Somebody had a case of the Mondays.
"Am I the only one who cares about the planet?" Todd said.
Outside the back door of the library were about five bags of trash. Stinky, putrefacient, garbagmonious, shit trash.
Two days before we'd had our holiday open house party. We had a live band and free gift wrapping and oceans of free coffee. And trash. Lots and lots of trash.
"Trash makes baby Jesus cry," I said, to ease the tension.
But Todd was having none of it. He was angry. Dark and savage in his beard, he wore black cotton gloves to objectively correlate his psyche.
"It's fucked up. We have parties just so we can put more plastic and junk in the landfills and destroy the planet."
"Yes, but there were cookies. People like cookies."
Todd had asked one of the librarians, as they cleaned up after, to take all the uneaten food and compost it. But Genevieve didn't have a compost bag. Todd told her to put all the olives and crackers and cheese and half-eaten cookies in her backpack so she could take it home to compost. Genevieve did not. She scraped everything into the trash. Todd was just not winning against Trashbor, a monster made of trash and made up.
That morning we had a harpist. She was set up in the community room and plucked ethereal Xmas tunes for our customers (one of them being Muu-muu Mama!). Todd scowled beardedly.
"Fuck that shit," he opined.
"What's the matter? It's dulcet and melodious."
"I fucking hate fucking Christmas."
To cast a light on Todd's eco-Christ-hatin'-darkness, I told him about the date I had on Sunday. And this is a delightful bonus for all of you who have read this far. After the usual round of messaging on the interwebs, Kate (if that is her real name) and I decided the only time we could get together was at ten in the morning. She had a busy schedule, and nothing had canceled for me. We met at Le Peep. She wore a floppy hat and kept it on throughout our interview. As I got the oatmeal, Kate asked if I was a vegetarian. No, a VAGetarian, I said in my mind most cleverly. She explained that she had been a raw vegan for two years and hated it. That made me bring up Todd, and she agreed that plastic was, like, evil. Maybe she should date him instead? Speaking of dating the wrong men, Kate told me she was writing a dating book with advice for young women. She'd had her share of terrible boyfriends. The latest was some guy who had been stalking her for four years on Facebook. He convinced her to move out from Vermont six months ago. It turned out he was a psycho, a sociopath, and a narcissist--but not only that, he'd fallen out of a roller coaster and gotten a brain injury. In other words, a catch, ladies. So Kate moved out from his house, but as she was literally walking out the door he tried to give her an engagement ring. That did not change her mind. She'd had another marriage proposal with another psychopath. Now she looked at me. Would I be her latest psycho? I tucked the ring back in my pocket.
"Sounds terrible," Todd said. "But did you get some action?"
"Yes, after the omelette we scrogged."
"Okay."
"Are you at least in a better mood now?"
Little Drummer Boy wafted into the back room. A rumpa pum pum...
"Now I'm just suicidal."
"A Christmas miracle!"
NEXT WEEK: The new Star Wars movie reviews me, finds me hackneyed and turdy.
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