A Night at the Bull's Market

This black tie party just reached a biblical level of indulgence. A man with half a haircut pulled a silk sheet from off the lobby's new state, and we all admired the raging bull of gold and its underlying plaque: 'The Lawrence Gilhourey Economics Analytical Center'.

We came to the wrong party. But I still had half a drink in my hand when the realization hit. John stood beside me. I watched him express doubt over the scene before us, come to my same realization, then look to me for confirmation. I nodded once and lifted my drink, and he gave a wordless gesture that somehow wrapped up the entire message, ‘Sorry dude, not sure how I got us here, but yes, I agree, let’s finish these expensive drinks before we bail,’ into a small tip of his own glass.

In a conversation behind us, someone compared the presented golden bull to the much larger statue on Wall Street. Another voice asked, “Have you heard the one about the investor bull who was missing a horn?”

“No,” they said.

“Okay. There’s this one-horned bull who walks into the trading floor on Monday and throws down fifty thousand on dairy industry calls expiring that Friday. Nothing happens and by five o’clock he’s down ten thousand dollars. No big deal. On Tuesday morning, the one-horned bull is back on the floor at open. He buys another sixty in milk calls. At the closing bell, he’s lost half of it. And still, Wednesday morning, he’s back at it with another order. This time—”

My attention was pulled away by a beautiful couple breaking through the crowd and heading straight for me and John. The young man wore a white suit. The woman had a blue dress that dragged on the floor. She waved at John, and by the worry on his face I assumed he’d been mistaken for someone important.

“Is that from the tour?” she asked, looking at his chest.

John pulled on his tee shirt advertising the rock group Shotgun Soft. “This?”

“Yes. Did you get to see them last fall, or are you that sort of fan who buys merch from racks at shopping malls?”

John stared around the room of buttons and cuff links and fitted satin dresses. He gave me another wordless gesture, but I couldn’t interpret this. “No.” he said. “I saw them last August.”

The woman scoffed, “I’m so green. I bought tickets the minute they dropped and had to cancel for another stupid unveiling like this.” She held out her hand. “We haven’t met.”

He shook. “John. Sorry, I don’t usually come to these things. You are?”

She bowed her head to the golden bull. “Misses Lawrence Gilhourey."

“Oh! Then I guess we’re here in your honor.” John offered his hand to the man, that up to now had been quiet, and at the offered hand became giggly with nerves.

“No, no,” he said. “I’m not Lawrence. Mister Gilhourey, I mean.”

“Sorry, I—” John rescinded the offered hand just before the stranger tried to grab it. He then fumbled to offer it again, but the stranger’s hand was already retreating. They both gave up. “I just assumed you two were here together.”

“We are here together,” said Mrs. Gilhourey. Her arm slipped around the man’s elbow. She let alone the empty space that followed, the hole in the conversation clearly set aside for an explanation.

For lack of response from either man, Mrs. Gilhourey finished the conversation. “Well I’m looking forward to the next tour. Maybe I’ll bump into you there, John.”

“Sure,” he said. “See you there.”

She gave him the stiffest, politest sway of the head. It was the most posh goodbye I had ever seen. As she turned to me, I felt pressured to say something about seeing her around, or it being nice to have met her. But we hadn’t met, or even said a word to each other, so at the most awkward opportunity to do so, I said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” she replied, then led her nameless man off into the more suited party clusters.

“Lost it same as anyone,” said a voice behind us, “pulling out too fast in a bull market!”

Five old men erupted into a laughter that sounded like oil-gulping machinery. As one transferred to another party circle, he started the joke again. I listened closely, trying to catch the missing set up.

“So a bull with one horn goes to the dairy market and says he wants to buy this cow for twenty thousand dollars. The farmer says no, come back tomorrow. The bull says fine. He comes back tomorrow offering fifty thousand for the cow—”

Another of the old men that were joking behind me interrupted our eavesdropping with a slap on John’s shoulder. “Unbelievable,” he said. “I heard the whole thing. ‘Misses Lawrence Gilhourey.’ Puh! While dragging around that poor young office boy who will undoubtedly lose his job come Monday.”

“Does Mister Gilhourey know?” asked John.

Another suit appeared next to us as if dropped from the rafters, saying, “Along with the whole world. You don’t have to be an economics professor to see a trend there. It's really her debaucherous attitude I can't stand. Doing it at his unveiling, in his name.” The man bowed to the gold bull.

“Purebred stupid bitch behavior,” said the man holding John’s shoulder.

“How do you think I lost it? That damn cow ripped it clean off!” Though the punchline sounded a bit different, the laughter struck the same bell. I missed my chance at solving the one-horned bull riddle, and by the time I heard the start of a second retelling, “So a bull steps onto a dairy farm carrying a pile of twenty-dollar bills,” John was already leading me to the exit.

