Monday at noon, as every noon-time--except weekends and most Christian holidays--for the past thirty years, Mr. Eleven rang the bell suspended above the Oak Tree Diner door as he entered, sat down at the counter, and laid his hat on the stool next to him with a gruff emptying of his weak, old-man lungs. The chef and proprieter, Mr. Tree, appeared out of the kitchen polishing a bowl on his apron and, upon approaching Mr. Eleven, set it down on the counter in front of him without saying a word. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with an empty glass, then left Eleven alone in the diner--and I mean alone, as there was at that moment and most others barely a soul in the place--to resume his duties among the pots and pans. Mr. Eleven produced a brown paper sack from his coat pocket and set it calmly and without looking on the stool next to his hat. He also took out a flask of coffee, nearly cold by now despite the vacuum sealing, and began pouring its contents into the empty glass given to him by Tree. Screwing the top back on and putting the flask away, Eleven grabbed the napkin-roll by the corner and lifted it up to his neck. The silverware rattled out onto the counter, and after tucking the corner of the napkin into his shirt, Eleven moved the knife away as if it were an undesirable thing, and grasped the spoon vertically as one might expect the early, awkward caveman to have done. Soon returned the chef, Tree, with a great kettle of boiling French onion soup, and Eleven smacked his lips loudly and with more eagerness than usual, causing the cook to pause confusedly for a moment before filling the bowl and taking the pot back to its secret hideout behind the doorless entry to the kitchen. As if pretending to be interested in how Eleven liked the soup, but with an altogether different motive--one of playing his role in the same drawn-out performance the two had shared for thirty seasons--he slapped his wet hands on his apron and gave Eleven his cue.

"Mr. Tree," he said, the spoon halfway to his mouth but suspended there, "do you know what I see?"

"French onion soup, Mr. Eleven?"

"No, Mr. Tree. I see a long, black hair."

"So you don't see French onion soup, Mr. Eleven?"

"I do, but that's not the point is it? My view is obscured by this other thing."

"The spoon?"

"No, Mr. Tree. I am talking about the long, black hair."

"I'm terribly sorry, sir. Don't know how that got in there."

"Mr. Tree, I have been coming here for thirty years. Monday through Friday for thirty years. How often is that? I don't have a calculator, I'm afraid. Anyway, do you know what I always find in my French onion soup?"

"Onions?"

"No, Mr. Tree, a hair. A long, black, slimy, dandruff-flecked hair."

"Perhaps you should order something else then, Mr. Eleven."

"Would you like to tell me why I find a long, black hair in my soup every time I come in here?"

"No offense, sir, and I'm no psychologist by any means, but if you've seen it there 5 times a week for the past thirty years yet still order it every day, perhaps just maybe you want me to put a hair in your soup."

"Nonsense."

"No, no. Go with me for a moment on this one, Mr. Eleven. When we were younger, I used to have a long, flowing ponytail. Oh, it was something to be proud of in those days of rebellion against the establishment. And I'll admit, sir, that in those days, when I was just a sous chef in this place, I used to put one of my hairs in your soup just to spite you for being a businessman. God, how I hated you."

A bit perturbed, Eleven interrupted him with a brief, "I see..."

"But after a few years, I noticed that despite the fact that you found a hair in your soup every day you came in here, you never ordered anything else, nor went to another restaurant."

"I happen to like coming here."

"And we certainly appreciate it, sir. But the thing is, when I noticed that...I started to think to myself, and I even talked it over with my wife, and we both agreed that you must have some primitive need to find that hair in your soup."

"That's ridiculous. And not only is it ridiculous, it's disgusting and insane."

"Crazies better not judge no other crazies, sir."

"Listen here, Tree, I come here every day because that's what I've done for 30 years and I like the comfort of having some special place of my own to go every day for lunch. It has nothing to do with the hair, or being insane, or psychology in general."

"Well, I beg to differ with you here, Mr. Eleven. Desiring the comfort of a safe place is most definitely a psychological behavior, whether or not it's negative--or furthermore the cause of that desire--is something you can dispute as you please, but not the desire itself. That's pure human nature."

"Regardless, Mr. Tree, I don't really care for having someone's dirty hair in my food. Do you think I want your bacteria-filled dandruff and skin oils and all that in something I'm going to eat?"

"Once again, I have to prove you wrong on one point. Yes, there is dandruff and what one may define as 'grease' if we use that term liberally in my hair, and thus since my hair is in your soup they are also therein. However, I can assure you they are neither dirty nor bacteria-filled. Due to health regulations, I am required to cook your soup at a certain temperature in order to kill any bacteria or other critters that may be in the food. Even were I to have a scalp covered in scabies, lice, chiggers, ticks carrying Lyme disease, or what-have-you, they would surely be dead by the time the soup reaches your bowl."

Mr. Eleven whinced at this graphic argument and clutched his stomach with a groan. "And the health regulations you so dutifully follow are more concerned with the temperature of the food than the contents of it?"

"Oh, my food is top-notch when it comes to sanitary conditions."

