I check the stupid text alert on my phone, open my front door to sign for the mail, thinking, email would have sufficed. Everything else is digital. Without making eye contact, the courier angel from Post Haste dashes off singing, “Molweni Mhle! Ulungile ngokwenene. And you have a Truly Scrumptious day too.”
WTF she’s talking about?
Walking through the apartment looking for something to do. Something close to nothing, but different than yesterday. ‘Cause I don’t want him looking all nonjudgmentally at me. I throw the envelope on the sofa and try to remember where I put my coffee.
Thinking, I’m ready for him to be gone. Coming in from the balcony, “Answer your phone.” He mumbles, scratching his belly, stretching and walking past me. “Good morning, Gorgeous.” It felt nice. The same way a straight woman would mean it. I embraced it. Before seeing my naked face and undone hair in the mirror. I’m ‘bout pissed. My phone vibrates, I answer it before it rings and his Selfietron mirror answers, “Yeah girl. What’s up?”
Palimpsest Anastasia is almost irate, crying, “Hey! You seen your husband? I think he’s cheating on us. Ain’t nobody talked to him in days. I’m pissed and I’m worried. Hold on there’s somebody at my door.”
He sees the yearbook sized package on the couch, hands me a cup of coffee and says, “Annual report. You should open that right away.”
Talking to his screen about some nonsense, “Don’t worry ‘bout that niggah! They won’t believe it until they’re on the way out the door and somebody says some variation of What Up Dough to the playbill kiosk. No, it doesn’t matter to the target audience. Anyway,” He drops his sarong, I’m thinking, Hmm. Not today, buddy. He says, “they won’t get it until they can steal video and game files from expensive ass paid services.” I think, like my girlfriends and cousins? That’s your target audience? Damn. Puts on trousers, lacing up his boots, he catches my attention saying, “Endorsements, baby! So, Yeah, So, I’m editing for them Black grammarian and spelling Nazis heifers. Spelling and punctuation is always the hard part of this shit. It’s not art, it’s engineering. This shit is an applied science. It’s Kung fu.
The magic is the faces of the people presenting all this gobbledygook.
…Yeah. Like your mom. After they stop being offended because of the genre, they’ll spend a couple semesters taking apart the context. They get paid ‘cause it’ll be required reading. But first, I gotta get past them sistahs that be all, ‘Yeah, well, I got like ten pages in and found all these typos…”, grabs his backpack and walks out the front door saying, “You can keep the shirt. I’ll see you after work. Love you.”
Ain’t got shit, but always workin’. That’s why I hate that niggah.
Palimpsest returns shouting, “I just got the Annual report. It’s been a whole year already. Nevermind, girl. I’ll talk to you after service. Sorry to bother you. Bye.”
I plop down and open the bubble wrap envelope, inside is a pretty coffee brown box with a cream colored velvet ribbon tied in a pretty bow. I
study the blank coffee brown key card tucked under the ribbon.
I sat it aside. I don’t want to be reminded of how rich I am, because I did what he’s been begging me to do my whole life. “You have to confide and confess. Only then will you know your price. Unless your goal is to always find out after. You know, like I painted all these pictures, let me have a yard sale to see what I can get, but only with your life. You ain’t gotta tell me nuthin’! Your dreams and goals are between you and your gods. I live here. Money moves around us and accumulates like snow on a glacier. It doesn’t move through us like beer.”
So, his story is about the off-work dramas of a group of make-believe characters that do together, what we do individually in real life.
They’re called The Propmasters. Film Industry term for Studio Property Managers: The guys that build and handle all the Props, sound stages, back lots and facilities.
In the imagINed nation we call it the Art Department. The Propmasters build and operate Enhanced IRL Game Environments.
They are one hundred and fifty eight complete and utter jackasses and assholes who shouldn’t be left in polite company, but they know they should have an educational TV program about what and how and why they do the things they do. Because they love it. And kids love them too.
And Pookie and Ray Ray. When you can find them, they’re the sweetest couple.
See what had happened was.
You got time? Koolaide? One? Two? Three? Three!
Each story goes from See What Had Happened Was, then goes the way things in life go.
Until you get where you are.
This Sunday, after Afternoon Services, during Milk and Cookies, the taunting and the *GOFPAW and dinner the Propmasters are required to give their individual department reports. With the exception of the one hundred sixty one departments inside of the Art Department. They have one Representative.
The Creative Director.
Yeah, well that asshole just walked out the door.
Last month or so, he comes in, shits, showers, puts on sweatpants or sarong and sits there, writing. He’s been laying there on a yoga mat only a couple hours a day. Gets up and goes to work on whatever the fuck he’s doing.
I don’t feel like reading and he don’t feel like you know. That thang.
from : Group Stolen Tshirtzenlostdrawz: Palimpsest Anastasia, Kajira Natt Hvitsilke, Palimpsest Vellocet.
You read this? Niggah’s retiring this season. Says he can’t find the muse.
UltraHuzzee INQueen of the Furniture Gurls
Oh! That shit again. We need to find him a nice Umma Heyboo, with a nice three day getaway for us!
He’ll scribble a few words, sketch a few cute things, eat, sleep and paint a picture or two.
from : Group Stolen Tshirtzenlostdrawz: Kajira Natt Hvitsilke
The Last Dishwashers Special and it’s going to be spectacular.
UltraHuzzee INQueen of the Furniture Gurls
Wait! After the Propmaster’s Roast. He’s serious,
We can’t let him skip next season.
I look at my g-name, Ms Kaniya Walker, on the envelope and feel some kind of way. Sip my coffee and instantly forget why I’m mad.
When he walks in he’s fussing, “What’s bothering me. So, yeah. Had it been any other woman in our camp…”
He waves, “Hey! What up doe, y’all. “
“…She’s here. I can’t talk about it? See you Sunday.” He hangs up and starts looking for a station to work at.
I box him in a hallway corner Yeah. I’m here. What can’t you talk about?
He starts fidgeting around, hands flapping, looking for an exit, “Man period stuff. I-I- You heard me, I can’t talk about it. Okay, please?”
I say, Look, we have customers coming in here in a few minutes. You can speak and get it out of your system or you can go home for the day. I can’t have you expressing all your autistic symptoms to a bunch of strangers. Got it! So, if it had been another woman. You were saying!
All the women in the studio gather around me, arms folded, standing akimbo, ready to kick his butt.
Now that I’m paying attention to his body language, I’m realizing he’s been in a ready posture since.
He wrings his hands, shakes off the expression and mumbles, “I’d have dived face first and tried to make my home between her big pretty brown thighs. Okay! I’m having a tough time understanding not her. What makes her the exception? Okay. I’m leaving. Bye.”
He’s broadcasting, emitting all this feminine energy and it’s affecting us all. Gwen, the most openly misandrist of us, reaches out to show compassion, he backs away, growling, “Step off! I don’t want to…
…Bye.” Grabs his backpack and makes for the door.
We’re all following him to the door, demanding to know who ‘she’ is. I’m wishing it were me, so I could reject him. I don’t know why I like seeing him on the edge of stupid. Maybe it reminds me that he is male.
