Dadaoism (An Anthology)

by Oliver, Reggie

“Oh.”

  “But I assume I wouldn’t have liked it. Probably because I wouldn’t like it now.”

  “You don’t have to wear it, but it is messy.”

  “Why is it messy?”

  “Because you eat it with your hands.”

  “I thought it was a delicacy.”

  “It is.”

  “If it’s so delicate, why wouldn’t I use a fork?”

  “Because it has an exoskeleton,” the man had said, before pretending to get another call. He called the call an emergency. It was really an emergency exit out of existentialist conversation. “What’s not an emergency these days?” the girl had thought to herself.

  *

  She was considering handing over the wait before her check. Unfortunately, it was against her good upbringing to leave unless she knew she had waited half an hour for the other party to arrive. Not only did she not know if thirty minutes had passed, but she didn’t even know about this whole time scam anymore either. What if time had just been somebody’s get-rich-quick scheme?

  The girl was trapped in the waiting room, getting closer to feeling like a lobster in a tank. She wondered if the lobsters too were waiting for dates that never showed. What if when a lobster was being boiled, all it thought about was how it had been abducted from the waiting room while patiently awaiting its date, only to receive a brutal death penalty? And for what? Not bringing flowers? Excuse me—for not bringing barnacles? The girl knelt down and gazed into the tank that was becoming more and more like a waiting room mirror.

  Then, a school of unruly flounder swam by, who were looking too cool for school. They were so unruly one might deem them rebellious, although the cause of their rebellion was rather uncertain. They weren’t going to start a revolution just by revolving around a girl, although they did cause her some dizziness. The girl feared if she revolted against her dizziness she might puke.

  The flounder kept revolving around the girl and soon they were orbiting like planets. The girl tried to enjoy feeling like the sun, but found it rather taxing, especially since the fish were swimming at what she imagined to be a greater velocity than the planets around the sun.

  She tried to reason with the flounder, but they had yet to learn English. She tried to tell them that she was prone to the Tilt-A-Whirl effect in everyday existence, not only when flounder were orbiting around her. Unfortunately, the fish tried to respond to her foreign tongue by upping their velocities. Their communication system, as usual, was meddling with their intended message.

  What they wanted to tell the girl was that they meant her no harm. They were just playing a game similar to Ring Around the Rosie. Their game was a little less filled with Black Death innuendos, but somehow more nauseating for the girl positioned center. The school of unruly flounder were giggling bubbles. They wondered if the girl, who was shouting words they had yet to learn, was maybe laughing. “Maybe some species look like they’re upset when they’re happy,” they thought.

  In some cases this may be true, but it is never the verdict in the case of the lobster.

  The flounders’ fins were spitting water up from the carpet like dirt spit up from a bike. The girl’s head was spinning like the spokes of a bike. This made her wonder, “If flounder could ride bikes, would they bother with tricycles? Maybe they would trigress past tricycles and just go straight to the real deal.”

  Then she fainted.

  The flounder stopped cycling cyclically when they noticed the girl’s immobility. They offered up a moment of motionlessness. Unfortunately, she was not moved. The school congregated around her, this time feeling cool enough to school. Through their unruly behavior, potentially mistaken for rebelliousness, they might have caused the death of a human. Now that would be a sticky revolution for some flounder to pull on accident.

  The girl was motionless, her bloody red lobster heels buried in the seafoam carpet. The flounder didn’t care for lobster, so they didn’t bother to note her ruby reds as a mockery of the lobster holocaust everyone in the underwater portion of the globe was splashing about. The team teamed up via the buddy system and decided to be the buddy of a human. They scooped the girl up with their team effort fins and raced to the finish. The finish—in this case—was the bench. They left the girl in Catatonia as they swam out the front door.

  Catatonia was not what the brochures made it out to be. There were neither cats, nor was the atmosphere tonic. Conversely, Catatonia had the stale stench of reality filtered through bogus 3-D glasses. Nevertheless, the girl was unable to move. She vaguely remembered the flounder exiting Red Lobster. She knew it was the only time flounder would ever exit out of any lobster. Lobsters don’t eat flounder.

