The Agnostic

I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that.

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I didn’t vote for Obama. Blasphemy, I know. It’s not that I’m not into change; believe me, I am. Obama’s “Vote For Change” campaign was kind of convincing, I must admit. It did get him elected, after all. And it’s not that I have anything against black people; I’m not so cynical that it makes me racist. I didn’t vote for Obama because I didn’t vote for anyone. Not McCain, and once again, not Ralph Nader—though, if I had voted for anyone it would have been him. I once sat in on a lecture he gave at a university in Massachusetts—I won’t tell you which one, it’s not important. In it he pushed his audience to avoid identifying with one political party so strictly. An open mind is the best mind, he said. When it comes down to it, the foundation of each party’s philosophy lies on something contingent—something which you can only hope is true. So, in a way, to declare yourself a tight-ass Republican, or to be one of those tattoo-wearing, radical-thinking liberals they call Democrats is to commit one of the easiest and worst mistakes any rational human being can ever commit: to believe something as true when you know that it might not be. Socrates noticed this. He let himself be put to death because he believed he was a smarter man if he admitted his ignorance than if he claimed to know something he really didn’t. Now, that’s a real hero.
Picking a president is about as simple as figuring out how to decorate your apartment. I live in a simple basement apartment in a town in Massachusetts—I won’t tell you which one, it’s not important. And when I say simple, I’m not trying to be modest or come up with a clever way of telling you that I’m poor. “Simple” means that my apartment now—as I’ve lived in it for the past 13 years—is just about the same as it was when I moved into it after I graduated from college. Sure, I’ve got a couple pieces of furniture, but the walls are just as white as the day they were painted. I’m not gonna put up any pictures of Elliott Smith or Jack Johnson or Jimmy Page or some other musician who has wasted their life away on drugs. And I’m not gonna set up everything around an entertainment system, I don’t have a favorite television show. I don’t know interior decorating, so I’m not going to pretend to set up my apartment according to a certain style ‘cause that would be the same as making a statement about its value and to neglect the others. It would be ridiculous to pick one because I’d have to try every possible style of interior decoration. I’d have to hire every decorator in the city. Or maybe the country. And then when that’s done I’d have to let someone decorate who isn’t an interior decorator—‘cause that’s a style of its own. Figuring out the truth would just require this infinitely exhausting set of trial and error. And there are way better ways to spend my time. I have food in the fridge. I’ve got my head on my shoulders. I’ve got the essentials; the rest is just fluff.
That’s probably all you need to know about me to understand what I’m about to tell you. This guy stopped me on the street today while I was walking. I apparently didn’t look busy enough for him to realize what an incredible nuisance he was going to be if he interrupted me.
“Excuse me,” he said—like saying it politely makes it any better. I didn’t even say anything back, I just stopped and looked at him.
“Can you help us with something?” he asked. He was standing on the sidewalk next to a white town car that was clearly a rental parked next to the side of the road. His wife was sitting in the passenger seat with the window down holding a travel guide and thumbing through it like it didn’t make any sense at all. She looked like a seven year old trying to understand organic chemistry.
“We are trying to find these two restaurants,” he continued. The guy didn’t even let me say yes or no. No, man. I don’t want to help you and your pre-pubescent, but thanks for the opportunity. “Do you know where Pierre’s Café is?” he asked me.
“I thought you were looking for two restaurants,” I said to the middle-aged ignoramus with a major receding hair line. He probably just shipped his kid off to college and now has all this free time that he doesn’t know what to do with so he hit the road with his wife—who intellectually hasn’t passed the single digits—and now they’re bugging me for somewhere to eat as if they can’t feed themselves without someone holding their hand and walking them through it.
“Pierre’s is only one place,” I said. “And it’s not a restaurant, it’s a café.”
“Right, sorry,” he said, rubbing his hand over his baldness and turning around to his wife. “Honey, what’s the name of the other one?”
