in response to Ulysses by James Joyce

“Yes,” I said, “yes I will Yes.” “No,” he said, “no you won’t No.” “Yes,” I said, “yes I’ll remember next time to take out the trash, which—and I’m only adding this because it’s two o’clock in the morning and we have plenty of time before the alarm clock—I’d like to offer is usually the Man’s job, but of course over the years I can see how I’ve, with the help of my mother, emasculated you to such a severe degree that such a simple task may now seem impossible to a debilitated spirit such as yourself.” “No,” he said, “no you don’t understand. I didn’t take out the trash not because I’m dickless but because I was busy hacking into your, arguably our, overstock.com account in order to empty the cart you filled drunk off that six pack—which by the way I was saving for the dog—which amounted to two thousand dollars, needed to delete that shit because I’m not a walking bank account, which I said I’m so sorry.” “Yes,” I said, “I know you’re sorry. Yes, I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for saying yes, but I guess that’s the best choice a 19-year-old pregnant girl from Moline Illinois has in life, right? To say yes to that overweight Nokia customer service representative who got her pregnant on the third date, right? And yes, of course you are not, as you so eloquently established, a ‘walking bank account,’ but rather, a sitting-on-his-ass unemployed fuck. And it wasn’t two thousand dollars, but two hundred, which if you bothered to get new glasses you’d have seen.” “No,” he said, “no, you’re forgetting what this conversation is even about. I was only saying that I felt you were passive aggressively, almost incidentally, forgetting to take out the trash as a commentary on my emasculation, sort of, like, bringing attention to the subject; the allusion being that if I wasn’t chronically or even clinically depressed I’d simply have taken out the trash like a normal person.” “Yes,” I said, “yes, you got me! You have it all figured out, you asshole. That was my vicious plan all along: to not take out the trash—not because I work sixty plus hours a week in order to make the mortgage, on which we are three payments behind, because my dickless husband can’t get off his fat zit infested ass and get a job, and I came home too exhausted after waiting in line to buy groceries for dinner, which I made, like I have done every single night for the past ten years of this prison sentence slash anti-orgasm of a marriage, and I simply forgot—no, oh no, I didn’t take out the trash just to irritate you. Oh, you fat genius, you got me all figured out.” “No,” he said, “no, you think it’s so easy don’t you? This is exactly what I mean about the emasculation, and don’t get me started on your mom, from whom you’ve acquired all your dick hacking tricks. No, you’re not getting out of this one. I know you’re being sarcastic. Yeah I never went to college and you did, but I just happen to know what sarcastic means. It’s when you say something to purposely mean the opposite.” “Yes,” I said, “yes, finally, you get it. Finally you fucking understand. When you say something and mean the opposite, yes, that is sarcastic. It is also called sad—like when I said yes to you on your knees in the parking lot behind the Nokia store and let you slip that cheap dull ring on my finger, I meant the opposite.”