A spiritual anthropologist sat in a diner in the city on a rainy Thursday morning. He looked out the large picture window where he sat and studied the gray sky and thought about human sin. He brought a coffee cup to his mouth and sipped it. Then there was a loud crash that startled him. A waitress had lost an entire tray of food. She started to cry and yelled out “Fuck this job!” and stormed out of the place.
The spiritual anthropologist watched her as she stood at the bus stop where she proceeded to light up a cigarette and start pacing around. She got out her phone and called someone and then started acting like she was mad. “Fuck this phone!” she cried out, and she threw it to the sidewalk as hard as she could and it busted. Her hands went to her face and she started bawling. A man stopped to talk to her and she slapped him. The bus arrived and she kicked it.
Another waitress came to the spiritual anthropologist’s table, and he pointed out the window and said to her, “Your co-worker is really losing it.”
“Oh yeah. That’s Marcie. She does this kind of shit every day.”
“What? Every day?”
“She has a lot of personal problems… Are you ready for your check?”
“Sure, sure. That would be fine.”
He grabbed her wrists and said to her, “Marcie, Marcie. Please calm down. I’m here to help you.”
Her yellow-green eyes were startled and swirling. “Who are you?”
“I’m a spiritual anthropologist. My name is Yurin Gatsby.”
“That sounds made up. No one has a name like that.”
“I do.”
“So. What do you want?”
“I want to help you.”
“How are you going to help me?”
“Come out to my lovely home in the forest and I’ll show you.”
“That sounds creepy.”
Her head turned in different directions, and she bit at her bottom lip, and a look of worry stretched across her face. “I appreciate the offer,” she said. “But I really need to get back inside and clean up that mess I made and be a waitress again.”
“You hate it, don’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes. Yes, it is. But do what you need to do. I can wait.”
“But I don’t get off until 4… Unless I get fired again. My instability as a human being is really affecting my life. It makes me so irresponsible. Oh, and I need to stop at Verizon and get a new phone.”
“I’ll drink more coffee, read the newspaper, look out the window. Don’t worry about me. And I can take you by the phone store.”
Marcie sat at one end of the long, polished table and waited for him. She gazed out the cathedral windows. The forest and the hills rolled atop a green carpet. Wood smoke wafted from a single point on the horizon. The late-afternoon sky was pale blue with a stream of cloud work sailing along within it. The house was still and quiet except for the sound of him preparing two cups of coffee.
He brought the cups, set them down and took a seat near her.
“Your house is amazing,” she said.
“Thanks. I like it.”
“No family to share it with?”
“No. Just me. My work is too demanding and really doesn’t allow me the time for such luxuries as family.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I enjoy the solitude. No noise. No drama… Now, before we begin, I think it’s important that we kiss.”
Marcie shot up out of her chair and threw her arms in the air. “I knew it! I knew you were a creep. I’m leaving.”
“No, no. Please let me explain. If we kiss it will break down any emotional barriers between us. We’ll be much more comfortable with each other and therefore you’ll be much more open, and I’ll be able to really help you. Please. Sit down.”
Marcie slowly descended back into the chair. “Just one kiss?” she wanted to know.
“Just one,” Yurin answered.
“Like, now?”
“Yes.”
Their faces slowly came together, and they kissed. Their mouths mingled longer than they both expected. Then they separated and looked at each other.
“All done,” Yurin said with a smile. “How do you feel now?”
“Better.”
“Good.”
The sun was starting to set. They had moved to the living room and Marcie sat on the couch as Yurin settled into his favorite chair after clicking on a soft light lamp.
“So,” Yurin began. “Tell me about your brand of madness. Pick a random memory and talk about it.”
Marcie closed her eyes and flipped through her memory files.
