“LeBron James is the G.O.A.T, I’m telling ya!”

Stewart was watching basketball highlights at the Bouncing Cat, a local watering hole. He defended James to Clive, his closest colleague with whom he was sitting at the bar and drinking pints of IPAs. It was late spring, and the two friends had snuck out of the office early after a tough day of work.

“LeBron’s a beast, no doubt,” said Clive, “but he doesn’t have the heart to be the greatest. Michael Jordan was not only talented, he was also insanely driven. I don’t see any of the new kids reproducing that sort of intensity. Basketball will never be innocent enough to produce another Jordan.”

“You know I’m a stats guy,” answered Stewart. “If we are going to be impartial, as a society, we have to go by data. The numbers will set you free! And the most indicative career stats clearly favour James.”

“Gosh, sometimes you sound like a robot, man,” his friend shook his head, “People loved Jordan, and Jordan loved the game with the innocence of a child. Big money endorsements, though he started all of that, for him it was only a side thing.”

“Well, we could also quantify the popularity of the two players with for example global viewership stats…”

The conversation went in that vein until the third or fourth beer, when it began to slur and swerve into politics. At that point the two friends wisely decided to call it a night. They emptied the last splashes of beer from their pints, which they lifted with both hands.

Stewart and Clive sat right opposite each other in the office. Everyone knew them as inseparable, their friendship fuelled by a stimulating clash of personalities: Stewart a tight-lipped gearhead, and Clive a talkative charmer. Other than that, they were both conscientious and dedicated to their profession, which was the design and manufacture of bowties.

They were assigned to work as a team, their contrasting personalities delivering complementary aesthetics of bowties that when combined produced very popular designs. Stewart had a strong institutional sense and had a touch for palettes of navy blue and gold, or purple and silver. Clive on the other hand was a magician with creative patterns; his most successful ones featured bones and puppies, flowers, and one popular pattern of bowties themselves.

Another reason Stewart and Clive were put into collaboration is because they both had achieved the highest score – both in the 99th percentile – for short fingers, a trait critical for handling, testing and tying bowties. To ensure perfect fairness in this regard, their company, Twiddle Tie Technologies (TT Tech), had put in place a most rigorous qualification assessment program for employees.

Every September the company tested all ten fingers of every single one of their designers and technicians with a laser caliper. Based on the average length of each digit, the employee would be assigned to a talent tier. The assessments were carried out every year, for two reasons. First, new employees would be measured for the first time. Second, research published by Harvard University suggested that intensive experience and practice with tying bowties may lead to as much as 1.27 millimetres of finger shrinkage per year. Though the research was not conclusive, TT Tech would not take any chances on sleeping on incremental stubbiness.

“Our company is successful thanks to its transparent finger ranking of employees,” Stewart would argue.

“I don’t know about that,” Clive would respond, “I think long-fingered people can also be good at bowties, but the company does the whole testing charade to give confidence to investors and consumers. People are superficial, man, they fall for that sort of stuff.”

Stewart made a wry face: “Well, don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence that the two of us, who have the shortest fingers, are also the best at making bowties?”

Clive’s answer came immediately: “That may be true, but that could be explained by the fact that we leaned early towards bowtie making because, having short fingers, society pigeon-holed us as bowtie makers. God knows my parents put me through so many private tutors on bowtieology.”

The office seating was in accordance with employee finger aptitude rankings. The lowest tier, those who scored over 50th but under 60th percentile, were posted in a secluded little office in the corner, a boiler room really, away from everyone else. Their whole job was to serve as experimental objects, “guinea pigs” as Stewart would say, in comparative market studies. Their single tedious role was to look at slides depicting bowties, then use their long fingers to point at which ones they thought looked better. Due to strong labour unions, these proles still made only 16% less salary than master’s-educated designers who did everything from design to cutting and stitching the ties.

Stewart and Clive, alone in the top tier, sat in a section right next to the door separating the Executive and Administration Department. Beyond that door was a large open space that seated the administrative employees, and beyond that, there was a separate corner office for the CEO, Ricky Ramon. The administrative staff was comprised entirely of very attractive young women. This profile of individual correlated strongly with long fingers; therefore, the women, about seventeen of them, didn’t do any work directly related to bowties.

Helen, a tall, slim blonde, was an admin girl who liked to chitchat with Stewart and Clive whenever she would walk by their desks. She would often tease them about their bromance and comment on how cute their bowties were. She was referring to the bowties they were designing, as neither Stewart nor Clive actually wore any bowties.

Stewart would explain his non-consumption of his art thus: “I appreciate bowties for their aesthetic value, but for me personally wearing bowties feels impractical. For example, when I am eating a soup, I fear I may spill some on the bowtie, or when I’m texting on my phone, I don’t like the bows chafing against my chin. That said, I respect other people’s free choice to dress as they wish.”

Clive for his part would say that he admired bowtie wearers for their willingness to go against the grain, to challenge convention. He was also a free spirit, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t into the particular rebellion of bowties. His most rebellious hobby was probably his theatre club.

