BUSINESS TIME
It is not the sky
we are reaching for
It is rather a sea
to be named after us
which grasps our minds
as the sun
melts our ambitions
and sends us falling
down into animosity
onto the hard concrete
of a parking lot floor
MISTER STEWED PEAR
I'm not Mister Stewed Pear anymore. Every Christmas my mother made stewed pears. She used to put the bowl down beside me and say: “I'm setting the bowl down next to you because you like stewed pears so much.” I ate more stewed pears than anybody in my entire family. Then I reluctantly passed on the bowl.
Now, years later, I am all grown up. At Christmas my mother has once again made stewed pears. I had completely forgotten about their existence. She puts the bowl next to my cousin, her eldest grandson, and says: “I'm setting the bowl down next to you because you like stewed pears so much.” My nephew immediately puts stewed pears on his plate. “Mister Stewed Pear, look at him go,” his father says. “Take as many as you want,” my mother says, “I don’t think the rest likes them.”
BONDING EXPERIENCE
Matthew has exactly one non-banker friend, and considers that friend one of his greatest accomplishments. Bankers are no fun. All they do is bitch about sales and cocaine. He’s the same when he’s with them. His non-banker friend is actually an arts student, which is definitely a top-tier friend for a banker to have. They are valued highly for their inside information with regards to parties, psychedelics and avant-garde art expos. Matthew’s arts friend’s birthday party last Friday consisted of six arts people, two non-bankers and one banker (Matthew) in a cigarette smoke-filled apartment at the metro’s last stop. One girl spent the night changing the music halfway through each song. Everybody else was drinking cheap tallboys.
Matthew has a hard time making non-banker friends because he has to spend all his time at the office making deals and stroking corporate, and then later he has to show up in ten-dollar-beer bars bragging about deals and girls and how he’s going to show corporate who their Daddy is. Maybe that’s why all his banker friends are so cool and cynical. Which arts people are too, by the way, but at least they don’t yell all the time.
His arts friend dug up a bag of MDMA and everybody had some. Matthew wasn’t sure whether he felt anything, because everybody was so cool and cynical that they didn’t really want to let anybody notice that they were feeling an intense and as far as they could tell completely authentic indescribable happiness in every crease of every fiber of their respective arts, non-banker and banker bodies.
A short, nose-ringed Norwegian girl turned to him and said: “So, who are you?”
Matthew looked at the compressed Scandinavian and answered: “I sold three Investment Growth Bonds today.”