“The Pour House,” she said, finally looking up from the chemical formulas disguised as maps and simple directions. She handed Mr. Bald Beer Belly the travel guide and he brought it back over to me, almost slipping on a small patch of ice on the sidewalk. It was the middle of February and it is way too cold in Massachusetts this time of year to be having this kind of conversation outside.
“I don’t need the map,” I told him. “We’re right in between both of them. If you keep going straight on this street you’ll run into Pierre’s. But if you turn right on Chester then the Pour House is on your right just past the elementary school. Maybe you can drop off your wife there.” Except I didn’t say the last sentence, I only thought it in my head.
“Oh, great!” he said. “Did you hear that hun?”
“So which one should we go to then?” she asked. I thought she asked that thing she was married to, but apparently she was asking me. He turned back and they both looked at me and raised an eyebrow perfectly and creepily in sync. Apparently the “fuck off” message that I tried to shoot back with my eyebrows was not clear enough. I sighed, unlocking my shoulders.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Which one is better?” he clarified.
“Well, that just depends, now doesn’t it?” I love answering questions with questions. And just like this guy did to me, I didn’t wait for him to answer before I continued.
“Do you like burgers? Cause that’s what the Pour House is good for,” I said.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” he said.
“It can be pretty pricey there, though,” I added. “You know, table cloths and fancy waiters. If you are looking for a local favorite then you should go to Pierre’s.”
And then the wife piped in. “Let’s go there, honey. I want to go to where the people around here go.” The husband seemed to agree, but he didn’t even know that he didn’t know!
“How do you feel about abortion?” I asked the wife.
“Excuse me?”
“The lady at the counter at Pierre’s has had two,” I said. “And are you ok with tattoos? Cause she’s got three of those and you should be ok with that before she hands over a sandwich to you.”
The couple just looked at each other, gauging one another’s reactions.
“And how do you feel about vegetarians?”
“Our daughter is a vegetarian.”
“Ok good. ‘Cause there will be a lot of them there. A lot of the menu is vegetarian.”
Now they seemed ready to leave me alone. But only now? They could have avoided this all at the beginning if they had just let me walk on by. I guess we’ll call it payback.
“I think we’ll just head on over there then,” the husband said. He started to get in the car.
“Wait!”
He stopped just before getting behind the wheel.
“Are you good tippers?”
“If the service warrants it,” he said.
“Oh. Well, then you should go to the Pour House. Their service is better. And they make plenty of money even without their tips, so they can afford to treat you like dirt.”
“And what about at Pierre’s?” he asked.
“The people that work there really need the money, you know? Even if the service is bad you gotta tip them cause they need it,” I said.
“I don’t want to go somewhere with bad service,” the wife said to her husband.
He nodded his head and said, “Ok, let’s go to the burger joint.”
“It’s not a burger joint,” I said. “It’s a nice restaurant, they are just known for their burgers.”
“Whatever,” he said and got in the car. I walked over to the wife’s open window.
“You have cash on you? ‘Cause the Pour House only has valet parking,” I said.
“Please take your hands off the car,” the husband said.
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t want you that close to my wife. Let us leave,” he was talking to me through the passenger window but seated at the driver’s seat. His wife just sat with her head against her seat watching the spit fly from our mouths like she was at a tennis match.
“I thought you wanted to go to a local joint,” I said.
“Yeah, honey, I do,” the wife said finally fixing her eyes on her husband.
“Ok we’ll go there.”
“But they don’t take credit cards, so you should have cash no matter where you go, I guess,” I said.
He flipped his hands off the steering wheel and into the air for a second. The look on his face screamed what the fuck do you want me to do! It was really hilarious.
“Just tell me,” he said. “Which one do you like?”
“I mean, they’re both great,” I said. “It just depends on what you want.”
“We told you what we want!” His voice was rising now and his wife seemed a little bit startled.
“Hey,” I said calmly and clearly. “I’m just trying to help you make the best choice.”
“You don’t even know what that is,” he said.
“Then why the hell did you ask me in the first place?”
“I didn’t think it’d be this difficult.”
And that’s the problem with these mother fuckers. They never do.