I was on line 12, on my way to the station, when a boy got on the Leidseplein who phoned agitated from behind a red-white-blue mouth mask; not the Dutch flag, but the Tommy Hilfiger brand. He was about 18 years old and his eyes were angry.
“I’ve been moaning about a dwarf at school,” he called into his phone. ‘I had come up with something cool for the graduation stunt, with Felix and Victor and Tijmen. We hire a dwarf in a security suit. You can rent them from such an agency. If we pay 2 euros each with the entire annual layer, we have a dwarf at that party. You can choose what kind of suit he wears. That’s laughing, isn’t it?’
He was silent for a moment, and listened. “No man, that’s not pathetic!” he continued. ‘They choose that themselves. Just google ‘dwarf hire’ and you’ll get a company, Short People Agency or something. The boss is a dwarf himself, so… what? No, Tijmen’s father already mentioned that, but that’s nonsense, because they do it voluntarily, don’t they? They’re not forced or anything, are they?’
He listened again for a moment, then rolled his eyes in irritation. “Jesus man,” he said. ‘What now, medieval? They choose it themselves! Surely they can also work in the, I know a lot, in IT or something like that? But as a dwarf you can just earn super good. Handicap, come on, they can hear just about anything, walking and dancing and everything. Man…’
“But it probably won’t happen anyway,” he continued. ‘A lot of people are against it. Tessel, Sophie, Justine… all those woke girls and stuff. They want a stripper. Yes a male stripper, otherwise it’s not woke enough.’ He laughed scornfully. ‘But a stripper, I don’t think that’s possible. He goes completely naked. The first-graders are there too, aren’t they. You can’t do that with first-graders, can you?’
He paused again. ‘No, man…’, he sighed. ‘Of course you’re not going to laugh at a dwarf. Not about an ordinary dwarf, who just walks on the street or something, so you really don’t laugh about that. But if that dwarf rents out as a dwarf, then it’s a different story, isn’t it? Then it’s just like a clown or something, isn’t it?’ He sounded desperate now.
“Well, so now it’s probably going to be something really silly,” he said bitterly. He stood up. “A masquerade ball or something. That’s cancer, isn’t it?’
He walked to the door. He himself was about 2 meters long.
‘Cunt, man,’ he concluded. “What a piece of shit.”