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Literary
Town Hall

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The Donut Party

J. Kent Allred

    “So, do you collect comic books or jazz albums,” Tim politely asked Omar, the new employee in our market’s produce department.
    Omar was stacking apples at the time; he stopped and leaned against the apple boxes upon his produce cart. “I fucking hate jazz music and I’ve never read a comic book in my life.”
    “Well, you just look like you would collect one of the two,” Tim stammered.
    “What in the fuck makes me look like I collect either one? Do I look like a fucking dork?”
    Tim took a step back, turned and was ready to leave but decided to make one more attempt to make friends. “Well, no. But everybody collects something. Right?”
    “Are you special needs or something?” Tim gave no response, just a blank stare. “You don’t want to know what I collect, kid. It would make your stomach turn.”
    “I was just trying to make small talk. You’re new and I was just trying to introduce myself. Hi. I’m Tim. I work on the front end.” He extended his hand out in an effort to shake hands.
    Omar straightened his long figure off of the apple boxes in an effort to put a little distance between them. “I don’t shake hands... not because I am worried that your douche baggery is somehow contagious, although it my be, that is not the point, but strictly for the fact that shaking hands is an invention of ‘the man.’ It was introduced to America by Sir Walter Raleigh as a tool of deception, to make the Native Americans believe that the white man was trustworthy and that they viewed the Indians as fucking equals.”
    “So, are you Native American?” Tim asked, uncomfortably, as though he may have offended the new employee.
    “No, I’m fucking Jewish,” he went back to stacking apples. “Can’t you tell?” his voice trailing off into the distance.
    Omar was no longer a practicing Jew, but an atheist. Although he looked Jewish, with long, black, wavy hair that came down past his shoulders and a long black beard. He was tall and slender, had a prominent nose and dark brown eyes hidden behind thick-lensed eyeglasses, with hard, black, plastic frames that looked like they came out of the 1950s. He was originally from Vermont but lived in Tulsa for 3 years now, attending TU as a graduate art student. His transportation was a rusty ten-speed, even though Tulsa was an unfriendly city for bicyclers.
    Tulsa was and always had been, inundated with squirrels; they were everywhere, so needless to say, so were their corpses, littering the streets throughout the town. After living in Tulsa for a few months, Omar began collecting pictures of squirrel casualties with his Polaroid camera and filing them away in dead-squirrel photo journals that he intended on using for his graduate art exhibit. He had four albums, each categorized by location of homicide when the photo was taken: “One Step from Freedom,” “U-turn,” “Oblivious,” and “Obliterated.”
    Over the years his squirrel pictures acquired a cult status among his friends with people frequently stopping by to see his work. He would occasionally sell a photo for the right price and give some of his prize photos as birthday gifts to his closest friends. There were several that he kept framed and were not for sale at any price, pictures like: “Arnold waves to heaven,” “Gabe blows his top,” and “Kirby #3 discovers roller blades.”
    Omar was a very difficult person to make friends with, because he held nothing back when it came to speaking his mind. What many would be thinking (but would not say) in a typical social setting, Omar addressed without fail. Most people hated him for his veracious honesty, but if you could see through his insecurities he was truly a genuine person. Every Monday afternoon at 1 pm, Omar held a tea party for his closest friends. If you were privileged enough to be invited to “Onsies,” you knew that you had fallen into his good graces.
    Omar bathed once a week, just before “Onsies,” and because he was traveling on bicycle in the Tulsa heat, by the end of the week he usually smelled pretty ripe. Omar claimed he would like to bathe more frequently but he had marijuana plants growing in his bathtub, so he chose to bathe in a large galvanized tub that sat in the corner of his living room. Not that we ever saw him, it was just understood what the tub was used for because there was a washcloth draped over the side, a long-handled, scrub-brush hanging through one of the metal loop handles and a yellow rubber duck that sat damp on the window ledge next to the tub dripping water onto the hard wood floor during our “Onsie” meetings.
    In December of 2007, Tulsa faced one of the worst ice storms of the century; power was out across the entire city for several days. Some people were without heat, electricity and phones for up to two weeks. Everybody was affected to some degree. At the organic supermarket, people were irritable and short with each other.
    A few days after the storm we reopened the store. While Omar and I were walking to lunch from the back room, an elderly woman approached us from the bulk aisle. (In an organic market, many items are sold in bulk from large plastic containers that you open at the bottom and allow gravity to push the food out of the container until you have filled your bag to the desired height and then you release the handle to stop the flow.) The elderly woman approached us with a baffled and irritable look upon her face, “How does this work?” she said as she shook the plastic bag at Omar. Without hesitation, Omar quipped, “You open the bag from the top, place it over your head and close it off firmly around your neck. Breathe in and out rapidly until it’s all over and you are out of your wrinkled misery.” Of course Omar was reprimanded for the comment and several days later he was called back into the break room to get reprimanded once again by our manager.
