I Am Nobody's
Personal Food Taster
the commune's Rok Finger is going through a mid-meal crisis 

Monday, Feb. 18, 2002
Brace yourself, good people. I have news of the biggest importance: My wife Arvelyn and I have split up.

That’s right. After 30 years of marriage, there are issues which sometimes just cannot be worked out or addressed. It’s true, Arvelyn and I could not have been more alike had we been split from the same zygote, but thankfully it was a less disturbing and more natural coincidence, and our genitalia synched up perfectly. But all that is over. Our disagreements could not be overcome.

As we ate dinner one night, just Arvelyn and me—our cat Makeshift had prior arrangements he had to meet—we enjoyed some of the most delicious soup and meat loaf you’d ever tasted. We’re not sure where it came from, Arvelyn claimed she didn’t make it and the door to our house was open when we came home from our respective jobs. But possession is nine-tenths of the law, as the cliché goes, so we chowed down.

Now is where the trouble starts. The meat loaf, the soup—delicious. No argument. But there was a strange collection of yams, strange mainly because I’m not quite sure what yams were, they may have even not been yams, but I’m not going to belabor the story so I grabbed a random word. Arvelyn scooped some on her plate, sniffed it, and offered me a forkful. “Taste this,” she demanded.

Well, that was it. I tossed up the table and told her I needed some time apart. I couldn’t even stay to watch her clean up the mess, which I usually enjoy, that’s how frustrated I was.

I will not be anyone’s personal food taster, I tell you that much. I know if I was going to poison someone, yams, or whatever dish that was, is the first place I’d start. And Arvelyn knows sure enough, she’d better after all these years, how much I feel the rest of the world wants to poison her. I’ve told her enough times that all her sass back to the folks at Burger King could come back and bite her anytime, but she carries on in her cavalier fashion. That’s fine, let her risk her own neck, but how dare she test her possibly poisoned food on me first.

It’s a shame to flush 30 years of marriage down the drain in an instant, but I’ve done it before, you get over it after about five or ten more. There are so many mixed emotions, like rage and hate, anger and revile, not to mention complete disgust. How do you counter all of this? Maybe you can’t.

First I imagine we’ll sort out all the technical details. I assume we can divide the house down the middle like perfect sitcom fashion, as long as I get the half with the bathroom, never let anyone say I haven’t learned from Peter Brady’s follies. Arvelyn would probably like custody of Makeshift, but I would rather have him put to sleep than to argue about him. Plus, he’s been eyeing me suspiciously as of late and I notice money is missing from my secret hiding place.

Perhaps the time has come for Rok Finger to get out there in the singles scene again, to fill up his cup with love and slurp it loudly and rudely. I’m ready, people. I’m dangerous.

Although I think to start I will mope around in my underwear for five or ten years.