The sun is in my eyes and I'm grumpy. I'm at the mechanics, sitting outside, my mask on. They dragged the old lobby table and chairs outside so we'd be safe. A whole summer in the sun has deteriorated the fabric of the seat cushion and fuzzy bits are all over the butt of my pants. I don't ever want to stand up now. Down the pavement is a middle-aged woman in another ratty chair, positioned in the only shade, behind a single awning pillar. Sly old thing! She's trying to read her romance novel, but I think she can feel my shade-envy.  But, hey! I've got this cheap table to lean against. Take that, you old…actually I'm sure she's a nice lady. I got here late; I don't deserve the shade. I'm just bored. I forgot my book. Maybe that's what's getting to me: she remembered her book. By comparison this means I'm burning up in the sun and an idiot too.

         I look at the carvings in the supposed-to-be-wood on this table. It's the usual junk: "P + M = <3" and "Joey was here." Over in the corner some cynic etched "This is Hell," and a very sneaky vandal drew a penis with black Sharpie pen. But one in particular catches my eye: "Ass is Life" it says. I shake my head and think, Who does this? What kind of person takes the time to secretly scratch these hidden messages into a table? Why? What makes them choose their words? I form a mental picture of this "Ass is Life" guy - it ain’t pretty. Pimply, a bit sweaty, and desperately needing to shave his thin upper lip hairs. He probably still thinks skating in No Skateboarding zones is dangerous and uses the word "literally" incorrectly. Literally. He makes unfunny jokes with no punchline and thinks he's misunderstood when, really, it's just that his jokes are lousy. I can hear his laugh, shrill and a bit cruel, but only because he hasn't discovered empathy yet. He's disgusting and I hate him. I've dreamed him up out of a concoction of other dudes like him I've known, and I kind of hated them too. That seems a bit harsh, but the sun is in my eyes, what do you want? I have discovered empathy, despite the fact I just said I hate an imaginary teenager, but I can't use it here! His three little words are a stunning and concise picture of a subculture of female objectification - "Ass is Life." What. A. Douchebag. I imagine the scene - a group of, let's say, three guys, waiting for the hand-me-down clunker his mom used to drive to have its oil changed. They're talking about bitches they've romanced; this guy is really talking up his fictional prowess and to fully prove his life's philosophy he scratches it into this very table: Ass is Life. "Boom, that’s it motherfuckas! Now I'm off to ogle some cabooses in Burger King down the street," or wherever.

         My daydreaming gets interrupted by some gobbledygook hollered from one of the grease-stained gents out in the shop. What are they saying? Is it important? It's not for me. I look back at the table graffiti. What? Where was I? Oh yeah. In my mind I put together the image of this douchebag again. There he is! Ugh. He's just so… so…Oh, I don't care. I don't really have the energy to hate him anymore. An ice cream guy on a bicycle just rode by, chiming his bicycle chime; I can't be negative after that. I was probably too hard on my imaginary douchebag anyway. He's just a kid! He'll grow out of it! I bet, if I followed him around, he's got some redeeming qualities somewhere - he was just trying to impress his stupid friends that day. Cut him some slack, man - you’ve certainly been a douchebag before. Listen, the guy likes asses. I mean, that’s like - I mean, nobody can - it's ehh - I get it, is what I'm saying. I still wouldn't scratch such a thing into a table, but to each his own. He knows what he wants and he's not afraid to let other people know it. Is that weird? Gross? Or would some people call that brave? He's putting it out there, so what? I wonder if he's ever had an ass. As in, a consensual, "Yes please, clamp your clammy hand around my gluteus maximus," kind of had. Not the sneaky brush-by in the grocery store. A real honest one. If he did, it was the highlight of his short douchebag existence, that's for damn sure. It made all the uncertainty and pain of youth and adolescence worthwhile. That squooshed glute was his life. He's ingrained into this ugly table a short history of a human who has finally and truly lived.

         …Or has he? Maybe he wants to live. He hasn't yet. Nobody has let him grip their tuckus with gusto and oh, god! he wants to so bad. Why doesn't anyone want him? Why won't anybody love him? He's just a misunderstood kid trying to get his punchlines down. I've been there, we've all been there. All the pop songs tell us "Life without love is no life at all." I wonder now, his chicken scratch here is a lonely cry, a plea to the universe or God or whoever to give him life. (I pretend an old coffee stain is one of his sad, little tears.) He was raised right, he won't pull the sneaky brush-by, no no, he's on a quest for a physical relationship, hopefully loving and understanding - though his descriptive powers could use improvement, I admit. Does he deserve love? Doesn't every human? He probably wondered what's wrong with him. "If I were taller someone would love me. If I had some damn punchlines I could make girls laugh." Can he change, can he fix himself? Or will some other Channing Tatum-looking guy always be the one with an ass in his hand? "What if I fought him? What if I beat him?" He's always the bottom, he'll never win, he thinks. Maybe, in carving here, he was purposefully drawing attention to that eternal cycle of hardship and elation that is inherent in the drive for love, or sex, or "Ass" as he puts it. What could be more human than that?

