Sam Pink

Hurt Others

Bees

A couple years ago, I lived in a different apartment, part of the same building as the one I’m in now.

My roommate was someone I didn’t know and almost never saw.

He was from India.

The landlord set us up when I emailed her about needing another person to split the rent.

Our rooms were right across from each other.

Sometimes I’d open my door in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and he’d be standing by his door, looking out its slight crack.

Other than that, I lived a year with him and our only exchanges were brief smiles in the kitchen while we drank water.

I saw the inside of his room once.

He was gone and he had left his door open.

I didn’t go into his room but I did look.

There was just a sleeping bag on the floor and garbage all over.

The garbage made a steep pile in the corner of his room.

It looked exactly the same as my room.

Three days before the end of our lease, he walked up to me in the living room.

I was reading.

He told me he had just finished his PhD and that he wanted to buy me pizza to celebrate.

He kept saying, “Ahm — do you like beesa hot? Beesa hot?”

I knew he was saying Pizza Hut, but it also sounded like he was saying, “Bees are hot.”

I was worried that he’d turn around with a back covered in flaming bees and then point to them saying, “Bees are hot,” in his tiny voice.

Flaming bees would’ve been nice to look at I bet.

Maybe too scary though.

I said, “Yes, I like Pizza Hut.”

He ordered pizza and we ate it, sitting very still on the couch.

We only looked at each other once, to nod and smile.

We didn’t say anything.

I moved out the next day, into an apartment on a different floor in the same building.

Love

This afternoon I took the Montrose Brown Line train to go find out about getting a Link Card.

A Link Card is foodstamps but on a thing that looks like a credit card.

Someone at work told me I’d probably qualify.

I went to the office and the employee gave me a form to fill out.

I took the form and sat down with it and started to fill it out but then saw a magazine that was left in the sitting area and on the cover there was a weird-looking kid and I decided I didn’t want to be there anymore so I threw the form out and left.

On the Brown Line back, the car I was in had four other people in it.

To my left in the opposite aisle facing the opposite way, a woman talked loudly into her cell phone.

In the middle of the car — sitting on the sideways seats — there was a young woman on one side and her two kids, a boy and girl, facing her from the other side.

The young woman was taking pictures of herself with her cell phone, trying to look attractive.

Her kids talked to each other.

I couldn’t hear them because the woman across the aisle to my left was loud on her cell phone.

“That’s wh’I’m saying,” she said. “I’ll fucking break the bitch’s face she keeps talking. Uh huh.”

Then she stopped to listen, tapping the window with her knuckle.

She said, “No that’s why he hits her pregnant ass — because she playing games.” Then her tone changed. More friendly. She said, “Oh man, last night Ricky was trying to get up on my ass while I’s sleeping. I passed out after smoking this blunt and he was trying to get some pussy and shit. I’s like, uh uh. Not when I’m all sleepy and shit, feeling crusty and sweaty and shit. He annoying as hell that bitch Ricky, and girl, yup, I’ma fuck his brother.” She listened. She laughed. “Ha ha, girl. Telling you this, I’ma fuck him.” She listened again for a little bit then laughed aggressively, slapping her leg and the back of the seat in front of her. She said, “Hell-ell-ell-ell no. What — what. No girl, I’m saying me and you we should get pregnant together so we can be pregnant together and shit. That’s wh’I’m saying. I want to do it with you, sto-pid. No, we always sisters and shit — she the one — what — no — she the one ain’t in the family. That bitch ain’t in my motherfucking family.”

The train took a curve, leaving the downtown area.

All the buildings were tall and black, lights on in random windows.

Below, the Chicago River had the same lights in the same spots.

All together, it looked like a really expensive toy.

We passed the building for the Chicago Sun Times newspaper.

We passed slowly, in a curve that maintained the Sun Times building at its center.

The lettering on the building was lit yellow, and said, “Chicago Sun Times” in the same font they used on the front page of the newspaper.

I heard the boy and girl talking.

The boy pointed at the Sun Times building and said, “Wow, I want to live there, in that building.”

His sister looked.

She said, “You’d be lonely” in a tone of warning.

He lowered his arm and swung his legs back and forth on the seat so his heels hit against the bottom of the seat.

“I’d have a party in there,” he said, looking at the ceiling of the train, smiling.

Their mom took another picture of herself, looking into her cell phone camera and tilting her head sideways a little.

“You’d be lonely,” the girl said again.

The boy said, “Party up, nahhhh!” and then threw out his hands and feet while still sitting in the seat.

Their mom made eye contact with me.

She was pretty.

Her nose looked like it’d been broken before.

She went back to taking pictures.

Across the aisle, the loud woman on the cell phone said, “Aw fuck no — that bitch sitting next to you right now? Right now?” A pause. “Ey, tell me.” She listened, making a fist and putting the fist against her mouth. “Oooh I hate that bitch for real. What. No, I’ll come out tonight. Yeah I’ma go home and come out later. Girl we should get pregnant together for real. But no, I’ll break her face, fucking with me. Bitch got me off my square. No fucking games with me. Girl, I spike the bitch. Suh-pike a bitch.” She laughed. Then she yelled, “Suh-pike a bitch in the a.m. or the p.m.”

She laughed.

She leaned forward, stomping her feet against the floor of the train.

The floor of the train was gray, from snow and dirt.

I stared at the color and wordlessly promised something to it.

I didn’t know what I was promising, but it immediately felt gone.

Everything I got I always immediately wanted to give away.

Terrible kinds of weight, terrible colors, terrible people, all terrible weights.

The kids were still staring out the window opposite, into the downtown area and its buildings.

The boy turned sideways and looked at his sister.

They looked at each other as best as they could with their winter coats and hats on.

He said, “How high can you jump.”

“Really high,” she said.

He said, “We should see who can jump higher.”

“Yeah but we can’t do that now,” she said. “Because of we’ll fall over because the train is so shaky.”

“Yeah the train is too shaky,” the boy said, realizing he hadn’t thought of that. Then he swung his legs and the heels of his boots hit against the bottom of his seat. He said, “We can do it when we get off the train. Do you want to do it then.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, we can do it then,” he said.

“Yeah.”

The boy started chewing his scarf.

“I’m going to beat you,” he said, smiling with the scarf between his teeth.

“No you’re not,” said the girl.

Their mom was taking my picture, holding the cell phone so as not to look like that’s what she was doing.

It made me feel really warm and stupid.

Need to get off this train and become someone else — I thought. Someone who is a success. A fucking blue-burning comet of success ready to take others in as fuel to get wherever I’m going. Someone who dies at the moment of arrival. Someone who is missed by everyone he meets once he dies.

Sitting on the Brown Line to Montrose, I was missing somebody.

But I didn’t know who.

I had a lizard when I was seven and I put too many crickets in with him and they ate his leg off.

Maybe I was missing the lizard.

Do I miss my lizard.

I’m not sure.

I shouldn’t be embarrassed about that, if that’s true.

I should just be able to admit I’m still sad about my dead lizard.

He’s never coming back.

Yes I know.

Please come back lizard.

I’m sorry I left you alone with all those crickets.

I didn’t know they did that.

If I knew they did that I wouldn’t have done that.

The loud woman on the cell phone put her feet on the metal-pole headrest in front of her.

She said, “Hell yeah, if I was him I’d hit her pregnant ass too because she always talking. Right. So he kicked her bitchass in the mouth good, yeah? Hell yeah. Dumb bitch.”

The train announced the stop and it was my stop and I got up and so did the loud woman on the cell phone.

We walked out together, me gesturing with my arm for her to go first through the open door.

I followed her out.

And I wanted to marry her.

Wanted to get her pregnant.

Twizzler

When I was sixteen I knew a guy named Scott. He always had people over to drink in his basement. I would go over sometimes in the summer because it was within walking distance. Also because his sister’s friends all wanted to have sex with me. One time after not seeing him for a while I heard from some people how Scott had been drinking and driving, and how when he was speeding up a hill, he hit a kid crossing the street. Scott was seventeen when it happened and the kid was fourteen. Scott didn’t go to jail. So one night after not seeing Scott for over a year, I went over. And he told me and some other people about the night of the accident. He said he held the bloody kid’s body in his arms while they waited for the ambulance. He said the kid either died in his arms, or was already dead, he didn’t know. He said holding the kid’s body was like holding “a Twizzler.” No one said anything, but I think we were all thinking about how the Twizzler comparison made sense at first, then not at all.

Thing About When I Worked at a ‘Treasure Island’ Grocery Store in Chicago, Illinois

I got a job as a bagger at a grocery store called “Treasure Island.”

They gave me a handbook during my orientation day and that night I sat on the floor of my room reading it.

The handbook said Treasure Island was “The most European supermarket in America.”

But the store sold the same things every other supermarket did.

Plus the employees were me (American), the manager (African American), the produce employees (Mexican American), the cashiers (Puerto Rican American), the deli workers (African American, and American) and the kid who worked the customer service booth (Phillipino).

So no one was from Europe.

One of the sections of the handbook was titled “Procedure for Cash Handling.”

I didn’t read it.

Another chapter was titled “Bagging a Customer’s Order.”

I read it.

Kept trying to memorize the tips (“meat with meat” “frozen with frozen”) but then decided to just see what feels right as I’m doing it.

Like if a certain combination felt wrong, I wouldn’t do it.

This shouldn’t be hard — I thought.

In a way, it felt like I’d been preparing my whole life.

One bullet-pointed tip read: “All soft, perishable items must be packed on the top, to avoid crushing.”

I imagined myself bagging groceries and repeating “I have to avoid the crushing” over and over not looking at the customers. And the crushing came as a low tone from inside the bags and only I could hear it. And then my boss, an overweight man named Charles, would come up to me, his thin nose covered in sweat, a Newport cigarette behind his ear, and he’d say, “Are you avoiding the crushing.”

The crushing.

Making money.

I looked at other parts of the handbook.

In the chapter about Conduct, it prohibited both “horseplay” and “scuffling” in the store, as well as “catcalls” or “any similar antics.”

Antics.

I envisioned myself coordinating antics.

There would be a lot of antics.

One section under Conduct, was “Dress Code.”

In the dress code it said I had to wear a cleanly-pressed white shirt and a tie, which I would never do unless the store funded me.

Anything required to do the job would be provided or it wouldn’t be done — I thought, feeling bad-ass.

I handled my balls and looked through the handbook.

It said your skirt had to be knee length.

I considered wearing a skirt and then suing the company when they discriminated, then when I won the lawsuit I’d say, “You can keep the store open, if you rename it: ‘The Most Not-European Store in America.’”

The handbook also stated I had to wash my hands after using the bathroom.

I would not do that either.

I never wash my hands after using the bathroom.

Never!

I flipped to a random page, feeling ready to go to sleep.

