Pregame Trashtalk
The Arena was packed; the crowd electrified. Winston Jones sat quietly. His wife was buying a tub of popcorn and would join him soon. It was date night and they enjoyed watching university kids beat the hell out of each other. He’d paid handsomely for the best seats in the house and looked forward to the show.
He’d chosen to wear a suit and tie; like a civilized human being. The students were the opposite; expensively outfitted to look like bums. They had more tattoos and piercings than Neolithic tribesmen. Winston disapproved. One green-haired girl wearing rainbow pajama pants, Crocs, pink mascara, a bone through her nose, what looked like the contents of an entire tackle box in ears (and presumably other places), and a t-shirt that said “Eat the Rich” tried to take the seat Winston was saving for his wife. He waved her off.
She glared angrily in his direction; which was what she did for any situation that displeased her. Surprisingly to the girl, it had no effect on Winston.
“Glare all you want my dear,” Winston replied, “when this school is done with you, student loans will change your world.” The girl blinked, unused to literal Nazis willing to meet her all knowing eye.
“You will put 20% of your meager income towards a debt you will never escape. You will do a shitty job, for which you’re ill prepared, which will be irrelevant because the job is pointless. Then you will die alone, in a room full of cats.” Winston smiled.
The girl cringed. Usually she just called all white men racist. Then they reflexively bowed to her every whim. That’s how it always worked. Winston was breaking the rules! Her upper lip quivered. She steeled herself to shout at him in self defense. Winston, meanwhile, didn’t have time to listen to yet another spoiled brat’s tirade. He decided to crush her completely. Otherwise he’d have no peace during the fight. It was essential he strike fast. If he let this nitwit get up a head of steam, she would be intolerable for hours.
“Everything about you will come to naught.” Winston began, derailing the girl’s slowly rebuilding sense of superiority. “As you die, your iPhone, made by slave labor in Bangladesh, will slip from your hands. In your years of poverty, you will know that I made 6% compounded bi-annually on stock market picks meant to bleed your generation dry. I will retire on a yacht. You will slog through old age like a Soviet peasant. You will spend yourself to death paying for a data plan and an artificial hip; neither of which will work well. You have peaked right now; today. It’s all downhill from this moment forward. Bitching at me won’t restore your wasted youth or alter your pointless future.”
The girl crumpled and began to cry; sending great streams of pink mascara down her face. Winston’s wife arrived with the popcorn to find a weeping young girl blocking her seat. The girl was facing, for the first time, her irrelevance in the enormity of the universe. Her soul ached. Her heart was torn. Winston’s wife considered the situation. Did she give a shit? No, she concluded, she didn’t give a wet fart’s worth of a thought for the pampered baby seal her husband had just clubbed.
“Beat it hussy. He’s mine.” His wife muttered. Then she grabbed a random piercing and dragged the girl, weeping and now writing in pain, to the aisle. She left her to face her little emotional breakdown where it wouldn’t block anyone’s view.
“God you’re beautiful.” Winston enthused.
“You too honey. I can’t imagine living without a man who can make trust funders cry in”, she checked her watch, “under three minutes.”
The two held hands. They’d been married forever and were madly in love. Their joy made the girl weep harder.
All good things must come to an end. Robert Mublowski, a student Winston recognized as “Douchebag with an Audi” barged past, ruining a sweet shared moment. He was accompanied by a striking young lass clearly out of his league. Winston began to wonder if he should buy an Audi. Winston’s wife poked him in the ribs and they both laughed.