He set his glass down on a table. I still had three fingers left of mine.

“Boujee silver-toothed geezers.” John opened the brass door. As we stepped through, I overheard a piece of the one-horned joke as told by another of the first gaggle of oily voices. “The bull says, ‘Wait a minute, this ain’t milk!’ and the farmer says, ‘Well this horn you sold me ain’t even a—’”

Traffic was light. The night was peaceful, and we had a rare view of the stars shining between the buildings. John was going off, “Choking on the fumes from all that balding tonic isn’t worth as much gin as it’d take to wash down.”

I still carried my drink, sipping it from the top of the entry steps as he mocked insults to the streetlights. “‘Debaucherous attitude. Purebred stupid bitch behavior.’ And the way they all spit when they talk. God, my skin is hiving from the pork fat in their teeth.”

“I think they were serving chicken,” I said.

“Let’s get out of here, dude. Fast. Before this place depresses the alcohol out of me.”

“Okay. You get the car. I’ll finish my drink here.”

John took his exit stage left, and I had no time to enjoy the starry night alone with my drink before a houseless man in a dirty coat decided to enter stage right and leaned on the stairway handrail.

“Wh’s goin’on in there?”

“Some rich party,” I told him.

He pointed to my glass. “They givin’em out fr’free?”

“They are at the bar, but I doubt they’d let you through the crowd.”

He stared quietly at me and I swirled the icy island in my drink. I eventually gave up my glass just hoping he’d wander off and leave me alone. He did, and I got to vicariously watch at a distance as he leaned against a streetlight and enjoyed sipping my drink under the stars.

Again, my solace was interrupted. Someone opened the door to the party, casting their shadow with mine inside a square of light thrown down the steps.

“Where’s your friend gone?” asked Mrs. Gilhourey.

“He isn’t feeling well,” I said. “Just left for the car.”

She dismissed my answer with a sour, “Hmm," then sided herself to me as if John should be expecting her on his return.

“You've never met me, right?” I asked.

She looked me up and down for the first time. “I don't think so. But you do have one of those forgettable faces, so maybe.”

“Then you probably don’t care what I think about you, and you won’t ever expect to see me again?”

“Sure.”

“Then could you tell me candidly what that introduction was about? Why all the melodrama behind the ‘Misses Lawrence Gilhourey’ and with that poor kid on your arm?”

She kinked her jaw in a relieved smile like she’d been anticipating this question her whole life.

“Assuming you’re not part of any art movements, I’ll explain this in simplified terms. There was a system once called modernism, and there was a violent revolution that came post-modernism, and after the dust of revolution settled and it was time to rebuild a better system, the architects found themselves without blueprints and the builders without any materials but ash. But still, build away they did, using dead ash and old ideas. The death of the death of the modern, where we are now, is a post-post-modernism made of rules set by children playing dress-up as their forgotten heroes, and the wealthy of that modern generation who have only briefly lost their footing have become the lion tamers and curtain wavers to the animal rage under the instinct of all polite masses to impose old patriarchy and class hierarchy through easily digestible shackles like silver placards and legal titles. I claim myself through the title forced on me, but what I claim as an identity does not claim me as a property, and if my individuality can be eclipsed entirely by—”

I’m sure she could have gone on the rest of the night, but the houseless man was back and now climbing the steps to ask me something.

“What?” I asked.

“Wh’s you wantchur cup?” he mumbled.

I was ready to answer, ‘Let me take it inside,’ but I was struck dumb by the sight of Mrs. Gilhourey ripping off her gold link necklace and whipping the thin chain down on the man’s arm.

He cried. She stepped forward to reach his face and swung again and again, driving him slowly backwards down the steps with the tail of her blue dress flowing up the staircase. She bared her teeth the whole way and hissed words like, “Unprovoked! Unprotected! Unprompted! Unwanted!”

I reached out to stop the whipping, but the man was already falling. His head hit the concrete and his limbs shook like tree branches in wind. He quickly recovered and turned himself over, then he crawled, then he ran.

Mrs. Gilhourey said she was calling the police and asked me to wait with her and be an eye witness.

Instead, I picked up the empty glass, which had miraculously survived the fall to the steps, and I returned to the venue's bar to set it beside a stack of its siblings.

“Hey, you wanna hear a joke about that?” asked a drunk man seated beside me. He pointed to the gold bull statue at the center of the floor. The crowd had already grown bored of it. Someone had left a drink between the bull’s front hooves.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“So this bull with a giant penis walks into a bank, and he asks for a loan to start a dairy farm.”

“And he’s missing a horn, right?”

“Huh?”

“The bull only has one horn in this joke?”

The drunk shook his head. “Why? What happened to his horn?”