SMILE AT MY MIDDLE FINGER

"I didn't intend on pissing anyone off. In fact, I assumed that people would respond with... weird smiles, some surprised expressions and a couple of playful middle finger returns. I mean the middle finger is almost like a greeting by now. Johnny Cash has done it to all of us so many times from t-shirts and posters and that's a guy who's almost universally admired. I mean maybe the Chinese have never heard of him but then they also don't know what a middle finger means so you know..."

He doesn't know what his point is and his voice trails off into the nothing that surrounds him. The whiteness holds his silence indifferently. He blinks down on the whiteness of his eyes.

"I don't think that it was justified. No, I think it was just stupid. I mean you don't just run people over because they finger you. I had an eight thousand dollar Canon. It's huge. You can see that someone's a professional when they bring it up to their face to take pictures. I wasn't just some stupid kid fucking people off for kicks. I had a deadline. I mean I had to get three hundred reaction shots by the end of the month. I fingered him for professional purposes."

He doesn't know why but he feels compelled to plead his case, to explain himself to something hiding in the white. It's like the whiteness is a drug that's motivating the chemistry of his mind in a certain way. Or maybe it's just good old fashioned other worldly magic.

His forehead has the imprint of the buses' license plate but there are no mirrors for him to see this. He will never again see a mirror and someday he will forget what mirrors are as he repeats his story again and again. His body will slowly fade into non-existence and nothing but his voice will remain repeating the familiar phrases. And eventually these words will also lose their flesh and bones until there will be silence.

"Okay well maybe the whole idea was kind of stupid. I mean I guess people are going to get pissed off with me for flashing them the bird but it's not like I was living in New York. Vancouver, man. Vansterdam. Everyone's stoned and mellow and smiling. I just wanted to shake things up a little with something funny. I thought it was a funny idea for a coffee table book. I didn't intend on pissing anyone off."

The silence betrays no signs of being pissed off.