Three Syllables
I had my good buddy Grant Hier on speakerphone when I saw it.
Grant is a writer and a poet. I know a lot of scribblers, and he is easily the most competent wordsmith I’ve ever met. His writing stirs. It splits time in half and lets you peek behind the veil that separates this world from the next, and you come away from it realizing that it’s all an illusion. There is no separation. You are not you. I am not me. We are us.
Here’s a quick sample from his long poem, Untended Garden:
And everything here is merely the same simple star ash rearranged.
Could it be that all is present, that everywhere is contained in where we are?
In addition to his masterful poetry, Grant also knows his way around a good old-fashioned dick joke. Makes sense. Like poetry, a joke has to be structured, timed, lean. They both drive toward surprise and revelation, and they luxuriate in wordplay. Like this classic:
What did the elephant say to the naked man? “How do you breathe through that thing?”
As I typed up that joke, I could hear Grant’s chuckle echoing in my head. He’s among my favorite people to make laugh, to tease, to banter, to verbally spar. He gives as good as he gets. We used to sit side by side in rambling meetings about curriculum and assessment and write lists with titles like The Last Thing You Want to Hear in This Meeting. And we’d pass the list back and forth like snickering teenagers enduring a World History lecture from the knucklehead who got into teaching so he could coach golf.
One year, at a Christmas party, I made a comment about Grant’s age. I like to take the ancient piss out of him at every possible opportunity. I said, “You know, Grant, you’re the same age as my mom.” Without missing a beat, he said, “Who do you think your daddy is?” And we laughed before pivoting to talking about the nature of God or the dream logic of David Lynch. That’s how we do. We slip in and out of the sacred and the profane with relative ease.
All this to say, Grant was the perfect person to be talking to when I saw a particularly poignant bumper sticker. I forget what Grant was talking about at the time, probably something thoughtful and elegant, so I interrupted him—
“I wish you were here to see what I’m seeing.”
“What’s that?”
“A bumper sticker, except it’s not on the bumper. It’s on the rear window, probably because it’s way too big for the bumper. In big bold baby blue letters, it says: I EAT ASS.”
At this point, we both started laughing for a good thirty or forty seconds. What follows is a summary of the rigorous intellectual inquiry that emerged from this encounter, an exploration of the artistic, moral, and literary merit of such self-expression.
I couldn’t see the driver, so the gender of the I EAT ASS sticker owner was unclear, but the mental gymnastics required to conclude that it was a woman were the kind usually reserved for Flat Earthers. So, yeah, it was probably a man. The baby blue color also suggested as much. And a quick Google search for ‘I EAT ASS sticker’ only strengthened the theory, yielding multiple news stories involving the notorious Florida Man.
While the driver wasn’t visible, the make and model of the car was. An early 2020s Toyota Corolla Hybrid. You have to admire the man’s intrinsic sense of irony. To balance the practicality and sensibility of such a vehicle with just three publicly indecent syllables—that’s a master at work.
The contrast brought forth a lot of questions specific to his process. I mean, this guy saw this sticker and thought, Yeah, this is an accurate representation of who I am. And then he exchanged legal tender for this sticker. He did work, received money, and then gave that money to a sticker manufacturer who, in turn, gave him a repugnant decal. And then the guy carved time out of his day to clean his rear window and prep the surface, position the decal—it was dead center and as level as a pool table—and carefully affix it to the glass, smoothing out the bubbles for a clean transfer. The obvious precision of the sticker’s installation suggests a high-wire level of commitment. There’s no way this guy second-guessed his I EAT ASS ethos.
You also have to respect his inclusive nature. I suppose one could assume that he’s using the word “ass” as a misogynistic sort of synecdoche. Ass = woman. But I can’t imagine a misogynist leaving that up to chance or interpretation. He’s definitely an equal-opportunity eater of all things ass.
Also, it’s important to note that there was no modifier of ass. He doesn’t eat hot ass. Or fat ass. Or even nice ass. Just ass. All shapes, sizes, colors, ages. He’s clearly a man of the people.
As a man of the people, he must also participate in the mundane humdrum of everyday life. It’s entertaining to daydream about this guy pulling into his mom’s driveway for an afternoon visit. Or navigating the parking lot just before, or just after, Sunday service. Or ordering at a Chick-fil-A drive-thru where the employees are required to end each exchange with “My pleasure.”
The use of the present tense is also compelling. He didn’t eat ass yesterday. He doesn’t plan to eat ass tomorrow or someday in the near or distant future. He eats ass in the spirit of René Descartes: Culo vescor, ergo sum. I EAT ASS, THEREFORE I AM.
And then there’s the confidence, the sure-footedness of such a statement. I wrote for a good long while—many years actually, thousands of pages—before I had the courage to define myself as a writer. I shudder to think how many asses were eaten before this guy summoned the audacity to make it his own personal brand.
Eventually, Grant and I moved on from our exploration of the ASS EATER’s intentions and artistic point of view. But after our conversation, I returned to Grant’s poem:
And everything here is merely the same simple star ash rearranged. Could it be that all is present, that everywhere is contained in where we are?
Maybe everything here really is just the same simple star ash rearranged. Poet. Philosopher. Florida Man. Ass eater. Same atoms. Same longing to be seen.
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HAWW! "I eat ass, therefore I am!" That's MY new bumper sticker!
Grant is a treasure!