The first of the two men was likewise young, aggressive and on his way up, but the other man was in his mid 30's, lazy, irresponsible, and already at the top and looking for an easy way back down.

"It's either music and marijuana," said the second man, "or manhood and manual labor. Nature, in short, has conned a whole fucking species into not hanging it up -- for THIS!"

He held his arm out palm up and motioned it around the restaurant and then around a picture of the cosmos on the cover of a book he'd brought with him to read when dinner with the wealthiest man on earth just got too fucking boring.

"As far as that dickbrain Nature's concerned," he continued, arms now drawn back into his body, "we're just another fucking coin-flip experiment. A whole species created solely for a test run -- like a handful of coins minted just to decide who kicks off and who receives -- and meanwhile we think we're here to be some kinda super-elevated locus of creation and will."

The waiter came over.

"Tonight we have, uh, you know, some kinda meat thing, or whatever, with, like some sauce or gravy or something on it, and, like some kinda potato or pasta or rice thingy. Or you could have some kinda TOTALLY veggie thingy with some kinda, you know, dressing, or whatever. And there's of course, some vinaigrette thing or whatever in there somewhere, no matter what you get."

"That sounds excellent," the first guy said, "I'll have everything."

"Nothing, for me," the second man said, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a can of Franco-American Spaghetti. "But what kind of can openers do you have?"

The waiter ran through the kinds of can openers they had.

"Bring whichever one you'd personally use," the second man said.

"To open a can of Franco-American Spaghetti with?" the waiter asked.

"That too," the man replied. "But I mainly wanna use it as a prop to help me describe my recent surgery to my friend here. All kinds of tubes and scopes and lasers and baskets were shoved up the tiny hole in my dick, so they could fish around and yank out a couplea big bloody kidney stones through my ureter."

People at nearby tables politely choked on their food or spit out their coffee. The sound of stifled, unrequited vomit could be heard.

"And it went on for HOURS," the man called out as the waiter was walking away to get their food and props.

Several tables finished quickly and got up to leave, holding their stomachs and/or mouths.

As soon as a table was completely deserted by its former diners, the second man got up and moved over to it and sat down and started scarfing up big handfuls from the wide assortment and vast amounts of unfinished food left on its plates. The first man followed, sitting down across from him, semi-frantic.

"What are you doing??! Are you crazy?!! This is the most expensive restaurant in LA. The most important and powerful people in modern world civilization eat here all the time!"

"Well, they're sure bein' fed shitty leftovers," the second man said, downing something red from between his forefingers.

"You're just doing this to test us, right?" the first man said.

"Doing what?" the second man said, draining the only previously undrained wine glass. Then, looking quickly around and seeing the current table pretty much scarfed out, he moved to another table where the pickings were far better.

"Whoaa!! Look at all this shit!!" he said genuinely elated to the first guy, who'd followed and sat down across from him again.

"Isn't the money enough for you?" the first guy said. "Do we have to indulge your fucking persona too?"

The second guy did a total 180 demeanor change and grabbed the first guy by the shirt neck. "This isn't my fucking persona," he said.

He grabbed the table full of dishes and leftovers and wine and with great difficulty lifted it all a few feet off the ground and threw it against the wall, but missed and it smashed into another table instead.

"This isn't my fucking persona," he said, louder, more forcefully, turning over more tables as he headed for the door.

But instead of using the door when he got there, he jumped through the plate glass front window beside it, and, while he was still in midair, continued intoning, even louder, "And THIS isn't my fucking persona EITHER!"

And, fully-coated in glass shards by the time he hit the ground, he continued rolling sideways down the middle of road, cars swerving through more plate glass windows and storefronts and each other to avoid hitting him, and in between the screeches of their horns and brakes and the sound of metal wrenched apart, he continued saying forcefully, at the top of his voice, but without much other affect, to the many passersby who lined the streets to gawk as he rolled past, "And This is NOT my fucking persona, either, yah buncha sick fucking bourgeois losers!"

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