5. social liability, chapter one continued from midge ure

The next morning, Saturday, I’d resolved to work early on odd repair and restoration though Stereofish didn’t open until 7:00 P.M. More notably, I wanted to apologize to Kara, determined to expose my distress at her set up scheme, and articulate my affection for her.

I’d taken the chance that she was working that afternoon. I picked up the phone at Stereofish and dialed.

“The Liquor Store, Kara speaking”

“Hi Kara, it’s Greg, uh, I have to apologize about last night and...”

“It’s o.k. I know it’s about Brenda….”

“It’s something else, I don’t want to talk about it over the phone, are you free for lunch, or on second thought do you get a supper break?”

“How about I come by after work, what’s this about?’

“That’s great...um, I’ll explain when you get here tonight alright?’

A part of me knew that Kara hadn’t come by last night to set me up with Poo.

That evening Max was choleric, his petulance, an effectuation (he explained) of a day spent listening to his lawyer crack wise about queers, chinks and fat sluts. It’s a thing we’ve always held in common, our contempt for insipience manifest in racism, sexism or discrimination. He then launched into a gloriously sarcastic and sardonic impression of Richard Nixon.

“The point I make is that goddammit, I do not think that you glorify on public TV homosexuality. You know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that. So was Socrates. The last six emperors were fags.”

It should be accepted that possessing a position of jurisdiction, dominion or privilege would carry certain social ethical liability or convention however ignorance persists, irrelative to caste or education. Max was gifted with deftness at impersonation. It was his favourite resource for ridicule or persiflage when baiting staff, or strangers for that matter. I was told he performed a dead on parody of myself, I never want to see it.