At the top of the page it said: “Who is a Customer” and it featured eight definitions of a customer — reprinted from an advice column ran a decade earlier in the Chicago Tribune.

One of the definitions was: “A customer is a person who comes to us with his needs and his wants. It is our job to fill them.”

The store was in a shitty neighborhood on the border of a really nice neighborhood.

Right by The Gold Coast.

Which meant a lot of assholes came in.

Different kinds of assholes.

Ones with money, ones without money.

The way you can be an asshole to others, that’s what makes us all the same.

My first day I had to bag a lot of groceries.

It felt overwhelming but I learned to think about nothing and just do my job.

I absolutely stopped thinking about time outside of the very moment I was in.

I’d start saying dumb shit to the customers.

Like someone would come in and buy a frozen dinner, a bottle of wine, and like, dish detergent, and I’d say, “Big night” or “What’s going on here, uh oh.”

At one point today I was putting a wine bottle in a customer’s bag and I had an almost unstoppable urge to hit the customer’s child with the wine bottle, for no detectable reason.

I wanted to just take the wine bottle by the neck, then windmill it downward onto the top of the child’s head, circle of glass at the bottom of the bottle landing hard.

A sound no one would want to hear.

Then blood.

Meat with meat.

Frozen with frozen.

Midway through my shift, the guy who was kind-of training me — a guy whose rank was represented by the fact that he got “regular hours” and “weekends off”—showed me the breakroom.

The breakroom was like, in the attic of the store, on some loose floorboard and roof beams, with a folding table and a coffee maker and a bathroom.

It was really hot.

“Shit’s hot,” I said.

The guy training me said, “It’s some hot shit.”

And we looked around the breakroom, not wanting to be the one who said anything else.

He said, “So clean it before you come back downstairs and then I can show you the freezer and the coolers.”

And he went down the open stairwell, making eye contact with me at the last possible moment his head was visible over the floor.

Later, my trainer showed me the freezer, where they kept supplies.

It was in the back of the store, in a basement-like area you accessed through a very narrow hallway.

The freezer stockroom was ten degrees below zero, and its engines were loud.

I later made a habit of going in the freezer stockroom and making a noise with my throat that exactly reproduced the tone of the engines.

I’d stand there and do the exact same tone of humming.

Making the same sound as the freezer.

I liked to do that.

Every time I did it, it seemed like that layer of humming stayed in my head.

Getting louder every time.

Yes and I’d stand there in the freezer, knowing that one day when I went into the freezer to get something I’d come back out but no one would be in the store or anywhere else I looked.

Just humming.

And having given myself repeated reminders about how this feels, it wouldn’t surprise me.

And that’s comfortable, to never be surprised.

To come into command of something already happening a certain way, and not be surprised.

Harmlessly in command by just not needing solutions.

That’s comfort.

Letting myself become something that’s already happening a certain way.

Humming along with the freezer.

The pay was seven dollars and thirty five cents and I spent most of it on food at work.

One of my first nights there, a really drunk woman came in and bought a bunch of things, and then asked me to carry it home for her.

I looked at Charles, the manager, and he said to do it, so I did it.

I carried the bags a few blocks to her apartment building, and we went up twenty some floors.

She opened up her apartment door and I went in and put the bags on the ground, while she went into her room — right down the hall — and lay face down on her bed.

There was a picture of some guy on the wall by the doorway, and I found myself staring at myself in it.

I’d focus then unfocus, letting my face and the guy’s face blend.

On the walk back to work, I sat on a curb by a sprinkler going off, and stayed for ten minutes, trying to stop sweating.

A prostitute walked down the sidewalk and when she (?) passed by, we smiled and waved to each other.

The job was fine.

I just did what I was told.

I went to work and bagged groceries.

After working there for a month, the manager said he liked me and moved me to the deli, where I got paid thirty five cents more.

I sliced meat and cheese on a deli slicer and cleaned.

I had to disassemble the meat slicer, and the cheese slicer every night, and clean every part of them.

One of the main guys at the deli cut the top of his thumb off right after I started in the deli.

His thumb bled a lot and he kept saying, “Oh shit oh shit” almost quietly.

Working in the deli was ok.

It made me smell weird.

I had to wear a hairnet.

Plus the bathroom in the breakroom sucked for shitting because it was always cold for some reason and the door didn’t lock.

And for whatever reason, around that time, my dick looked a lot bigger than it usually was.

Charles was the manager.

I felt bad for him for some reason, so I liked him.

One time he paged me over the p.a.

I went to his office and he asked me to clean up outside.

He was staring at an invoice of some kind, in quiet terror.

“Ey can you sweep ah-side, out front,” he said.

He didn’t look up from the paper.

I said, “Yeah, I’ll go do it now.”

Then he turned to me like I’d just entered the room. “Ey,” he said, “I wanted to ax you—” he reached under his desk and opened a mini-fridge. He pulled out a small plastic bag and extended it to me. “You want this roast beef?” He shook the bag. “I bought it the other day and the expiration date is tomorrow. There’s like half a pound left but I been eating it f’the last week. Can’t eat no more. I’m afraid I’ma have a stroke because of it or something.” He jabbed it at me. “Here. You want it?”

“Sure,” I said and grabbed the roast beef. I looked at it then back to him. “Thanks. Thanks for the roast beef.”

“No problem. Sweep under the ice machine too, please.”

He smiled and winked and clicked his teeth.

Then he returned to staring at the invoice.

There was a juice-box on his desk, fruit punch.

The roast beef felt heavy in my hand.

Out front I set the broom down and sat on the curb.

Somebody drove by and yelled “Cocksucker” and I watched the car get smaller.

I swept, pushing dead leaves into the street.

There was a huge puddle along the curb.

Inside it was a broken pencil, bobbing.

It floated past.

I threw the roast beef into the street and a car ran it over.

I was still young.

My shifts were mostly at night, up until the closing of the store at midnight.

At night, the overnight cleaning crew would come in.

There was this old man named Gilberto.

He worked for the cleaning company hired by the store.

He was like, in his 60’s, and he worked over eighty hours a week.

He’d work a twelve hour shift, go home and take a three hour nap and come back.

Sometimes I couldn’t understand him with his accent, but Gilberto was fucking awesome.

We always acknowledged each other the first time on any particular day.

I’d always say, “Hey man” while doing a single, precise upward-nod.

That was my thing.

Every time.

And he’d say, “Mijo.”

I’d developed several relationships like that with people at work.

Just a single performance.

A single nod while saying, “Hey.”

And then slowly I noticed I started using “Hey” more in a way that sounded like “Ey.”

Slowly, it became more and more like “Ey.”

I’d become an “Ey” guy.

And Gilberto knew it.

And he loved it.

Today after our regular greeting, he motioned me over, and we talked for a little while next to the floor waxer.

We had a conversation.

He leaned on the floor waxer.

“Lot of pretty girls here shopping huh,” he said, speaking carefully. He made a circling motion with his finger, “Everywhere, they come in today.”

I nodded.

He was right.

In fact, just earlier, I had had the thought, “Sea of tits.”

He smiled and said, “I always been ugly though.” He looked at the floor waxer. “I always been ah ugly.”

There was silence.

Neither of us did anything to interrupt it.

The silence spread between us, became boss.

“I always been ah ugly though, so, doesn’t matter,” he said. “But they a lot of pretty girls today, hah mijo?”

“Yeah man,” I said. “You’re totally right.”

“Sorry,” he said, pointing to his mouth.

“No I understand what you’re saying.”

More silence.

Gilberto.

He kept smiling and nodding.

I did too.

His teeth looked triangular.

What some might call shark teeth.

His shark teeth were too powerful for me so I looked away, at the logo on his shirt.

The logo was a vacuum cleaner, winking.

A winking vacuum.

For a second I thought I had to wink back.

I almost winked back.

“I always been ugly though,” he said again, splaying his fingers and motioning them about his face. “My face — always ugly thing. S’okay though.”

I didn’t say anything.

The shark teeth.

“Ugly all the time,” he said, shrugging. “S’okay though.”

“Nah, it’s ok man — don’t worry. No problem. I mean—”

“My daughter look pretty, though,” he said, pointing at me and smiling.

“Oh nice.”

We smiled at each other for a little bit more before I walked away to do whatever work I had to do.

Today I worked a nine hour, midday shift.

I spent the whole day taking down and restocking an entire beverage aisle.

After work I bought two bananas and some water and went out front, by the Clark bus stop.

A bus pulled up and a co-worker exited.

She nodded to me and had a cigarette, standing outside with me before her shift.

“I’m going to be frickin late,” she said, rolling her eyes like it was someone else’s fault.

There was some name tattooed in cursive on her neck.

And she always called me “Yogurt Man” because I bought yogurt to eat on break.

That was all I knew about her.

I also knew that I wanted to hug her around the waist and put my head on her breasts in a gentle, innocent way.

Without sexual intentions.

“Did you hear Marquita got shot,” she said.

“Who’s Marquita,” I said.

“Marquita, the cashier,” she said. “She works here. She got shot in the face yesterday, right around here.”

“Ow,” I said.

I finished one of the bananas and whipped the peel at the metal garbage can, slapping the rim and going in.

She laughed and said, “Yeah, ow.”

I said, “Ow, someone shot me in the face, help!”

I cracked the end of the other banana open and started peeling.

She idly said, “Ow”—looking out at the street and blowing out smoke.

And it was quiet except for the collage of traffic, and some wind, and a plane nearing to land at Midway Airport — all somewhat dulled by my ringing ears.

I felt insane standing there.

Watching my co-worker smoke her cigarette.

Marquita got shot in the face.

Who shot Marquita.

I thought about a television show and/or novel called, “Code: Marquita.”

My co-worker started coughing, and a big vein surfaced underneath the cursive tattoo on her neck.

“Oh hey,” she said, coughing less. “Do you know what day it is, hun.”

“What day it is.”

“Yeah, what’s the date,” she said. “Like, the number, I mean.”

Then she coughed a single cough with her mouth open, her tongue curled along the bottom of her mouth.

The cough shotgunned into my face through her curled tongue.

Boom — the smell of her perfume, and the cigarette, and her cough — all of it shotgunned into my face.

A stream of germs, smoke, and perfume particles hitting me.

Boom, in slow motion, the cough rips my head apart.

“Yeah reason I was asking about the date,” she said, “Is I don’t know if I still have enough time to ask for this day off coming up. You have to submit a request like, what, what is it, what two weeks in advance.”

“Nineteen days,” I said.

“Great,” she said, rolling her eyes again. “Yeah so what’s the date, hun.”

“The first thing I thought when asked the date was, ‘249 Million’ for some reason. Is that right. Is it 249 million already.”

She said, “I wanted to ask for a day off. I’m going to this Christmas concert where they play Christmas songs with guitars and drums and synthesizers and shit. Should be awesome. I’m taking frickin boring-ass Ray though. Gonna get my tits sucked on, hopefully.”

