Teddy Wayne - Kapitoil

I drank cold water from the sink faucet in her restroom for a full minute. I had never valued water as much. Her sink was covered with long blonde hairs that were black on one end and white toothpaste remainder like lines of writing in the sky from airplanes. When I lifted the toilet seat, I almost ejected when I saw how dirty it was on the reverse side, so I closed it and used the toilet while sitting down. It was difficult to believe such a dirty restroom could produce such a clean body.

I considered leaving my email address with her, but I knew we didn’t have many intersected subjects of interest and another meeting would not be profitable. So instead I wrote on a piece of paper: “TO: MELISSA — Thank you for an enjoyable night. FROM: Karim.”

It was dark and cold outside and I was still partially drunk. A taxi drove down the street and I raised my hand, but when it stopped I told the driver, “My bad — please resume.” He cursed at me in his language and left. I walked north and west, and with every step I wanted to eject, but I told myself I merited walking home. Bags of trash sat along all the sidewalks like palm trees in Doha and the smell made me feel even unhealthier, so when it was possible I walked in the dividing islands of the streets to avoid the smell and other people. In one hour I was at my apartment, where finally I did eject everything I drank the previous night in my restroom, and I then drank water until I felt I had consumed an equal quantity to the alcohol, and showered for a long time and washed myself well but was too exhausted to pray.

high roller = gambler with significant funds at his disposal

mechanic = worker who repairs machines

pocket = deposit an object inside a pocket

pre-game = drink alcohol in the apartment before external parties to reduce panicked feelings

redneck = negative term for someone who lives in the southern U.S.

repressed = emotions that a person attempts to restrict

tool = someone who is leveraged by others

When I woke up after Halloween, I was still ill. I hydrated on my couch and watched American football on television, which was less stimulating than baseball even though there was more continuous action, and I also failed to cover the point spread in one of the three games I bet on and lost my $5.

I considered calling Rebecca, but I was uncertain what to express.

After two hours of not moving from the couch, I forced myself to take the subway to the mosque on the Upper East Side.

There were again many people inside. I performed wudu, and felt especially refreshed after rinsing my mouth and inhaling and ejecting the water into and out of my nose. Wudu is like defragmenting a bottlenecked hard drive: You do not realize how enhanced you will feel until you do it.

I found an area in which to pray. When I stood to leave, an older man with dark skin and long eyelashes wearing a white robe walked over. “As-Salāmu ‘Alaykum,” he said.

“Wa ‘Alaykum As-Salam,” I said. It felt strange to speak Arabic to someone in New York.

“This is your first time here?” he asked.

I didn’t want to admit that I had been there before but had never talked to anyone in nearly a month in New York. “I recently transferred here for work at Schrub Equities,” I said.

“Ah, you are a banker.” He rubbed his fingers together and smiled. “You are making money, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I donate Zakat to schools in Qatar.”

“Are you from Doha?” he asked. I told him I was. “Then you should meet Fawaz.” He waved his hand at another man his age also in a white robe. Fawaz had one golden tooth, and told me that he was an Egyptian who previously lived in Doha but hadn’t been back in over a decade. He had lived near my family’s neighborhood, and we discussed the infrastructure changes there in the past ten years, e.g., construction for what will be the largest shopping mall in the Middle East.

Fawaz wrote his address and telephone number on a piece of paper. “My family is having a dinner with others from the mosque on Friday,” he said. “Your presence would honor us.”

“It would honor me as well,” I said.

After I left I felt enhanced in all ways, so I decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked south on 5th Ave. past the wealthy apartments bordering Central Park. Mr. Schrub probably knows many of their residents. One goal I had hoped to achieve here which I haven’t yet is meeting more business people and networking partners to build social capital. But whenever I meet someone, I have difficulty thinking primarily of that person as part of a future network.

The museum entrance was similar to a palace and made the Qatar National Museum seem like a small store. I was seven when I first went. I do not remember the actual visit, but only what happened before it. There was an exhibition on Qatari traditional clothing and how it is produced. Even though clothing is not my preferred subject now and it was not then either, my mother talked about it for several days in a way that stimulated my interest.

The day arrived, and we were about to leave when my father, who was reading a newspaper at the kitchen table as he often does, asked where we were going.

“I told you before,” she said. “I am taking Karim to the museum.”

“You are pregnant. You should be resting at home.”

“I can manage a museum,” she said. “And Karim is very interested in seeing the exhibition.”

He put down his newspaper. “What is the exhibition?”

“Traditional Qatari clothing.”

My father turned to me. I was even worse then about reciprocating visual contact, and I looked at my shoes. “Clothing.” He laughed. “My son is interested in clothing.”

I wished she had at least said it was about how the clothing was produced. But my mother just shook her head and took me to the door. “Do not forget to show him the jewelry and perfumes as well,” my father said as we left.

When we got outside she said, “Do not ever let anyone make you feel inferior for what interests you.” I tried to remember this advice whenever my classmates made fun of me for being interested in computers before technology became popular.

In the Metropolitan Museum I decided to observe exclusively the European paintings, as the museum was so vast that I had to specialize, and that area is also a major knowledge gap to address if I am to become as well-rounded as Mr. Schrub.

I spent a long time studying the paintings of Paul Cezanne, who focused on objects and sometimes nature. But he also painted men and females bathing. At first I stood far away from the painting so no one would witness me looking closely at it, but then I listened to a museum leader lecturing to a cluster of tourists.

“Cezanne was noted for his discomfort with female models,” she said. “He compensated by concocting imaginary tableaus in sylvan environments, and that visionary quality is what lends the bathing paintings a sense of the mythic. Note the characteristic diagonal, parallel brushstrokes that weld the bathers to the landscape while simultaneously asserting their division…”

I stopped listening, because although I appreciate receiving some data to help decipher a problem, it’s always more enjoyable for me to utilize my own intellect. After the tourists left, I moved closer to inspect the brushstrokes. The leader was correct, and I examined them for several minutes and was careless when other visitors came nearby. It’s beneficial for my programming to remind myself that major projects ultimately derive from discrete miniature components.

For the rest of the paintings I selected just a few that intrigued me, and similarly magnified them, even when they were of bathing females. After two hours I was taxed and walked home for exercise.