But You Can’t Take the Stoop out of the Man

Oh to kick it on the stoop. Watching traffic with a lukewarm Tsing Tao and a radio buzzing federal propaganda. Wearing snoopy pajamas and slippers. The ideal everyday afternoon. The perfect demonstration of leisure.

But alas! My home, my stoop, my radio, the cushion of my chair, even my beer – all gone! No. No, you can’t take it from me. You can’t, you won’t. I’ll have none of it.

I will sit here on my hardened chair with my hardened soul and you can knock it all down and build it all up or fill it with trash or whatever it is that you want so badly. But not at my expense. I will sit here and as you bend your check card to make these men toil I will watch traffic and smile with my unchanged view. In the words of western genius, “I am a rock, I am an island,” and you may be able to move rock but not an island, at least not one of my stature.

You with your shiny car and shiny shoes and shiny woman. It is the Chinese genius that said, “Shiny, it is, that birds aim for.” You should know that. I see from the flag on your car that you are patriotic and from the white splatters on your hood that the saying is true. To you, my home was like those white smudges. My stoop, my radio, my beer – excrements dropped on the city block. Oh yeah, you cleaned it up real good.

You will get no thanks from me. Well, perhaps for the guard job that gives me pay for sitting where my stoop used to be. But you know, I watch only traffic and couldn’t care less if people entered your ruins. I suppose it wasn’t your fault that I lost both the radio and cushion playing cards the other night either. But no beer! That is certainly your fault. And, as for this uniform, it screams all work and no play, even if my drooling sleep says otherwise.

Just so you know, they won’t buy it. No one will. I exude leisure. I am saturated in it, having marinated in it for years – I am chilled to perfection. As long as I have my chair and my traffic, people will know and they will say, “Now there is a man of little work.”

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