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You Can’t Eat the Orange and Throw Away the Peel A Man is Not a Piece of Fruit
Goddamn, I feel lucky to be alive right now, at a time when a mere
twelve Nobel Prizes have been awarded to researchers who engaged
in rogue self-experimentation. Once that list gets even a little bit
longer, I’m gonna feel like not irradiating myself is simply
leaving money on the table. I hate the future. Twenty years ago,
an average house took a full eighteen minutes to burn to the ground;
with today’s petrochemicals and particle board, it’s more like
four or five. At this rate, homes in the year 2050 will be toast
before they’re constructed; we’re gonna lose stuff we never even had.
Already I notice big things slipping away. OF ALL THE GIN JOINTS,
I robotically commented to my former boss, when I randomly ran
into him at Dinosaur Coffee. I discovered from his blank look back
that he didn’t know the reference. He hadn’t seen most movies. He
hadn’t even seen PAPER MOON and so failed to clock the resemblance
when he and I began posing as father and daughter, embarking
on a protracted and lucrative Bible-swindling scheme. He wanted to split
the cash 50/50, but I said 80/20. Or 85/15. Would also do 90/10—
Natalie Shapero's most recent book is Stay Dead, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine.
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