Ethan Garraway

Soupman

Excerpt

The weather in New York City on the night that I landed—last Wednesday—was perfectly cold, just like I had previously seen depicted in various forms of art, namely two dozen late night sittings of Home Alone 2. The flight itself had been mostly fine. I watched some decent enough films that had accomplished their mission: they passed the time quickly enough and prevented me from socking the prick in the Bayern München soccer T-shirt that I had been seated next to, who it seemed was endeavoring to break sound barriers by snoring—yes, I know, a sound barrier is broken by speed, not by sound. Who the fuck decided that, though? On the flight, I had also managed to read a whole book. It was an old book about some guy who time-travelled to 1984 and ended up falling out of love after being massaged by rats. It was all right. The highlight of the flight, however, was the food—particularly the chicken noodles, which led to my mind wandering on what was nearly a goddamn loop about the snooty little idiot men who are paid the big bucks to review restaurants, and what they’d think of such airborne dishes. Such lil’ snooters were never any larger than five foot three and often wore spectacles and brightly colored bowties as the substitute for light in their lives, which was either severely lacking or entirely nonexistent. If such men lowered themselves to the task of reviewing airline food they would undoubtedly give it negative reviews. I know, I know—I’m getting mad about a hypothetical that has been fashioned within the constraints of my own cognizance, not reality. But you can hardly blame me. I’ve had thirty hours of travel time to conjure up such madness. And you know what? Had the chef been aboard the flight I have may have been tempted to forward my compliments to him. He would have been a big fat bastard just like myself and I would have said something exceptional such as, “Nice noodles, mate,” and he would’ve smiled back at me and asked, “What about the omelet?” Well, even the omelet was decent enough and when the big snorer who was seated next to me didn’t wake up upon being served his, I leant over and stuck my fork into it. Two minutes later his omelet had vanished. Reparations, I guess. 

There was one downside about the journey, however, which was that the most shut-eye I had managed over the entire thirty hours was when I had winked at the bathroom mirror while imagining that I was flirting with one of the air hostesses. She had big red lips, thick blonde hair that waved down beneath her shoulders halfway to her arse or “ass” I should say now that I’m on Yank soil, and, well, you may fill in the rest however you wish—however you might prefer your women so long as they’re not underage or pregnant or dead. Or if you prefer men, which I would most certainly envy you for, then by all means: close your eyes and do your best. I mention envy because while we men might typically be ugly as sin, with our hairy, farting bodies and in particular our flabby guts, there’s a better chance that we’ll like football and beer and even though I’m about a year sober, but for a couple of slip-ups that I’ve never told my shrink about—because I’ve never had a shrink—I’d still most certainly go for a beer-loving man if I was in fact gay, because those bastards, men, are often not afraid to keep you in line—just ask my mother’s dentist. But I’m sadly not into men so until the day that day comes, it’s winking into the bathroom mirror on long-haul flights and imagining unrealistically sexy female air hostesses for poor old Mr. Jack Cotton for the time being. Are you jealous of my sex life?

This lack of sleep on the flight would have been acceptable, or fine, or perhaps even productive had I been flying in from somewhere relatively local—say Philly or Boston—but you’re probably not so mathematically or mentally impaired to think that it takes a big jet plane thirty hours to travel such insignificant distances, which, when looking at one of those world globes that spin around that rich people used to have in their private studies, would be about as far as a bee’s dick. If you are so impaired then just embrace it—because you’re probably too dumb to ever feel true sadness, which, in turn, renders you blessed. And you have also read above where I wrote the word “mate” and surely and hopefully you realize that London isn’t thirty hours away from New York either (it’s fifty hours away) so surely and hopefully you’ve coupled two and two together like the genius that your parents always said you were and concluded that I’m Australian. Bravo! And I’m an Australian who has just arrived from Melbourne specifically, which elevates me above Australians from other cities because it is probable that I am not quite as racist or sexist as they might be. Melbourne is also the city that has so often been declared and championed as the most livable city in the world, yet I couldn’t bear to stay there another month or two, particularly as the hot stinkin’ summer threatened to kick in. 

My arrival in the city that they call the “Big Apple” was what they had labelled a “fresh start,” which is code for wanting my twitchy ass to become somebody else’s problem. People liked me, sure, some of them may have even considered me a friend, but even to them I had always been a little bit problematic, namely that I was perceived as lazy and unpredictable, and lately that measurement of “little bit” had ballooned to “very,” and adding fuel to the fire was that they thought that I was most likely losing my mind—though this they couldn’t quite be sure of, such is my sense of humor—which is not to say that my sense of humor is particularly good, it is just what you might call…unstable? Unstable it is. After seven and a half years at the same law firm, Jakobi & Co., which had head-hunted me straight from university and proceeded to suck both my time and my soul like a dementor might (do not fear—I’ll keep my Harry Potter references to a minimum just to spite that trans-hating bitch of a woman, she-who-must-not-be-named-and-who-must-be-cancelled-then-forced-to-transition-and-then-castrated!) before plonking me in the aisle seat of a plane. Say what you will about big corporations but they sure know how to make you feel loved. Specifically, my greasy-haired boss, who had summoned me to his office—a capacious space that was nearly larger than his ego and boasted wide-ranging views of Melbourne’s CBD as well as a whole cabinet that was legendarily dedicated to expensive whiskey—and in his office kindly gave me the chance to sit before declaring that HR had considered my attitude to have become particularly negative and that a change of scenery might be good for everybody. “Though we didn’t exactly need HR to tell us this,” he had warmly added. What was I to do, though, other than nod in agreement like the freethinking and emotive being that I am, particularly when presuming that a change of scenery was going to involve being relocated to a different department; perhaps to a different corner of the office, say property law or tax law—somewhere fun—but instead my boss (did I mention how greasy his hair was?) asked me: “London or New York?” to which I plucked a dirty twenty-cent piece from the depths of my pocket and flipped it high up into the stuffy office air. It landed with a clattery bang upon the glass table, right beside the gold Rolex that he had placed within some sort of viewing box that almost rendered it objectophilia, and just like that my future had been decided: I was heading to New York.

About the Author

Ethan Garraway is a writer from Melbourne, Australia, currently residing in Manhattan and completing his MFA (Fiction) at Columbia University.