“Sucking on tits,” I said, confused about why she used the name ‘Ray’ assuming I already know him, and also confused about why she thought Christmas time was that close.

“Yes sir,” she said.

She stared at the street.

She scratched the cursive lettered tattoo on her neck and coughed again, just once, through the curled tongue.

“I actually don’t know the date,” I said.

“I don’t either,” she said. “Thought you might. Shit. I just look at the boxes at the work schedule and know how many boxes I have left before I have to go back. I never actually know the name of the day it is, or the number.”

“Me neither,” I said, feeling distinctly stupid-as-hell.

“That’s how you know you’re truly losing,” she said, laughing to herself a little. “When you can’t figure out the frickin date.”

She coughed.

I said, “Oh wait, the date is: the 14th of Time To Get My Tits Sucked On.”

We laughed together a little bit.

My laugh sounded really fake to me.

Her laugh sounded fake to me too.

Her smile looked pretty though.

Mine, I never liked.

“Let’s rock this shit,” she said, taking a last pull on her cigarette.

“I’m done actually,” I said.

“Well fuck you then,” she said, smiling.

She put her cigarette out on the pole for the bus stop sign.

The cigarette smeared.

Some embers hit a movie ad on the bus stop bench area.

The movie ad showed a man up close, smiling, with a woman kissing his cheek.

“Alright, I’m late,” she said. “Bye sweetie.”

She turned towards the store.

“Wait, let’s get a hug,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Come here,” I said, with my arms out.

She said, “Yeah, alright.”

We hugged.

I had to bend down a little to properly hug her.

My right ear touched her right ear.

We let go of each other and she walked towards the store.

The front door opened out towards her and almost hit her.

She sidestepped it, coughing into her hand, her other arm holding down her purse.

Some people came out and she waited before going into the store through the door that had opened outward.

Plus, minus.

I walked in the direction of my apartment.

A bus departed from its stop going in the same direction alongside me.

A man sitting towards the back made eye contact until we were out of range.

And it occurred to me that maybe if I had a regular thing I did each day, like reading the newspaper, or going swimming, or a crossword puzzle, maybe then I’d feel rewarded.

Maybe then I’d be someone who consistently knew the date.

After about two months at the grocery store, I felt too depressed one day to go to work so I didn’t go.

And I didn’t call in.

I thought about calling and lying.

But that felt stupid. I thought about calling and saying I just didn’t want to go in. But that would’ve gotten me in more trouble than lying.

So I didn’t call at all.

The next day when I went in to work, my boss Charles said, “What are you doing here.”

I said, “I’m scheduled today.”

He said, “Nah I had to replace you. You don’t come in, you don’t call. Come on.”

He looked scared.

I looked at him and said, “Yeah, alright. I have no excuse. Thanks for the job.”

I walked out.

I went down the block and sat on the sidewalk.

It was still hot out.

It felt amazing not to have a job.

For a second, I felt confused about who I’d been at any point before this.

And I focused on the feeling.

It thrilled me.

It made me realize I’m an individual, but not because I’m special, or unique or any other empty idea, but because I could never share my thrills and disappointments.

It was all mine, but in a way that wasn’t by choice.

I could walk up to someone on the street, and I’d be containing this amazing feeling, without them noticing it.

I could be jobless and ecstatic, and walk up to someone and they’d think I was just another person.

I could look that person in the eyes and they’d notice nothing.

I could say, “Look at me, what do you see.”

And they wouldn’t see it.

But I’d still be feeling it.

And it’d be mine.

Outside, sitting on the sidewalk, I had thoughts that I left vague, undeveloped and unguided.

Like: “Somebody get these motherfuckers out of here.”

Or: “It’s time to kill these motherfuckers.”

On the walk home, the wind off Lake Michigan blew hard against my head and face.

I’d gone to sleep with my hair wet the night before, and now there were like, antenna on the back of my head.

The wind hurt, blowing through my antenna.

Near a bus stop, an old woman leaned against a mailbox, talking to another person.

The old woman had no teeth and she was wearing a large, all-blue baseball hat with no logo or words or anything on it.

She was drinking a green Beck’s 24oz bottle, waving it at the other person.

She said, “And dat wuss in 1977, I wunnda what dey sell me for now.”

Passing this bus stop meant only one more before my apartment.

What a grown up.

Walking home like a big boy!

At the next bus stop there was no one — just the smells of piss and shit when I walked by.

I breathed in the piss and shit smell.

In the year 2009, there will be a man who breathes in the same piss and shit smell, over and over.

You will not meet him but he will save your life over and over just by imagining himself dead.

He is, a dumbshit moron.

I thought half a thought about a movie poster for a made-up movie called “Dumbshit Moron.”

Back inside my apartment, I lay on my bed and opened my window a little because my room smelled terrible.

The people in the apartment below were out on their deck.

They were breaking up.

Some really great lines from both him and her — and in the slight happiness of just having gotten off work, they rewarded me with their fight.

It was really funny.

They criticized each other harshly, then themselves more harshly, then complained about smaller issues they neglected to mention when they originally happened, then ended up at a state of unstable understanding, where both realized the relief of saying insulting things might jeopardize the safety they felt in staying with someone, to retreat.

Halfway through it all, I wanted to start announcing what was happening like a sports announcer at a school sporting event, loud enough for both to hear me.

Charles called me later that day and claimed that what he meant was he had to replace me, “For today.”

He said I could still have the job if I wanted it.

I said I wanted it.

He said he had to take me off the schedule for the week, because he didn’t know if I still wanted to work there.

But he said to call at the end of the week to see about the new schedule.

The next week when I called about the new schedule, the deli manager said Charles told him not to put me on the schedule, and then replaced me with someone from the produce area.

I said, “Alright thanks. Have a good day.”

And I went outside.

A man at the end of the block was selling cut-up mango in a plastic cup.

I bought a cup and the man squeezed lime all over it and it tasted great.

The taste made me want to eat the mango holding someone’s hand so that person could feel it too.

Kids were screaming and playing in the playground at the gradeschool across the street.

June 2009.

Summer.

Pilsen Neighborhood.

Chicago, Illinois.

Socks

Looking for socks this morning, I found a sock and picked it up and smelled it to see if I should wear it. When I smelled the sock a crumb went up my nose. The crumb didn’t go too far though, because when I stopped sniffing it fell out easily. It was a shitty feeling though. Really shitty.

Shoes

After maybe ten to fifteen minutes I have now realized that what I thought was a cat off to the right in my periphery, is really a pair of shoes — one upright, one on its side.

Ryan Francis

I was at the train station in a town where I used to live.

My friend Rabb still lived there.

Rabbnuwaz Ali Shah.

He lived at his mom’s apartment.

He had a few pieces of an old drumset of mine.

I wanted them back.

“I want them back,” I thought, standing still as people got off the train and walked across the tracks.

I made eye contact with a few guys on the platform.

There were three of them, all in business clothes and sunglasses.

I kind of recognized them.

We went to the same high school.

They seemed to recognize me.

I could only remember half of their names.

Not like one half of the total people (which would be 1.5) — I mean either I knew their first name, or last name.

When they saw me walking across the parking lot, they drove up next to me and offered a ride.

I got in the car in the passenger seat, as offered by the person originally in it.

I usually don’t like to sit in the passenger seat if someone is sitting behind me, because it makes me feel tense.

When the driver asked where I was going, I gave him directions to Rabb’s mom’s apartment.

During the car ride, they all talked about something work/internship related and I sat there looking out my window.

I tried to focus on the blurry stream of trees and grass.

Then I tried to do this thing where I focused on a single tree, by moving my eyes side to side.

One of the people in the car mentioned the high school we attended.

Then someone said, “Oh yeah, did you guys hear about Ryan?”

Someone else said, “Ryan who.”

“Ryan Francis — he was in the same lunch as me and you,” the original person said to the driver. Then, to me, “Did you remember him man, you know who I’m talking about.”

At first I didn’t say anything. Then I said, “Did he have like, brown hair.”

“No, blond hair. Long sideburns, kind of an old lady face.”

Someone said, “Old lady face.”

Someone else said, “Oh yeah. And always with the inside out Pink Floyd t-shirt on.”

“Yeah. He’s fucking dead now, did you hear.”

I couldn’t tell who was talking at that point.

“Wait, Ryan Francis is dead.”

I looked out my window, hoping that Rabb or his mom hadn’t thrown the pieces to my drumset in the garbage — but at the same time, also accepting in advance that possibility.

Someone said, “So what happened.”

One person leaned forward from the backseat.

And I noticed, peripherally, how close his face was to mine.

And it deeply pained me.

Neither of us moved for a second.

During which time I imagined myself playing a fucking awesome drum fill, wearing no shirt, my mouth wide open and smiley, my hair sweaty and slapping my eyes.

The person who mentioned Ryan Francis said, “He was fucking walking along the uh, traintracks last weekend. He ate mushrooms and got too high I guess. And so,” here he paused, and spoke with deliberate clarity, “—a fucking train hit him while he was wandering around.”

Someone else said, “He got hit by a train? Shit.”

“Yeah, fuck man — hit by a train?”

I was doing drum fills with my teeth.

Trees and lawns outside, passing.

It didn’t matter who was talking anyway.

“No, he didn’t get hit by the train. It just kind of—” someone demonstrated with his arm from the backseat, “—he got his arm tangled up in the ladder on one of the cars somehow and it ripped his arm off. He thought he had to get on for some reason and it wasn’t going as slow as he thought or something.”

“Fuck man.”

I sat there thinking about myself sitting at my drumset with one arm ripped off and bleeding onto the drums.

Someone said, “Old lady face.”

One of the people in the car said, “I know — I talked to his girlfriend and she said he fucking bled to death on the tracks, probably panicking.”

Someone else said, “Yeah, wow man.”

“Old lady face,” I said.

Then we were all silent.

The silence was incremental.

Going into town down a significant hill, I saw in the distance the textbook warehouse where Rabb and I used to work and where we used to smash bottles at night.

He lived in an apartment with his mom, a few blocks behind that warehouse.

Someone said, “Yeah you know what though, fuck him. He was a dick, man. A fucking dick — to everyone. Fuck him. I say fuck him.”

“Yeah man, fuck him. Remember how he’d rub his bare dick on the younger kids in the locker room.”

Someone else said, “Yeah dude. And that one kid threw up on his own feet because he was so scared. What an asshole, yeah. He was a fucking asshole.”

Everyone became quiet.

And the quiet was incremental, measured by the wind through the open car windows.

I pointed towards the driver’s side window, and said, “You can take a left up there and just drop me off at the entrance so you don’t have to turn around.”

The driver rubbed his chin and the wind blew through his hair.

