Woe is Brad

Decorum, often, is a two-way street; or, better yet, it’s an entire city blueprint and is contingent on all of us. But there’s a world in which things are upside down, where cars fly and tenants, clinging to their curtains, are tugged from their windows by gravity (fine, that might be an exaggeration – but only in the literal sense). And in that world, decorum is a vacuous thing in its unrequitedness. It is demanded by some and performed by many – sometimes, even, when one spits in your face (quite literally this time).

“Had you not looked at me thus,” said Brad, “why, a gentleman such as myself—handsome and intelligent and funny as I am—would not have spat at you.”

And in this topsy-turvy world of nonreciprocal decorum, only others in their innocence feel the vertigo—not our Brad, no, neglecting to clean up after his rottweiler (Tony as in Montana), tut-tut-tutting at receptionists, and frolicking to the front of queues, oblivious to the gaping jaws on the floor. I mean, Brad, wait in line? As though he were like everybody else?

Brad was distinguished, didn’t you know? But why? Let’s have a look, shall we, and imagine me, your narrator (beautiful and intelligent and funny – just kidding), unrolling a large scroll.

Brad was distinguished. But why?

Imagine me (wonderful, etc., etc.) adjusting my ghastly little spectacles on my nose and clearing my throat…

Blank.

Blank as a bank with an ‘l.’ Brad was distinguished just because, despite its absurdity and nonsensicalness. Good word, that one, as good as a hood with a ‘g.’ Entitlement, sometimes it’s rooted in nothing; it’s all castles in the sky, floating apple trees and rosebushes.

“Sir,” began the gentleman, wiping Brad’s spit from his face with a handkerchief, “it is only right that you, too, queue to be served.”

“Do you know who I am?” asked Brad, his chest swelling like a songbird’s. And there was a slightly birdlike, hippity-hoppity jitteriness to him, as though his bladder were full (with caffeine, perhaps).

“No sir,” replied the gentleman. “Who are you?”

The queue rumbled with murmurs, the queuers leaning this way and that for a peek like a line of synchronised swimmers – faces poised, necks long, eyes large and gogglesque.

“Why, I’m Brad.”

“Brad who?” interjected an elderly woman.

The interaction alone was a concession, thought Brad, why humour these commoners? But they didn’t understand, no, why would they? How very frustrating, it was, having to justify himself to this vulgar lot. I mean, they couldn’t even keep their mouths closed (and some of them clearly needed a dentist). How would they begin to understand the demands placed on a gentleman with errands to run and people to meet and business to be done and responsibilities to be responsibilitied? Had they not seen his briefcase and tie (silk, if it must be known)? Had they not seen his imposing height of six whole feet (or 6”2 if you count the lifts in his shoes – loafers, had they not seen his loafers!?).

“You see,” began Brad—his mother had always told him to be polite, and he prided himself on his politeness— “I have an enormously important meeting at two o’clock.”

“I also have a meeting,” chimed a woman, her head peering out from behind five rows of shoulders. Like a little domino, she was, in her black pencil skirt and polka-dots.

“As do I,” said another.

“And I.”

“And I.”

“And I,” they chimed.

Brad growled under his breath, gritting his pearly whites in frustration.

“Why sir,” began the spit-clad gentleman, “Are you perhaps snarling at me?”

“No, not I, sir,” said Brad, wiping the drool from his own chin. “A gentleman does not snarl but speaks – he uses his words, diplomacy.”

And yet his words, observed the gentleman, seemed charged with something like the quiet buzz of an electric fence.

“And sir,” continued Brad. “If we must be honest, I did not spit at you. It was more a light shower, or rather a sprinkling of summer rain – the kind that accompanies passioned conversation.”

“You did spit at me, sir. Just now, you did.”

“Is that so? Do you suggest I’m anything less than a gentleman, that I am, perhaps, amongst the rags of society?”

“He didn’t say that,” a domino protested.

“Do you suggest that my mother failed to raise a gentleman?”

“It’s just that you cut the q—”

“Me, spit?” Brad muttered under his breath, turning his back to the gentleman. “I’m offended by the very thought.”

And in this backwards world, Brad (or Darb, rather) began to believe that he had not, in fact, spat, and was now incredulous that he’d been accused of something so base (again, had they not seen his tie?). So convincing were his cognitive distortions, that he now began to pout and cross his oh-so-muscular and sun-kissed arms (he spent the summer in Spain, not that you could tell with his shirt on – maybe he should take it off?). But it wasn’t fair, the way he was being treated. And I mean, he might even cry at the injustice if he weren’t a man (a big, strong one at that).

The gentleman tapped him on the shoulder and Brad rolled his eyes as he swung around, petulant.

“You pushed in front of me.”

“In front of all of us,” echoed the queuers.

“If you must know,” said Brad, jutting out his Hapsburg chin, “my dear aunt, she—” He paused and squeezed his eyes shut, sighing a grand sigh (the grandest of sighs if ever there was one!).

“She what?” the queuers dominoed.

“She’s dying of… cancer,” he wheezed, studying their faces to gauge their reactions. It didn’t matter that his aunt was perfectly well, or that she’d just returned from Italy where she’d adopted a Burmese, because Brad felt entitled to his incredulity, justified in his victimhood, irrespective of the pretext.

“Mine too,” called polka-dots.

“Oh, but mine, she’s dying of a very rare kind—the rarest—the incurable kind.”

The queuers blinked as Brad cleared his throat and furrowed his brow.

“And my dear aunt,” he continued with woe-is-me inflections, “she’s all alone. Her husband, he died just—”

“Your uncle?” clarified the gentleman.

“My uncle, yes, my uncle, he died just—”

“Mine too,” called a domino.

Brad growled before readopting his grimace. “And the poor thing, all her goldfish died—all her little, sparkling companions—of an enormously awful, terrible, just terrible infection, virus, of some sort – the worst, the very worst of sorts. All the water, it turned green like you’ve never seen before, a cloudy mucous—”

“That sounds bearable,” interrupted the gentleman.

“Did I mention she was an orphan?”

“Have you no dignity?”

“Too much of it, I’d wager,” mumbled an elderly woman.

“Madame, might I suggest you shut your mouth,” barked Brad.

Had she minded her own business, he thought on the drive home (two-storey, good neighbourhood), a gentleman such as himself wouldn’t have snapped. She’d clearly provoked it – all of them had, ganging up on him like that. Jealous, they must have been. He revved his engine (because apparently that helped), convinced that the world was unforgiving and oh, woe is Brad, what had he done to deserve this cruel fate? It wasn’t his fault he was so noticeable, he thought, his moisturised hands gripping the wheel of his sparkly BMW. He couldn’t help that his very presence aroused insecurity in others. If he could be just as ordinary and dull and unremarkable and invisible (did I mention dull?) as everybody else, he would be.

And never mind the queue (forget the queue! What queue? Brad hadn’t cut a queue). What about the way they’d looked at him? As though he were a rat or a cockroach, as though there’d been a saffron cream sauce stain on his silk tie. Had there been? He even glanced down to make sure. God forbid he was the problem.