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    The Rundown
    « Ode to a Stolen Guitar | Main | Now I know. »
    Thursday
    Apr012010

    Sad Lunch.

    DateThursday, April 1, 2010 at 1:29PM

    Photo by Alex Brown. http://alexbrownphotography.com/

    SAD LUNCH
    By Kevin Murphy 

    Based on a series of tweets sent April 1, 2010.

    Had lunch with Joyce Carol Oates - sliced bitter heart on stale rye, with raddichio slaw, served on an obituary page. I drank unsweetened cranberry juice, she had wine mixed with myrrh. Dessert was a warm brownie made of dryer lint and cigarette butts. It fell on the floor. We ate it anyway. 

    I offered to pick up the check. She heated the butter knife with the candle and burned me with it.

    We parted ways, I took a taxi. Cabbie said, "Where to?" I said "Away from all this misery" then I threw up in the ash tray. When I got home, I looked in my doggie bag. it was filled with the salt of human tears. Oates had switched bags on me again. 

    The End.

    # # # 

    Notes on "Sad Lunch" by Kevin Murphy

    This morning I noticed that Rosanne Cash, who I follow on Twitter, had written that she needed a good cry, and a reason to have one.  Soon after, Rosanne wrote that now she'd been plagued with enough heartbreaking stories to make her want to slit her wrists, and that her well-meaning followers should knock it the Hell off. Since I always assume that humor is a way to navigate sadness, I tweeted her thusly:

    @rosannecash You want sad, you should see the lunch I have

    To which Rosanne replied,

    @kwmurphy Haa.

    Apparently I had succeeded.  At least she didn't block me.  But then I remembered that some days before, my friend Veronica Belmont had written of sadness:

    Life's too short for my lunch to make me this sad.

    To which I had replied 

    @veronica "Sad Lunch" is the name of my post-Cyberpunk short story collection. 

    To which Veronica replied that she'd like to write the foreword. Which was all so very wonderful and flattering, to have an internet icon and one of my musical heroes appreciate a joke at a time when perhaps they needed one.  So by abstraction, keeping in mind that humor is a way through sadness, I set out to write the most ludicrously depressing set of Twitter vignettes I cold imagine on this day, this extraordinarily fine April First in Minnesota.  

    My mind as always shot back to the writing room at MST3K, where funny seemed to be in the air conditioning, and sadness was kept at bay during working hours. Mary Jo Pehl, I believe, had been reading some Joyce Carol Oates, that prolific and, well, even more prolific short story writer.  I've never taken to her.  I don't find her funny.  Oates, I mean, not Pehl.  MJ brought up the title of one of Oates' stories, "Because it is Bitter and Because it is My Heart." The context seemed to be in part wondering how she could know what her heart tastes like.  This might have led to the subject of lunch, a subject that was never far from our lips.  So in writing this dumb little assemblage of tweets, I have done so with compassion for the sad, and with fond memories of people who made me funnier that I ever could on my own.  

    -kwm

     My thanks to Alex Brown for giving me permission to use her wonderful photograph.  Find her work here.

    AuthorKevin Murphy | Comment91 Comments |

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    Reader Comments (91)

    Welcome back to your own blog, Kevin! I was duly designated the duty of welcoming you by a pack of sad clowns who smelt of Strong Drink and Salty Desperation (TM), available at participating Walgreens Pharmacies and fine Skid Row dispensaries.

    Randy

    April 1, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterRARoth

    At least you didn't have lunch with Flannery O'Connor. That would have ended violently.

    April 1, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterKeith

    Rather brilliant! So when do we get a novel out of you?

    April 2, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterJames Shearhart

    Robert Bolano always seems to bum me out something awful and most of the time Mccarthy does the same. I look forward to reading your fiction Mr. Murphey.

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