Went out to dinner the other day. I ordered the salmon. Three cups of coffee later the waiter brings out a large hot plate with a steamin’ pile of fish.
"The hell’s this?" I snapped.
"It is your order, sir, the sa-" he stammered.
"I ordered salmon."
A brief pause as we sized each other up. He was a lanky kid; eyes as black as a desert night and a heart to match.
"Sir, this is-"
But the sentence never finished dribbling out of his pitiful mouth. My fist pounded his gut like a jackhammer as his eyes grew to the size of large apples (note: or smallish grapefruits). A trickle of blood from his mouth grew to a steady sputtering stream of sanguine filth. With cat-like agility I avoided his feeble retaliatory jabs, and moved to the door.
"Burn in hell motherfuckers!" I screamed dramatically as I flicked a lit match to the floor.
I turned and left, straining my ear to hear the screams of agony eminating from the fire hell on earth I had created. Hearing none, I realized I had forgotten to splatter gasoline all over the restaurant before I flicked the match, and thus my action had been one of symbolic destruction at best. I went back, poured the gasoline, and threw a match down. I even mustered up a "Burn in hell motherfuckers." (with a period rather than an exclamation point) But it felt awkward. I did take pleasure in their tortured screams as their very flesh burned off their bones, but it was bittersweet knowing I’d fucked up that first match-throwing. I mean, you spend your life waiting for a moment like that and then what do I do? I fuck it up. God damn it.
I relayed the whole sordid tale to a friend who replied:
"Salmon is fish."
"What? What…? What does that have to do-"
"Salmon. You ordered salmon. You ordered salmon and they brought out fish. That’s right."
"I thought salmon was a type of beef."
"No. No, that’s wrong. That’s quite wrong and you’re very stupid."
"So…"
"So, you burned seven people to death
(an aside: Obviously when I relayed the story to this "friend", I was more specific in terms of the number of people in the restaurant at the time of the fire; it’s an interesting note and a comment on the nature of story and how it’s affected by the environs in which it’s told.
But I digress.)
"So you burned seven people to death for no reason whatsoever."
"Yes. Yes, that’s true."
I wrote an extremely sincere letter of apology to the families of the deceased including the phrase: "beside myself with anguish". They were impressed by the extreme sincerity of the letter and invited me over for lunch.
We had salmon.