Snow White by Donald Barthelme

done. We are what we are.
     Now it is just a question of rocking along with things as they are until we are dead.”
     “You don’t paint a very bright picture Hogo.” “It’s not my picture Jane. I didn’t
     think up this picture that we are confronted with. The original brushwork was not
     mine. I absolutely separate myself from this picture. I operate within the frame it
     is true, but the picture—” “How old are you Hogo.” “Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant
     age to be.” “You don’t mind then. That you are not young.” “It has its buggy aspects
     as what does not?” “You don’t mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death.”
     “No, Jane.”
    HUBERT complains that the electric wastebasket has been overheating. I haven’t noticed
     it but that’s what Hubert says and Hubert is rarely wrong about things that don’t
     matter. The electric wastebasket is a security item. Papers dropped into it are destroyed
     instantly. How the electric wastebasket accomplishes this is not known. An intimidation
     followed by a demoralization eventuating in a disintegration, one assumes. It is not
     emptied. There are not even ashes. It functions with a quiet hum digesting whatever
     we do not wish to fall into the hands of the enemi. The record of Bill’s trial when
     he is tried will go into the electric wastebasket. When we considered the destruction
     of the esthetician we had in mind the electric wastebasket. First dismemberment, then
     the electric wastebasket. That there are in the world electric wastebaskets is encouraging.
     Kevin spoke to Hubert. “There is not enough seriousness in what we do,” Kevin said.
     “Everyone wanders around having his own individual perceptions. These, like balls
     of different colors and shapes and sizes, roll around on the green billiard table
     of consciousness . . .” Kevin stopped and began again. “Where is the figure in the
     carpet? Or is it just . . . carpet?” he asked. “Where is—” “You’re talking a lot of
     buffalo hump, you know that,” Hubert said. Hubert walked away. Kevin stood there.
     “That encounter did not go well.Perhaps I said the wrong thing?” Kevin blushed furiously at the thought that he might
     have said the wrong thing. Red blushes sat upon his neck. “What could I have done,
     to make it ‘go’? What is this gift that others have, that I do not have, that chokes
     The Other with love, at the very sight of one?” Kevin’s pre-encounter happiness leaked
     away. He had been happy before the encounter, but after it, he was not. “My God but
     we are fragile.”
    SNOW WHITE hung her hair again out of the window. It was longer now. It was about
     four feet long. She had just washed it too with golden Prell. She was experiencing
     a degree of anger at male domination of the physical world. “Oh if I could just get
     my hands on the man who dubbed those electrical connections male and female! He thought
     he was so worldly. And if I could just get my hands on the man who called that piece
     of pipe a nipple! He thought he was so urbane. But that didn’t prevent them from making
     a hash of the buffalo problem you’ll notice. Where have the buffalo gone? You can
     go for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and hundreds of miles
     without seeing a single one! And that didn’t prevent them from letting the railroads
     grab all the best land! And that didn’t prevent them from letting alienation seep
     in everywhere and cover everything like a big gray electric blanket that doesn’t work,
     after you have pushed the off-on switch to the ‘on’ position! So don’t come around
     and accuse me of not being serious. Women may not be serious, but at least they’re
     not a damned fool!” Snow White took her head out of the window, and pulled in her
     long black hair which had been dangling down. “No one has come to climb up. That says
     it all. This time is the wrong time for me. I am