Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Forks and Spoons and Knives

They drink honeyed water from preserve jars and live in white houses laced with trellises and lilac. Every table is littered with papers and books. White porcelain coffee cups stand empty. Classical music mingles with the noise of cups colliding over a sudsy stainless steel sink hidden in a back room. The silverware cries out as it is sorted, forks from spoons and knives and sent to separate quarters where they may see each other, but not touch. The moment when they can all crash and clang together in a great orgiastic reunion behind the closed kitchen door is a moment they look forward to. Only the Latino dishwasher in his white apron with his sleeves rolled up witnesses their reunion. He helps them along through their frenzied ritual in the times between their segregation in the cylindrical white tubs positioned by the chrome napkin dispenser. No human can know how completely forks long for spoons. Nor can we of the two legged breathing kind imagine the anguish of the knives, always struggling with the forks for a moment with the spoons, and the spoons with the libido of rabbits profess their love to each of their brothers, but the forks luck out more often than the knives because they are after all more alike to the spoons than the knives are. Spoons and forks both enjoy a line of work which brings them close to the heat of open mouths. For this reason they share a certain sensual connection which the knives, always busy with the business of slicing and spreading will only rarely know when some sexed up model parts her pouty lips and extends a tongue to lick whipped margarine from a blade in a television commercial which will also feature a white stallion and a world famous tennis player on their way to brunch with the margarine licking sex pot. Such encounters are rare and awkward for knives. More familiar to them is the life of the deadly assassin, striking without remorse, carrying out their lonesome quests without tears. Do not pity the life of the knife. It cannot pity you. It lives in a world in which none of us may escape our truest nature. The knife meets its destiny with eyes wide open. It never begs or pleas. It loves the spoon fearlessly but will never sacrifice its own work or compromise its own true nature for the pleasure of fraternizing with a piece of curvaceous cutlery.
If anything, admire the knife, or do not consider it and saw away at that slab of charbroiled bovine flesh and chew and talk at the same time to the girl sitting across from you whom you hope to bed later. Cast the knife aside when you are done with it and do what you can to wile your own time away without a backward glance at the instrument of your will, you cruel and indulgent God.

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