- Are you ready?
Yeah, I am.
- Have you prepared a few words for us?
Nope, but I’m ready.
- Well, the stage is yours.
Thank you.
I am here, but not for long. I have much to say, but will tell you nothing at all. I will tell you what you want to hear, feed your illusions, and affirm your preconceptions. I will stroke your egos and add to their massive largesse. But I will tell you nothing at all – nothing that you don’t already know. When life becomes futile and passionless, nothing is all that I can tell you. A loveless existence is interminable. Honestly, I have nothing to tell you really.
But this is my time. This is my stage. This is my opportunity to peddle trite facility as truth - to a group that sees through my duplicity. Here I stand here today not a good man or a bad man, whatever good and bad means. So what do you want to know?
- What’s your favorite food?
Why?
- Because that question that tells a lot about a person.
Oh really? Well all right.
I really liked hot dogs.
- That’s not food.
What do you mean?
- It’s not a type of food.
Well what the bloody hell have I been shoving down my gullet all those years?
- We cannot disclose that, but we can safely assure you that hot dogs are not food.
Okay, I don’t want to know.
- Was there any other food that you had a special affinity for?
Yeah, I enjoyed bananas.
- The demonic fruit?
The what what?
The demonic fruit!
I don’t understand how bananas are demonic. I mean they were tasty and a versatile fruit.
You can eat them, fry them, make banana splits and blend them into smoothies and shakes.
- Yes, all of that is true, but that does not make them any less demonic.
Okay, I love the demonic fruit then, next?
- Please don’t address us with that tone.
Hey, is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit?
- We are the ones posing the questions, not you.
I thought this could be a dialogue, an exchange of information and all that.
- We know all.
Good, so fruit or vegetable?
- A tomato is a tomato.
That’s some profound shit.
- Please refrain from using that language.
You know all, right?
- Yes.
So don’t prude up like you never knew about that little word.
- Please change your tone of voice.
All right, I suppose I’m disclosing too much, go on…what else do you want to know?
- What is love?
Okay, so we go from hot dogs to bananas to tomatoes to love? I have eaten the first three, but the last one ate me.