Belonging

The two men sat at their usual corner table.

They’d known each other for a long time and would catch up at the club occasionally. There was no sense of regularity to their meetings, an arrangement that suited their quite different walks of life. They had always been very comfortable with each other’s company. One had picked up a complimentary copy of that day’s paper and was perusing while the other gazed out of the window. He broke the silence that had settled between them.

“You know, I don’t really belong here.”

From behind the paper. “You don’t?”

“No, not really.”

The other lowered his paper and looked around. “But you’ve said on a number of occasions how much you like this club.”

“Not the club, the world. No, not the world, that’s not what I mean. This planet. That’s a better way of putting it.”

The other, knowing his friend well, put down the paper and sat back in anticipation. “Go on,” he said.

“Haven’t you ever felt like that?”

“I can’t say I have, no.”

“Perhaps you belong here.”

The other shrugged.

“I’m not sure, but I think it started with holes.”

“Ozone layer holes, you mean?

“No. Jeans.”

The other smiled and repeated, “Jeans.”

“Yes, you know, when it was the fashion, only, I didn’t know that. We were shopping when I saw this woman wearing a pair that had great open holes at her knees. I didn’t think much about it at the time. Felt sorry for her, maybe? Oh! I don’t know what I thought, really. Anyway, then I saw another, another pair. It was the third pair that did it. I asked. You see, I just asked her, my wife, I just asked and she said that they sell them like that now. That’s what she said. I said, you mean that they sell new jeans like that and people buy them, and she said yes…” He sat back.

The other remained silent.

He leant forward and sipped his drink. “I know, such a small thing, such a silly thing, but a wakeup call, I suppose. Anyway, it had a profound effect on me I can tell you that. I began to question it all, something I’d never really done before.” His hands flapped to show he was finished.

The other sat thinking for a while before saying. “All right. On this issue of belonging, where do you think you do belong?”

“Ah! That’s the issue, isn’t it? That’s the thing people go on about all the time, isn’t it? That’s the question everyone keeps asking; what am I doing here? Why am I here? Questions that I have never even considered asking myself. Have I been too busy? Have I always been too dumb to ask?

The other stirred. “All right. I repeat, where do you belong?”

“Ah! There’s the rub, eh? It’s so difficult to describe.” He sat thinking for a moment. “Out there, somewhere, I see a great swirling cloud of beings, all floating around in harmony with each other. Then… then one says to the other, of course they don’t actually say anything, they don’t have to, but let us say they do. One says to the other, I haven’t seen him for a while, have you? And the other replies, well, now you mention it, no, I haven’t. Then a third one says, no, he’s not coming back.” He pauses. “Of course, they don’t use any of this ‘him and he’ stuff, that’s just me talking, because I can, or should I say because I have to.” He fell silent for a bit before going on. He looked at his companion and sighed. “Then… then this third one says he’s been sent to one of those planet’s, the ones that have beings that operate those human forms and undergo life cycles.” He grimaced at the other. “That’s me, of course!”

His friend nodded slowly.

“Anyway,” the man says, taking a drink, “this has to be a very good scotch”

He put his empty tumbler down and asked the waiter for another.