Dejeuner

If you wanted to not be a prole, or rude, you would find a better way of writing. --Anonymous


 As I have mentioned before on these pages, I am the son of a plumber and a factory worker. There isn't much more of a prole background to be found that is more prole than mine. I am not overly proud of it but there is the square root of fuck all I can do about it.  My mantra of 'once a prole always a prole' is a firmly held belief. You might see some Joe average ass hat win the lottery, and buy the fancy cars, the big house, and surround themselves with opulence, but they are just trying to compensate for being a prole. They are just the nouveau riche now, it doesn't change their fundamental make up one little bit.

Truth be told, while I am not proud of my prole background, I have come to embrace it. Not that I have a lot of choice, but either way I can't hide from it. A true prole is the enemy of pretense, and all of those fancy places that people would pretend to pretense like to shop, be seen, and (mostly) eat, are places that proles like myself feel the most uncomfortable. It is the angry proles, like myself, that also feel the most contempt for these types of places. I have personally found that the pretentiousness of a place can be measured by the fact that (in my part of the country at least) they serve shrimp and grits.  It is an article of faith that if a restaurant has shrimp and grits on the menu, proles such as myself will not be wanting to partake of the menu. Price matters in a lot of things, food is one of the few things that I am not so sure about. Maybe if it is steak, but a grit is pretty much a grit, and one of the FEW foods that I refuse without a doubt to EVER eat, and a shrimp is pretty much a shrimp. They don't use fancy nets to catch the fancy shrimp.

This is to say, that for the most part, even if I wanted not to be a prole, I feel I don't have a lot of choice. I can certainly 'pass' for a non-prole if the occasion demands it. I can, if I want to (which is that hard part, getting me to want to) carry on the most pretentious of conversation with the best of the pretense lot. However, I rarely feel the need to, and usually doing it makes me feel slightly dirty. Never try to deny what you are, no matter what kind of Eliza Doolittle bullshit people try to pull on you, be true to yourself, and (if possible) your roots. Civilized society isn't the only place were you can have intellectually refined conversations, and I have had more intellectually challenging conversations over BBQ pork, than I have ever had over a plate of shrimp and grits.

The atmosphere that you are paying so dearly for may be all well and good, but more likely than not, some prole is cooking that forty dollar entree you ordered, and making fuck all to do it. The one hundred and fifty bucks you plop down on ONE meal, ordered to satisfy your appetite, and your desire to be one of the 'in' crowd, could probably feed a family of three for three or four days. However, that is a distressing thought, and the 'in' crowd (the pretense lot) probably doesn't like to think too many distressing (or any) thoughts, they would ruin the ambivalence.

There has been, in my very limited, experience one thing that does level the playing field between us proles and the pretense lot. There is generally one area where no matter the fancy finishing school, the pretty dresses, the acting classes, the elocution lessons, the piano teacher, or the riding lessons proles and pretense are the same. It is the one place where most of the female members of the pretense lot become, though not as often, nor as crudely I am sure, what Napoleon, that well known lover of the ladies, liked to call baby factories. Of course the big difference is the pretense lots babies get to own the factory, the prole lots (like the wolf that raised me) get to work in them. 


I hope that answers the first part of Anonymous' comment about choosing not to be a prole. I guess the simpler answer would be even if I wanted to, I couldn't but I figured I would also try to address the second part of her comment about finding a better way of writing, by using this response to practice my writing 'talent'. It is a very limited talent, and trust me Anonymous, if I could just 'find' a better way of writing I would. However, I fear/know that a better way of writing is not to be found at your local Starbucks, tucked amongst the lattes and the cafe du laits. I fear that for me a 'better way of writing' is a bridge too far, but since the internet allows me to do it for free, and I sometimes get a lot of pleasure out of both the act of writing, and some of the responses I get, I fear that I am here to stay after all.

Therefore, like the good prole that I am, lacking the funds to purchase a 'better way of writing' I keep plugging away at this keyboard (since I type this blog, it's too tedious to hand write), in the vain hopes that a 'better way of writing' will appear. If it does I will be pleasantly surprised, like a child at Christmas that gets exactly what they asked for.