When you arrive at your door step and your home goes from calm to chaos, it would indicate that you, and not the ingredients already incased, are the reacting agent. But perhaps you are a creative, like Vladimir, who sends science off as a limited tool to describe the “human experience”.
Vlad did so when he arrived home. His apartment erupted as he stepped in. He zoned out and the storm turned to a dull roar. It remained so as he prepared dinner.
Beatrice sat in an old wooden chair whose paint was older than the chair. She gummed on a grape that she had taken from a grouping that sat in front of her on the dinner table in a secunda mensa manner. Beatrice was an orangutan and was dressed in expertly tailored garb from Club Monaco*. She scratched her head and picked up a large piece of cabbage as commotion arose from the neighboring room. The cacophony was created by Vlad trying to prepare Archibald -- who happens to be a chimpanzee and all the chimpanzees I know have an attitude, a rebellious sense of style, and an appreciation for grindcore and twizzlers, which can only mean that they’re bad news -- for dinner in Archibald’s bedroom. The walls were thin so the sound came through the plaster as well as the door. The walls held various pieces of Vlad’s graphic design projects, framed in black and matted in grey, that he hadn’t been able to pawn off to Oliver People-d art gallery curators. The picture frames shook with each forte of noise rising.
Archibald held the upper hand and he knew it. A primitive Thrasymachus, Archie held the rules that Vlad attempted to enforce in contempt. It was not Vlad who controlled the power, it was he. Archie wrapped himself in a cardigan without a shirt and, as Vlad pursued, fled from the room.
Vlad chased Archie into the hall. Not only was Archie refusing to wear his dinner-wear, but he was wearing a cardigan without a shirt - a crime a foolish post-modernist might commit.
Vlad shouted after Archie, “WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? DAN TREPANIER?!”
Vlad had grown up in Buffalo. His father had owned a number of chain restaurants and a Super 8 motel or maybe two. They summered on Lake Chautauqua. His two older brothers had followed their father into the franchise business as the oldest owned 3 Qudobas and the second oldest hung around his brother’s and father’s restaurants and smoked cigars, drank Iced Coffee from the 1.89L containers you can get at any mid to large sized grocery store, and would occasionally help with the dishes. There are some redeemable qualities about people who get drunk at Applebee’s and the 2nd son was lucky enough to have them.
Vlad had not been so inclined to go golfing with Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas and firing teenage boys who failed to show up to give you fries with that (or, like, clean bathrooms and whatnot). Vlad went to art school. He liked it well enough. When he graduated he began working on breaking the social norm. So he was a typical art school revolutionary as he attempting to unleash the positive and negative liberties innate in our natures and solve the contradiction between the two. Or maybe he believed that the contradiction never existed and was only created by a false social structure in place since that dude who ate the Hemlock.
At art school Vlad met Megan. Megan was a sweetie. Megan moved in. Megan wanted kids. Megan couldn’t have them. Enter the primates.
Anyway, Vlad created a new art form. Well, a new art form as defined by the art critics known as faux anti-adultism. True anti-adultism is impossible simply because you’d have to start with a sort of society that has no adult influence whatsoever (i.e. all kids, all the time). Would they produce art? Would they call it art? What would they do with the kids when they became “adults”? What would they define as “adult”? Would there be a differentiation between “adults” and “children”? Vlad attempt to solve this hypothetical question with his art (so Vlad’s answer to the second question is “yes”). He produced many scraps and bits that one could suppose were meant to look like a cow or maybe a car or maybe a cat. After showing a gallery shortly after art school, a number of the right people started buying his work. Magazines ate it up. Megan did not.
Megan left. Megan moved in with a cleaning supplies mogul. The primates happened to be the jetsam that stayed aboard. Megan took the 10ft x 8ft portrait of her that also happened to look like a four-wheeler. Megan took it because she thought it was supposed to be a four-wheeler. It depended on the angle you looked at it.
Archie threw a Belgian at Vlad’s head and screamed. Vlad glowered at Archie and, in his best attempted at a pillow-soft-rock-solid voice, said, “What....” -- he paused -- “what would Will Boehlke say?”
*Those crazy tailors, they’ll tailor anything. However, it should also be noted that Club Monaco fits female orangutans fairly well off the rack. Hats off to Mr. Aaron Levine.
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