Deep within El Cajon, in the noisy crotch of two freeways, stands a Sizzler. Inside, tucked away in a back room, a group of UFO enthusiasts meet once a week to discuss their research, sitings, and enjoy generous helpings of steak and salmon.

7:32 EL CAJON, CA: SIZZLER

“They banged Wheeler,” says a leathery man in sweats, shaking his head. “Had a lotta secrets. Government didn’t want him to let any out. They found him in a dumpster.”

His table-mates answer in a chorus of yup’s and join in his head-shaking.

All around similar conversations are taking place.

“My phone’s been tapped for five years!”

“There was a car that ran on air…had three engines…but the guy who invented it got bought out.”

“…Bay of Pigs…”

“…JFK…”

“…9/11…”

“Excuse me, I ordered the salmon”

An affable woman in pants-suit gets the room’s attention. Her name is Linda. She is the host of tonight’s event as well the host of [internationally known] astrological radio show, “Spiritual Discovery and the Lunar News (pause for applause)”. She introduces our speaker, a hunchy man who’d been standing in a corner checking his watch. His name is Ed. He does not give his last name. “Tonight he will reveal to us exciting information about a real-live documented abduction!” says Linda excitedly, enticing the room, “Ed please inform us!”

Ed thanks Linda and flips open a sketch pad. In it, a list of strange words you’ve never seen before, each an exotic and impractical garbling of consonants. He teaches the room the proper pronunciations of each (it’s essential to our understanding of the lecture) and the crowd mutters along like a Catholic mass.  He pauses to mock those who, “pass themselves off as experts,” sitting smug behind their college degrees who, “can’t even pronounce the damn names right.” He pauses for laughter.

“One of the biggest mysteries is corn,” professes Ed. “It comes wrapped. How does it procreate? Without man’s help it does not!” An in depth history of corn and its relatives in the wild is presented, Ed attempting to heighten the unseemly mystique of corn with Rod Serling intonation. He ignores domestication as an explanation.

“Now, can anyone in this room explain how it got there?”

Mutterings of extraterrestrials from a hesitant crowd.

“The truth is,” says Ed, “they don’t have a clue!”

The crowd is sits in spurned disappointment, their suspicions weren’t affirmed. The lecture goes on and nowhere as Ed, fixed in his corner, rattles off fact after fact about Egyptians and the Aztecs. This is not the conspiracy-ridden rant they’d been hoping for.  You start to hear muzak bleeding in from the dining area, the subtle shush of water through pipes in the walls, the tentative clinks of silverware as guests try quietly to scrape up leftovers. The heads, grey and balding in your foreground, begin to nod off. A toupee sneaks discretely toward an ear.

Eventually Ed is finished. Linda thanks him and politely apologizes for his attention to detail.

“Clearly a Scorpio,” she says.

Ed has his applause and announces himself available for questions. The room perks up, excited to have their favorites answered.

“The UFO’s are here. Can they not see that we’re destroying our planet? Why don’t they give us their technology?” a woman asks.

Ed pauses in thought, fingers teasing his chin-beard, before delivering a well-rehearsed analogy.

“What would you do if you went to the zoo, the monkey exhibit, and saw two monkeys with pointed sticks poking each other? You wouldn’t give them AK-47’s and see what they did with them. Can you imagine? Monkeys with AK-47’s?” Chuckles fill the room. Ed smirks and nods, obviously enjoying the reaction. He answers another hand.

“Our governments are failing. Why don’t the aliens make contact? Couldn’t they come down and solve our dilemmas?” asks a man in a wheel-chair.

Another thoughtful-looking pause, “Thinking about it from their perspective, it would be a bit like parachuting into an ant hill. You’re falling and one sees you and soon they all come out to meet you and you can’t guarantee that they’re going to be diplomatic about it. You could be food for all you know!”

Laughter again. The whole room is smiling now, some nodding in whole-hearted agreement.  It’s as if from they don’t mind being referred to as violent, thoughtless animals as long as the UFO’s were flying above, detached it all; zookeepers wise beyond anything they could understand.

After a few more questions and some news from the UFO community abroad, the meeting is over. You slip out the door, leaving the guests laughing and mingling, talking more about government secrecy and sharing their mutual frustration with the way they’re treated for their beliefs, society’s stargazing pariahs. Walking to your car you can’t help but look up and wonder.

These people can’t get together over iced-tea and talk about their marriages. They can’t commune on the bleachers while they watch their kids play soccer. If you were them, you’d probably be frustrated too. Frustrated that your life turned so inexplicably dissimilar from the lives depicted in theaters and TV sets.

Naturally, you’d want there to be some wonderful, incomprehensible force taking interest in the glum little planet you lived on.

Naturally, you’d want to believe that the society you were born into/the government you were born under was shallow and insignificant and somewhere out there was someplace perfect, somewhere where they had it all figured out, somewhere where the grey’s in your hair, the stain on your shirt, the organs unused and withering away weren’t important. I guess what I’m trying to say is I hope, for their sake, they’re right.