As we turned into the apartment area, he looked at me and said, “He deserved to fucking bleed to death in my opinion. Fuck him, you know.”

The others in back had begun a new version of the conversation.

“No man, I’m not glorifying him. All I’m saying is — fuck, all I’m saying was what I already said. He’s dead. I was just telling you guys, I didn’t know if you knew. That’s all I said, I mean his mom seemed pretty sad when I saw her—” he sat up in his seat a little more. “But yeah, I know what you mean. Fuck him.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

As I got out of the car I could hear them from the back, still arguing — quieted by the sound of the car leaving.

They drove off and I was playing a drum solo in my head that no one will ever hear.

I buzzed the buzzer next to the name Shah.

Rabb came out wearing blue Dickies pants and no shoes, socks, or shirt.

Right away he laughed, and said, “Yeah sorry, I let my brother’s friend borrow your shit. Sorry. I think it’s gone pretty much. I don’t know.”

He laughed again then quickly got serious, idly staring at something in the air.

Then he was nodding and looking at the ground.

I stayed for a while and we sat on the curb at the end of the cul de sac and finished a case of beer he took out from beneath a broken swing chair in the apartment common area.

I said, “Ryan Francis died.”

Rabb said, “Who.”

Then he showed me his leg, where one of his friends tried to tattoo the star of Islam, using pen ink and cigarette ash.

He said, “It looks pretty shitty but—” then he laughed.

TV

I used to have a small television in my room.

One side was kind of burnt from someone leaving incense by it.

Only public access channels worked.

And I developed a hatred for some people in public access television commercials.

People I’d never met, just watched on public access television commercials very late at night.

There’d be commercials about guys who’d mistakenly bought too much merchandise and had to sell it for very low prices, in a warehouse somewhere in the city, but just barely inside the city.

And I’d hate them.

There’d be shows with two people sitting in a room discussing Chicago politics.

And I’d hate them.

There was this one commercial for a barbeque restaurant, and this guy takes a bite of some food and yells, “Awesome stuff!” and the camera zooms in and out with the words “It’s awesome” at the bottom of the screen, blinking, right next to a smiling cartoon of a pig head.

Having seen that commercial however many times, I then hated the man who said, “Awesome stuff.”

I’d deliberately watch the commercial and wait for him to say, “Awesome stuff” and then feel hatred towards him.

I’d try to convince myself not to hate him.

But it’d still happen.

Why — I’d think, feeling hopeless and tired in my room. What is it that I hate about the man in the barbecue commercial. Maybe it’s just the way he says it. I guess I don’t hate him though. I’m just being dumb. It’s weird.

Honestly though, I always liked watching tv because it was a good way to silently panic while making it look like you’re not.

Books work too.

Summaries of Two Walks I Went on Recently

Last night walking west on Montrose Street I passed a woman out walking her dog.

The dog was very big.

Its hair was black and shiny.

As we passed, the dog stopped and nudged me with its head.

I petted it.

The woman said, “That’s weird, he never lets anyone pet him.”

I scratched the top of the dog’s skull for a little bit, in silence.

“Have a nice night,” I said, looking at the dog.

“You too,” the woman said.

And we walked opposite ways.

I smelled my fingertips and there was dog stink on them and I thought, “So good.”

SUMMARY #2

Yesterday walking south on Clark Street I thought I saw a puddle floating towards me, but it was just a section of newspaper blowing across the street. The first thing I thought when I saw it coming at me was, “There’s a puddle coming at me” and then I felt adrenaline. (It was just a section of newspaper though). But it took me a while to calm down.

Juliana

For a few weeks last year I had a job as a nanny for a rich family in Chicago.

My friend was a nanny and did babysitting work at hotels and this one family asked her to become their nanny but she couldn’t so she asked if I wanted the job.

I said yes.

I’d worked with kids before.

I used to work at a daycare.

I was the “Nap Assistant.”

That meant I watched a room with 10 to 20 kids in it — supposed to be napping — while the teachers got lunch and had meetings.

The kids were between the ages of three and six.

I helped them get their cots arranged and then I watched over them, maintaining order.

Maintaining order meant reading them books, whispering their names from across the room and motioning for them to stop talking and go to sleep, preparing the snacktime food, talking to kids about things to keep them from doing something else that would wake kids up, reading the same book over again, denying attempts by girls to become their boyfriends, sitting by potential loud/misbehaving kids as a source of discouragement, agreeing to play soccer or other sports at recess, agreeing to play legos after naptime, agreeing to sit next to someone at snacktime, and helping outside at recess and doing anything else until the end of the day when parents came.

This one Chinese kid named Hardy always came up to me at naptime, with a ring of dry snot in his nostril.

He’d pinch his genitals and look sideways and say something like, “I like fruit punch and tacos.”

Hardy was really cool.

He always behaved.

I think he only got upset one time (because he missed his mom) and cried a little bit and then was embarrassed about it.

Other than that, Hardy was cool.

Whenever I asked him why he didn’t do something he was supposed to do, he’d say, “Want to know something—” then he’d make shit up to keep me from talking.

Some of Hardy’s jokes were pretty good too.

Most of his material involved “wieners,” but I could sense he was expanding.

There were a lot of kids.

There was this girl named Ariel.

She made me promise to be her boyfriend “before Maria”—if I decided to have a girlfriend.

I said, “I’ll pick you as my girlfriend first if I decide to have one.”

There was a very tiny girl named Aruj and she always slept the entire nap time.

Every day she slept the whole time.

And every time she woke up she’d either cry or shake her finger at me and say, “Vutt is so funny, mister.”

I had to carry her a lot.

Felt like I had her in one arm a lot and would just forget about her.

Other things I did were—

I cut up apples.

I drew a lot of Spiderman masks.

I did legos.

I tied shoes.

I supervised games of tag and often dominated them at recess. (Having longer legs and arms.)

I talked about dinosaurs.

I explained why you couldn’t act a certain way to another kid because of how you had to respect other people.

I addressed questions on the day a bird flew into the recess door and lay there bleeding and dying on the sidewalk by the fire exit, while we all watched.

I addressed questions about superheros and things about their powers that didn’t make sense to them.

I just made shit up a lot of the time, because kids believe anything you tell them as long as you don’t laugh while saying it.

I watched butterflies hatch for a science experiment.

I helped trace kids so they could draw themselves on large pieces of paper and hang them up for Parent Night.

I made paper aiplanes.

I went to museums.

I held hands.

I pushed up to four people on swings at the same time.

I made seven dollars an hour, which seemed like a lot.

When kids actually slept during nap time, I read books myself.

I read a book about World War Two and a death march and how when one prisoner in the march, like, did something wrong or fell down, a guy from the Japanese military swung his sword down into the prisoner’s head and the sword went from the top of the prisoner’s skull, all the way down into his neck.

Sometimes instead of reading I just drew pictures on pieces of construction paper lying around and then gave them to whoever wanted them when everyone woke up.

Every day at the job I felt angry and annoyed and then at the end the kids all said bye to me at the same time and/or tried to hug my leg to keep me from leaving and I felt dumb for getting mad.

No actually I was still mad.

It was summer and I was living in a studio apartment near Little Italy.

At night when it was too hot to sleep I’d shadowbox until I sweated a lot and felt tired enough to sleep.

The mirrored sliding door to my closet had streaks of sweat all over it, from months and months.

Or I had this old soccer ball that I would kick against the wall by the Christopher Columbus statue across the street.

I got thin and hardened.

I was ready for things no one had even heard of.

Ready for things that would never happen.

It was a very calm summer of realizing I didn’t want anything, and there were good reasons.

The nanny job paid thirteen dollars an hour, cash.

I only got the job because my friend told the family about my daycare work and she also made up some shit about how long she’d known me.

The family invited me to dinner.

Their apartment was in the downtown area of Chicago and overlooked the lake.

Their apartment had people working in the office area on the main floor.

It had electronic keycard access.

So fucking awesome it made me lose hope in everything.

The parents were from Ohio.

The husband said common political shit about needing to stop immigration, hating Barack Obama, and he also made jokes that centered on homosexuality as the funny part.

The wife was from Ohio too and she was really nice.

Their daughter’s name was Juliana and she was overweight.

At dinner, the mom said, “So basically, the job is just picking her up from school and doing her homework with her and playing with her until I get back from doing my campaign work. She’s a little brat but she can be good.”

“Yeah she’s a little something,” the husband said. “You like football man? You a Bears fan I guess? Probably a Bears fan yeah?”

I ate some of the lamb they made.

I had a brief vision of me and the wife, sitting naked in a field, with our hands on the back of a lamb, me and the wife looking at each other.

“I don’t like football,” I said.

“What do you like,” the husband said.

“I like boxing.”

He said, “No one watches boxing anymore.”

The mom continued, “And um, she can bathe herself.” She laughed and put some hair behind her ear. “Please, don’t bathe my child. Also, you don’t have to clean the apartment or anything.”

“I can do that if you want,” I said.

Both parents looked at me.

They thought I meant, “I can bathe your child if you want” but I was referring to cleaning the apartment.

“Cleaning the apartment,” I said.

They seemed upset.

The mom said, “Why don’t you and Juliana play in her room for a little bit.”

I said, “Ok. Dinner was good. Thank you.”

“Spank you,” the husband said, looking off somewhere, before getting up.

Juliana and I went to her room and we played with a huge dollhouse.

I was given a doll

I was told what to do.

I did what I was told.

The dollhouse was big and we played an extremely vague game with the dolls that involved a lot of walking around and not understanding what was going on.

It was fun though.

Then at one point Juliana smiled and said, “What about this” and she made her doll shit and then eat it, saying something like, “Chup chup chup”—laughing.

“I don’t know,” I said, laughing.

Then she was laughing hard, almost without sound, her eyes watering.

“Chup chup chup.”

She made the doll shit again and then eat it and then she rolled her eyes all around and said, “Mm mm, I love it.”

I was laughing.

I said, “Man.”

Then the game with the dolls transitioned into making the dolls jump off the roof of the dollhouse and hit the carpet and die.

The mom told me it’d be a regular thing with regular pay but it turned out only me being on call for whenever they wanted to leave the apartment.

Which turned out to be barely at all.

It was bullshit.

Almost two months, a day or two each week.

Like, seven visits total.

Picking Juliana up from school was weird because it was a bunch of middle-aged women waiting for their children and then me, a big dumbass with a shaved-head, looking tired.

On the walks home from school, Juliana would tell me about her classmates and about toys she wanted.

I would ask her questions about the toys.

Like, “Why do you want that toy.”

Or, “Why is it good that the toy does that.”

When she finally noticed it was a regular thing I did, she stopped explaining anything and would just say, “Stah-opp, I’m trying to tell you.”

At home I helped her with homework.

It was easy.

I knew all the answers immediately.