  She tried to moved her head but—

  Let’s not go there.

  She tried to move her feet, but they were trapped in dead lobster shoes from PayLess. She was now wishing she had PaidMore. She didn’t know about the lobster holocaust swimming in the Sea Times, but she began to infer as much.

  She was alone in the waiting room. Well, she was with lobsters, but they were in a tank across the room and she was no good at long distance relationships. She would have collect-called them, but she couldn’t collect herself enough to do so.

  She was alone. She wished she was beside herself. At least then, she’d feel comfortable. She tried to make out her reflection in the tank, but all she saw were some presumably crusty crustaceans. She was starting to feel crusty herself.

  She looked at a lobster who was looking at her at the time. She felt like he was a convict and she was his lover. It was visiting hour. She wanted to touch the glass between them. But, if she touched the glass, she’d feel the glass, and she’d rather not feel the very barrier between her and her lobster love.

  His antennae moved with such tact. His antennae moved fluidly, like two people dancing. Was he trying to get her aroused? Well, she was. Her legs started moving like two people dancing. How antennaesque of them. Her legs were dancing with each other. Her legs were dating one another. Eventually, they were making love to one another.

  Her legs were moving fast, in the relationship sense more than in the speed sense. If the lobster had been waiting in the tank for his date, the girl had been more than happy to take her place. The girl’s date was also missing, though not in the back of the milk carton way. The girl and the lobster were bride and groom, both left at different altars.

  The girl was so wrapped up in red-hot lobster eroticism, she forgot that she was about to unite with a member of a different species. She didn’t know how to address this problem with the lobster without being politically incorrect. So she asked herself a solid question: “Do opposites attract?” Well, she and the lobster were certainly attracting one another. Yes, they were of different species, but did that make them opposite? The girl certainly didn’t want to use the endearing cliché to encourage bestiality.

  She tried to think of how they were the same. He was red and hard, but, mostly, she was pink and soft. He was gentle, but had an exoskeleton and she was gentle, but just had a plain ol’ skeleton. She asked him how she could add an “exo” to her skeleton. He told her to look in the mirror.

  She thought this was pretty funny, but not LOL funny. She hated LOL but loved palindromes, so she begrudgingly welcomed it into her vernacular. She didn’t know if the waiting room at Red Lobster had a mirror, but a red lobster told her so, and that seemed like a reliable source.

  She looked around. The room was dark except for the tank. She stared at it hard and cold, envisioning her own reflection. Her pupils were taking over her irises, trying to run the eye business. Her pupils then shrunk into beady, glossy buttons. Her hair was grouping up into two ponytails that kept on thinning out and going up, up, up. Her hair was lifting up for blast off. Two thin rods were forming and turning red. Her face was also growing red. For the first time, it wasn’t out of embarrassment.

  She was shrinking and hardening, finally growing the exo onto her skeleton. She thought the “e” in “exo” w
as unnecessary. Without it, it could be a hugs and kisses skeleton. Her red lobster lover predicted this thought, knowing that humans are evolutionarily maladapted when it comes to processing grim imagery.

  The girl was down to half her old size when a gust of wind blew open the front door. Her human date was late, but had arrived with flowers. Now she wished they were barnacles and he didn’t exist. He strolled in like a cowboy without a cow. He was in his business attire, ready to use his tie as a lasso, if need be. He was not pleased when he had to drop to his knees just to meet eyes with his date. Their eyes met, but didn’t bother to shake hands. He didn’t like what he could see. She was half hard red and half soft pink. She was the height of a twelve-year-old. She was ambiguously lobster, ambiguously human. He decided to call off the date.

  “I had assumed you weren’t showing,” she said.

  “I’m showing, but I don’t like what you’re showing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I feel—” he paused, “like I don’t know you anymore.”

  “Did you forget me?”

  “No.”

