausted my supply of vodka and cigarettes and I have no choice but to brave the cruel winter air in my quest to resupply. My bathrobe offers little in the way of protection. I think my balls may have frozen to the bench at the bus stop. I don't know. Vodka puts hair on your chest. I imagine it can grow you a new pair as well.

The seat is warm and the bus smells like sulfur. I can feel them staring at me from every corner, judging me. Surely they know about the banquet! The rage wells up within me. The shame of defeat. Humanity conspiring against me. So I'm broken. So I failed. "You win! You win! Are you happy?!" I scream as time stands still. Sometimes it's not about winning, it's about tearing away from security, cold-cocking the guy on the podium, and whippin' out your ding-dong for the whole world to see.