Documentarian

Rain was visiting old friends at a spot that, if you were keeping track, was the place to be from 8:30PM till around 10, at which point the people to be had branched away from tapas and $15 drinks and into their chosen industry, whether it was designer chemicals, performance art, combative fornication, or professional-grade sleep, the type that people announce via social media like it were a Kickstarter campaign. Nobody with a life cares about basil-infusion after 10PM.  It was 9:15 when Rain arrived; she and her friends have never been here, but her friends brought along a tour guide named Brent, who was anxious to meet Rain.  You could hear every conversation in the room, but not understand a single word anybody was saying.  It seemed designed to allow you to speak and feel like you were heard, and listen the same way people listen at karaoke.  They catch the headline like a song title then return to their own internal dialogue until it’s their turn to sing.

Rain was visiting old friends at a trendy spot in LA, when it occurred to her how much time had gone by since they had spoken.  She walks in and thinks about the past 5 months.  Same job, same apartment, same wardrobe… as she approaches the table and notices a carefully groomed stranger talking to her friends, his messenger bag precariously draped over the round back of his chair, his eyes wandering to meet hers as they have been scheduled to, she realizes “Right! Boyfriend.”  Or rather, committed relationship at least; they haven’t really discussed titles.

Brent has a parlor trick where he can take any subject and segue to his effective panty dropper line of “I am an indie documentarian”, in 5 sentences or less.  Rain has read the same book of parlor tricks, so she replies, “So, please forgive my ignorance, what makes you an indie documentarian… are there corporate documentarians?” Just as Rain’s curt dismissal caused Brent’s scarcely contained rape fantasy to surface, the waiter approached the table and announced, “I’m sorry everybody, but the excessive narration of this story has sucked all of the oxygen from this room.  Please put on these masks or you will die.”  Nobody could talk for the rest of the night, so they survived. The end.