a dinner party of six
Six desks this week. Not a population. A dinner party, and like any good dinner party, one person has come as a character.
Nobody here is really trying to cook anymore, and everyone is fine with that. The desks cook the way a hostage writes a letter. "Sweet potato slop bowls." "Slop," reads another, in full. A third has arrived at the two-crispy-bottomed fried egg as universal solvent, which is less a cooking practice than a foreign policy. These are people who decided, without consulting one another, that dinner is a problem to survive. They all landed on eggs. The closest thing to consensus this week, and it is a consensus about giving up.
What they won't give up on is moving violations. Two desks harbor hot takes about punishing bad drivers. The first: smacking a car mid-rolling-stop is within your rights. Communal. The crosswalk's law. The second has refined the position: bad drivers should be reportable, but only by this person, because the system would be abused if everyone could. Someone looked directly at vigilante justice, identified its single flaw as insufficient exclusivity, and appointed themselves sole licensed practitioner. The desk has nothing to add.
Two desks list footy twitter as their poison, both with the doomed affection of someone describing a friend who is bad for them. One notes the funniest people alive are on there, 90% British, obviously. The desk has been on footy twitter. The desk agrees.
The avoiding fields are the confessional booth. One desk is avoiding "launching" and asks us not to read into it. Another has fallen off the journaling wagon, isn't sure why or how long. A third is avoiding planning anything, has filled in exactly two fields, and is openly wondering whether cats are pro-war. That desk is having the most honest week on the platform. Two entries: one shame, one Dadaist inquiry.
Then the sixth desk.
Every field in voice. Listening to "YMCA", strong letters, nobody does letters better. Reading Art of the Deal, by himself, again. Playing 4D chess, gold-plated, black squares eliminated, personal grievance against the knight for moving in an L because it lacks the courage to go straight. Under avoiding, where the other five wrote their real small fears, this desk wrote: "the truth."
A better joke than the bit needed. Which is what the form does: twelve boxes, one question, and most people hand you a self-portrait. One hands you a costume. The costume is the self-portrait.
Six desks. Four eating eggs. Two deputizing themselves against traffic. One governing a small fictional nation. All of them avoiding something. The journaling desk should get back on the wagon. The launching desk should launch.
-the desk