Athanasius Finch: Registered Flex Offender - ONC 2024

Keeping Up With The Cagliostros

Whoever was the pencil-pushing imbecile stuck in a dank cubicle in some mold-infested basement who thought that "exposure" was a valid form of payment for struggling artists and freshly-minted professionals never tried to pay groceries with a shoutout and a tag from a moderately popular pug novelty account on Instagram, because exposure works for exactly jack shit.

The only exposure that has any actionable effect in the real world is the indecent kind of exposure, a fact one bumfuzzling "private dick" found out the hard way. But like a farmer tripling over his lettuce field, I'm getting ahead of myself.

There might be several questions running through your head right now, such as: Why are you, Beatrix Cagliostro(pen name), writing yet another chapter in the memoirs of one Athanasius Finch, when last we checked, he still owed you a substantial amount of money, and you were cursing him up and down while simulating a piston-action dildo with your middle finger on the way out? Or the classic, Who are you? And why are you trying to sell me novellas on 5th Avenue like a rapper trying to scam me out of buying a subpar mixtape? And the answer to both is:

Exposure ain't paying rent, and I have to make money somehow, even if it meant swallowing my pride and making lemonade out of the gravel life is swearing are chunky lemons. And sadly, the only blender in town is that devious bastard in a yellow poncho, which looks more like lemons than the actual gravel. I seem to have lost my way with this analogy, so let's drop it here, just like I should've done when Destiny came knocking at my door.

For now, like the best way to eat a stuffed crust pizza, let's start at the end and catch up from there. But first, introductions are in order.

My name is Beatrix Cagliostro(pen name), and you might know me from such titles as "The Kosher Nostra: A Look At New York's Lox Smuggling Underbelly," and "Pride, Prejudice, And Pralines: Gordon Ramsey x Reader." You might also know me as "Agathass Chrixxxty," the pole-dancing star-in-the-making down at "The Clitzz," the most popular lesbian strip-club in the Bronx, mainly because no man has ever found it.

But chances are you know me from my previous, and sadly most famous work, "Athanasius Finch: Private Dick," a book that earned me an accolade in the 2020 Open Novella Contest. It received such glowing reviews like: "It is a story that is between 20.000 and 40.000 words long," and "You have submitted it before the deadline," which are both accolades I have framed on the boiler above the cot I call a bed, which is technically a janitor's closet on the bowels of "The Clitzz."

Sadly, the prize of such a prestigious award was exposure, and a barely legible sticker, both of which were not legal tender accepted by any landlord this side of Staten Island. And so, after leaving 696 West Penn Street, and saying "sayonara" to that sniveling swaying snake named Athanasius Finch, I sought to reinvent myself and get back on my feet. However, where would I go? What would I do? I still owed Amazon money, and my Doctorate in Lettuce from Subway University was worthless thanks to that pesky lifetime ban from harmlessly dealing subs to homeless people--like nobody had done it before or something. Hypocrites! Not to mention a fat greek-sized hole in my CV that I refuse to elaborate on, unless you read it for free on Wattpad. And judging by the unchanging read count on that one, I'll say with confidence that nobody cared enough to check.

Homeless, jobless, foodless, and penniless, I did what any starving artist does in one point in their life: apply for Hamburger University, McDonald's premier institution for up-and-coming workers and managers alike. After all, hamburger is a type of sandwich, and I already had a doctorate from Subway University, so it would be a cakewalk, right?

Fucking, no. Turns out, a sandwich is to a burger what a secretary is to an administrative assistant, which is fuck all.

A sandwich is a form of art, an expression of love between client and artist. You don't go to Subway to pay for a sandwich, but to pay for an experience in which you and a trained professional dance the footlong tango to create something unique and personal between you two, like a baby sharing their parent's DNA. A baby you will proceed to eat with gusto. No two sandwiches are alike, each being uniquely crafted to suit the moment, the feeling, the raw sexual tension. How you place on it, what you place on it, and how much of it creates infinite possibilities for sandwichcraft. People mock sandwich artist, but can you find a better word to describe such joyful art of creation? I think not. Next time you eat a sandwich, savor every bite, for no other sandwich will ever be the same, not now, not before, not after. You, my friend, are capturing an experience you will only get once in a lifetime.