This thread started in a bar on a beautiful fall day last week. A woman sitting next to me turned to me and asked, "So what do you do?" a question that always bores me and causes me to respond with something odd. So I said "I write rainy day anthems for indifferent mosquitoes." which, of course, got the odd look I was going for and then once she recovered she laughed and said "I bet there is some hidden meaning in that."

I said "Of course there is, that's the story of life isn't it? All these hidden meanings we have to deal with."

I won't bore everybody with the whole conversation but it wandered through a few mutations where we discussed life, booze, and then politics. As we talked a guy watched us and listened from the corner of the bar. Finally he got up and came over and sat on the other side of the woman. She was a sales person and he, get this, was a postal worker. Only the postman no need to be alarmed...yes, I did actually work that in when she asked what he did.

He brought a new twist to the conversation and I guess since we were talking politics and that was when he decided to enter the fray he felt it made sense to segue into a conversation of 9/11 conspiracy theories. You know, that whole all this voting stuff is hopeless because we are just little bits of gristle passing through the giant machine that is big government and corporate mayhem theme. Anyway, it took only a short period of time until we got to the point where I wanted to take leave of the conversation because she was getting too drunk and the postman too petulant due to the fact that I would not take his admitted world-wide-webbed theories very seriously. I tried to swerve our now out of control bus down that dusty, dirty road of philosophy pulling a quote from Jacques Derrida out of my ass about naming your monsters and how once named they become pets...this got the glassy-eyed stare of too much Patron and a look which brought very real meaning to the term "going postal."

I thanked the two of them for their company and got up to leave but quickly found my exit would not be so easy. The postman whirled on his bar stool grabbed my arm and said "You know you can verify everything I've said." sounding sort of less peeved and more desperate now, knowing I guess he had run out of time to sell me his wares. I stared into his face sizing up the situation and noting the unkempt status of his beard. Different strategies ran quickly through my head and I settled on the one that amused me most at that moment "When in Rome."

So, I said "There's a reason I never told you what I do for a living."

It seemed not to occur to him that he had never asked.

"It's not that I don't want to talk about what you are talking about," I said trying to sound sympathetic and surreptitious at the same time "it's that I can't."

I knew he was on the hook when he said nothing and waited for me to continue.

I raised my free arm and put my hand on his shoulder saying "Have you ever heard of the Franklin Cover-up?" knowing it was probably a coin toss as to whether he had but truth is it was the only juicy scandal related thing I could come up with at that moment and I had used it many times in the past when bar talk turned too crazy or too boring for me to handle anymore.

"No." he said. "Something to do with Wall Street?" he guessed.

"No," I said "look it up." and he let go of my arm and turned and asked the bartender for a pen. She obliged and he wrote "The Franklin Coverup" on his cocktail napkin and stuffed it in his pocket.

At this point Patron girl woke from what seemed to be quickly becoming a stupor and interrupted and said "I thought you said you were a writer?"

I said I had to run, and free from the grasp of the gnarly bearded, conspiracy minded postman I quickly headed for the door hearing him ask her as I left "So, that guy is a writer?"

In my mind I saw the bus being engulfed by flames.

Quickly moving toward my car I thought "God help the poor bastard that runs into that guy after his next spin around the internet."

I shoved the key into the ignition and started it up as the radio announcer was babbling about something which led into that song by Rufus Wainwright. It seemed to perfectly capture my mood and I drove away completely entranced by it lost in the beauty of the fading sunlight and the salacious colors of the foliage.

Sometimes moments that vivid worry me and I wonder if I will suffer insomnia or nightmares about postmen and sales women wildly fucking in a grove of pornographically colored trees as in the distance buildings explode rhythmically lighting the night sky as if celebrating their frenzied gyrations.