"Mm-hmm," Eleven said, turning the spoon downwards to let the soup--but not the hair--fall back into the bowl. A few droplets splashed on the surface and made dark brown spots on the paper sack next to him.

"I mean, don't think this place is some sort of greasy spoon. You're the only customer who has hairs in his soup, unless of course somebody else wanted them too. But that's never happened yet..."

"I have never wanted hair in my soup! That's disgusting!"

"What's so disgusting? Really...we've been through this before. I wash my hair, of which I have considerably less than I did 30 years ago due to heredity, age, and constantly having to cut clumps off and refrigerate them over the weekend."

"Why on earth do you cut clumps out of your hair and freeze them?"

"They're for the days when my wife has to fill in for me. Sick days, days when it's my turn to drive the kids to the pool or wherever in the summertime, et cetera. After all, we don't want you getting angry because you find one of her hairs in your soup instead of mine. You're our best customer."

"I'm your only customer."

"Now, that's not true, but it almost is. No, I guess it is true. You're right."

"And this is how you treat your only customer."

"Are you being sarcastic, sir? Did I not just tell you what great personal sacrifices I've made to make you happy? Who else would hack off their beloved ponytail, their ultimate 'Fuck you' to the Man, to please a member of that very same Man's apparatus? When my hair started losing its color as I got older, against my own personal and very strong opinions on natural beauty and society's obsession with cosmetic beauty, I went to the store and I bought hair dye. Hair dye, sir! Just so you wouldn't have to lift up your spoon one day and lose your appetite reminded of my diminishing appearance and mortality. What is that but Platonic love with an aroma of chopped onions and parsley, Mr. Eleven? What is that but pure, humanistic self-sacrifice for another being?"

"This is silly. Why don't you just admit that you're a lousy cook who serves lousy, dirty food? At least then you'd know why nobody else comes here except me."

Mr. Tree began to sulk into the countertop, beating it with his fists at Eleven's failure to understand his devotion to his #1 customer. Suddenly Mrs. Tree, a foreign woman who spoke very little English, popped out of the kitchen with an angry look on her face. She yelled something at Mr. Eleven and waved her hand, but in thirty years' time he had never learned a single word of...whatever language it was she spoke, so it always sounded like, "Brllablabrlla! Trigibrllabrlla!" with various sprinklings of "Stuped fahk," "Sheet-fehssed son of a kam-loveenk khor," and the like interspersed. Most diners of this type had country music or old, shitty jazz records playing softly in the background--something that would make the sounds of other people eating less obvious while still being low enough to talk over. The Oak Tree diner gave its customers a loud, chaotic "brllabrlla" tempo every now and then with graphic depictions of their own mothers' tortured dependencies on hard drugs and male seed. It was like listening to a recording of postmodern poetry, only slightly less profane and with somewhat more imagination and talent.

"Look," Mr. Eleven continued, ignoring the brllabrlla's, "I'm not going to eat this."

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Tree nodded, "you eat! My hasbend lose his hair for you. Now you eat!"

"No."

"Brllabrllabrlla, fuck shitter! Eat now, bitch, or I make Mama cry and take away all fat cocks from kher!"

"My mother is dead, if you please."

"Yes, I please. I please she dead! I say to God last night, 'If I please, please make khis mama dead. That way there more fat cocks for others of khis family's women, like wife and grandmother.' You look at daughter closely ever, fuck shitter? She look like mother, but don't even look like you at all. So she fuck, but not shitter. Only shitter by adoption, not blood."

By this time, Mr. Tree had regained control of his senses, and bid his wife to go back to the kitchen. Hesitantly, she disappeared, and Mr. Tree wiped his eyes.

"OK, Mr. Eleven, if you don't like my soup, don't eat it. I never said you had to come here every day for lunch."

"Look, I like the soup fine. I just don't want you to put hair in it anymore."

"Did I do something wrong this time? I don't understand."

"How can you not understand that I don't want hair in my soup? If you went into a restaurant and ordered something, would you not feel repulsed to find something that fell off another person's body inside it?"

"If it were cooked at a high enough temperature, what would it matter? Really, your logic in this astounds me. Look at primitive people who eat bugs. Sure, to us it's disgusting, but only because of our cultural arrogance."

"No, this isn't the same at all."

"Sure it is. You're," Mr. Tree made finger quotes around the next word to illustrate his skepticism, "'disgusted' by my hair in your soup even though: a) you find it every day, five days a week, for the past 30 years and still come in here; and b) the soup is boiled for 20 minutes and kills practically every microorganism that it could possibly contain."

"So you're sticking by that then?"

"Yes."

"And you're saying you'd have no problem in my place because the hair has been virtually sterilized."

"Naturally."

"I didn't want to have to do this, but I am left with no other option." Mr. Eleven shook his head and grabbed the brown paper sack from the stool. His hat tumbled to the floor unnoticed. The chef watched in false perplexion, almost annoyed amusement, as Mr. Eleven carefully pulled a sealed plastic bag with a red biohazard symbol on it. He tossed it onto the counter and it slid across to Mr. Tree's apron.

