Tag Archives: intellectual

A Kind of Thin-Skinned Annoyance

At the end of the famed Savile Row there’s a small men’s clothier called K’s. Although it claims to specialize in men’s bespoke clothing (as every men’s clothier on the famed Savile Row does), those in the know know K’s true specialization to be things made of silk.  They know, too, of the proprietor’s prominent role in the black-market silkworm trade. But they don’t care. People much more important than you visit K’s from far away places.

K used to have an apprentice: a former leftist intellectual who turned his back on a career in “the academy” because of a profound distaste for its increasing corporatization and residual and unwarranted snobbiness. And because he was totally into fashion. Rumors suggest that K’s apprentice fell in love with a woman who worked someplace nearby, a former cocaine addict who was not very pretty but nevertheless attractive for indiscernible reasons.

Some say K was jealous of the couple. They also say that he fed them to his silkworms and that he subsequently offered an exclusive collection of extra fine silk handkerchiefs called “LoveLost.” An edgy enough name for a collection of handkerchiefs, but they weren’t worth what they cost.

 


musique d’ameublement

It took him much too long to realize that his new tufted-back chairs were eating his other pieces of furniture. In fact, it was not until the girl he, like, was totally in love with said to him one morning, K, your dresser looks sad, that he realized the ordinariness of his world was creeping toward impasse.

Or whatever.

She was right, the girl he, like, was totally in love with: his dresser did look sad. An inquisitive sort, she pried further: Why did you get such a sad dresser? She figured it was some sort of high intellectual thing to surround oneself with negative affect–K being a high intellectual and all. The truth was that K’s dresser was less sad than afraid–fearful that today would be the day that K’s new tufted-back chairs would decide to eat him. K hadn’t really noticed that his furniture was slowly disappearing: he was in love and when one is in love, one doesn’t really notice things.

But there is one thing K will notice: tomorrow his tufted-back chairs will decide to go after the girl he, like, is totally in love with. He’ll notice, too, tears falling from his dresser’s eyes.