  “Then you still know me.”

  He paused. Then he said: “But you’ve changed.”

  “How so?”

  “You look different now.”

  “You’re shallow.”

  “You’re practically another species!” he exclaimed. Technically he was right. Still, he felt politically incorrect.

  “That’s right. I’m just another species, so what’s the big deal?”

  “You’re not of the same species.”

  “You’re a bigot.”

  “You’re a lobster lady.”

  “But a lady all the same.”

  “You’re right. Where are my manners?”

  “You must have lost them.”

  “How do I find them?”

  “I don’t know.” The lobster lady had sent the man into an eternal mind warp. She decided to be generous and asked him: “How is that football team you love… the Steelers?”

  “Glad you asked. They’re not looking so good…” he said. The man continued talking until he talked himself out of himself.

  When he finished, the lobster lady said: “That’s wonderful. I think you should leave now.”

  The man’s face hollowed out in surprise and then filled up with anger. Her remark evidenced that she hadn’t listened to a word he had said. He hadn’t listened to a word he had said either, but that wasn’t the point. The man pulled a bib out of his suit pocket like a pistol out of a holster. He waved it around in the air and threatened to shoot. He lassoed the bib around his neck and danced, his spurs jangling. His dance was not nearly as graceful as that of the lobster.

  The man pulled a plastic-wrapped knife and fork out of his pant pocket. He was a little bit obsessive compulsive, especially when it came to eating lobster. He was ravenous, ready to compulsively eat all of Red Lobster’s lobsters, only to obsess about it later. The girl was half lobster and half the man’s height. She needed some aquatic assistance.

  She transmitted an emergency call-to-action through her antennae and waited some more in the waiting room. The man was not going to wait to eat, so he lunged with fork and knife in hand towards the tank. As his face neared the tank, he got a glimpse of his reflection. His eyes were digressing. They were supposed to be looking for lobsters to eat, not for themselves. His eyes were still ravenous, but now, only with the hunger for his own flesh.

  The girl didn’t know what the man was seeing in the mirror, but she assumed her favorite lobster was behind the scenes. In fact, her favorite lobster was the tank’s favorite as well, thus he was voted Red Lobster. He told the girl she could call him Red. She told him she just couldn’t get into names; they never did it for her. He didn’t mind tossing the name Red, just as he wouldn’t have minded tossing the name Blue. And, he had to admit, both were good colors.

  The man was really dying for a bite of himself as he gazed in the mirror. He was salivating all over his reflection. He was gnashing his teeth, which were flashing back at him, while wondering what teeth tasted like. He imagined they were something like XXL Pop Rocks. They would burst into a million particles upon a hard munch. He thought of a slogan: “Pop Rocks: Miniature teeth that shatter when you bite them!”

  Pop Rocks and tank water don’t mix well. It’s one of those oceanic legends that’s actually true. The man was about ready for a dynamite mouth explosion when the family of whales rushed in. They pled with the man to drop his arms, but the problem was in his mouth.

  Next, the swordfish rushed in. They pled with the man to close his mouth, but it was already open for a kill.

  Lastly, the school of flounder swam around the man, begging him not to move any closer to the tank, but he told them to walk the plank and forget about it.

  The crowd was splashing in horror. The man wrapped his mouth around the tank, tilting his neck back as dirty water and red lobsters poured in. The crowd protested loudly, but the man was in a moment of silence. The water rushed down his throat, knocking his teeth out of his gums. His gums chewed his teeth and then let them gush down his thundering waterfall esophagus. The girl’s lobster lover was nearing the back of the man’s throat. The girl screamed and cried, but she was only half the man’s height and half lobster.

  Meanwhile, in the man’s tummy, a tooth was ticking like a Pop Rock about to explode. As the tank water flooded in, the tooth detonated. The girl’s lobster love was only inches away. The girl thought such might be the case. She pondered, “How can there be a chance for a lobster to survive in the belly of a man?”

  That’s when the man exploded.