"What's that?"

"That, my old friend, is a hermetically-sealed sample of human waste. Yesterday afternoon, following my usual terrible lunch here at the Oak Tree Diner, I felt sick to my stomach--no doubt because of your soup--and was stuck on the toilet for close to half an hour. That was just enough time to develop my Plan B in case you would choose this route again."

"You shit into a bag and carried it around with you all day?"

"Of course not. One doesn't just happen to have hermetically-sealable plastic bags on his person. I scooped this out of the toilet with a newspaper that was lying on the floor for employee convenience and put it into a shopping bag discarded in the trash. Then, after work, I brought it to a friend of mine on the third floor, the science lab, and he agreed to irradiate the contents for me no questions asked. I was assured by him that, not only are these feces free of microorganisms, they are completely safe to eat were one so willing to try. So, by all means, open it up and dig in."

"You want me to..."

"Eat my irradiated excrement, yes."

"And this proves..."

"That just because something is 'clean' doesn't mean it's appetizing."

"But we were talking about soup, here. I mean soup is soup, and with a hair in it, it's still soup. This isn't food at all, it's just shit."

"On the contrary, before irradiating the fecal matter in this bag I went to the trouble of seasoning, marinating, and adding a wide variety of exotic spices to it. Not only is the normal aroma now replaced by oregano and bay leaves, but the taste--or so I can only guess--is exquisite."

"You're joking, right?"

"I'm not." Mr. Eleven stared across the counter with a blank face, and without losing his fixed gaze at Mr. Tree's forehead (a tactic he learned in business school) pushed the fork and knife across the counter. He coolly pulled a small tape recorder out of the inner pocket of his jacket, and said with a smirk, "Either you eat it, or I hand this over to the health department."

Mr. Tree stared back at him with raw resentment and a sense of 30 years betrayed deep in his pupils. His mouth muscles quivered, and with the same business school stare-down technique tore the top off the plastic bag. The mood was so tense in the diner that Mr. Eleven feared Tree would strike him when the latter suddenly shot his hand towards the former, but it was only to rip the napkin from his shirt and tuck it into his own. The chef stared down at the bag, breathing heavily, and pulled Eleven's waste out with the fork while grasping the bag from the other end. The tightly-sealed plastic had kept it well-preserved, and it had indeed been so well-mingled with herbs and spices that Tree figured if he closed his eyes he could pretend he was eating fried chicken. He clenched his eyelids and took a bite, then another, then another. He ate faster and faster, furiously cutting with the knife and fork and cramming the bite-sized pieces into his teeth before he had finished another.

"Yes, yes," Eleven cheered him on self-satisfyingly, "eat every bite. You like eating my shit, don't you?"

Mr. Tree began crying again, but this time out of shame, but couldn't stop eating as he wept. "Yes! God, it's true! It's fantastic!" He searched the bag for more, but he had finished every last bit. "Please, I must have more!" Mr. Tree grabbed Mr. Eleven by the collar and shook him violently, "I need it!"

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

"Please! I can't describe it to you, but it was the greatest feeling in my life to be eating what was in that bag! The spices, the textures, it was magnificent!"

"You are fucked up in the head, Tree!" Eleven shouted, grabbing his hat from the floor, tossing a few bills onto the table for the soup he didn't eat, and running out of the door. The little bell rang as he flew.

Mr. Tree wiped the tears from his eyes, put Eleven's dishes and garbage on a bustray, and went into the kitchen. His wife, covered in flour, arduously rolled a blob of dough flat on a baking tray for the evening's special: biscuits and gravy.

"Is fuck shitter gone away?" she asked, grunting as she pressed the dough down with a rolling pin half the length of herself.

"Yes, he just left."

"Good. I don't like khim. Always complains of soup."

"But that's why he comes here, dearest."

"Yes, khe is sick in khead!"

"Now, who are we to judge?"

"I am judge!"

"Darling, you mustn't talk that way so loud. Mr. Twelve will be coming in any moment now, as it's his usual time, and I don't want him thinking we laugh at our customers."

"Twelve's pie ready in five minutes. If khe come in, you tell khim wait!"

"I'll try, but you know how Mr. Twelve is. He refuses to be served by a male waiter."

"Last week khe put cigar out on arm. I must go to doctor afterwards because of khim! And I forget 3 ice cube, so khe leave no tip!"

"I just ate a bag of shit."

"Brllabrllabrlla shit eat brlla!"

"No, you know Eleven won't let you serve him. He's too much a gentleman to make a woman eat his shit. His pleasure comes from subjugating other men. Probably got passed over for another promotion by someone younger and more eager to kiss the executive asses. It almost makes you feel sad, until they force you to eat a bag of irradiated human waste."

"Brllabrlla!"

"Yes, dear, I know. I love you too. Make sure that pie doesn't burn. I can't afford to shut the diner down to take you to the emergency room again."

"Business mans all fuck shitters eat kam! Every last one!"

Brllabrllabrlla!