“I once went to the desert in Arizona and got high. I started hiking through a canyon and I was surrounded by cliffs of red rock. There was merely a trickle of a stream and in some parts just the remnants of one. But like I said, I got high, very high, too high, and so everything was weird, and I felt like I was walking around on Mars, not Earth. Then I saw a figure standing on a rock above me looking down. He was dressed in all white and his hair and even his skin were white as if he had powdered himself with talc. He didn’t say anything, but I could still hear him talking, in my mind. He was going on and on about my destiny and how my life was merely a mirage and that I should look forward to death because I will return to my place of origin somewhere in the stars. And as I continued walking he went up into the air and hovered above me. He told me not to be afraid and that he was really my guardian angel but not like an angel in the Bible, he was from outer space and that is what angels really are anyways. I asked him if he wanted to get high and he smiled and descended to the path I was on. He was much taller than I realized, and his eyes were the brightest blue I had ever seen. I retrieved my pipe from my pocket and packed the bowl with a good amount of weed. I passed it to him along with a lighter. He looked at them as if he were confused and I took them back and showed him what to do. I exhaled into his face and he smiled again. His teeth were pure white, but his mouth had a purple tinge to it. I passed him back the pipe and the lighter and he did exactly as I had shown him, and he took a giant hit and then coughed it out. I laughed. He laughed. I told him to try it again and he did, but this time he didn’t cough. As I got higher, I was really tripping out and being with this space being gave me a whole new perspective on life. But then here I am today, a complete mess. So, I’ve concluded that I am living the wrong life. That’s why I am so sad and angry all the time. This isn’t what life was meant to be… For any of us. The white angel told me we got it all wrong. That we took the wrong path and that we are all now enslaved by our ultimate mistake.”
“And what is this ultimate mistake?”
“Money,” Marcie answered. “It forces us to divert from our true passions. Our true meaning.”
“But if no one worked, society would collapse.”
“It’s already collapsed.”
“I must say, Marcie,” Yurin said. “It all sounds like hippie bullshit to me.”
“What? That’s your conclusion. How is that helping me?”
“Sorry. It’s how I feel.”
“Well, then your feelings are stupid.” She started to get up. “I’m leaving.”
“No. Please don’t.”
“I want a ride back to the city.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“I’m tired.”
“Then I’m sending for an Uber.”
“They won’t come. They’re too afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“The woods, the darkness… Me.”
Yurin strangely grinned at her from his chair.
“Then I’ll walk,” she nervously said.
“It’s way too far.”
“Stop trying to ensnare me!”
“But you are ensnared. You’ve always been ensnared. You’ve said it yourself.”
Marcie stomped her feet and groaned. “I just want to go home!”
And suddenly she was in her apartment and the snap fish reality of it all hit her like a wasp sting. Her head swiveled on her neck and she steadied herself.
“What happened?” she said aloud to no one.
Yurin Gatsby appeared from the bathroom with a blue towel wrapped around his waist.
“Hi, hi, hi there,” he said in a cheerful tone. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took a shower.”
“What are you doing in my apartment!?” Marcie demanded to know.
Yurin ignored her question.
“It smells weird in here,” he said.
“You better get dressed and get out before I call the police.”
“The police are too busy rounding up the unholy.”
“Oh, shut up!” Marcie snapped. “It’s the unholy doing the rounding up.”
“You’re lucky your white or I’d report you… But you are a woman.”
“You’re a terrible fucking person,” she said, and retrieved her new phone. “I’m calling building security to escort you out.”
“All right, all right. I’ll get dressed and go, but we haven’t finished your therapy.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want therapy from the likes of you.”
After he left, Marcie stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at her weary face. Her sad eyes went to the cubby where she kept all her bottles of prescription medication—a dozen of them if not more. She sighed. How messed up I must be to have all that, she thought. She started to cry.
Yurin Gatsby tasted failure in his mouth as he sat on a bench in the park near a fountain. He watched all the people and wondered, who could be next?
Her or her or her. Maybe him? Maybe a dog or a crow.
Maybe himself.
A woman sat down on the bench next to him. She turned and smiled.
“Hello,” she said.
Yurin returned the smile and placed a hand on her knee. She didn’t react in a negative way.
“I sense you have a lot of personal problems,” Yurin said to her.
The woman sadly laughed. She pointed to two children, a boy and a girl, who were playing near the fountain.
“There are my personal problems,” she said. “I wish I could just walk away and leave them here.”
“I think that would be criminal,” Yurin said.
The woman sighed. “I don’t care. I think I’d rather be in jail. Hell, I am in jail. My life is jail.”
“My name is Yurin. I’m a spiritual anthropologist and I believe I could help you.”
“I’m Kathy Cooper. Look, they’re at the playground over there. They’re not paying any attention to us. We can ghost those annoying little brats.”
“I have a place out in the country in the woods. No one would ever find you,” Yurin told her. “You could take on a whole new identity.”
She took his hands in hers and squeezed. “Take me there. Please.”
“I will,” Yurin said. “But first, I think we should kiss.”
cereal after sex 
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