The Philosophers II

by Israel Centeno

a Pittsburghese soap opera.

First time I met The Philosophers I didn’t even know their existence. I was doing my researches about a criminal gang at the University of Pittsburgh. Our Office knew about trafficking activities in some department.
We did what every department do in a case like this; we enquired here and there, we had interviews with authorities and students, staff and even our sources.
We found the usual.
Few toxics substances, the points of distribution, sellers and resellers but nothing out of proportions.
But our sources kept rising red flags, and we were disconcerted because our job was under the scrutiny of people who were asking us to stop abstracted toxicity it the campus.
Then I had the tip from one of the students of a seminary about the paradox of the social work of Pablo Escobar Gaviria in Medellin and criminality.
I went to the YMCA on the Northside and Pierre le Pierre was waiting for me smoking a viper and with a book about some insurrectional stuff in the third world. He was a middle stature man with a lovely shiny black skin, a little messy wearing as is usual nowadays and a deep sight into any space in front of him.
We change hello, and in a second other man come out from the fluoroscopic entrance of the YMCA. He was fat and friendly with his hairs disheveled holding a piece of bread in his left hand. “ The meal of the Earth, the disinherit’s bread,” he said trying to make the sentence to a rhythm. “Have you been at the banjo house on Cedar?” he asked me without letting me answers he asked me again “Have you read Derrida, Oh la la, Jacques” he praises “How we would have survived, literally survived without your deconstructionism theories? Oh, vaina tan buena La la, have you read him?’ I tried to find an answer checking my cultural background; I did those movements with my whole mouth looking, maybe for help, at Pierre le Pierre but the fat man didn’t wait for my feedback. I’m Paul, call me Pablo, por favor, Pablo Ph.D. Philosopher and psychiatric at the Allegheny General Hospital.
An explosion tore the silence of the evening. It was a firework, the baseball season was ending and the Pirates were loosing again for more than 23 years in a row.