We traced letters and colored pictures at the dinner table, overlooking the entire skyline of the city and the lake.

All of Chicago opened up, even the factories along the outside, the traintracks, highways, Chicago River, Sears Tower, State Street, everything.

I’d look out into the skyline and feel good feelings, even though there was nothing to feel good about.

“I handed out invitations for my birthday party today at school and I didn’t give one to stupid Larry,” she said, tracing over her vocabulary words.

She bit a grilled cheese sandwich I’d made her.

She said, “I hate Larry, he’s so gross.”

“Why is Larry gross,” I said, putting my legs up on another kitchen chair.

“He always has boogers in his nose and he pinches everyone. He’s stupid. Larry is so stupid.”

“So he’s not coming to your birthday party,” I said, checking over a packet of homework her teacher had returned graded. “I see a lot of stickers here, good job.”

“Um, yeah thanks,” she said, still trying to stay mad. “No he’s not coming because he’s retarded.”

“Larry is retarded.”

“Yeah I hate him. Charmene is coming and I told her to buy me a Littlest Pet Shop toy. It’s a squirrel named Rodney and I don’t have him yet but I want him.”

“Rodney is a squirrel.”

“Yeah he’s insane.”

“Wait is Rodney a person coming to your birthday party or a squirrel.”

“Stah-opp, Rodney is the squirrel. My mom said you can come too if you want.”

“I can come to your birthday party. Thanks. I can probably make it.”

“Yeah, we’re getting pizza and cake.”

I leaned forward and said, “You’re going to have pizza and cake there—” then I made a fist and punched upward into the air and yelled, “—yes.”

“Yeah.”

“What is ‘Littlest Pet Shop,’” I said.

“Here, let’s go play.”

She closed her book and put it in a folder and put three more stickers on the folder.

Then we went to her room.

She took out a plastic case.

She opened the case and inside there were a lot of small plastic animals.

I looked at a picture of her and her dad in a frame by her bed.

It scared me.

Turned my shit to stone.

No I’m lying, I didn’t react much at all.

Juliana got on her knees and sat on her heels, dividing the toys.

I got to be a rhino and I made up a voice for it that Juliana really liked.

She kept laughing.

Which meant I had to keep doing it.

In the few times I visited, we played Littlest Pet Shop, dolls, “camera woman” (where I acted like a camerman filming her doing the news), cards, and legos.

We colored in coloring books, painted, looked at toys on the internet and ate together.

Sometimes the dad would be there, sleeping in his room because he worked at night.

Sometimes he’d wake up and come out of his room to the kitchen, where I’d be cooking a grilled cheese and quizzing Juliana in math.

It felt weird.

Working for the family added to my general feeling that everyone I encountered (for good reason) didn’t like me.

It was ok.

Juliana and I went on walks.

I took her to a playground once and we kept putting snow on the slide and then sliding down the slide really fast.

At night, Juliana would be in bed and I’d just sit at the dinner table and look out the windows — from the twentieth floor — out at the entire city.

The last time I ever worked for them, I took Juliana to the Chicago Field Museum.

We saw an exhibit called “Underground.”

The exhibit was enlarged displays of insects and things that lived underground.

Juliana held my hand the whole time and we walked through a “shrink ray” which was just an optical illusion where you go into this room and can watch yourself on the screen, shrinking in order to go “underground.”

“Are we really shrinking,” she said, looking at me.

“Yeah we’re really shrinking.”

“No we’re not,” she said.

“It felt like I was shrinking,” I said, looking at my hands.

“Me too,” she said.

We walked through a dark tunnel into the exhibit.

There were field trips, little kids with a few teachers/moms.

There were kids in wheelchairs.

“How old are you,” Juliana said.

We were looking at a diagram of dirt from the Midwest.

“I’m 26.”

“Are you married,” she said.

“No.”

“Do you have kids.”

“No.”

“You don’t have any kids,” she said.

“No wait, yeah. I had a kid and then I lost him after he walked through a shrink ray and wouldn’t hold my hand.”

“No you didn’t,” she said. “Do you have a girlfriend.”

“No.”

“Why not.”

“Shrink ray,” I said.

We looked at a diagram of how other things become dirt and then that dirt makes other things.

We walked through a tunnel of dirt, where it was supposed to be like we were in the root system of a tree.

We stopped and stood by a display of huge plastic parts meant to look like a burrow and some kind of insect that was motorized with an opening and closing jaw.

Then a hissing sound happened.

A big spider came out from behind a tree-root.

Its fangs were motorized and they squealed back and forth.

“Scary,” Juliana said.

I looked at the fangs of the motorized spider and realized that after this day, there would be another one.

Thing That Lists the Scars I Have

Here is a list of some of the scars I have and how they happened and what I feel each scar looks like. (This list is not complete):

1. Middle of forehead, by hairline — I fell and hit my head on a rock that was part of someone’s fireplace. This one looks like a single grain of rice smashed into my forehead (I know it’s not an actual grain of rice though).

2. Right kneecap — I accidentally slid while running through an alley. My right leg went beneath me. This scar looks like a tiger clawed my knee. People younger than nine years old have statistically always believed me when I say tigerclaw caused it.

3. Both feet (various areas) — From not wearing socks. These are just purple areas in different locations on my feet. One time I got an infection in my heel and it was really bad. My friend’s mom was a nurse and when I was over at her house she had to drain it because I got a fever from it and I felt all fucking weird and dizzy. Wear socks!

4. Forearm — My friend pushed the top of a lighter into my forearm while I was talking to someone at a Halloween party. He came up to me, said, “Let me see your arm” and then did it. This one looks like a dinosaur footprint. It happened pretty quickly. My friend was laughing. It didn’t hurt until the first time I showered.

5. Below left nipple — Someone put a cigarette out on me. This one is just a circle.

6. Smallest finger on right hand — Washing a chalkboard in gradeschool I hit the metal thing that held the map and I remember I used my tongue to clean the cut because I noticed the metal thing was rusty. This one looks like the letter u.

7. Other forearm — Jumped to do a pull-up in school as the kid in front of me turned. His braces went into my arm. Which means my skin was in his mouth. Thinking back, it felt good to feed part of myself to another person and be able to watch it. But also, it hurt. This one looks like three lightning bolts.

Crackheads

Last year I was walking around a forest preserve outside of Chicago and I met two crackheads and I stood and talked with them while they smoked crack. We were by the picnic area, sitting on some tables. The crackheads were really nice and funny. They kind-of acted like a comedy duo where one guy is the “controlling, mean-guy” and the other guy is the “gullible but also more comically-lovable guy.” I don’t remember their names. But it was nice. Everyone was in a good mood because it was nice to talk to each other.

TRAINING

I worked in a department store warehouse.

Which meant I had to use a hydraulic forklift.

Which meant I had to be trained.

Which meant I had to watch a slightly more executive employee do it.

The slightly more executive employee was a fat guy and he seemed to act the same way every fat comedian/actor did.

I recognized every part of his behavior from something I’d already seen.

Part of his behavior was responding to almost everything I said, with his eyes open wide, nodding, and saying, “Right on, right on.”

He showed me how to use the forklift machine.

He made the forked arm go up beneath a palette of merchandise, high up by the ceiling.

The hydraulics made a droning sound.

He looked at me, raising one eyebrow a few times in succession.

“This is the way of the master,” he said, tapping the fingers on his other hand against his fat stomach. “Pay attention, son.”

It was amazing to watch him navigate the lift.

Beautiful and amazing.

The way he worked took me soaring to beautiful heights.

I wanted to buttfuck him.

“Here, you try,” he said, pausing the lift up high beneath a palette. “Show me the way of the master.”

I accepted the controls and slowly lowered the palette.

There was no trouble.

It was amazing.

Basically, I fucking reigned.

The other employee clapped and whistled for me and I imagined myself controlling a larger machine that I could use to rip the entire planet into smaller pieces.

“Look at this fucking guy,” the slightly more executive employee said. “Just, raw power.”

On the dashboard of the machine I noticed a dial that had a turtle painted on one side and a rabbit painted on the other side.

I touched the dial of the machine.

I asked about the turtle and the rabbit.

“One means slow and one means fast, buddy,” he said. “Turtle goes slow and rabbit goes fast.”

He took a bag of chocolate-covered peanut candy out of his cargo pants pocket and held the bag upside down until half went into his mouth.

While pouring, he kept his lips open in a concentrated ring, and his eyes were open, looking upward and determined.

The candy clicked against his teeth and he seemed to be doing some type of throat clench to keep from choking.

“But the turtle eventually beat the rabbit right,” I said. “The turtle won the race I think, right. Hey does my voice sound weird to you. It sounds weird all of a sudden.”

He was chewing the mouthful of candy.

“I don’t know — is that how it went,” he said, clearing his throat after gargling a few words. “The turtle won? Is that right.” He looked at the ground, and then opened his eyes wide. “Wait — shiiiiit — you’re right.”

“Yeah I think so,” I said. “Does that mean the turtle setting is better then. Should I just keep it on turtle.”

The conversation was dying.

A gigantic asshole slowly opening itself around the planet earth — quieting all conversations.

“No wait, how could a fucking turtle win,” he said. “That’s impossible. Turtles like, live forever because they never move, right.”

His mouth was open, crushing chocolate candy with his teeth and when he talked, he kept the pool in the bottom part of his mouth.

He said, “Wha’d he do, catch the rabbit sleeping or showing off or some-shit, then bite through his leg tendons with that powerful turtle beak. I mean, come on man.” He honked the horn on the hydraulic lift. “The horn’s right here, by the way,” he said. Then he honked the horn like seven times. “What happened exactly. What did the turtle do. Tell me. Did he fuck him up. Fuck his rabbit-ass all up.” Honking once to each word, he said, “Fuck, him, all, up.”

I said, “I’m not sure. He might have fucked him up. I think he won the race, so that’s like fucking him up, right.”

“Yeah man, true,” he said, looking off like he was thinking. He sniffed while making a face. “Like, I could easily imagine the turtle walking up to the rabbit right after the race and putting his hands on his hips and saying, ‘I just fucked you up.’ And he’d be right about saying it.”

Suddenly I couldn’t tell if he had a southern accent or not.

He looked at me again, smiling.

There was chocolate on his teeth and gums.

I said, “Fucked him straight up to the fucking moon and then fucked him into one of the moon’s craters I think.”

“Sho ‘nuff,” he said loudly, scratching his eyebrow with his thumb. “Alright, here, practice again by lifting the palette back up and putting it down into its original spot. I want to see your best shit here, guy. No holding back. Then I’ll sign off on this training sheet right here.”

My training checklist was almost complete.

I imagined myself rubbing my hands and saying, “Soon I will be certified.”

I raised the palette back up to where it went, and lowered it there.

Boom.

