Brittany

“It doesn’t matter,” says Dorian. “We’re all the same,” his voice slurring with imminent inebriation. “And I don’t say that fatalistically, I take comfort in it. You, me, Tadam Biddle,” he gestures outward, vaguely towards the streets of Lower Manhattan. “Working stiffs, housewives, schoolchildren, church-goers, the upper class and middle class and—what are they calling it now?— working class, but then more specifically widows and illegal immigrants, truckers and people with master’s degrees, drifters, retired landowners, sovereign citizens, teamsters, the mentally insane, ambulance chasers, girlbosses, teachers and nurses, protesters, Southern aristocrats, temps, sex workers, Satanists, the young and beautiful, intravenous drug users, the people who stand outside of art galleries, industry plants, Canadian jocks, rust belters, foreign heirs, Hasids, carnies, plastic surgeons, men with Napoleon complexes, engineers, podcasters, the terminally ill, Holocaust deniers, terrorists, kings and queens, in the monarchical sense not the colloquial one. All the same.” “What are you?” I ask. “Easy,” says Dorian. “I’m the jester. My societal role allows me to speak truth to power. I’d say you are too but you don’t seem to participate in enough self-parody.” “I can make fun of myself.” “Alright, then you’re the jester too. Cheers, jester.” Dorian clinks his drink with my water glass which the more superstitious consider to be bad luck.”
― Madeline Cash, Earth Angel