Alone I stand, covered in BBQ sauce, eating a pickle.
The guests at the party are of distinguished nature, some would even say the are academics and intelligentsia of some sorts. The people that can name the composer of a piece of classical music and accurately pronounce ingredients in various Western European languages. The sort in whose vocabulary the word toilet does not exist.
Yet I am here, all raggedy among them. Nobody noticed yet that I don’t hold my wineglass at the stem but fully fondle its voluptuous shape. For I am drinking faster than my hands can bring it to room temperature. Alongside the ramblings about Kants categorical imperative, I am invisible.
I stray like a cat, light on my feet, with squinting eyes, trying to make sense of it all. Who has lead me into this treacherous place, the world of competing egos and phrases that are uttered, neither understood by the author nor by the recipient? I mumble along, I am nothing but a pantomime in their play. Watch me grab my invisible rope as I swing from group to group! I am Tarzan and my glass of vino is Jane.
I found my way to the catering, a table of delicacies whose names I have never read before. Pigs in a blanket sounds fun, so I grab the piglets from the silver tray. The intelligentsia doesn’t eat, it nibbles. Thought is the real food, wine the appetiser, main course and dessert.
My piglets are mad, they pay me back by separating them from their herd on the silver plate by spraying sauce from their doughy blanket. Fair enough, I think to myself as I let them run free. Shoo, back to your comrades, go and be cosy!
What’s left is the pickle on the skewer. Sharp aromas of vinegar battle the acidity of fermented grapes. Another firework in my oral cavity.
Despite the abundance, find myself wondering. Why am I here? Who are these people?
Kant whispers into my ear: Sapere aude!
That’s right Immanuel, this is actually the wrong house!