Lanyards

Many children learn how to make lanyards at summer camp. At my summer camp, we learned how to compose theme songs for concentration camps and write comedic monologues about dying superheroes. My parents were progressive conservatives, and my teachers tore their hair out. Lanyards just weren't in the equation.

So they give me pause. So simple, so useful — utilitarian even - with that touch of whimsy that comes with anything modeled after a necklace.

For something first made at summer camp, lanyards can be incredibly sexy. The reason for this is the businessman. The men in suits who own the downtown business district, ID's on lanyards around their necks. Employed men. Heavyset family men. With secrets. With lives both on, and way under, the radar.

A man with a lanyard is adult entertainment to me. His lanyard signals income, opportunity; his gaze, on occasion, rests in mine. And now, I am one of them. I have a lanyard of my own, my laminated smirk clipped onto it, resting on my new gut.

I am more than ready, at long last, to be the object of my desire.

Seth Gall has had his work published in China, Canada, and the U.S.  His work has appeared in Word Riot, SmokeLong Quarterly, Nanoism, and A-Minor Magazine.  He is S.H. Gall in Nanoism, issues one and 27 of SmokeLong Quarterly, Five Star Literary Stories, and Fictionaut.