thevillagecharlatan

Today is the company retreat for my place of employment, a speculative nonprofit initiative in a mid-sized Southwestern town. We have been brought to the boss’s palatial hobby farm for the retreat - a hobby farm whose remoteness is charming/romantic/British-Isles-gentry-esque and slasher-filmy in equal measure. The place is still being remodeled, and the array of construction materials within easy reach makes the mind turn to grisly murders. Some slightly ameliorative features of the farm are the hotel-size stainless steel refrigerator stocked with catered lamb shanks and French baby lentil and purple potato salad, Danish salted butter and five-dollar crusty breads, chived Stilton, brie, rare sliced roast beef, alienating peanut butter from a Whole Foods bulk bin, lavender body wash and Aqua di Parma scented shampoo, thick Turkish towels towering in precarious piles (within easy reach if you care to stand under the ten-inch stainless-steel adjustable shower head that pours deluge after deluge onto your soapy head - if that doesn’t satisfy you, perhaps you’d prefer the Jacuzzi-jetted bathtub underneath you which screams QUICK MASTURBATION; your choice, really), twelve-foot walls of windows that frame such sweet pastoral views that you feel like some kind of lord of the manor whose slaves labor merrily in the background, whistling over the saws, getting black lung from merbau dust. Every so often the boss nips out of the room and comes back with a plate of handcrafted shortbread squares or boutique lemon loaf. I feel like Little Fucking Orphan Annie, staring agape at the framed Bruce Nauman ephemera and Shrigley paintings, stuffing my little maw with artisan pretzels, wondering when they will all wise up to my tricks.

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