It goes without saying that everyone in the office accepted bowtie wearers, and the company even employed a few flamboyant ones. However, society at large was rife with bowphobia, that hurtful prejudice that saw bowtie-wearing men as “pretentious”, or “snobs”. TT Tech was all about empowering these victims and creating a future when men, and women too, could wear their “pretentiousness” with pride.

The day after they watched basketball at the bar, Stewart and Clive were approached by Helen, their admin friend, precisely on the subject of bowphobia.

“Hi boys,” she greeted them. “Oh, I love your jerseys! James and Jordan, so cute! But you will make each other jealous with your sports heroes, hehe! Anyways, I just wanted to let you know, tomorrow we have two consultants from McCracken Consulting, two partners, I should say, who’ll give a presentation on bowphobia.”

“McCracken? That’s real big,” said Stewart. “Do you have the presentation outline perchance?”

“Well, no,” answered Helen, “But from what I gather, they did this big pro-bono research project and they are now touring the country sharing their results. They will talk about the hidden impact of bowphobia on our society and give us some scientific insights on how best to fight it.”

“Hm, I’d be interested to see the numbers behind their work,” Stewart mused. “I wrote this paper for the Journal of Scientific Bias where I …”

“Great,” Helen interrupted, “You can ask some smart questions during the Q&A. See you then!”

Sure enough, the next day at 10:30 a.m. the whole staff, some fifty people, filed into the presentation hall and watched the two partners wire up the projector. One of them had an oxblood suit and wore a massive orange bowtie that reached up to his ears and down to his elbows. The other one wore a black-on-white suit with a bolo-tie, except that instead of a suit jacket he wore a leather biker vest. He even had a long beard, which was especially strange for a partner in a consulting firm.

The large white screen flashed the title slide featuring in wide bold brown font: “Bowphobia: Untying the Knot”. The biker partner started off with a personal anecdote that related his past unconscious bias towards bowties. He and his friends once bullied a coworker who was a wearer. Then one day, someone forcefully stripped his bowtie off, and his bare neck revealed, to sudden horror and pity of the onlookers, that he suffered from leptolimosis – the debilitating disease that afflicts 0.0012% of the population with “dangerously thin, elongated necks” (New England Journal of Medicine 2127-2 p 874). This incident threw the biker partner into a period of depression, of navel-gazing and self-searching, most of which he spent at an ultra-exclusive rehab centre in Northern California, and after which his eyes opened to the injustice of bowphobia.

“From then on, I always wear a bowtie ribbon on August eight,” the biker partner concluded with pride, referring to the International Bowtie Day, when bowtie allies wear bowtie-shaped ribbons on their lapels.

In the middle part of the presentation there were a lot of sensational stats displayed in various forms, including pie charts, bar graphs, 3D bar graphs, worm charts, tornado graphs, javelin boxes, and elephant glyphs. Helen took notes every time she saw some particularly bright colours. Stewart, right next to Helen, sat upright throughout the presentation and asked questions whenever the presenters gave him an opportunity. His eyes lit up when the slides turned to discuss the F-DMBS-66, a human gene cluster that a group of geneticists at Johns Hopkins believe predisposes carriers to partiality to bowties.

“Biochemical genetics is actually a hobby of mine,” Stewart started after he was given the opportunity to comment, “and I’ve read many papers on genetic influence on IQ, extreme finger stubbiness societies, genetic triggers for mayonnaise addiction, and so on. But for this particular case of F-DMBS-66 and its correlation to bowtie affinities… From what I’ve read in the Scientific Bias, I mean I see some correlation, but the causation, I…”

“The study is limited in depth,” responded the partner with the bowtie, in his thick British accent, “due to the ethical concerns surrounding controlled experiments on human subjects, but this empirical work still goes a very long way to insinuate, to suggest even, that bowtie wearers may in reality have no control over their fashion choices, and that many are out there today who continually, violently repress their natural urge to put on a bowtie.”

“Of course, we wouldn’t want individuals to suffer… ” said Stewart wistfully. It seemed as though he was still trying to add some other point, but at that moment Helen turned around and smiled at him. She rubbed his tricep with her long hands, leaned over and whispered how she was so glad someone was asking such intelligent questions. ”Besides,“ Stewart told himself, “I’m well aware of the empirical standards adhered to by McCracken Consulting.” So, he decided to let it go.

The bowtie partner gave a concluding monologue. He summarised key findings and wrapped up the presentation with a call for general tolerance:

“To create a truly equal society, a truly indistinguishable citizenry, we must not only accept our bowtie-wearing fellow travellers, but we must be blind to every shape and form of difference. We must not judge people by whether their noses are big or small, sharp or bulbous, whether their eyebrows are thin or bushy, whether their legs are thin or stocky, whether their backs are hairy or bare, or whether their thighs or their forearms are long or short. None of this matters: we are all equally human. We all deserve equally happy lives!”

These words were spoken with a pathos that induced thundering applause up and down the presentation hall. Stewart, Clive, Helen and everyone else was genuinely inspired. At lunch afterwards, the canteen buzzed with discussion. The two consulting partners stuck around to eat with the company. They answered questions from the many workers who approached them, and some of the workers even asked for their autographs.

