The Second Class Citizen

It was David Byrne who once famously asked, "well? how did i get here?", and being a denizen of the lily-white suburbs i often find myself asking that question, the place i inhabit is both comical and frightening (to me at least) and disturbing.  Next to my fair hamlet there is a place which i will dub Upper Crust Snob, it's main goal is to beat my fair burb in what i call the School District Wars and it irks the residents of Upper Crust Snob that we who have been labeled Cake-Eaters, a slur that developed long ago and my not being a native have really yet to fully grasp but as an insult i find hilarious as i fucking love cake, hell i love most pastry unless of course it's fucked up with a bunch of fruit on it because a fine pastry, at least according to Kono should be nothing more than sugar and icing and delicious type pastry material, but i digress, needless to say my lovely school district smokes them every year, this year being no different... (third in the state overall, which judging from my taxes it damn well better be.)

To be perfectly honest i do my best to do nothing more than drive through the village of Upper Crust Snob, but on occasion i am forced to visit, (i once spent a comical evening at the Upper Crust Snob Country Club for an awards banquet where the Breadwinner's business was receiving an award, i was fucked on pills and booze and weed, of which i kept walking out the front door and smoking while all the teenage valets looking enviously on, all whilst sitting next to the the commissioner of Allegheny County and laughing my ass off at what a slob he was while an attractive woman across the table openly flirted with me, fine night indeed...) so we may ask? how did i get here? well the I-mac had some event at school, International Night to be exact, and well he needed the extra credit points and they teachers were offering up ten fucking points if you attended and brought a dish, (for the record the kid made high honor roll with a 3.8 his first semester but his momma worries too much) it's some gigantic potluck where an ass ton of people show up and the kind of thing i would wholeheartedly avoid in order not to attempt to socialize with people i mostly have zero in common with, which brings me to quote another fine English band, 10cc, and the things we do for love... like walking in the rain and the snow/ when there's no place to go/ or attending shit for kid...

The village of Upper Crust Snob is on a building spree, a new plaza with a Whole Foods and a slew of high end shops, except of course for Duck Donuts which is a purveyor of fine donuts, made fresh and warm and fucking Kono approved, they're also building some mansions and quasi-mansions all i'm sure running well north of 500k, which in this part of the Rust Belt is big money, in Cali terms they'd be in the millions. Now it just so happens that one of these shops specializes in bundt cakes, yes you've read that right, it appears it was started by some well coiffed and manicured ladies whose children must be capable of taking care of themselves or more likely have a nanny or more correctly, an Au Pair.

So in order to get the ten extra credit points the Breadwinner decided it would be a good idea to get and donate one of these cakes to the big shindig, mainly because it reflected both her German and eastern Euro mutt heritage and who the fuck wants to eat haggis anyway? and so it was on the week before the event we rolled in and ordered said cake and tried the mini-bundt cakes which i'll well cop to being fucking delicious, on that day we were treated swell, or more correctly i was because i happened to be wandering around the shop with a woman who could easily fit the bill of successful trophy wife or more correctly very successful business woman, the Breadwinner is nothing if not a well spoken and polite human (myself being excluded from those courtesies of course) and has a lovely smile which disarms the best of them, i on the other hand am a 6'4 lumpen prole who is usually unshaven and wearing whatever i happened to pick up off the floor that morning... and so the cake was ordered, the extra credit points secured, and the next week i would pick it up...

Let me state that it dawned on me the other day, as i was wandering around stoned, that i could easily pass for a criminal, hoodlum, or petty thief, it's winter and my usual get up is a black Carhartt work coat, a black hat (think Randall Patrick McMurphy) and black gloves, watch any prime-time CBS crime drama and you get the picture...

And so it was that i went to pick up the cake, alone this time, and oh what fun ensued, when i arrived the woman who took the order was waiting on another customer, she looked fearfully at me as she worked on the lady's order, then two old women came and started doddering around, regulars i gathered, since it was taking a bit of time Brunette yenta called back for help and another well dressed and coiffed Blonde yenta stepped from the back room and came out to help, now if you looked at the line you could obviously tell i was the next up but the Blonde took one look at me and said, "can i help you ladies?", smiling all the while and doing her best to pretend i wasn't there, the Brunette was taking her good old time with her current customer in what i gather was hope that her partner would finish first and be forced to wait on me, the current customer then saw someone in the back, the labor/cake maker, a woman who was most likely a lesbian, (though i am loathe to stereotype or assume i've been in enough gay bars and dealt with the LGBTQ community enough to have a pretty good idea, besides she was the only one to smile and give a friendly look my direction), thus ensued a round of hugging and gabbing and what not all while i patiently stood and waited, of course Blondie was taking her good old time as it seemed it had become a contest of which the loser got me, because why would this man who looks like a mechanic or garbage man be in a bundt cake store?

And so finally it was my turn, Ms. Brunette had lost by a fraction of a second, Blondie stood back, most likely holding the mace or taser behind her back just in case i got out of hand.  I stated i had an order to pick up and Brunette looked at me as if i had a third eye though just a week earlier she had no problem taking my order or my money, she took my name and went in back to get the kid's extra credit points, when she came out she asked my name again and since somehow the last letter of my surname was cut off the tag she became confused, dare i say reluctant to give me the cake, my Scottish surname is not that common and any moron would figure out that was my cake, she of course deduced that i was there to steal someone else's cake because that's what tall men dressed in black do, we heist fucking bundt cakes yo, and then sell them on the street at inflated prices, of course while all this was happening i was reciting Buddhist koans in my head in order not to start fucking yelling at these yentas, i knew well enough that any uppity-ness on my part and the call to the UCSPD would be quick fast and that those jack-booted fuckers would take delight in fucking with me, and so once she figured out that the name on the box matched mine, minus one letter, and she found a tag with my full name stating i had ordered the exact cake she had she finally handed it over, a visible sign of relief on her face, she then thanked me for being so patient and though for a fleeting second i was about to state that i needed to be seeing as i was treated like shit because of my appearance and the place i was in, i instead smiled and said, it's a virtue now is it not? picked up my cake and made for the exit...

In the end i found it comical but in the age of the Orange Shitgibbon it once again drives home the point of white hegemonic butt hurt and the now not so veiled discrimination that seems more prevalent in this shithole country dubbed Merica, i would not want to be or witness a person of color in that shop (because then i would get in trouble), particularly an African-American male, Jah forbid the bubble that these people live in be burst lest the recognize their own shortcomings and misguided views on humanity, the cakes may be fucking delicious, but i can learn to make them myself, they've gotten the last of this hoods money...