“Holy shit,” said the slightly more executive employee, “—you’re good, guy.” He was sniffing a lot and licking candy pieces off his molars. “I think it’s about time I take a look at that checklist, son,” he said.

Looking just past his face at the unpainted concrete wall, I said, “Check the shit out of that shit.”

My co-worker held my training checklist up against the side of a shelving beam and signed the bottom.

He cleared his sinuses a little, inflating his cheeks.

He gave me the training checklist.

It was completed and signed.

I was certified.

I looked up and down the list — all checkmarks.

“I have become certified,” I said.

The slightly more executive employee said, “Welcome home, son.”

And he lowered the forklift.

I imagined hiding until everyone left the store and then using the machine to mishandle a palette from up high, make it fall on my head.

Just expertly dropping a big wooden palette on my head while placing my head sideways against the unpainted concrete floor.

I could kill myself and make it look accidental.

The best of both worlds.

Fucking certified.

No, think I’d only drop a pallet on my head though if I were able to live through it — and watch the first person to find me.

That was the promise I made to myself, as the other employee was talking to me again.

He said something about “Re-stocking” but I wasn’t listening.

Because I was trying as hard as I could to fully feel the pain I’d experience — as if living through the experience of getting my head crushed by a wooden palette.

What would it be like.

What if it felt exactly the same as eating like, a cracker with peanut butter on it.

What if all experiences occurred from the same foundation of excitement, and it just registered in different ways, but each attempt was an attempt at it all.

I saw the sight of my head getting crushed and coming inside-out.

And it wasn’t painful.

It wasn’t gross.

But calming and quiet to see.

I could appreciate it.

I took the keys out of the hydraulic lift and returned them to my co-worker.

“Here you go champ,” I said.

Then I went to pinch one of his nipples.

He backed away.

“Look out champ,” I said.

He covered both his nipples with his hands, backing up a little.

“Good God,” he said. “Calm down.”

I imagined his nipple between my top and bottom front teeth and then me ripping it off.

Felt good.

Calming and quiet to see, his holed-out nipple bleeding into my mouth.

“What do you think you’re going to get for lunch, man,” he said, tucking in a part of his shirt that’d come out during my attempt to pinch his nipples.

There were purple stretchmarks on his stomach.

“Well,” I said. “I suppose, I’ll be getting whatever the fuck I want.”

“Certified,” he said, miming a pump-shotgun motion then shooting it at me. “Boosh,” he said, and stepped back a little from the imaginary recoil.

I touched my stomach with both hands then held both hands up and looked at them and said, “Fucking certified.”

And we both laughed some fake laughing for each other.

Then walked in different directions to different stock rooms to keep working on whatever we were supposed to be doing.

I thought about a wooden palette dropping on my head.

And how maybe it would be worse for the palette to fall from only a few inches up, rather than many many feet.

Because then you would really feel it.

Maybe.

Maybe I hadn’t ever felt anything.

Maybe the turtle won the race because he didn’t start, he just walked away.

Fucking certified.

After work I went across the street to a Chinese take-out restaurant.

It was called ‘The Chinese Connection.’

Inside it smelled like burnt oil.

A Chinese man with mild gigantism worked the counter.

“What I get you,” he said, combing his bangs to the side with his fingers.

I ordered fried rice.

He raised both his hands and said, “No rice any kind anymore.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

Then I realized the restaurant was going to close soon.

I ordered something else.

“Ok, wait little bit,” he said, and went back to the kitchen.

I stood at the counter and noticed a small fountain by the wall, where water dripped down from a top rung onto a lower one, then onto another lower one and then somehow back up to the top, recycling.

Looking at it felt really nice.

The employee came back and added up the price on the register. “Nine dollar. Be ready ten minute.”

I paid.

I said, “Where did you get this fountain, it’s nice.”

My elbows were on the counter and I was on my toes, lifting myself up and down.

Without looking up, he nodded towards across the street at the store where I just started working, and said, “Over there, twelve dollar.”

I said, “Oh, nice.”

I thought about telling him how I work there, but then it didn’t seem to be important.

It went from immediately seeming important, to definitely not.

He walked back into the kitchen area.

The fountain kept going.

I watched, waiting for my order.

It was so nice to watch and hear the fountain.

A very tiny sound.

I folded my arms on the counter and put my head down and started to laugh.

I thought — Nobody knows I’m here except me and the guy who took my order.

Walking home with my food, I passed a gradeschool.

There was a light still on in one of the rooms.

I walked up to look.

The room was empty.

On the chalkboard there were pictures of everyone in the class.

Each picture was inside a construction paper balloon.

I stood by the window looking in, but I couldn’t read any of the names beneath the pictures.

I tried to read the names but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t read the names.

MOONSHINE

I drank moonshine once.

I was at a party where I barely knew anyone.

At some point, the guy who lived at the house came up to me and some other people and said, “Hey, would you be down to drink some moonshine. I have some.”

The other people around me said no and walked away to do something else.

But I said yeah.

The guy said, “Yeah? Here, hold my beer.”

He went to hand his beer to me and then took it back.

“Wait, why’m I giving you this.”

He looked confused for a second, then went to set the beer on the carpet.

He stood back up and said, “Fuck.”

He walked away.

He came back with an unlabelled plastic bottle.

He held it up to the light and looked at it.

He said, “Shit’s actually eating through the bottle in some places.” Then he looked at me and said, “I got it from this guy at my work. His dad makes it. It’s not bad, taste-wise.”

We went outside onto the deck.

There was a guy and a girl kissing on the deck.

I’d kissed the same girl earlier when she sat on the couch where I’d fallen asleep for a little bit.

Me and the guy went into the yard.

We stood behind a tall bush and he lit a cigarette.

It was threatening to get light out.

The house was across from a library.

People who looked like employees started pulling up in their cars.

The guy uncapped the moonshine and drank some.

He closed his eyes and shivered and exhaled and it felt hot in my face.

I drank a half-mouthful and immediately saw double.

The library, the yard, a fence and some cars, all doubled.

I talked to the guy a little bit about something I didn’t know anything about probably, then I think we each agreed to get punched in the face by the other.

Then we went back into the house, where the only people left were sleeping or going to sleep.

I tried to sleep on the same couch I’d slept on earlier.

No one had taken it.

Going to sleep at parties was something me and my friend Rabb invented.

You just walk through a big crowd of people and lay down somewhere and try to sleep.

I was still seeing double, and when I lay on the couch, I noticed the girl I’d kissed earlier was sleeping on the floor.

I thought I’d be able to sleep right away.

But I just lay there, feeling weightlessness and pinned-downedness at the same time.

Dreams happened where I was basically still awake, watching a waving yellow color.

At some point, the girl on the floor moved up onto the couch with me.

We kissed each other for a while and when she felt my dick was hard, she undid her pants and mine and rubbed her bare ass on my bare dick until I ejaculated.

We didn’t have a condom and she wouldn’t let me without a condom.

I ejaculated hard, breathing out into the area between her breasts, which smelled good enough to remind me I was garbage.

Later I woke up with my pants stuck to me and my jaw swollen.

Probably around noon.

People were talking in the kitchen.

It was the girl who rubbed her ass on my dick and the guy who owned the house and someone else I didn’t recognize.

We all went out onto the deck and stared into the brightness, not really talking.

We drank some more moonshine and I ran around the backyard holding a bedsheet around my neck like a cape.

I kept falling.

Everyone was laughing.

Neighbors

This afternoon I was lying on a sleeping bag on the floor of my room, waking up and trying to stay awake.

The deck door opened for the apartment below mine.

I heard it slam and then people were outside on the deck, talking.

I kept hearing, “No, you don’t understand—”

When I was fully awake, I got up and opened my window.

I put my head out the window and looked down towards the deck.

It was two women around my age.

Tattoos covered their necks and arms and they had a lot of piercings and they both wore all black clothing.

I’d never met them, but I’d seen them in the building.

I only knew two of my neighbors: the crosseyed girl with the giant golden retriever, and the old man who worked nights somewhere and could barely walk, the one who always wore vomit stained shirts.

“Hey,” I said, leaning out my window.

The tattooed women looked up.

“Hi,” one said, holding her cigarette-hand to visor her eyes.

“Sorry, are we being loud,” the other said.

“No I just wanted to say hi. I’m your neighbor. I live upstairs.”

There was no response for a little bit.

“Coo-wull,” one said.

“It’s very cool,” I said. “Alright. Have a nice day you two. And enjoy this weather.”

“We’ll do that,” one said, giving me a thumbs-up and adding a clicking sound with her mouth.

“Yeah, you do the same, guy,” the other said.

“Thanks,” I said. “I think I will.”

I went back into my room and put on my work clothes.

My workshirt still kind of smelled like deodorant, so it was ok to wear.

I never liked wearing deodorant, so I didn’t use too much.

Just enough to get by at work.

Zipping my pants in my room, I winked to myself, and said, “Juuuuuuust enough.”

A car playing loud rap music drove past outside.

The word “Motherfucker” came from the car’s speakers.

Section That was Edited Out of the Novel The No Hellos Diet

On your first break today you sit at a table with six or seven women at it.

They’re talking loudly and eating little bags of chips, adding hot sauce.

You listen, drinking the coffee left over from the overnight crew.

The coffee is cold and has nothing else in it except coffee and you pull the grounds through your teeth.

Like you’re sucking Satan’s infected dick.

Between sips you swirl the cup.

The grounds follow a circular motion, each right behind the other.

Used-up.

Someone’s walkie talkie goes off at the table, and she turns it down.

She says, “Man, yesterday somebody took a walkie talkie into the bathroom with theyself and held it on while they peed, so everybody could hear that shit. Seriously.” She puts her hand on her thigh with her elbow out at a right angle. She says, “Seriously, took the motherfucker into the bathroom, and made it so everybody could hear his ass pissing.”

Everybody at the table starts either laughing or yelling.

Ass pissing U.S.A. — you think.

You laugh, and the woman next to you laughs, hitting your arm.

A woman across the table makes a face of disgust and says, “Uh uh. Thass nasty. How you do that shit.” She changes to a tone like she’s directly asking the person who did it. “I wanna know, how y’all do something like that. Tell me.”

Others nod.

You’re nodding.

You feel the urge to take a chip out of someone’s bag.

You’re pretty sure no one would mind.

But still, you shy out.

You always shy out.

Ass pissing.

The sunlight in the room gets incredibly bright then — lowering and coming over the tops of the other buildings outside.

Coming in through the window facing Broadway Avenue.

Coming in through a very strict angle.

It’s getting dark out early.

Daylight savings time.

You want there to be a day you turn the clocks ahead twelve hours and then twelve hours later you move them back and everyone has to act like nothing happened in that time.

Pretty much, that’s how it is now.

You wake up when it’s almost dark, and then work, and after work stay up until it’s light.

