Reading from pages 51-57 of Reheated Cabbage

The perspective character in this story, is, like the brutish husband in A Fault on the Line, a man with no name. However, where the husband in that story, which opened this collection, has devolved into a kind of brutish sheep avoiding the police and seeking only the vantage of the spectator in life, this man with no name is still a subhuman.

The perspective character is “our man in the shellsuit troosers” drinking at a seedy strip club. While possessing no morality and lacking most characteristics that separate the animal from the man, he possess something of a higher order than animal kind, hatred, a deep seething hatred for women. “Our man in the shellsuit slacks” is a sweaty binge-drinking drunk obsessed with “hoors” and “slags,” the latter being drug addicts whom he has never been able to control.

Our man looks up to Seeker, a stone-faced pimp, the man with the secret to dominating loose women. He is also obsessed with defections in women, including physical scars and mental instability. His lust for beating his girlfriend is overpowering and his only good time on earth is havening post-violence sex with the women he hates. But for his flawed entirety, Our man does possess that single transcendent quality beyond the ken of most animals—hatred, and hence is not entirely dead…yet.