The Compulsion of Lack

He smiles, and it’s contagious.  She returns a flashy grin and stokes the base of a clunky black box—an electric and completely portable fireplace!  For the low, low price of…oh, never mind.  She is in awe of its sheer convenience.  This box completes her.  It is the world and there is not an object more precious, no other object that could fill the electric-box-shaped void inside her heart.  She is oblivious to the mad chaos outside of her perfectly fabricated suburban living room.

Screaming people pour into the streets.  It is election day.  Hours later, men in suits nervously play a game of chess in some convoluted office.  He is announced.  Bursts of celebration seize the nation.  For the first time in history, a man of color is elected President of the United States of America, and his name is Chris Rock.           

The streets are emptied now, and most have met inside a dark, crowded room with a few uncomfortably glaring lights and a stage to the front with full accessibility to gawk.  The lights worsen when they glint off the over-emphasized smile of a man on the stage.  He distorts his face and delivers an endless entourage of bad marriage jokes.  The people laugh hysterically, their faces red.

She has had a falling out of sorts with the black box.  It no longer suits her.  Instead, a woman dressed in black now poses before her, modeling a hand-crafted Italian cameo.  An exaggerated Italian man converses with her in his thick accent.  He is an expert of Italian cameos because he is, himself, Italian.  Soft music plays in the background.  She agrees readily.

 “Spectacular!”