Perspectives

Let’s talk trash?

“There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them.” — closing line from the 1950s ABC TV series “The Naked City”

I am an unrepentant eavesdropper. I make no bones about it, offer no apologies; I have no shame in this regard. I find our stories immensely interesting, but some days, I am discouraged by the lack of originality in the everyday lives of my fellow man. My sister describes us — humanity — as “nasty little monkeys.” But even our nastiness, pettiness, myopia and selfishness can seem rather ordinary. Some daze.

I have spent the better part of three weeks in New York City. Perhaps I am experiencing sensory overload, which is easy to do, but I so enjoy the cultural amenities of the world’s capital (which New York is). For an Iowa boy, NYC still leaves me in “aw-shucks” awe of what we are capable. From art to architecture, New York is Nebuchadnezzar’s Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Pericles’ Athens or Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris. So much culture, so little time.

Yet. You walk out of a Whitney retrospective and some gorgeous tanned young thing saunters ahead, goddess-like, in an incredibly oh-sooo-provocative flouncy-bouncy summer dress all the while loudly chastising whomever on her cell phone for not texting about tonight’s parteee. And, my gawd, what should she wear? And was Bradley bringing you-know-who? Fortunately, I didn’t know and crossed Madison Avenue.

Or, I walk out of Brooklyn’s Green Point subway station and two Polish chaps are having a heated exchange over, from what I decipher, garbage pick-up. Garbage.

And then you die. I understand why those with a religious need crave a life hereafter. I do. Hanging around as an eternal holy bootlicker, singing hosannas, has to be preferable to a lifetime of arguing over garbage collection schedules or whether Bradley is shtupping, you know, her!

I distinctly recall once sitting in an Orlando Denny’s Restaurant and in floats a woman so beautiful that time stops. So exquisitely striking that you’d be left (as a man) a mumbling jumble of a fool. So stunning that you actually could not look at her. As did I, and my eyes quickly returned to the book I was reading. She joined a nearby table, and I observed her from afar.

And then? And then? She opened her mouth. And she may as well have fallen off a rural Arkansas turnip truck, so shrill, so coarsely ignorant her voice and language. And her all-consuming beauty evaporated as quickly as the Orlando Magic in the NBA playoffs. I laughed out loud. At myself. Christopher, you superficial fool.

We all want our story to be different. It is said of humanity that we have but one theme — that all of our stories revolve around one over-arching theme, that of conflict. Depending on which literary “school” you subscribe that “conflict” is told (revealed) in either three or seven or 20 or 36 different plots. Pick any plot device. There may be eight million stories, yet they are all but variations on a theme.

Actually, we are nasty little monkeys. But we are so much more (see our art). We’re born. We die. And all life in-between — a struggle.

Any of our stories on any given day may be tedious, trite and boring. Pick the day and believe you me, I’ll talk trash. Literally or figuratively.

What’s your story? I’ll listen. I do.