*

Stewart and Clive returned to their desks after lunch and settled as usual opposite each other. They noticed that someone had placed a pile of round aluminum duct along the wall, together with a whole set of tools: drills, hammers, toolboxes, ladders. Soon enough, the person responsible showed up. He was a tall, muscular man in his early thirties, wearing blue worker’s overalls unbuttoned at the chest, and large orange work boots. He had blue eyes and a large, round skull, over which receded a broad m-pattern hairline.

He introduced himself: “Hi guys, I’m Dennis. I’m here to replace the old HVAC. Don’t mind me, I’m just setting up for now. Won’t be too loud.” His voice carried an easy energy.

“No worries,” said Clive. “I’m Clive, this is my friend Stewart.”

As Dennis fumbled away with his tools, the admin door opened and out walked Helen with the CEO, Ricky Ramon, and another young woman, a stunning brunette. Ricky wore a silk turquoise shirt, unbuttoned low to expose an indiscreet amount of chest hair. His skin was tanned to an unnatural shade of bronze, out of which his grey-blue eyes popped out, and which was darker than his long blonde hair, held back over his skull and down his neck in a sludge of wax.

“Clive, Stuey, my stubby wizards!” Ricky said, “How was the presentation? I couldn’t make it thanks to a customer call that lasted the whole morning. They were driving me and Andrea nuts. You guys met our new secretary Andrea, right?”

“Yes, we met three days ago,” said Stewart.

Ricky thought for a second with a finger on his lips. “Ah, right, I remember now, Look, Andrea and I have got to head to the afternoon meeting with the McCracken partners. I was wondering if you three could put your heads together and brainstorm some ideas for our own bowphobia materials? Maybe we could write a white paper on it, huh Stewart? Or maybe some brochures, videos even? We can then run some PR on social media about it.”

The three persons looked at each other and agreed with due cheerfulness. Ricky and Andrea walked off. Helen took a seat next to Stewart, and Clive slid his chair next to Helen for a discussion. They browsed through the McCracken presentation to pick out the most persuasive points, and when they ran across the F-DMBS-66 gene slide, Stewart's reservations resurfaced. He looked frustrated.

“Man, this study is so fascinating,” he said, “yet their statistics are so odd. Here, I googled the raw data that they published, and their sample selection makes no sense.”

At this point Dennis, who’d been hanging in the background, suddenly chimed in. “Of course it doesn’t make sense. Bowphobia, are you kidding me?” He laughed.

The three colleagues looked at each other again with looks of mild amusement. The blue-collar dude is of course going to have some backward opinions.

Dennis continued: “That whole bowphobia is nothing but a way for the powers that be to get you all to toe the line. They are training you in groupthink.”

“I don’t see how someone else’s decision to wear bowties hurts my personal freedoms,” answered Stewart.

“And don’t you think that a world without bowties would be that much greyer and more boring?” said Helen. “You want everyone to look the same?”

Dennis stopped whatever he was doing with his equipment and turned squarely towards the TT Tech employees. “You all think you are so different, don’t you? You poor stiffs – look at you. No one wants to be ‘different’. Everyone wants the same thing – power. Back in the day bowties were recognized as part of the power game; some nerds would put them on to signal erudition, intellectual achievement, sophistication. They got bashed by those who didn’t like how they pretended to be gentlemen but acted like they are better than you. Today, the hypocrisy game’s been played out so much, it’s impossible to get away with winning. You can’t just bash your actual rivals anymore. So instead, everyone has to play the saint. You pick some small, innocuous victim group, and they pretend they support them. We all pretend losers are heroes, which has the great benefit for the elite of making all the losers content in their defeat. As for the victim group, they become so coddled, they become the elite, too. And the elite becomes them. All right? Put that in your PPT, and smoke it!”

The three friends were at a loss. You could see they were trying to process what Dennis threw at them so unexpectedly. Clive looked over his shoulders to see if anyone had overheard the transgressive monologue. He then tried to reason with Dennis: “Look, we are not saying we live in a perfect world. We all know there’s a hierarchy and there will always be one. But, in my humble opinion, you’re taking too much of a dark picture of human nature. This is not healthy. And, perhaps you’re projecting a bit?”

“I’m projecting the truth on you mortals!” boasted Dennis. “Bowties are not your thing, they are your thing; you don’t have a genetic predisposition to bowties, others do. Get out of here! We’d all be wearing bowties twenty-four-seven if we weren’t too late in squeezing our asses in the power-grab queue.”

“I don’t think I want to squeeze my ass into any power queue,” insisted Stewart.

“All right. Consider this Dennis,” said Clive. “Let’s assume you’re right, and bowties are a power move. Why doesn’t Ricky, our boss, wear a bowtie then? He really cares about his status. Yet, he walks around with widely unbuttoned shirts, the exact opposite of a bowtie.”

Dennis laughed again. “Because he’s laughing at you dummies! He knows that bowties look silly, we all know that! He makes money off them, and in his secret harem through that door he acts all tough-guy among all those ladies inside.”

