Carbine: Stories

Culture

 Culture = One day everything in the world was based on a comic book. Clotilde wanted to see a movie, so he took her. A gangster movie. Even by gangster movie standards, the movie unreal. He remarked on it. It’s based on a graphic novel, Clotilde said. He was not surprised. Why not? He’d long ago surrendered his argument with the culture. Culture? Who believed that? The community college in his community was reading a common book. All the students and the teachers were supposed to read the same book and members of the community were encouraged to read it too, and when everyone had read it, the college was going to sponsor a gathering in celebration of the common book and the common reading of it. Clotilde told him about the book. He said he’d never heard of it. It was a famous graphic novel everyone had heard of. It dealt with important themes of history and culture and identity. Clotilde told him that. What was he supposed to do—apologize? He did not want anything. He tried not to want anything. He told himself to try not to want anything. Life was what, an expectancy for him of, seventy-eight years. He was forty-nine. Maybe take off ten, twelve years for all those cigarettes he used to smoke. No one needed to explain. Clotilde wanted to see the Egyptian show. At the museum. He’d lost interest in Egyptian things when he was a child. When he found out the Mummy was not anything like real mummies. Still she wanted to go. He would have liked to see Beckmann and Grosz if he looked at pictures but those kinds of things would not come to his community. He did not say anything. Who was he to talk? While she looked at the Egyptian show, he had a fancy coffee in the fancy coffee shop. It was good. He went to the museum book store. Not looking for anything but who knew. Many clever toys there and more books on more subjects than he would have predicted. Then. He picked it up. Collection. Comic strips about sex. Like a porn movie in black and white, paper and ink. Well done. They wanted $24.00 for it. She was looking at the Egyptian things. He was forty-nine. And still he had no money. Culture  ...