Hex Refund

Capitalism is the worst thing to happen to America. Sure, that seems weird to say when so many other things seem experientially worse, but don’t be fooled, for the one thing that ties them all together, and amplifies their awfulness all the more, is capitalism. So it stands to reason that curing America of that scourge not only takes precedence over the other crises, but the crises in turn get solved with the vanquishing of capitalism.

I suppose if capitalism is that bad and can be dealt with decisively, more power to the person so equipped to pull it off. But the whole animus toward capitalism seems off to me. As if it is misunderstanding the source and proportion of its own discontent. If I had to make a finer point of it, I’d say that the issue is not with capitalism itself, which we carry out more or less automatically, but with stark reminders that we carry out capitalism. This is not to say that the matter is less serious, but allows us a clearer perspective.

The weight of capitalism is lighter relative to the lightness of the cost of products that the capitalist market makes available to you. Which is to say, when there is no tension between what you need to buy and what you want to buy. But when prices increase and your wages are, at best, flat, the tension becomes noticeable. This could express itself in selfish moments when you must reckon with your own limitations. But that is easy compared to the more acute experience of having to be aware of the limitations of the person nearest you.

Let’s explore this with an illustrative example!

Two women work in the same building. One sits at a desk during the day while the other cleans around the desk at night. After work, the woman at the desk goes out with her friends at a bar. There they encounter a gypsy. Uh oh! The woman at the desk has just spilt the gypsy’s Long Island iced tea all over her shawl, an heirloom passed down from one gypsy mother to the next over centuries! The gypsy isn’t exactly pleased by this occurrence. And though the woman is registering that displeasure enough to apologize repeatedly, the bass drops from the DJ booth overwhelm her pleas, and the hard-of-hearing gypsy places a curse on her.

Meanwhile, the woman cleaning around the desk is just getting off of work and waiting at the bus stop to get home for some much needed relaxation. Wouldn’t you know it? An entirely different gypsy woman appears in the seat beside her. (Must be a convention in town or something.) The gypsy is slurping very loudly on a Big Gulp, almost like the bitch is doing it on purpose. The woman has sort of a headache and doesn’t want to deal with this shit right now, so she grabs the Big Gulp and throws it into the street. Unfortunately she did not notice that the bus had only just arrived, and she actually launched it perfectly into the door and at the bus driver. The soda-drenched bus driver is a practicing witch and says that, while it’s not his policy to cast bad spells, when he gets back home he will put a cast a very special bad spell just for her. Also she is free to walk home.

When both women wake up the next morning, they find that that their respective curse-layers were not fucking around. Sitting at the kitchen table of the desk woman’s condo is her greatest fear at the present moment: John Wayne Gacy in full clown makeup. Meanwhile, in the recliner in the den of her parents’ house, the cleaning woman finds, if not exactly her greatest fear, something no less obnoxious: a reverse centaur, the bottom half of which is the boy who took her virginity, as indicated by his camo-pattern cargo pants, Adidas sandals, and Red Hot Chili Peppers calf tattoo.

The desk woman’s true crime acumen tells her that she is technically safe, but this is still a problem she does not need. She contacts her HOA. They don’t cover supernatural occurrences. She goes to the nearest priest. He refers her to some sort of Santeria-adjacent practitioner, who is at least discreet and professional. She must pay out-of-pocket, though, which means cutting into the vacation fund. At least she’ll still be able to have them when this is over, she rationalizes as she hands over the check.

The cleaning woman has been staring at the abomination in her den for hours now. What to do? Let’s take away any kind of social safety net. No taxpayer-funded exorcisms! Let’s also give her a substandard religion. Like a revival “church” that actually meets at a hotel conference room and makes liberal use of PowerPoint for sermons. Let’s call it Surge Church. The pastor remembers her parents’ miserly approach to donations. He does not return her calls. She consults the clerk at the head shop in the strip mall. He says he has a cousin across state lines who knows a guy across another state line who can take the centaur and get him into the glue factory. He will not be cheap. But she has lingering student debt. She tells her parents who threaten to kick her—and only her for some reason—out. So what does she do? She goes back to the bus stop hoping the gypsy would be there. Luckily she is. The woman asks the gypsy to help her lift her curse. “You didn’t even apologize,” the gypsy woman says. “Okay, I’m sorry. Now will you help me?” “Bitch you didn’t even mean that. And you didn’t say ‘please.’” The woman gets on her knees. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?” The gypsy woman stands smiling in a long silence. “I’ll swing by tonight.”

So “tonight” in gypsy talk actually means “the following afternoon.” She shows up with a bunch of incense and Joan Didion’s The Book of Common Prayer. “What the actual fucking fuck?” the gypsy asks regarding the centaur, still seated in the recliner. “Well,” the cleaning woman says, “can you get rid of it?” “Fuck no. I’m like 1/3 Sicilian, you racist bimbo.” And she leaves.

A new work week. The woman at the desk breathes a sigh of relief. The exorcism took without incident. She is light on money at the moment, but it can be made up for. She’s even thinking of asking for a raise for the exemplary performance of whatever it is she does. No, it’s not the smoothest of sailing. She has flashes in the corner of her eye of John Wayne Gacy, still beclowned and brandishing his balloons. Sometimes it’s actually Brian Dennehy as Gacy, which is sort worse? Still, she knows that this will subside. Hopefully by her earliest possible girls trip.

Yet as she’s leaving, a different feeling comes over her. A nag of guilt surges up from her stomach to her throat as she sees the cleaning woman coming to work on the shoulders of a horrible half-equine beast. She has not been able to get rid of it, so now she is putting it to use. Warily, the desk woman approaches the cleaning woman. She puts her hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she weeps. “I’m so sorry that there is only one dead curse and not two.” “Huh?” the cleaning woman blurts backing her shoulder out from under the crazy woman’s hand.

The desk woman returns to her condo, incensed by the injustice of it all. Something should be done. So she resolves to vote for AOC. Even though she does not live in the Bronx. She doesn’t even live in New York City.

THE END 🤔🐴