         Maybe he meant the idea that that very cycle has brought us all, as humans, to where we are today. Chasing tail is the fuel for the fires of evolution! A billion years ago some tadpole squirmed out of the sea and saw another tadpole and thought, in effect, "What an ass!" Copulation ensues. Then their great-great-great-great-grandkids sprouted legs and thought, "I'll be damned, look at those doodads." Copulation ensues. Then tadpoles with legs were everywhere. This continues until this douchebag and I arrive. Can I deny this human's basic biology? It's just nature, man. And we're natural beings, as far as that goes. Thinking of this cycle brings on a litany of dramas - the bad and the good. On one hand a lion kills his brother, a turkey scratches out the eyes of his former friend, a buffalo gores a rival. But, on the other hand are the feathers of the peacock, the bugle of the elk, the dancing colors of the butterfly. Nature as we know it was built on chasing tail. It's all there. We are all here. We were born. We were kids. We are Life. He was born. His parents copulated. Maybe that's what he meant. There is a lot to think of here. Too much. I feel tired. Ha! And I thought this guy was stupid. As if only cavemen liked to get their rocks off. Listen, even Einstein was married twice, so he didn't always have his nose in just books. Damn! There is a lot to think of here. This guy might have hit on something.

         Oh no! I've stuck my foot in a trap of my own making. Guy? Guy? I've automatically assigned a gender to this carver. What exactly, when I just get down to it, is inherently male about any mention of an Ass? I've heard a rumor that ladies enjoy themselves a bit of keister. In fact, a well-rounded tush could be considered like those peacock feathers or frog songs - something to draw attention, so to speak. This could have been a lady who liked herself a sweet, plump pair of buttocks just as easily as it could have been some dude. And would I call her a douchebag? I've stepped in it this time. She could have meant those other things - sex, love, loneliness, evolution, nature, parents copulating. Wait just another minute! "He" or "she" doesn't matter at all. Anatomically speaking, "Ass" isn't specific. I have an ass. You have an ass. We all have asses. It doesn't matter if you're male or female or fluid or whatever. I'll be damned! - "Ass" is completely inclusive. If this had been "Pussy is life," they'd exclude somebody. If they'd written "Cock is life," they'd exclude somebody. But ass? Everyone's got one of those. By default, we are all members of the Ass community. We are alive and we have asses. We are alive and we want asses. Ass is Life. This may be the only blanket statement that truly applies to the whole planet.

         My spinning mind is in philosophical heaven. I'm almost pulled out of it…

         "Hey bud, your car is ready."

         "Hold up, I'm having an epiphany."

         "Who's Tiffany?"

         "Shh!"

         I'm sitting in a mechanics shop and I have that epiphany. I'm at this hideous slab of compressed wood-pulp not reading my book, or learning how to fix my own car, or even hating old ladies for hogging the shade like I expected I would. I've learned something far more important than any class or book or guru could purposely have taught me. I've just considered everything - everything that matters - from the single individual, whoever it may be, waiting, yearning; on up to the great wheel of life, so vast and strange. The message is in plain language we all understand. It's small and yet huge. I don't know if I've quite got my head wrapped around it. It's just too big. In my mind I try to reform my image of this engraver, like one of those Before and After pictures. On the left is my pimpled moron, on the right the new potential. But I can't seem to nail it down to one picture - I don't think I possibly could anymore. It isn't just a person, it's a physical representation of knowledge and wisdom beyond my reckoning - an entity, or perhaps a deity - an ever-morphing head, changing its appearance from young to old, man to woman, from north to south, Buddha to Mother Theresa, Barack Obama to that lady down the street - ol' what's-her-name. It’s a new sort of godhead, frighteningly illusive but somehow soothingly familiar. I think to myself, "Just what the hell have I stumbled upon here?" This cheap-o table should be a shrine, a shrine to all human existence put up in the greatest gallery the world can provide. It shouldn't be leaned on by flakey idiots like me, mingling with Sharpie penises and "Joey was here." Nobody gives a damn, Joey! You've blasphemed on a sacred relic, you ignorant jackass.

         I decide then and there that the rest of the world ought to hear these words of wisdom. I am spreading the word! I have yet to find a gallery that will take the damn table - which I bought off the mechanic's shop, of course. So, instead I am building a museum to the philosophy of the Ass. Maybe an Ass art gallery on the side. Some meaningful paintings, a few photographs; tasteful, of course. And when that is complete I will begin my new life as a sandaled wanderer, evangelizing to those with ears to listen. I'll make T-shirts and print pamphlets and bumper stickers. I will spread the Ass! All I ask you, you people out there with asscheeks and assholes, is to go out and share this new gospel too. It's pretty simple. It is only three syllables!

         "Ass is Life."

         Amen!