Johnny America

 

In­tro to Existentialism

by

Illustration of a plate of chopped liver

I want­ed peo­ple to vis­it and leave slight­ly changed, you know. Didn’t al­ways go how I’d hoped. Can­dace said she want­ed a chai tea and I pro­vid­ed. Hon­ey, too. We talked about phi­los­o­phy. She’d just been in­tro­duced to the Ex­is­ten­tial­ists. “Do you know Sartre?” she asked. I told her I did, but didn’t en­joy his writ­ings that much. “Frankly, I think he’s a bit dat­ed,” I of­fered. “Ca­mus still works for me,” I added, “at least his fic­tion.” She seemed dis­ap­point­ed, as though she were hop­ing I looked up­on Sartre fa­vor­ably. “But why the Ex­is­ten­tial­ists now?” I asked. She wouldn’t an­swer at first, but fi­nal­ly she ad­mit­ted that she was hop­ing to im­press a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor she’d met at a mix­er a few weeks be­fore. “Oh re­al­ly,” I said. “In­ter­est­ing.” She smiled un­easi­ly. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “Noth­ing,” I said. “I just find it in­ter­est­ing that you came to me to puff your­self up a lit­tle, prime your­self for this pro­fes­sor fel­low.” I searched for an ex­pres­sion I’d heard in the past that would score a few points be­fore she left. “What am I, chopped liv­er?” I blurt­ed, but the door had al­ready closed be­hind her. 

Filed under Fiction on August 16th, 2024

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