The Artist & The Booger Sandwich

Standing in front of a local art galley
there was a large sign
'Booger Donation Line'
it read in green and brown letters.
It was some sort of performance art piece
the guy ahead of me said.
I had just gone out for a pack of smokes
when I saw a long line of people
and that booger sign.
So lit up a smoke and got in line
anything to avoid my goblin of a wife
who was waiting at home
chain smoking and cursing my name.
I was a man with time to kill
so why not? I had a booger to donate.
"This guy is such an amazing artist. I once saw him drink a milkshake
made with bloody tampons and menstrual blood clots."
A girl in the line said, to her friend who looked just like her.
"But have you heard him read his poetry?"
"Yeah, isn't it beautiful?"
A young man with a patchy beard was handing out pamphlets
to all of us in line
it was the artist's poems.
I read one line,
"The sun and the moon fought for the perquisites of the day..."
and let it fall to the ground.
The line moved forward
and I was finally inside.
We were all moving towards a table
that had two pieces of white bread on a paper plate
next to it were green chips and a glass of dirty water.
The artist was seated at the table
wearing a bib with a big lobster on it.
I saw each person stop at the table
and dig their nose for a good one.
"Ohmygawd. We're almost there! We're almost there!"
"He's so fuckin hawt."
Standing at the table
I dug deep
the two pieces of bread were covered
in all different types of boogers
wet slimy ones, dried out crusted ones, long stringy ones,
I think I saw one with a nose hair stuck in it
green, brown, white, and even a few bloody ones.
It had a thick layer of boogers.
I pick one and wiped it on the bread
trying not to touch the others.
The artist stared straight ahead, looking right through me.
"Can I put another one in there?" I asked.
A woman standing at his side
stepped forward, speaking for him,
"One donation per person. Please step aside, sir."
"Yeah, come on! It's our turn." The girls behind me whined.
I could hear them gushing as I walked to the back of the room,
'....you know, we both just love you..."
A few minutes later
the woman at the artist's side announced
that the deposits were closed and that the performance
would now begin.
He held the two pieces of
dripping booger bread
high above his head
he them together and spoke into
a headset microphone.
"Life..." He began,
"is a tremendous booger sandwich and we must all take a bite."
with that he took a corner of the sandwich into his mouth
and bit down hard.
And then another
and another.
I watched him
struggling to swallow the salty shit down
he was having trouble
trying his best to stay in his artistic persona
without puking.
The two girls from the line
super fans
went up to him
"Can we have a bite?" They asked,
smiling up at him, like he were Zeus up on Olympus.
Without a word
he broke off two pieces
of the booger sandwich
and placed it in their mouths.
"It's like the holy communion. He's commenting on the absurdity of Catholicism."
an art fag whispered in the darkness behind me.
The artist was having trouble swallowing.
The super fans didn't even get that far
they both gagged and puked on the floor
at the artist's feet.
Then he finally lost it
puked all over the girl's feet
which were both in black flip-flops
chunks of green and white
in-between their toes.
The artist tried to speak into the headset mic
but it was covered in puke and fried.
He ripped the headset off
threw it sailing through the air
and into the audience, shouting
at the top of his lungs
and with a smile on his face,
"BUT LIFE ISN'T ALWAYS EASY TO SWALLOW, NOW IS IT?!"
The room roared with applause and cheers.
They rushed the stage, shaking his hands, patting him on the back
someone put roses in his arms.
As I stepped out onto the hot streets of Mesa
I lit another cigarette
thinking of what a fool the artist and his followers were.
Then I remembered my angry wife at home
and
I remembered
that I was the biggest fool of them all.