Out on the street, out on the mall, out in the park, we crane our necks and raise our beaks and pass our judgment. Too bad that beautiful woman over there has those saddlebags or that waffle-butt (Look! you can see it right through her shorts) or dju you see that one's zits and that chin! And Oh my Gawd!! my Gawd!! my . . . 'dju see that? Lookit them hooters! Lookit them badooties! Lookit at them . . . bahzoooms! And oh lookit that . . . that fellow with the . . . with the . . . Jesus What's he got up his ass? Skin wings, slack jaws, bug eyes . . . Did you see the little black hair he had growing out of a mole on his left cheek? or lookit the one near the fountain with (ah glory be Agnes!) HAIR in her armpits. Hair! Black crinkly stuff that looks like old dead moss or Brillo right up under her pits, the poor woman! A haven for lice, by God! And what about did she do to her face?
Crater face . . . old schnozzola. . . lips . . . lips . . . some people don't even have any lips!
We turn away from some old geezer's loose gut . . . his beer belly squeezing through between his buttons. His spare tire. His oleo roll. His parking garage. And lo! we can put Winston Churchill in his place below us with all those other red necked creeps with their red cheeks and broken blood vessels (just like a road map, Harry!) and slack jaws, exhaling imagined clouds of fetid green breath--Red Necked Alcoholic Creeps who light their farts with Zippos. Imagine that Agnes! In our own community without a leash!
And as we crow and as we pick, and as we try to lift our
scrawny necks above the crowd, we peck at each other's skin tags and string
warts until . . . until . . . well until someone falls down and can't get up, and
we come back later with knives and spoons right there in the yard.