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epitome of incomprehensibility
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When I try to be funny and say "occupy the kitchen sink!" as a response to Occupy Wall Street, dream-world literalism will change my surroundings into a giant kitchen sink.
The bridge between the two basins is now a wooden dock. A security guard in a blue uniform tells me to stay away, since the sink is being prepared for the video shoot. I understand instinctively that he means a Justin Bieber music video.
But I want to swim. So I have to use my wits. I tell him: "I'm Justin Bieber."
He shakes his head.
I try again. "I'm Selena Gomez."
He doesn't think I'm Selena Gomez either. So I give up on these un-impersonatable young pop singers; I plan to make this giant sink a setting for MY story.
I'm in the story, but I can't quite control it. As proof, I've aged backwards to the age of about eighteen. People of similar age surround me on the dock, four or five boys and one other girl besides me. We're all in bathing suits. It is to be understood that the boys are shallow, though the water level is deeper than before.
The other girl looks like my friend H's sister, but her name is Jhumpa Lahiri, same as the writer. She's a great diver (it is to be understood) because she's related to Captain Nemo's daughter Janni from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic. Anyway, to prove some point, she strips naked because she dives better that way.
The boys jeer. As Jhumpa-Janni jumps smoothly into the water, they say that Indian girls are ugly because they have hairy arms. They say that, but one of them, hypocritical or betrayed by his poor innocent sex organs, has a hard-on. The prurient writer-character could point it out and embarrass him... but no, that would be cruel. So I push him in the water.
He just splashes and sputters, too shallow to go very far. But Jhumpa-Janni has vanished. I can see the end of the sink, but she has gone beyond its confines somehow. Maybe, I think, she found the way into the ocean.
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