One woman says, “Who do that shit. Who want everyone to hear how you be pissing. I mean, is you stupid. Honestly. Some pervert shit.”

Another says, “For real. That’s just gross. That ain’t funny at all. Trying to be funny, but that ain’t fucking funny.”

You sit up a little.

Your plastic chair makes a sound.

It scares you and your heartbeat gets fast and hard.

You wait for everyone to look at you but no one looks at you.

Safe.

And the sun becomes less bright, going below the strict angle.

Gone from all angles.

The room turns a darker blue.

Another employee walks into the breakroom and stands there, pulling his pants up.

He sees a box of free Styrofoam cups on the countertop.

When he sees the cups, he says, “Aw, shit ch’yeah. Free cups, son.”

He’s wearing a reflective vest so that when he collects carts in the parking garage, no one accidentally kills him with their car.

You wonder if the person training him said, “Wear this vest to help prevent from getting accidentally killed. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about the on-purpose kills. You just have to be smart. And quick.”

He takes a cup, then leaves the breakroom with the cup in his mouth, both hands pulling up his pants.

You think — Why did he come in if he didn’t already know about the free cups.

The women are still talking about the piss thing.

One says, “I’on’t give a fuck. It just sound like water to me that’s all. Like a waterfall. Like a beautiful waterfall. Y’all like waterfalls, right. Just think about waterfalls.”

People laugh.

A woman across the table from you licks her thumb clean of some chip crumbs. She says, “I’on’t want to be thinking about no pissy-ass waterfall.”

Another says, “Me neither. I can’t help but think about drinking it when I hear it like that. S’gross. Just going right into my motherfucking mouth.” She makes her hands into fists and brings them close to her body while shaking a little. “Oooooh. Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

The woman next to you says, “What about them pee-drops getting on the earpiece. If you holding that walkie talkie by where you pissing, some of that shit get on the walkie talkie.” She taps the table a few times. “No no. What about getting all them little pee-drops on your mouth or ear. Them drops.”

Another woman points and says, “Them particles.”

Someone else says, “Mmm hmm.”

“The particles,” you say.

Someone else says, “Mmm hmm.”

An older woman with thickly drawn-on eyebrows folds her arms and leans back. “Jesus in heaven, all them particles.”

You can’t tell if she’s awake or talking in her sleep.

She seems asleep.

You try to focus more on her and then you can’t tell if her thickly drawn-on eyebrows are eyebrows, or her open eyes, looking at you.

She uncrosses her arms and checks her watch and re-crosses her arms and says, “Hmm! Got-damn pee-drops. Who do that.”

“For real,” someone else says.

Then they continue talking to each other about things — like which guys at the store are attractive, how much the least expensive appliances at the store cost, and why no one should ever reach into the garbage in the women’s bathroom.

You look at your coffee, swirling it.

The floating grounds.

Almost empty.

You’re constantly airdropped into a life that’s already passing.

Passing like pee-drops into the ocean of time.

You finish your coffee in small sips.

The news is on the breakroom tv.

Everyone gets quiet as a story comes on about a kid getting beaten to death at a high school yesterday.

They show a video someone shot on a cell phone and it shows the kid trying to stop a fight and then some people turn on him, and punch and kick him many times, until someone comes up from behind and kills him with a wood board to the back of the head.

“Oh my gut-ness,” says a woman at the table. “Is that little G.J.” She’s looking at a picture with the people on either side of her. “My gut-ness.”

She passes the picture to the person next to her.

It makes its way around the table, from woman to woman as they all start to talk at the same time, laughing and smiling.

“Yeah, he two now,” says the woman who started the passing of the picture.

The picture comes to you.

You take it from the sharp entanglement of one woman’s artificial fingernails.

It’s a picture of a young boy.

He’s like, a baby, and he’s wearing baggy jeans, a blue bandana, and big work boots, posed in confusion in front of a backdrop that’s supposed to look like a building with graffiti on it.

You smile at the picture and say, “Shit” and pass it around to a woman just sitting down. “You want to see this?”

She looks at the picture and snaps her fingers and says, “So so fresh.” Then she points downward and looks to the side away from everyone and says, “This right here — this a little hunter right here. Hm!”

Everybody laughs.

The woman who called him a hunter looks up at the people laughing, and says, “Ow k?”

And you’re laughing.

Which transitions to thinking about whether or not you’d be able to play a violin if you had one.

Maybe you’re an amazing violin player and you don’t even know yet.

For the last few minutes of break, you think about how it seems like you can already play the violin even though you’ve never held one.

Yeah, it could be.

Always having been this amazing without knowing it.

The women continue to talk.

You feel glad that this — and everything else — is happening.

But you’re also feeling a weight inside your body at a location triangulated using the backs of both eyes and a point inside the brain, and that weight is called: Nothing more to contribute.

A weight that never seems entirely retired.

So you want to try and start liking it.

You need a fucking violin.

After break, you’re in the loading area of the store, breaking down boxes with another stockroom employee, nicknamed Sour Cream.

You’re ripping boxes apart and stacking them in the compactor.

There are three big cages full of boxes for you to break down and compact.

“Shit jo,” Sour Cream says. “I feel like such a bitch. Like, I feel like, just such a soggy-ass bitch on the inside.”

“Awesome,” you say.

Then he starts telling you about how his uncle has done work for a drug cartel in Mexico.

He says his uncle pays people thirty-thousand dollars in cash to drive a truck from Chicago to the border of Mexico.

He says his brother was in jail for going to a guy’s house and knocking on the door and then just firing a shotgun into the house when the door opened.

Then he says, “So what’re you doing tonight, guerrito.”

“Probably just going to go home.”

“And how does that make you feel,” he says.

He says that sometimes after random shit.

You’ll be like, “It’s busy in the store today.”

And he’ll say, “And how does that make you feel.”

A cardboard box cuts a big cut on the side of your finger.

It bleeds dark blood.

“You know what I’m saying though,” he says, ripping a banana box into pieces, “like, just a little bitch deep down, guerro.”

“Yeah a soggy bitch,” you say. “You feel like a soggy bitch.”

“For real. Hey did you see that new trainee. He looks like a little bitch too, jo.”

“No man, no, you’re the bitch,” you say. “I’m going to hold you down while he fucks you and then I’m going to look you in the eyes as you’re getting fucked and I’m going to say, ‘You’re the soggiest bitch.’”

Sour Cream laughs really hard.

He walks away a few steps and leans his forehead on a shelf, as if the laughing is too powerful.

He rubs his eyes and claps once.

“Bogus ass, guerro,” he says, wiping his eyes.

Another stockroom employee walks up, carrying some broken-down boxes.

He’s friends with Sour Cream.

You look at him, but can’t remember his name.

The first name you think is “JuJu The Elder” but that doesn’t seem right.

Whenever they’re scheduled together they stay together the whole day.

“Aw, look at this bitch,” Sour Cream says, grabbing his friend by the shoulders. Then Sour Cream seems to remember something. “Oh wait man, hold on,” he says, holding the other employee in place by the shoulders. “Do the teeth thing, bitch. Like where you put your teeth together, all fucked-up-looking and shit. Do it man, show him. Show El Guerro your, your magic.”

They’re both looking at you.

You feel cornered.

You look at Sour Cream’s friend and say, “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want. Think about it.”

“Come on bitch, do it,” Sour Cream says. Then he looks at you and says, “This pussy got some diced-ass teeth man, no joke.”

The other employee bends over laughing, and covers his mouth with his hand.

He’s acting like a seven-year-old girl.

It’s really dramatic.

It’s really embarrassing.

And how does that make you feel.

“Come on, fucking bitch,” Sour Cream says, hitting the other employee’s arm. “Why you always such a faggot, jo. Fucking do it.”

The other employee is still laughing, covering his mouth with his hand.

Then he calms himself and puts his teeth down together, keeping his lips apart so you can fully see the teeth.

His teeth don’t line up correctly.

And he’s barely able to keep from laughing as he’s showing you.

His nostrils twitch open and close and then he starts laughing.

Him and Sour Cream hit each other back and forth.

You say, “Wow those are fucked-up teeth.”

Sour Cream looks at you, with his thumb gesturing towards the other employee. “Shit is so fucked-up right man,” he says, eyes open wide. “Freaky as hell. Fucking freak-teeth, thass what it is. Oh shit. Thass it. Nigga got some freak-teeth.” He laughs loudly at a high pitch and says, “Oh shit, freak teeth.”

“Aw shit,” says Freak Teeth, boxing Sour Cream’s arm.

Sour Cream says, “First time I saw them I’s like, ‘Shit is freaky.’ Like a goblin or something, you know.”

“Freak teeth!” yells Freak Teeth, with his hand up to his mouth like he’s calling out to someone.

They both laugh.

You’re smiling.

Like a goblin.

And for some reason you think about a cardboard cut-out of Sugar Ray Leonard, on fire. And flaming cardboard Sugar Ray Leonard yells, “Freak teeth.”

Sour Cream laughs another high pitched laugh.

He says, “Got those freak teeth from all that dick in your mouth, little bitch. Eating all that dick up like some salad.”

“Your dad’s dick, maricon,” says Freak Teeth, stepping back and guarding his body with his hands.

They’re both laughing.

“Wait, why are you sucking his dad’s dick,” you say to Freak Teeth.

But they’re both laughing and not paying attention.

They hit each other a little more before walking on towards some other work.

As they walk away, you put your hand up to your mouth and yell, “Freak Teeth!”

Sour Cream yells, “Freak Teeth!” over his shoulder and him and Freak Teeth hit each other — walking away with an empty cart between them, going to get more boxes.

More boxes.

On your last break, you sit in the food court area of the store.

There’s an old couple arguing.

They look homeless.

The man has a shopping cart full of garbage.

He’s very skinny and bald, like he has cancer.

You watch him be mean to the woman.

He’s talking in a hushed, but mean way.

He keeps saying, “I told you not to fucking say that word.”

The woman eventually gets up and walks away and the look on her face is very very sad.

The look on her face is like, “Well, ok” and she looks like she’s trying not to cry.

You think about it the rest of your shift and it makes you feel awful, like doing anything feels stupid when someone is as badly hurt as that woman.

You continue thinking about it on the walk home, after work.

You start panicking.

And it transitions to thinking about getting your nose bitten off by someone.

Like, someone biting off all the cartilage and skin.

You can’t stop thinking about it.

The worst part would be the aftermath, just sitting there with a hole in your face, and the air making it hurt and how nothing could be done until you got to the hospital.

So many things I’m not ready for — you think.

When you turn the corner to your apartment building, you see one of the area’s more recognizable crackheads — the guy who wears the big white shirt with a cartoon man on the front, speech-bubble saying “Beer” and then the same cartoon on the back saying, “Sex.”