“He’s kind of right,” said Helen, then whispered. “I’ve even overheard him tell bowphobic jokes to Andrea. And that bitch thought it was really funny.”

“No way! Ricky?” whispered Clive in turn.

Stewart remained mute and fixated on his keyboard. Dennis waved his hand at the others dismissively and returned to setting up his equipment.

Stewart snapped out of his momentary stupor. “If Ricky really said that, I am not going to sit here and tolerate the hypocrisy. I am going to do something about it. I cannot believe that such a person could make it all the way to CEO.”

“You can’t,” said Helen. “As the HR Manager I’m telling you right now that you, or we, can’t do anything about it. Keep that to yourself.”

“Yeah, roll it up in a little ball, put some cream on it, and eat it up, hehe,” said Dennis, who heard them despite the whispering.

Nothing was done immediately, but both Stewart and Clive could not forget about the matter. At first they were not sure whether to trust Helen’s testimony. Over the following days, they started to watch Ricky closely looking for signs of bowphobia, and they would drop hints to coworkers. They started to see and hear little clues that confirmed what Helen had told them. For one, they noticed that Ricky knew next to nothing about the latest updates from bowtie wearers communities. When Stewart told him about the F-DMBS-66 controversy, he realized that Ricky thought F-DMBS was a virus, not a gene cluster. Then several coworkers told them how they have even seen Ricky in downtown clubs wearing a regular tie!

The dawning of the realization about the hypocrisy of their boss Ricky, who was a well-connected member of the local establishment, turned Stewart and Clive to disillusionment. The whole company spirit of TT Tech now appeared to them as a big sham, exploiting the plight of bowtie wearers for profit. Ricky and his rich buddies probably laughed at the naïveté of their workers and their customers behind the closed doors of their fancy country clubs.

Stewart and Clive became sarcastic and even mocking when any of their coworkers brought up the company’s high-minded initiatives against bowphobia. Clive’s wisecracks began taking up Ricky as a subject, mocking his shirts, his hair, and his playboy pretensions. Stewart for his part took up the battle against the F-DMBS-66 genetic study, and the more he argued against it, the more polemical he became. In the canteen he would get into impassioned debates on whether bowtie predilection was due mostly to nature or to nurture. On one occasion, he made a colleague who was a bowtie wearer cry.

“You like bowties, and that’s perfectly fine,” Stewart yelled, “but stop trying to turn it into a medical condition, like it’s mayonnaise addiction or something!”

Dennis continued installing HVAC throughout the office over the following days. His refreshing bluntness of speech charmed Stewart and Clive, who often talk to him at their desk and during lunch. Dennis served as a morale booster in what eventually became Stewart and Clive’s cause. After two or three weeks, however, he finished his installation work in the office and disappeared.

Stewart and Clive were left to carry on their rebellion against Ricky’s hypocrisy on their own. Clive became despondent after Dennis’s departure. He would say that TT Tech is only a job, and although he can’t respect the company as he used to, he needed a paycheck, so he did not want to stir any trouble. Clive grew his hair and beard and his dedication to work slumped.

Stewart however would not yield so easily. He started an anonymous blog with a discussion forum, and he recommended it to coworkers he trusted, but without telling them he was the author (though very soon his authorship became an open secret in the office). He took the stance that bowtie wearing is a choice, not a medical condition or a genetically predetermined part of one’s identity and that there was nothing wrong with that. The thoroughness of his research and the cold-hard-facts approach of his writing attracted hundreds of readers and commenters. Stewart would even hear people in the office quote his work when debating each other.

Helen became an avid reader of Stewart’s blog. She would listen to Stewart’s intellectual arguments against the bowphobia hypocrisy, and she would in turn fill him in with gossip about Ricky and Andrea and the rest of the admin women. Helen and Stewart boosted each other’s convictions by providing for each other arguments they would otherwise never be able to command. Helen hated science and math, and she came to be impressed by Stewart’s analytical prowess. Stewart on the other hand was never good at reading people’s emotions, and Helen’s anecdotes in support of his theories gave him an intellectual validation that he craved. Gradually, Helen and Stewart’s differences generated magnetic attraction, and they developed romantic feelings toward each other.

One Friday after work, Clive was invited to the Bouncing Cat bar by Stewart to talk about an idea he had. When he arrived, Stewart and Helen waited for him at a table hidden in the back of the bar. They talked about Stewart’s blog and its popularity, and the whole movement against bowtie “identitarians”.

“The problem with only having the blog,” Stewart explained, “is that first of all it’s a virtual space. The comment section can get lively, but you cannot have a real community online. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, my work lacks an emotional element. People can get inspired by research only so far. We need to get people emotionally involved in the movement. This is when Helen and I thought of you. You are an amateur actor, right? So, we were wondering if you would be willing to lead an acting club that would help us gather our supporters, and at least from time to time, help us air our opinions – carefully of course – on stage. What do you think?”

“I don’t know about this whole rebellion thing,” said Clive. “Why try so hard? Things are what they are. Ricky has been a bowphobe before us, and he will remain a bowphobe forever. Nothing we can do about it.”

