On National Duty

Not in my jaded jeans and unwashed half shirt. I'm Dad's son.

Teenaged couples jazzing to jazz. Youngsters going to the movies more than frquently. Small cars, with college boys at the wheel, speeding to the thrash and drum of Metallica. Some soaking Bloody Mary's. Some cocaine. A million confused youngsters picking their escape routes. Eminem topping charts. Why Eminem? Because he's the itch society would rather have scratched away, nipped in the bud. For doesn't the expression of primal, silenced, unclean feelings that lie within us, pose a threat to society? Doesn't the potential of snapping the ropes of structure, of clearly defined right and wrong, endanger a social sense that has so laboriously been established, inherited generation after generation, unquestioned? And yet, I don't deny that promoters of such civilization didn't have their hearts in the right places. Somewhere in the midst of the transition from the social models to free-market capitalism, the essence has been lost. Contradictions within these two systems have caused the wear and tear of values, the friction generating new norms. A free-market economy cannot run on the value-system that the earlier model had been founded on. A new culture ushered in, the premium being on practicality, even if translates to the sporadic use of slimy ways. The clash that was destined to take place, is currently taking place in posh multinationals. Pressures, traumas, lay-offs, mergers, acquisitions. Executives bred on the Soviet model, maneuvers the American model, till guilt turns too painful in its repeated pricking. In this age, oft needed is the connection to basic human feelings, needed is the comfort that they exists. Fear. Pain. Disappointment.

It isn't just the smoke rings that make my sight unclear. A haze seems to blur my vision of him. I need to do this fast. He gets up. I firm my grip on the automatic. A hug to an acquaintance and he's walking to the exit. I get up and start following him. Two bartenders stop me. The Bill. Oh, shit. I reach for my wallet, draw an American Express credit card fling it in cowboy arrogance onto the outstretched palm of the bartender. I run after him. He's through the exit, walking briskly towards his Mercedes where a uniformed driver lies in wait, door ajar. The parking lot glitters, radiant in the smooth polish of a fleet of overpriced cars. In just a few seconds my target has multiplied. He's the corrupt politician, the upstart entrepreneur that runs his non-profit organization all the way to the bank, he's the prodigal son of the wealthy heir, he's the stock-market specialist, he's the Doctor-businessman, he's the bastard child of capitalists. Somebody has to do his duty, cure the disease. Someone has to balance the equation; eliminate these institutions of swelling financial disparities. Someone has to shoot. Gross. Point. Blank.