Listics

He’s a co-dependent, an enabler of the first water. You can’t trust him. He talks behind your back to me and then tells me to keep it confidential. Later he contradicts himself in public. He doesn’t contribute when we’re taking a collection for a sick friend. He reminds me of a squirrel the way he climbs so fast and furious, scrabbling his way to the top as if there is security to be found there. He’s a noisy fuck, always contributing some ego-slice of opinion that adds little to the conversation besides his presence. I really don’t like the guy. Who says we all have to like each other around here anyway? Did I mention he’s a suck-up?

“I’ve got to get that certificate!” he suddenly called out desperately.

“I don’t think you can pass the National Writers’ Examination with what you have on that paper,” Barb said then, with great regret, because even though he was her husband she didn’t want to discourage him unnecessarily. But she had to tell the truth. “Without a middle.”

“I wouldn’t have been great, even with the certificate,” he said.

“Your views would have become known. You would have been something.”

At that moment the son manqué entered the room. The son manqué was eight feet tall and wore a serape woven out of two hundred transistor radios, all turned on and tuned to different stations. Just by looking at him you could hear Portland and Nogales, Mexico.

“No grass in the house?”

Barbara got the grass which was kept in one of those little yellow and red metal canisters made for sending film back to Eastman Kodak.

Edgar tried to think of a way to badmouth this immense son leaning over him like a large blaring building. But he couldn’t think of anything. Thinking of anything was beyond him. I sympathize. I myself have these problems. Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

from The Dolt, by Donald Barthelme (found within Jessamyn.com)