“Come on, Clive, you can’t give up like this,” said Stewart. “We must fight for fairness.”

“How are we going to bring in members?” asked Clive.

“Leave that to me,” said Helen. “I’ve already got a few of the girls interested. “And Stewart will promote the club on his blog, which will bring in a lot of his readers.”

“Guess I could do it,” said Clive. “I’m getting bored with my current theatre club and I wouldn’t mind starting something fresh.”

Thus, the weekly acting club began. It was named Big Bad Bows. Its secretive nature made the members feel as though they are partaking in a romantic rebellion, and it caused others to want to join as well. Stewart took the lead in organizing meetups and writing a few satirical performances, while Clive took on the main roles on stage, taught acting to other members, and led improvisation sessions. Stewart explained on his blog that the purpose of the acting club was to “develop an entire counterculture battling the hypocrisy of bowtie identitarians”.

Within two months the club had more than twenty members, more than half of which were TT Tech employees. Of those, it was about a fifty-fifty split between the admin ladies and the technical staff, who were all males. Rumours about the club began to spread in the office, giving it a certain ambivalent reputation of transgression and courage.

Helen and Stewart’s romance deepened, but Clive was not left without action, either. He was the star of the stage at the club, and most of the ladies who joined became attracted to him. He began dating several women at once. His elevated romantic status filled him with a great amount of confidence and inspiration. Helen and Stewart would tell him how he should thank them for the acting club idea. Clive was indeed grateful, in a way only a truly happy man can be.

*

The rumours about the acting club soon reached the ears of the CEO himself, Ricky Ramon. For a while he had been noticing an increase in absenteeism among his administrative staff, and soon enough he started overhearing them talking about Clive, Clive’s acting club, and Clive’s performances. One time, two of the girls even got into a yelling argument after one of them accused the other of trying to steal Clive from her.

One afternoon, Ricky was sitting in his well-lit corner office staring out of the window, confronted with the worrying realization that Clive, with his whole theatrical entourage, had become his rival, and a source of unrest that could tear apart TT Technologies. Andrea was sitting on the office’s couch, filing her nails.

“This acting club that Clive and Stewart are running,” he asked, “have you checked it out, Andrea?”

“Yes, I went for one session, but that’s it. It was too much for me. The whole thing is like a cult. Stewart is like the high priest. All the women are all over Clive, and the men who go there all think of him as some sort of guru, from which they can like learn how to, like, become transcendent or something. And Helen, of all people, is facilitating everything. She talks to all the members individually and after she’s done with them, they’re as good as brainwashed!”

The more Ricky listened to Andrea talking about the acting club and the effect it was having on his staff, the more he became determined to take action.

A couple of days later he approached Clive and Stewart and invited them to the annual company retreat. He explained that the event was usually exclusive to VIP clients and executive staff, but this year he wanted to make an exception and invite the two friends. Their design work was exceptional over the year to date, he explained, and besides, he didn’t stop hearing from the admin girls about their acting club. He hoped that Clive could organize some acting activities at the retreat.

Clive and Stewart were surprised by the invite. They discussed it with each other and with Helen, who was also surprised. She had been to the retreat twice before. She described it as a couple of days of yoga and relaxation in the countryside.

“I know what’s going on,” said Stewart. “Ricky wants to get us to say something politically incorrect on stage and use that as grounds for firing us.”

“That may be true,” answered Clive after some consideration, “and if that’s the case, if he’s indeed challenging us, we cannot back off. That would be putting our tails between our legs and submitting to the man.”

Instead, Clive got the idea that they run one of their improvisational routines in which they bring audience members up on stage and give them a rapid succession of roles to act out. They would bring out Ricky and soften him up with flattering roles, and when he gets carried away, they’d ask him to play a bowphobe to Clive’s bowtie wearer. This way, political incorrectness would be made to come out of his mouth, and he would not be able to accuse anyone else of prejudice. And if he refuses to play the role, he will look as though he’s trying to hide his true opinions.

“That is an intriguing idea indeed,” said Stewart, and Helen agreed.

The company retreat took place at the start of the summer. It was in a large, beautiful manor perched on top of a hill and surrounded by acres of manicured gardens and lawns of soft, freshly cut grass. The building itself was built in the French style, with creamy-white walls of stone. It functioned as a hotel, with rooms on the second floor and dining rooms, exercise halls, and a theatre on the ground floor. The third floor was in a steep roof, with its rooms’ French windows showing out of the blue tiles outside. The staff was housed there.

They arrived by bus in the early afternoon. Stewart and Clive each got separate rooms in the same wing as Ricky, while the administrative women stayed in groups in the opposite wing. Invitees also included the two McCracken partners and several of their staff. Everyone unpacked and then went down for lunch. There were just over thirty people. Ricky then gave a welcome speech and outlined the schedule for the three-day stay.

There would be yoga sessions on the lawn every morning at six, but it was for women only. After breakfast and before lunch, there were several options for individual activities, including painting sessions, pottery classes, massages and massage lessons, and creative writing classes. Afternoons after lunch would be open-schedule, and in the evening after dinner, everyone was to gather in the theatre for the improvisational performances.

