We Must Be The Eggs

Wednesday is Books. And Writing. Today it's a Short Story. With - for the first time - me reading the story to a musical track I made. I'm nervous to share this with you...

He can still recall the moment – the moment he knew when he’d fallen as far as he was supposed to fall. You never know – until you do. He remembers that too. Remembers thinking that he never expected to know that it was his time to stop falling, to get up, to pick himself up – but it presented itself. Very clearly. Very quickly.

He was in jail. Well, not quite. That’s how the story goes now, when he tells it – he was “in jail” (fingers flicking up and down as air-quotes) – he was in fact in a holding cell. They were still to be decided whether he would go to jail (spoiler alert: he never went to actual jail). Anyway, he was there to enter a plea, and he had a lawyer who said “enter no plea” – the lawyer got paid loads of money to tell him that. He stood up and waited for his cue – he said “no plea”. And that was that. He was supposed to be out the door and off and away. But instead he joined another queue – not one he thought he was going to be joining.

So he’s in this queue, and as they’re filing into a cell – a ‘jail’ cell – but not in (actual) jail just “backstage” at the court-room – he’s wondering when he’s supposed to say “Ah, excuse me – no, not me? Not me?”  But there’s no clue that he’s ever supposed to say that/or not say that. So instead he just files in with all the other idiots…

So he’s in the cell now and he takes a seat; spends as much time as he can staring at his shoes…really getting to know them…really not getting to know anyone else…

Then the prison-guard, the Meat Loaf of a man, runs his club along the bars and yells; tells everyone to “shut the fuck up”. And everyone – pretty much – does.

Then some kid, younger than anyone else in there, starts rolling a cigarette. A couple of the older guys – and there’s like 20 dudes in this cell, or so – start in on rolling their smokes too. One dude, the oldest, pulls out a smoke from a pack, no rolling required. He lights it and smokes it hard – pulling down on each drag.

And Meat Loaf returns, yells at the cell, “hey, stop smoking. You’re in jail now! We can leave you here all weekend – how would you like that? – we can come back and do this next week…

You wouldn’t like that. But you don’t say a thing. You don’t light a smoke, you barely even fidget.

The prison guard-guy walks away and this dude, this old guy, this Maori Elder-type calls out from the cell, in defiance, “Egg!”

It falls away without much notice. One or two sniggers, if that.

Then he clears his throat, lifts his head, is all but awaiting his spotlight. It’s like – you think, briefly – something from the musical CATS – he is Grisabella! (Or some shit like that).

He says, as a carry-on, a continuance, from his “Egg”-shout, just earlier…he says, “…mind you…for us to find ourselves…in the position we now find ourselves in the position of being in…we must be the eggs?!”

The rest of the cell look at him like he is Socrates (or some shit like that). And you are still looking at your feet. The whole way through his mini-monologue you’ve been wondering where it was going and what he was saying and how it could mean anything…you were baffled by that that weird – rude? – clause: that line that isn’t at all subordinate, nor insubordinate, that goddamn fucking tautological shit about “we now find ourselves in the position of being in…” What. The. Fuck. Is. That?! – you were laughing, in a way, and not laughing in a far more prominent way. But you were baffled, that much is true. In fact, hearing the spokesman for the group offer up his philosophy…that’s what sorted you out. That’s what made you realise you were at rock-bottom, hadn’t hit it as much as you’d arrived at it by fluke/nonchalance…

You waited. And you got out – with everyone else. The Meat Loaf Guy rattled the cage once more, told you all that you were shit. And you walked out to start the day, a bit later than normal, a bit straighter than the last few days in your life. And onward and – ever since – okay…