I was watering the back yard at dusk. Right when my face hit the invisible web, I thought, ah, this is that big fat spider Gamma was going on about.
The neighbors probably thought I was having an LSD flashback. I danced and clawed at my face and hair with one hand, and squirted everything with the hose I held in the other.
I finished watering (front too, and the stuff in pots) and went inside and opened a kitchen drawer to sort flours when a big goddamned bumblebee flew out!!!
- A big black bee flew out of the kitchen drawer!
- What was a big black bee doing in the drawer?
- Why is the big black bee flying so funny?
- And why is it following me everywhere I go?
- Why is it still following me?
- That is not bee-like behavior.
- Oh, it’s the spider!
- Mother!
- fucker!
- Get it off me!
Yeah so I got it off. I clawed at my leg and stuff trying to find the web it was still hanging on and that i was sort of towing it around with and eventually found it and was sort of dangling it there when it looked up at me and said the following:
That’s the problem with you Americans.
It went on: “Not only, but especially you Americans. Never have I seen a bunch of people more brainwashed than you. You are, as a group, people who need a little perspective. You need to get out more.”
“Well, I did emigrate to Austria,” I said.
“I said, ‘as a group’,” said the spider.
“You pledge allegiance to a fucking flag,” said the spider. “And no one knows your Pledge of Allegiance started out as publicity for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Most of you still think Europeans discovered America. You think Democrats are leftists. Democrats today are to the right of Nixon.”
“Ok,” I said. “But I agree with everything you said.”
“Of course you do, I’m a figment of your imagination. You made me up. Spiders don’t really talk.”
“Actually you really did scare the shit out of me hanging off me like that.”
“How the fuck do you think I felt? No but listen, one of the most dangerous things you’ve been brainwashed to believe? That history is made by the Great Man (or the Great Woman).”
“Ok.”
“Americans are always looking for a savior. Other people too, but Americans are especially noxious about it. Kennedy! Obama! (We shall ignore for the purposes of our argument their emphasis on organizing and collective action). Greta Thunberg is here, we can all relax, she’ll save the environment,” said the spider.
“And now everyone is losing their shit about RBG passing away.”
“Well…” I said.
“It is sad. It is sad when a person dies, I get that. Even I, a spider who deals death to countless insects caught in my web every day get that. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a great woman. But she wasn’t a Great Woman. How can anyone be so blind to think a zillion year old lady was going to protect us from You-Know-Who, that other “Great Man” (to his cultists) like some kind of kajira battle?”
“Ok.”
“No Great Person has ever done shit. You morons don’t get that. Stuff gets done when the guillotines come out. The torches and pitchforks. I am speaking somewhat hyperbolically. Somewhat.”
“Well, it’s not like there are no protests,” I said.
“It’s not enough.”
The spider looked at me, and I looked at the spider.
“General strike,” I said.
The spider nodded. “Now take me back outside. To the hydrangea, if you don’t mind.”