On that first evening Clive went to the theatre to prepare for the night. To his great surprise, he saw Dennis working on some wiring on a big ladder on the stage. He was dressed the same as he had been in the office. Dennis greeted Clive with a smile, and seeing his perplexed face, explained that he is a permanent contractor for TT Tech and that he was brought over to set up the lighting and sound for the stage.

“Looking forward to watching you guys perform.”

On the first night of theatre, Clive brought up volunteers from the audience and divided them into two groups: short-fingered vs long-fingered people. The setting for the improvisation was a jewellery design studio in preparation for an urgent fashion show. They needed to decide who was going to design jewellery, who was going to make it, and who was going to wear it for the show.

The improvisation produced a heated debate on whether short-fingered people were actually better at making jewellery because their short fingers allowed them more dexterity when sculpting details of rings and bracelets and necklaces, and setting them with diamonds and other precious stones. There was also a clash of opinions as to whether short-fingered hands or long-fingered hands were better for modelling the jewellery. The long-fingered contingent pointed out that super-models throughout history have always had long fingers. Short-fingered characters called it discrimination, arguing that the association of beauty with long fingers was a cultural construct that needed to be demolished.

In the pitch of the debate, Clive stepped in between the two groups, lifted his two stubby hands in the air, and gave the following monologue:

“Ever since I can remember I felt like a man apart from ordinary society. The other kids either bullied me or smiled at me oddly; even my parents treated me like a stranger. In my youngest years, I did not understand why it was like this, but by the time I reached high school, I understood. My short fingers gave me stitching and sewing prowess that filled my peers with either admiration or envy, or both. People would tell me about the great future awaiting me in the fashion business, but I never knew if they were wishing me luck or trying to curse me. Yes! It is true that with these short fingers I am the best designer at TT Tech, just as I was the best designer at the fashion school. But believe me when I tell you, these fingers are as much of a curse as they are a blessing. I toil all day cutting out bowties, and at night I lose sleep dreaming up new patterns. People approach me and tell me how much they admire my gift, but what do I have of such praise? I have neither friend nor brother nor lover, only empty vanity and loneliness.”

Clive delivered his words with such panache that the audience and the other actors on stage froze in listening to him. The silence was broken after a few moments by a clapping of a single pair of hands.

“Bravo! Bravo!” It was Dennis, standing on the side of the stage.

Ricky himself then also stood up and began clapping, and after him all the people in the audience, including the McCracken partners and all the women of the administrative staff.

At the cocktail party afterwards, Clive was surrounded by people complimenting his performance. Ricky told him how he was impressed by everything he saw on the stage. Had he known that this was what the acting club was all about, he would have insisted they run it at TT Tech premises. McCracken partners expressed interest in having Clive organize a similar show at their offices, too.

The classical setting of the building was beautiful. The men were asked to dress business-formal, and everyone put on TT Technologies bowties. The women, wearing beautiful cocktail dresses, swarmed Clive, who had never seen his female colleagues look so seductive. The lights in the room dimmed and a jazz band started playing. The crowd began to dance. Clive turned out to be a good dancer, while Stewart could barely keep up with Helen for one song, after which he gave up and went to stand in the corner. He then watched Helen dance tango with Clive. They took over the dance floor, and though Stewart couldn’t see their faces clearly, it looked to him as though their eyes were shooting sparks at each other.

A few minutes later, Dennis showed up next to Stewart on the side of the floor. He was finally out of his overalls and wearing casual khaki trousers and a white polo shirt. He was drinking red wine and judging by his bloodshot eyes, he was drinking a lot of it.

“So this is how the rich and mighty amuse themselves, isn’t it?” said Dennis.

“Sure looks like it!” said Stewart. “I’ve never been to a party like this. Frankly speaking, my senses are a little overwhelmed. Even the smell of the hall is so seductive.”

“Talking about seduction, look at your buddy Clive tonight! He’s danced with every single admin girl so far, I reckon.”

“He has a great EQ and knows how to draw a response out of the audience,” said Stewart.

“And you? You are the IQ guy I suppose?”

“Let’s just say that I derive great pleasure from uncovering and contemplating hidden patterns.”

Just when he finished saying that, the music stopped, and Clive climbed up on the stage with the band and sat on the piano. He announced on the microphone suspended above the piano keyboard:

“I would like to dedicate this song to my dear friend and the shortest-fingered person I know: Stewart Rider.”

Accompanied by the band, Clive began playing an intricate, soothing jazz piece that once again froze everyone in the room. The dancing stopped as everyone gazed at the concert-quality performance on the stage. Once again everyone was taken aback by Clive’s talent and wondered how such a short-fingered man could play the piano with such masterful dexterity. When he finally finished, the hall resounded with applause.

Clive stood up and bowed, and then invited Stewart on stage.

“Stewart Rider, ladies and gentlemen,” Clive presented his friend to the crowd, “the fingers of TT Tech.”

