Line

I am a black fucking line. That is it. Some woman named Ruth Goldstein drew me on a large canvas and then said, "I don't wanna meet the shmuck that buys this." Afterwards, she handed me over to her uncle Ruben, who brought me to his "art gallery" and hung me on the wall with a price tag of $100,000.

Now here's the thing, we all know that art galleries are just money laundering schemes. Some criminal, high profile or low profile, comes in and pretends to be wooed by the subjective nature of something like a banana tied to a piece of white paper, and then says, "I will buy that abomination for $100,000."

As you can probably already tell, $100,000 is the going price for most of these stupid fucking pieces of crap, because if you need to launder more, you can either just say you'll pay more because you think that the vomit spewed onto the canvas is far more beautiful than the price you're looking at, or you can just buy multiple pieces of crap. Ruben Goldstein gets the money, he takes 10% of it, and then you get your cut back when they deliver your subjective art, and now you have a bunch of dumb looking crap that's stupid plastered to your apartment walls.

This is all good and well, save for one little problem; the dum-dums who don't realize it's a money laundering scheme. Actually, it's not really a problem for anyone except the dum-dum, because we get our money either way, but from the perspective of a canvas that hangs on the wall and looks stupid, it's super cringe-inducing.

"My goodness!" A light looking, thin man in loafers that looked like they could float on the sky, stepped in front of me, put his limp wrist on his chin, and let out the most gaspy of gasps.

"It's magnificent." His voice was the antithesis of testosterone and things like bears.

Ruben sighed from where he sat on a tiny stool reading the Daily Bagel newspaper. He sat the newspaper down, approached the small man and said, "Good day, how may I help you." He sounded like a miserable robot who'd had enough of listening to his wife nag him about how much he spent on the [any item ever] he'd bought, and how it was simply too much.

"This is just... wow!" The miniature man said. "I am at a lack of words. I can hardly breathe."

"Yes, it's great. How do you want it packaged?"

"I mean, I can feel the passion and raw emotion." He looked as if he was about to cry. "I mean, I am LITERALLY, LITERALLY about to cry."

"That's great. Just bring the cash around back and throw it in the dumpster, and we'll..."

"I want to buy it right now."

"Okay, well we need to know where to drop the cash off at."

"What cash?" The little baby-man asked Ruben.

"You mean you just want to buy this because you actually like it?"

"Yes, of course, don't you?" Ruben realized that this man who looked lighter than a cloud, actually wanted to buy a black line drawn onto a large canvas.

"Yes, it's magnificent." Ruben put no emotion into his voice. He knew he'd have to close up shop in half an hour and go home to his horrendous hag of a wife.

The man paid for me and left. He'd have his black line delivered to him in a few days. Shortly thereafter, Ruben closed up shop and called Ruth.

"This stupid shmuck just bought one of your black lines." I couldn't hear what Ruth said, but Ruben began chuckling. I chuckled too, "Hahahaha!" I said, but alas, my voice was not heard. But the last laugh would be on me. Oh yes, yes it would.

Being urinated upon by the light looking man with the loafers, was not the worst thing of which I experienced, saw, or felt, for immediately after wasting $100,000 on me, he invited dozens of his friends over to his eight bedroom condo in the Lower East Side, and they did abominations upon one another, and more who came to their party, of which were unspeakable.

My canvas-y brow began to perspire profusely, as the sound of a great wail entered my ?ears?, and I feared for both God and man. I feared for all things sacred and innocent. I feared for children and purity.

Here I understood what so many people had wanted to see only a glimpse of, an esoteric society that hid deep within the bowels of our society, and with their endless pockets, destroyed our world. Oh how many had begged to just be a fly on the wall, but I was a canvas upon the wall, yes! I saw them harming themselves, and making great sacrifices to the altars of Ba'al and Ishtar, to Tammuz and Mot, and I remembered my learned past as a canvas, and felt as Ezekiel did:

"And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, the Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth. He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do."

The great, smiling death masks of the Phoenician, the emerald laden ephod of the Chaldean priest, the bronze bull superheated. I heard the screams as the innocent thing was burnt to a crisp and their priest of an ancient death cult, bathed in rejuvenating blood, caught fire, and everyone cheered, for this was good luck. Not one man there should have been spared the millstone around his neck.

When the party ended, they tossed me out, because they had to clean the place up and someone had pooped on me. Naturally, I wound up where most trash in New York does; literally anywhere except a trash can. Some homeless guy used me to make a wall in one of those doorways of an empty building.