    “Omar,” he said, “we have to have a talk.”
    “What, fucking now?” Omar said as he shrugged his shoulders and hung his head.
    “Omar, you have been reprimanded for rudeness and your social skills are horrendous. You don’t bathe and your odor offends the customers. Now I have to address your work attire.”
    “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? You told us a few days ago that we would not have to be back in uniform until everybody had their power turned back on and could begin washing their clothes again.”
    Our manager was beginning to get flustered. “Those,” he gestured at Omar with both hands, “are not clothes you work in.”
    “No,” Omar murmured, “the’re my favorite Jammies.” Omar was wearing a red, plaid pair of pajama bottoms with holes in the knees, a striped pajama top with the dominant color of yellow, and slippers that looked like small hedgehogs with eyes and a tails.
    “Exactly, Omar, they are pajamas. Pajamas and slippers. When I said you didn’t have to wear your uniform, I just assumed everyone would understand that t-shirt and jeans would be preferred. Not pajamas.”
    Omar leaned back against the table in the break room and twisted his beard as he thought. “But you never clarified that.”
    “Your right, Omar. I didn’t clarify it because it’s common sense. You’re hanging by a thread, Omar. If you need this job, then you need to quit alienating your coworkers and start reaching out to make them feel like you want to be part of the team. Everybody considers you the biggest prick they have ever met. If you don’t pull a rabbit out of your hat quick, then you’re going to be looking for another job.”
    As our manager stormed from the room, I could tell Omar was embarrassed and worried about loosing his job. “I don’t need this job, but I like working here. Everybody is pretty cool actually; I just hate trying to be nice. I think it is a stupid thing that society requires from us when we are living in “the man’s” world.” I felt bad for him because he genuinely felt this way; it wasn’t an act.
    The following morning was Omar’s day off; his face was long and miserable as he walked into the store in his pajamas with two large boxes of donuts, his spirit broken by “the man.” He walked into our manager’s office.
    “Hey, I thought we might throw a donut party this morning,” Omar said mumbling, afraid somebody might hear him. It looked painful for him to try and smile. “I bought two dozen donuts for the crew, just to, you know, lift everybody’s spirits. It’s been a tough week on all of us.”
    “Really, Omar. You bought donuts for the crew. Seriously?” our manager asked. Omar looked to the ground as he shook his head, ‘yes.’ “I can’t believe this,” he reached into his desk and handed Omar the company camera, “take this back to the break room with the donuts. I have to capture this once-in-a-life-time affair. I’ll round up the troops and meet you back there in ten minutes.”
    In the break room, Omar refused to say much. Our manager knew it embarrassed him, so he continually threw praise toward Omar for his “effort to lift the store’s spirit,” with a donut party on his day off.
    After everybody dispersed and went back to work, Omar and I sat in the break room discussing his job. “These fucking donuts set me back a good ten-bucks.”
    “Well, it probably saved your job.”
    “They didn’t even finish them all. I should of just bought one-and-a-half dozen, saved a few bucks. Man, I feel like my principles have been raped. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so disgraced.”
    I didn’t know how to console him. He was utterly defeated and there was no way to lift his spirits. “I don’t know what to say, Omar. You did the right thing. You had to, to keep your job.” I stood and told him I had to get back to work. “Do you want me to take this back up to the office?” I asked him as I held the company camera.
    “No, No. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it up there after I clean all this shit up.”
    The following morning, Omar failed to show up for work. Our store manager seemed somewhat relieved even though the stress on the crew was strong. Our boss would not have to fire Omar after all, instead he could list this as “job abandonment” on Omar’s part, leaving the store safe from any wrongful termination lawsuit.
    Near the end of my shift, I was called into the manager’s office. My boss was extremely hot, doing everything he could to keep his anger under control. He shook the camera at me, “did you know about these?” he asked me.
    “Know about what?”
    He could tell through my confusion that I was oblivious to what was on the camera; then he showed me. There were several slides with Omar’s erect penis adorned in donuts, the shaft sticking right through the donut holes. “He stuck his dick in our donuts before we ate them. We ate dick-donuts! What kind of animal does this? How do you even think this shit up?”
    “Well, sir, nobody thinks like Omar,” I allowed him to believe that the pictures were taken prior to the party. That’s how Omar would of wanted it. He finally screwed, “the man.”



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