“I can’t believe you play the piano!” Stewart whispered to Clive after they hugged on stage and began walking down, “it’s such a long-fingered man’s thing.

“I suppose it is. I don’t have much of an ear for music, actually. I take a calculated approach towards learning the piano, focusing on optimizing the finger mechanics and practicing only pieces that don’t require spreading my fingers very wide. And to be honest, I don’t really enjoy it so much either. I just learned it to impress the ladies.”

The next day Stewart got into a fight with Helen at lunch. To begin with, she seemed already drunk so early in the day. She made some silly excuse about how the morning yoga classes required the girls to drink wine, for whatever reason (“at six in the morning!?”). Secondly, she kept complimenting Clive’s theatrical performance and musical talents. Stewart made an accusatory remark about her tango duet with Clive, calling it “a little too passionate,” and he sarcastically apologized that in addition to his short fingers, he also had short feet, and wasn’t as good a dancer as Clive.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Helen. “You should be glad Clive impressed everyone! He is going to boost your reputation too and get you Ricky’s and McCracken’s trust. And if that happens, maybe your stupid blog and stupid theatre can become respectable and make a real difference!”

“Oh, right,” Stewart answered. “It’s still all about sucking up to the powers that be to you, isn’t it? Why don’t we all just grow out long nails and look pretty for the hot shots? That will ingratiate us to Ricky and McCracken!”

The implications infuriated Helen. The two of them were now making a loud scene in the dining hall.

“You know what, asshole?” yelled Helen. “I’m getting out of this stupid manor and I hope you and your boyfriend Clive live happily ever after.”

The others, including Clive, who was sitting far off with a couple of admin girls, heard that last line. They were quite surprised, but considering the celebrity Clive was now enjoying, no one was exactly shocked that jealousy would erupt between the couple. Less than an hour later, Helen indeed disappeared.

*

In the theatre session of the second evening, it was time for Stewart and Clive to run the improvisational theatre game plan by which they would turn the tables on Ricky and put him in an awkward role. Stewart sat behind a table at the centre back of the stage, while Clive stood in front. This was their usual improvisational setup.

They called out audience members and gave them random roles confrontational with that of Clive, hoping that Clive and the volunteer would engage in a cathartic role-playing debate on topics such as marrying for love versus marrying for money, sales department versus engineers, classical music versus modern. Clive managed to generate a significant moment with almost every partner, and it got the crowd going. Finally, Ricky Ramon walked up on stage.

Stewart read out the prompt: “Clive, you are a bowtie wearer unfairly dismissed from work for your lifestyle choices. Ricky, you are his bowphobic colleague. Clive, you begin.”

Clive started on a dime and delivered a monologue quite similar to the one about being stubby-fingered he did the day before. He finished it and looked at Ricky to respond. Ricky turned flush red and giggled awkwardly. He assumed a half-decent geeky posture and began:

“I am your colleague Stewart Rider, and I believe that the scientific study on the F-DMBS virus proves conclusively that your predilection for bowties is nothing but a virally induced perversion, sir. Quit your whining and go get some treatment! Hehehe, facts, facts, facts!”

The audience gasped audibly. Dennis, who was working the lights, shone the spotlight directly on Stewart’s head, which revealed his face gripped with inscrutable tension. After what seemed to be an infinity of awkwardness, Stewart finally stood up and yelled:

“It’s a genetic cluster, Mr. Ramon! Not a fucking virus! F-DMBS-66 is a genetic cluster and while I would never, ever use the word “perversion”, which is highly non-technical, as a matter of fact I do believe that bowtieism is nothing but a silly fashion choice that ought not to be politicized!”

“Excuse me,” said Clive, who was still playing his bowtie-wearing character, “but maybe, after all, everyone here is a little too privileged to emphasize with the daily pain and humiliation that bowtie wearers experience throughout their life. And many of you, as short-fingered people who make a living manufacturing bowties, really do ought to emphasize.”

“Oh, shut up, Clive!” yelled Stewart. “What, you got all this attention from all the girls and from these McCracken hotshots and from your superiors and now you are going to change your mind? You know as well as I do that the whole bowtie wearers bullshit has been blown way out of proportion and that it is nothing but a power move to keep us in submission!”

“Hey, watch it,” a woman in the audience yelled. “What’s the matter with you, asshole?” yelled another woman.

The sporadic complaints from the audience grew into clamour. Some people had to be restrained by Dennis from getting up on stage.

“I can’t believe you two would turn out to be a couple of bowphobes,” said Ricky, still on stage.

“Let’s kick their asses!” some of the women in the audience yelled, and finally many of them broke onto the stage.

One girl threw her green vitamin smoothie at Stewart, and it splurged all over his shirt and face. At this point, the crowd rushed onto the stage and seized Stewart. While three or four employees held him by his arms and legs, the admin women started pulling his blond curly tufts of hair and scratching his face with their long fingers. He tried to scratch them back, but his short, chubby, and well-manicured fingers proved completely harmless, no match for the claw-like digits of the crowd of femme fatales.

“You evil, evil bowphobe!” they screamed, “Bowties are beautiful! Regular ties are a sign of the Serpent!”

