On a sorely misguided whim, I went to White Castle today with three of my co-workers. I haven’t been to one in a year or two, so you can imagine the idealized memories that went through my head as we fought lunchtime traffic. In my mind, White Castle stood as a paragon of fast food, a shining beacon for all other would-be Burger Kings to follow. Since it’s called “White Castle,” the implied virtues of royalty and purity must both be true, right?
It’d be silly of me to comment on the ambiance of a fast food joint, but the fact that everything was bolted down–all under careful watch of three security cameras–gave me pause. Why the Orwellian state of dining, I wondered, especially with the doubleplusgood sandwiches? Their marketing campaign had convinced me that their burgers were “what [I] crave,” which meant it’d be criminal not to eat there.
After stepping through the foyer, what others might describe as a space enclosed with bulletproof glass, I ordered some chicken sandwiches. My colleagues, bless their gastrointestinal systems, divvied up a Sack of 20, White Castle’s quaint euphemism for a small cow. Upon biting into my first chicken sandwich, I commented that it tasted like fish, only to discover that it was indeed fish. I’m inclined to believe the scientists at the Castle have genetically fused fish with fowl, but I don’t want to delve any deeper lest I share my lunch with my keyboard. In all likelihood they made an honest mistake and swapped one of my sandwiches.
That’s immaterial, however, because I’ve devised the perfect way to determine whether you’re having a chicken sandwich or a fish surprise. The chicken patty resembles a flat piece of batter, you see, whereas the fish patty looks like a chicken patty. You’re probably wondering how I’m feeling right now, gentle reader, and that’s very kind of you. I’ve managed to keep it all down and I’m feeling okay, though the first few minutes after the dining experience were horrible. Do you remember the poor space marine in Aliens who had the privilege of seeing an alien burst out of his chest? I felt exactly the same way, except I thought I had downed the marine who had downed the alien, and both the marine and the alien were trying to chew their way out.
When the clock struck midnight yesterday and Muse still hadn’t returned, I immediately grabbed my coat and set out to find her. Driving in pitch black is a pleasure reserved for lonely people and desperate people. All the things you find comfort in during the day–the foliage, the pedestrians, the familiar colors–change ever so slightly in the dark. You see things you shouldn’t see, and things you should see stay predictably out of sight.
I saw something yesterday night. I saw it when I veered off the main road, seemingly by mistake yet also by luck, and what I saw helped me find my way. You see, in my rush to dash out the door and find Muse, I had forgotten to take a map. Within 15 minutes I was hopelessly lost, vainly earmarking landmarks that confoundingly looked the same.
Just as I was about to give up and wait for daylight, I spied a man pacing the street, eerily illuminated by the moon and the anemic streetlights. He was an older man with a prodigious beard, probably in his early sixties, and he walked with a shuffling but confident gait. A tattered gray hat sat on his head, complementing his worn clothes and weather-stained coat. My gut told me to drive past the man, but against my better judgment I pulled up next to him and rolled down my window.
“Excuse me, sir, I need your help,” I shouted. “I’m lost.”
“Is that so?” asked the man, giving me a look that froze my blood.
I answered his question with shocked silence. There was something strange about his eyes.
“Looking at my eyes, are you?” he said matter-of-factly. “Let me tell you a secret. They’re both glass.”
“What? So do you have a cane? What are you doing out here at night?” I cried.
He chuckled and assumed the air of a practiced storyteller.
“This,” he gestured at the sidewalk and the neighborhood at hand. “This is my home. 472 steps from one corner to the next, 517 when the wind and snow pick up, bikers and dog-walkers on Sundays, children and old people on all the other days. There’s a bench from step 157 to 160, assuming your back’s to the setting sun, and you’re welcome to it.”
“Let me get this straight,” I replied after a confused pause. “You spend all your time walking back and forth?”
“That’s why I don’t have a cane,” he sighed with upturned hands. “Never needed one.”
“But, but what about food? Where do you sleep? What happens when it rains, when it gets too cold?” I exclaimed with some consternation.
“People around these parts will feed you something fierce,” he laughed contentedly. “That bench there? It’s my bed, not that I sleep much. Only need three hours a night. Or morning. When it rains, well, that’s my shower. When it gets too cold, some kind heart will take me in.”
“But, but–” I stammered. “What’s your story?”
“You don’t need to know where I came from or what I’ve done,” he told me slowly, “but what you do need to know is that I can help you. You see these eyes?”
I nodded.
“Well, behind these eyes there’s a whole lot of knowledge. And the occasional Tootsie Roll,” he whispered conspiratorially.
“What?” I gasped. “That’s disgusting.”
“Maybe so, maybe so, but you have to know this: Pick five and you will find what you seek,” he concluded.
I sat for a moment, trying to make sense of his advice.
“Pick five and you will find what you seek,” he repeated before bidding me farewell. “You’ll want to head back, take a right when you see a red rock, and keep on driving until you hit the highway.”
“Wait, how do you–” I protested, but he cut me off.
I followed his directions, moon to my back, Muse in my heart, my compass recalibrated. He was right.
During lunch today, a gaggle of people stood and watched as a wrecking ball demolished a decades-old parking garage. The spectacle, unlike what you might see in a cartoon or The World’s Greatest Wrecking Ball Adventures #42, proved far less exciting than you might think. There wasn’t a shiny iron ball wrought with mischief and black paint, nor were there explosions of bricks and cement.
Even though the ball was a tired beige affair made from stone, pedestrians looked on with rapt enjoyment while the demolitions expert chipped away at the garage. Everyone secretly hoped, I believe, that the wrecking ball operator would suddenly go nuts and swing her instrument of destruction in wild arcs, much like when your grandmother decides to do the Lindy Hop with her walker.
I’ll never know whether this happened or not because I left after five boring minutes, fearing beyond reason that I had inhaled more than a lifetime’s worth of pigeon defecation and asbestos. Those five minutes, however, brought up a question perfect for our one-way discussion today. Here it is: Why are people so fascinated by balls?
Look at the ball drop in Times Square, the giant ball of twine in Kansas, or the giant balls of anything–bras, barbed wire, foil–that dot our landscape. People will congregate en masse to lust after gigantic spheres of rubber bands, but why? Now, with the way things normally operate around here, I’d offer an entirely plausible account of how giant, eminently huggable meteors instilled this desire for all things round during the Pleistocene. I’m going to cut straight to chase today, though, because Muse and I had a vicious fight yesterday. The reason we love gigantic balls of twine is because we’re all cats. I’m going to search for Muse now. She roared away in my favorite coupe yesterday, peeling south in the waning sunlight after storming out the door. Me-ow.