a ninety fifth story...'franzen'

Franzen thought himself above most things.  He would not even so much as leaf through The Metro on his daily commute in, out of the city - it was an insult to his intelligence, a gossip rag. Neither would he spend the time in transit opening and closing the email program on his smart phone in vain hope of a message, nor had he ever played a game of Snake in his life - he didn't need to. And he didn't feel the need to carry a branded bottle of water with him wherever he went because he knew his body was made up of 90% liquids, and that advertising was 99% guff.

Meanwhile, Franzen was 100% convinced there had to be a better way of living, at the end of the yellow brick road, somewhere over the rainbow, etcetera.  In his three and a half decades living among the human race he had succumbed to something of a philosophical and spiritual malaise, and conveniently he blamed it on everyone else who did not share his appreciation of renaissance painting: bankers, politicians (of any persuasion), law-makers, the potty monarchy, his parents, even his dog whom he addressed in a frightfully condescending manner. His dog, incidentally, was a poodle named Curly.  Curly had an IQ equivalent to that of a five year old child.

Other than Curly there were no significant others in  Franzen's life.  He lived as he would undoubtably die - oh so alone.  But, as he was frequently at pains to point, it was his choice to be alone; he had never gotten over the fact that the only woman he had ever loved, turned out, in fact, to be a man.  The man's name was Michael, he was an executive transvestite.

Franzen had myopia, still he refused to wear glasses in case someone were to misconstrue his ocular apparatus as a fashion statement.  Moreover, he was fond of relating how he was not a victim of fashion, rather that fashion was a victim of him; conversely he was also a self-styled (and self-anointed) legislator in taste.  He would walk into a bar and order two light ales, dressed head to toe in ideal summer wear; he wore a scarf, and spent a lot of money on socks.  And, naturally, he professed to like jazz - evenings, where possible, he passed in the jazz cafe, mornings at leisure in the Patisserie: he liked coffee, but only good coffee.

The friends that Franzen had somewhat miraculously acquired were mostly from far flung parts of the world, Korea, Brazil, and so on.  They were all of them just passing through; they were all intellectuals with expensive tastes, elaborate cares and not enough money to satisfy either; they were all inclined to say how much they hated the city, how they longed for clean air - yet they all remained, a part and yet apart, or in the icy solitude of Descartes.  They were quintessentially defined by what they didn't like, what they thank-God-were-not.  Definitions, divisions, black and white lines, codes, modes, phobias and phobes were everything.  And yet they knew nothing, and Franzen as much as Curly, who, after all, spent half his life barking up the wrong tree, and half his life pissing against parking meters, lamp posts and Franzen's very own trouser leg.