As the crazed women continued tearing at Stewart, they ended up ripping off all his clothes and leaving him stark naked and blooded, sprawled on the brightly lit stage in the embryonic position. He managed to get up on his knees, however, and in despair he screamed:

“The whole thing with the club wasn’t even my idea! It was that technician over there, that Dennis, who made me and Clive think like that.”

Dennis then got up on the stage. He walked up to Stewart and slapped him violently across the face. He then took off his white polo shirt, revealing a chiselled physique. His chest had a tattoo of an angry unicorn with an oxblood coat and orange mane. Below and above the fantastic beast were the words “Stallion Studs”. This was the name of a notorious gay biker gang that was rumoured to control up to 60% of the national stock market and about as much of its GDP.

“You fools!” laughed Dennis. “I am the supreme commander of Stallion Studs Gay Biker Gang. You may have heard it through the grapevine: we are the majority stakeholders of TT Technologies. I showed up in the office in disguise because I heard about these two troublemakers, Stewart and Clive, how they are always debating nature and nurture, like a couple of toxic heterosexuals, and ruining the tranquility of our company culture. You even got our administrative virgins acting up and getting ideas of carnal relations. You must now pay for all of this!”

“My virgins!” continued Dennis, addressing the crazed women on stage. “You wanted Clive, did you not? He made you feel hot, didn’t he? Well, now you may have him! Strip him!”

At this point the women turned from Stewart and attacked Clive. At first it looked like they are hugging him affectionately, and then as though they may rape him, but in the end the kerfuffle turned out to be the same as what Stewart received: a lot of scratching and pulling of hair, and eventually full nudity. Like Stewart a few minutes before, Clive also found that due to his short and well-kept fingers he could not scratch back against his crazed attackers.

Dennis whistled and the women backed off. Then, Stewart and Clive were made to kneel next to each other in the middle of the stage, both badly bloodied and scratched up.

Dennis walked up with two white robes and covered the two terrified friends with them. He then addressed Stewart:

“Stewart, your sins are forgivable. They’re only concerned with facts. However, your friend Clive has encroached upon the sacred affairs of the heart, to which Stallion Studs claim monopoly. He has wreaked disorder among our ranks at TT Tech! He must go. Prove to us that you can change, that you can understand the power of feelings, and we shall promote you to the position of the Vice-Principal of Facts at TT Tech.”

“How… How do you do that?” asked Stewart.

Dennis produced a bowtie out of his pocket. It was a red bowtie with a pattern of Stallion Studs unicorns.

“This is a magic bowtie. Unlike regular bowties, this one endows the wearer with Kutos, a divine energy field of irresistible erotic attraction. Take this tie in your hand. Now decide, Stewart. Will you be irresistible, like your friend Clive? Or will you stick to the rational? What will you do with the unicorn bowtie, Stewart?”

Again, Stewart’s face became inscrutable. He held the bowtie in the palm of his stubby hand.

“I think I understand your point now, Dennis.”

He walked over to Clive, who looked at him in panic from his kneeling position.

“No, Stewart, no!”

Clive’s yelling did him no good, as he was held down by the McCracken partners. Stewart placed the bowtie on Clive’s bloodied neck, and then stepped back, as did his restrainers. The admin girls began to make inhuman howls as they rushed Clive with open arms. They piled into a human cairn over him and continued moaning sensually and even screaming. After some moments the confusion of limbs and bodies began to turn red with blood. Soon, one could see detached hands and feet and limbs. Poor Clive was being torn apart. Finally, Andrea produced his detached head and lifted it in triumph. The bowtie was still somehow tied around the neck. She ran off the stage and out into the darkness of the night, followed by the crowd of crazed admin “virgins”, all of which had different limbs and organs from Clive’s cadaver.

Dennis placed his arm affectionately around Stewart’s shoulders:

“Welcome to the establishment, brother. You are now promoted to the position of Vice President of Facts at TT Technologies.”

Dennis then walked over and embraced the McCracken partner who dressed like a biker, and who had helped hold down Clive before he was ripped apart. They kissed on the mouth.

“See Stewart, you have nothing to fear,” he said, “we also know how to love, but it must be done the civilized way. It must be done with hypocrisy. I know that now you understand that.”

“I have to confess, it all does make sense,” said Stewart. “And you Ricky, are you also gay?”

“Yeah, man,” answered Ricky. “How do you think I can spend all my workdays surrounded by seventeen hot broads, and remain a competent CEO?”

“Touché. And I guess you are also gay?” Stewart turned to the bowtie-wearing McCracken partner.

“Oh, not at all. I am just a big fan of James Bond movies.”

“And what about the whole F-DMBS-66 genetic cluster controversy?” asked Stewart.

At this question Dennis and the McCracken partners looked at each other and burst into a peal of long, hearty laughter. Dennis then wiped a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye and smiled wistfully.

“Stewart, you are an executive now, he said. “And now, you will appreciate that every culture needs its stories. It needs its narratives, its myths! But you are an executive now, and it is unbecoming of executives to engage in silly debates.”