  His gooey bits were shooting across the waiting room in slo-mo. They were crystallizing, diminishing, forming constellations and Pop Rockesque planets. The girl closed her eyes.

  The crowd was silent. Stunned. The whales, swordfish, and flounder started naming different alignments of Pop Rock stars and planets after their favorite underwater heroes. The girl opened her eyes. The tank had been shattered and the waiting room had been blown up by something like the Big Bang. The sea was swirling around the girl and she was again feeling the Tilt-A-Whirl effect. The ocean was a whirlpool and the girl was sinking into the quicksand waters. She was spiraling deep into the blue with the reds.

  The lobsters had made it!

  The girl swam with her lover. They vowed to observe each other in naturalistic settings forever. She asked him, “How did you survive the Pop Rock Big Bang Explosion?”

  He responded, “It was my skeleton.”

  “You mean exoskeleton?”

  “I mean x o skeleton.”

  “The hugs and kisses skeleton saved you?!”

  “No, just kidding.”

  “LOL.”

  “It was my exoskeleton. It hardened in the crucial moments, because I was thinking about you.”

  The lobster lady thought this was both explicit and subtle at the same time. She wondered how her lobster got to be so deep. Maybe lobster philosophers aren’t good at handiwork, but at least they’re good at getting the job done—existentially and sensually speaking.

  The lobster lady’s legs were still dancing with one another, but now her antennae were doing the same. Her lobster lover’s antennae were also dancing with themselves, but he and his antennae were all dancing around his lady. The two looked like DNA as they twirled together. They got a “10” in the oceanic dancing competition. When the two won, they split the trophy, vowing to never be separated.

  Despite the triumphant dance, the lobster had one hard fact of life to tell his lady. He told her, “One day, our dancing will stop and our DNA will dissolve into pieces.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Are you happy enough here in the ocean to be happy about dying in the ocean?”

  “Of course. I’ve been on land and have decided to take the deep end for sure.”

  “I’m glad to hear, but I must offer you this option.”

  “Wh
at option?”

  “Well, if it hadn’t been for your interactions with whales, swordfish, and flounder at Red Lobster, you’d never be here in the ocean with a lobster (i.e.—me) today.”

  “Don’t forget to give yourself some credit,” she beamed while dancing the DNA.

  “OK, so maybe I orchestrated the whole thing.”

  “Just like you choreographed this dance?”

  The lobster’s tongue was tied, so she untied it for him and said, “We can tie the knot later, I just want to know what you were going to say.”

  “I was going to say something that’s hard to say.”

  “Harder than an exoskeleton?”

  The lobster didn’t want to get into this one again so he said:

  “Here it is: if us ocean dwellers hadn’t intervened, your date would have never showed up to Red Lobster. The restaurant would have closed its doors and the host would have swept you off the seafoam carpet and onto the sidewalk. Your butt would be sitting on hard cement and you’d be head-butting the headlights of a Dodge Ram.”

  “Then what would happen?” she asked eagerly.

  “Then you would drive your Taurus into the driveway of your human date’s house. You’d knock. Nothing. You’d knock again. Nothing. You’d tell yourself a knock-knock joke and, upon finding it pathetic, you’d try to crawl in through the bathroom window.”

  “What would happen next?”

  “Then, you’d fall from the window into the toilet.”

  “Gross.”

  “Then, you’d hear your date in his bedroom just as he hears you.”

  “That’s confusing.”

  “Then, you’d hear the voice of another woman, before you even got to meet her.”

  “That’s awkward.”

  “You’d pick yourself up out of the toilet and run into his bedroom. You’d be drenched in toilet water, he’d be drenched in sweat, with her kneeling before him, like you once knelt before a tank before you knew what it all meant.”

  “Stop talking in parallels.”

  “How about perpendiculars?”

  “Parallels it is.”

  “So, you’d stomp over and trip when your lobster heels got caught in the coral carpet. While falling, you’d accidentally knock into the woman and she’d accidentally bite the—”