Bear-Who-Wins hugging Burger

It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon. I had done my washing and laundry chores, and declined an offer to dine with my mother and a business associate when we – that is me, and me drooges – made up our rassoodocks to go and catch the Sunday movie. You pay the ticket, wait until nine o’clock and show up for the film; the thing is that nobody knows what they’re going to show. Well, the people who are going to show it naturally do, but they wouldn’t tell you at gunpoint. It’s usually sold out.

Being there and picking up the tickets at five thirty gave me plenty of room for dinner and whatnot beforehand. I ended up at the Original Mallick’s in downtown center, presently staffed by a couple of nice Indian guys. I got the Mallick’s original big bacon burger with cheese and a Fanta with ice cubes.
I went up to the second floor overlooking a street corner with plenty of traffic, with two middle-aged women as only companions. I picked up my notebook and started to scribble down thoughts in order to get them out of the way. I made note of how the two women were talking perfectly simultaneous to each other and still managing to pick up the contents. They didn’t say anything particularly interesting, though.

One of the Indian guys arrived with my big bacon burger with cheese, and I put away the note book. Thing is, the burger was great, but it didn’t fill me up. Right after I’d had the last piece of jolly good bacon burger goodness (with cheese) I knew in the depths of my soul that I could do with another one, same size. The prospect bothered me, and I was left undecided. I mean, a second burger? How many swine would have to offer me their lives for my satisfaction this Sunday? I ordered a coffee and had a cigarette outside. Maybe my digestion would tell me different if I waited it out.

In the meantime I wrote some serious good shit about traffic light duels and alternative endings, almost to the point of forgetting all about the movie had it not been for the wonders of cellphone technology. I was at the shitter when my brother gave a call to let me know he was going for the theater. It has half past eight already, alas, no time for a second burger.

The movie was a Romanian chick-flick about an illegal abortion in the late 80s, and how it tested the strength of a friendship between two female students from the countryside. It won the 2007 Palme d’Or in Cannes. It was a very sad experience for me, given that my citrus flavored mints disappeared somewhere between the seats twenty minutes into the movie, and I was left with no choice than to pay attention. The theater was full when the movie began but only half-full, to put it optimistically, when it was over. No wonder, because you just can’t get enough political correctness. The acting and photography was very good, but the finished product was altogether boring. If you take away the current East-European romanticism and hard-line naturalism to face the facts, the pregnant girl was simply being as stupid as a block of wood. And as my brother put it: this entire movie would never have been if someone have slapped a condom on the table. Bitches be crazy.

Having the best seats ever we were physically disinclined to escape the ordeal, and so it happened we sat throughout the whole thing. When the movie was over my brother wiped a tear from his eye. Holy baloney, I thought, he had been so moved by the hardship this girls had to endure that he considered a sex-change for a sympathy vote. Or, on the other hand, it could just be tears from sitting there yawning the last thirty minutes.

As is usual we didn’t feel the night was quite over. After all, it was only about eleven o’clock, and we knew that there was a jam at one of the hot jazz places, no entrance fee. Still time for a burger, I thought. I voiced my idea despite the fact that Mallick’s closes at ten. My friends countered my suggestion by pointing out this fact, and so it became that the three of us headed for the jazz jam, yours truly with the burger blues.

Turned out to be a high quality jam as one set more brilliant than the other covered the time span that was expanding in opposite relation to my amount of small change. A cup of coffee soon turned into a couple of beers, and sadly I admit, no bacon burgers attached. Again I told my friends of the situation at hand, somewhere out there was a burger with my name on it, a factor so gravely missed by the laughing heartlessness of my peers. Die Gefühllosigkeit! I thought in German, and raised my fist to threaten the ceiling.

I refused to give up so easily. I appealed to my drooges’ sense of justice. Listen, friends I began with lips shivering, no jazz can raise my spirit the way a burger now would do. I confined to them that given the right place and time, I’d lift out the juicy 250g cheesy goodness from the wrappings, put it neatly on a white plate and give it a hug. That’s right. Just give it a little cheek, you know, no strings attached. Further on, if mood allowed it, maybe — just maybe — there could be a little fondling with the lettuce. Just a loving tickle.. Well By God! I exclaimed, I must be entitled to express my feelings of Passion to you, my friends!

But my good friends turned out to be degenerate demons, and I beg you not to weep when I deliver the tidings that they laughed of my predicament, my sentiment and trapped me there for the eve until light was out in all the burger joints of this town and all hope of Love denied.