As it turned out, this was my last assignment at Columbia College.
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(2nd Draft)
FICTION II
5/4/08
Desert Island Christmas Dinner
Day 10:
I'm an American, damnit! That God-damn tour ship! This isn't supposed to happened to me! Damn Southern Hemisphere--Spring in November!--fucked up weather, ass-backward-seasons, and lame-ass tour boats that capsize in small storms. Now we're stranded on this desert island!? How much stupider can this get? Tropical desert island! If we were gonna be trapped in a --what's that word--klee-shay--why couldn't it at least have been the one where we get shipwrecked with the Swedish Bikini Team or something? But no...we had to be stuck in the klee-shay of having our companions on this remote-forsaken island to be a bunch of people who don't even speak English. Some Orientals who chatter on and on in their high speed way and look at us as if we're the funny ones. They creep me out. We keep wondering if they're talking about us, but none of us--y'know, the Americans--can make out a word of what they're saying. So we don't really know, but it sure seems like they are. We keep an eye on them, suspicious 'cuz we know they're talking about us.
Day 13:
The others seem to be in two groups. Maybe three. One group is these three guys, I guess they're Chinese or Koreans or some other slantys... Then there's the three French people. I hate French people. Think they're better than the rest of us. But they're French, so what do they know? Then there's this other guy. He's a slanty-eye dude, too, but he doesn't speak to the rest of them--sits apart from 'em and doesn't talk to them when they try to bring him into their chattering talks. He looks at everyone like he's about to kill us. Vicious, but he's a little guy. Then there's us--a couple of Aussies or Kiwis or whatever the fuck they are down here, and this Scottish "bloke" and then me and the three other Americans. We've been talking about what to do. Almost two weeks here. At first we were all out on the beach every night with a big-ass fire. But after five nights of that, the food that washed up with us on the beach was gone and everyone was getting hungry. That's when we started pulling away from each other. Forming these little groups. Not too close to each other, but not too far away neither. Them Orientals didn't seem to have much trouble finding local food. Fruits and roots and leaves, they ate it all. Dumb fuckers. Going out all day and finding food and leaving us sitting here hungry...
We watched 'em eat the next few nights and then, well, they offered us food a couple of times, but of course we aren't going to eat tree bark or whatever. Fuck them and that.
Day 18:
Finally got the French guys to say something in English. I knew they could talk to us but just wouldn't. Too good for speaking English like they should. They came over when we had food and just as clear as English can be, asked us for some. I wanted to tell them "no"--just 'cause they're French--but, well...okay it wasn't our food...if it was, I wouldn't have given them any, but it wasn't mine to keep. It's that one guy's food. That single Oriental dude. Nice guy, though, for being a little vicious foreigner. He killed a boar somehow and dragged it back to the beach where he skinned and quartered it. Even brought some of the meat over to us to share! Cooked it up all tasty and we all had some. Eating with us, he cleared up some things we didn't know. In real good English, too. No accent even. The other Orientals are Chinese, not Korean. He's Cambodian. Like that means anything to us. Says his name's Pray-Cha-Cha, or somethin', but we call him Bruce-Lee. Bruce Lee was cool. The Frenchmen aren't French, they're Belgian. Like there's a difference? Maybe if they had beer with 'em, or something. Belgium has good beer, I guess, for not being American. The Scotsman told us that French fries really came from Belgium, not France. Like we wanna hear about french fries out here on this island where we're starving? Okay, so we haven't starved 'cause this gook-dude--Bruce-Lee-Cha-cha--gave us some pig to eat.
Day 27:
A few nights ago, last week, maybe, when we were eating the last of Bruce-Lee's pig, he made the comment that wild boar was a lot like human flesh. Fuckin' cannibal! is what we all thought right away. But then we got to thinking about it. We've got no food here but there's plenty of people. So we've been talking about this. Seriously. There's some considerations to be made. Like that soccer team in South America back in the 70s or whenever. Gotta do what we can to survive. But none of us are sick or dead. Yet. Are we going to wait forever, or maybe take matters into our own hands? Skinny people are out, they don't have enough meat on 'em. No one here is really fat, so that doesn't matter. We decided that eating more healthy food would probably make someone taste better. No fast food junk in their bodies, and chemicals or whatever. Too bad there's no vegetarians here. Or those other ones...the really annoying hippy freaks. Oh, yeah, vegans.
I bet vegans would be good meat.
Day 32:
Well, it wasn't that bad if ya didn't think about. It does taste a lot like that boar we had a coupla weeks ago. And things are a lot quieter around here. Less chatter. Those French-Belgian fuckers sure aren't talkin' much now, but when they do, they always speak English. They know who's in charge. Bruce-Lee sure can cook anything, just like he said. We'll keep him around to keep makin' meals for us. He speaks English pretty good and tells some funny jokes and can find all the trimmings to make the meat really tasty.
Last night he had Christmas dinner.
We ate Chinese.
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