The crackhead is in the street, talking to what looks like two businessmen going to the airport.

He’s talking fast and using his hands a lot.

The businessmen listen intently as the crackhead says a few things then goes into the middle of the street.

The crackhead starts trying to get a taxi for them, as if he knows the only correct method.

You’ve also seen him sell out-of-date train schedules, or half-used subway cards, or bikes, or whatever else.

Last time you saw him he was selling a deflated football.

He kept yelling, “Go long” and standing back to imitate a throwing motion to other people on the street. He made the Heisman trophy pose a few times too, holding the deflated football.

The crackhead loads the last piece of luggage for the businessmen.

He makes a securing motion before shutting the taxi trunk.

The businessmen look pleased.

Or eager to not be around him.

They give the crackhead some money.

He checks both sides of traffic and walks across the street, putting the money in his pants pocket.

The taxi drives away, towards the airport.

And your corner is quiet again.

Fun

This afternoon you fuck your girlfriend right after you both wake up.

It’s snowing/raining in Chicago.

And tomorrow you both move out, to different places.

With barely any kissing or touching, you take off your clothes, then hers, and she holds your ass and you’re fucking her as hard as you can.

You take her hands off your ass and hold her down by the wrists.

You move your hips side to side while going in and out of her.

You’re so hard it hurts.

But you don’t feel anything.

It’s not enjoyable, it’s just happening.

You get off of her and sit up while she kneels, sucks on your dick.

For some reason this makes you think about a crime you recently heard about, where a guy kept his son in a dog cage for years, only taking him out to beat him.

You remember that the news reporter said the kid finally starved and then the dad buried the remains in concrete.

Your girlfriend gets on top of you.

She lowers her ass on your hard dick.

You’re all the way inside her while she goes forward and backward.

Her face gets extremely red.

Then she’s yelling.

She keeps yelling, “Shit shit.”

Someone pounds on the ceiling.

Your girlfriend keeps yelling.

You’re too sad to orgasm though.

But also too (something-else) to get un-hard.

You just don’t care.

Instead of orgasming, your dick goes soft at a slow rate.

It feels very strange — like you’re really hungry, sad, and needless all at the same time.

It feels better than orgasming.

You pull out.

You both sit naked on the tile floor, to cool off and rest.

You take a blanket off the bed and wrap it around yourself like a tepee and she does it too.

Brushing crumbs off your asses and legs and feet.

It smells bad in the room.

This is happening — you think.

Comatose, you stare at your smelly dick.

She reaches behind her, grabs her big corduroy purse.

“I brought Guess Who. You want to play Guess Who,” she says, taking things out of her purse.

“I’ll play one game.”

“I’ll play one game,” she says, doing an exaggerated impression of you.

“Because when you lose you just want to keep playing until you win. It’s fucking terrible. Like what happened with Battleship.”

“Because I always grouped my ships together?”

“Yeah.”

She nods.

“Did you like playing Battleship with me though,” she says.

“Sometimes, yes.”

She takes all the pieces to a boardgame out of her purse.

You think about how there really seems to be only one good memory about your relationship.

It was the night someone broke into the apartment through the sliding glass door while you were out, and then stole a bunch of shit and one of the only things left was the tv with the vcr built into it.

Instead of being upset all night, you and her bought five 40 oz. King Cobras and a lot of 25 cent bags of chips and stayed up all night getting drunk and watching television and then when it was light outside you had quick, meaningful sex and fell asleep.

It was good.

It was the only good thing.

“Here you go,” she says, handing you some pieces to the game.

The game consists of two small plastic boards — one for each player — with a few rows of smaller plastic holders that hold cartoon pictures of people, their names printed beneath.

To start the game, each person playing takes a card from a deck and places it at the front of their board.

The goal is to guess who the other person is by asking questions, and eliminating people on the board.

You eliminate people from your board by lowering their picture in the plastic holder, getting closer to knowing the right person.

And after the first few guesses, she’s already winning.

She’s already winning because of a brave guess about the person’s haircolor.

And she opens her blanket tepee a little, clicking down plastic holders on her board.

For what seems like a ridiculous amount of time, you can’t remember her name — just feeling comatose, and like, idly handling your dick and balls.

Like a baboon.

American baboon, handling his dick.

Why can’t I remember her name — you think.

The first name you think is: Maria Consuela Hernandez.

“What if your name was Maria Consuela Hernandez,” you say.

“I like that name,” she says.

“I do too.”

“Fuck, I’m winning,” she says. “Took a big risk with that hair question, but now — ssss — I’m destroying you.”

You cup your hand around your mouth and look up and say, “Dee-stroy-duh.”

She says, “Dude you’re getting destroyed. I’m running this fucking board. And you’re just over there eating dicks all day.”

“Shit, I know,” you say. “I know it.”

She says, “A big plate of dicks, twirling them around a fork like spaghetti.”

She checks her board and the remaining rows, pinching her crotch piercing.

She smells her fingers, thinking.

Thinking with a secret hate.

Trying to win.

This means something to her.

She’s trying hard to win because she hates you.

She wants to degrade you.

She wants to be able to go around and tell everyone how terrible you are at this game.

Shit, did you hear how bad he is at Guess Who.

Oh I heard he’s absolutely shitty.

You watch her think.

Will she guess who you are and win, or will she keep failing.

You look at the person on your card.

Here he is.

“Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey looks really upset.

Like, he looks totally pathetic and helpless.

And this is the moment you and him realize you know nothing about each other, and have nothing to contribute, only take — which doesn’t happen, because there’s nothing to contribute.

Ha fucking ha.

Sorry Jeffrey — you think. I can’t help you.

Your girlfriend puts her hands together and puts both forefingers up to her bottom lip.

She says, “Does your person, have—” points her folded hands at you, “—sideburns.”

You look at Jeffrey.

Jeffrey has sideburns.

He has beautiful, light-brown sideburns.

Don’t tell her about my sideburns, says Jeffrey. You can lie, he says. Lie about it. Say your person doesn’t have sideburns.

Jeffrey, I can’t — you think. No, because then I’d have to win before she finds out I cheated. I’d have to guess who her person is before she realizes I’d made it impossible to guess mine. And right now I’m not confident enough. I’m not good enough to do it. No. I’m going to just tell the truth, Jeffrey. Jeffrey.

Jeffrey is silent.

“Yeah, he has sideburns,” you say, looking down at your smelly and wrinkled dick.

Your girlfriend puts down a few more of the plastic holders, making a fist with her other hand and elbowing downward against the air, her big green tit-vein shaking.

You look at the big green tit-vein shaking.

It’s beautiful.

Hey it’s the big green tit-vein — you think. Hey you. Thank you for this.

And for some reason this transitions into you thinking about a reality where everyone’s death is just a spreading apart into invisibility — and each death is voluntary and self-inflicted — accomplished by detachment from all objects, people and experiences — where death is an accomplishment — where death is people slowly guessing everything out about you, figuring you out.

And then that somehow transitions into thinking about holding your lips open and exposing your teeth for someone to throw darts at (why not).

You’re careful not to make a face so she doesn’t ask you what you’re thinking.

Outside there are a few loud booms, then squealing tires.

Your girlfriend looks at you.

“Were those gunshots,” she says, holding a plastic holder halfway down.

“Yeah, I think so,” you say.

She slowly flips down more holders.

You yawn and say, “Hey did you eat the rest of the peanut butter I bought.”

She flips down more holders. “Uh huh.”

“So it’s not on the counter anymore. I just don’t want to be surprised in the morning.”

“No, it’s gone,” she says. “It’s all gone.” Then she yells, “It’s all gone.”

Someone pounds on the ceiling.

“All gone,” you say, looking at the board and scratching your chesthair.

It’s your turn.

It’s your turn to crush her with a casually-stated question that completely characterizes the reality of her person, putting you one guess (not even a guess) away from finishing her forever.

Think hard, says Jeffrey. You can do this.

Rows of little cartoon faces look back at you.

Your head feels swollen, stretching slowly in different directions without any direction.

Tomorrow when you move out, you’ll continue to stretch in different directions.

You see yourself in a field with your hands on your head, eyes-closed, spinning around, saying, “I’m finished! I’m finished!”

Your girlfriend is looking at her board.

You decide to lie next time she asks something.

Because you want to win.

Want to make her feel bad.

Want to win and piss on her spirit.

Yes.

You can do this.

Believe in yourself.

There’s nothing left to lose.

Your peanut butter is gone.

“Does your person have — a weird head,” you say. “No like, a falcon-head.”

She looks at the board for a little bit.

“I don’t know,” she says. “They all have weird heads. They’re drawings.” She grabs one of her breasts and says, “Hell-oh” shaking the breast to the syllables.

She is very pale and her nipples are orange/pink.

You keep playing the game.

Neither of you tries to win.

Because when someone wins, it’s over.

Outside a plane passes.

Nearing to land.

You imagine the sound of the plane nearing to land as the falling of a bomb.

Just, a huge bomb of no-fun.

You’re standing in an empty field and a bomb that has “No-fun” painted on it lands on your head, detonating.

It happens to the sound of the plane nearing to land.

And it feels good to admit it.

Always feels good to admit it.

No close relationships of any kind.

And no satisfying goals.

Good to admit it.

Like it all makes sense.

Like everything always makes sense in some way, and you either see it or you don’t.

Right now someone is guessing who you are, and you are the one who has guessed.

And it makes sense no matter how you think about it.

“It’s still your turn,” she says. Then she raises both her arms and says, “We playing or what.”

You let the bomb of no-fun detonate over you.

Asking questions that have already been asked.

Asking unanswerable questions.

“Is your person diabetic.”

“Does your person look suicidal.”

“Does your person wish he or she had a fucking dartboard.”

“Does your person maybe have a falcon-head.”

She adjusts her tepee, checking her person. “No, my person looks more like a Croatian hockey player with lung cancer.”

“Ok, what about a shaved asshole, does your person have a shaved asshole,” you say.

No one wins.

Both boards go back in her purse.

You start the shower.

You stand naked in the bedroom waiting for the shower water to warm up.

You lightly pinch her nipple and say, “Beep-beep.”

She lightly pinches your dick and says, “Honk-honk.”

She gets into the shower, then you do.

Taking turns standing beneath the warm water.

You think about how showering with someone else is another thing that’s no-fun.

The bomb is falling on you.

You think about how maybe you just need to get a dog.

You see yourself hunched over the dog, to protect it from the bomb of no-fun.

You exit the shower before her.

In your room you dress in your work clothes.

Because that’s all you have there still.

And because it’s better to eventually fall asleep in your work clothes so you can wake up later the next day.

Sitting in the bedroom, you feel acutely dispirited and tired.

Listening to her shower.

Youth.

How have you lasted.

The best days put together wouldn’t even amount to a week.

Your girlfriend comes back into the room, drying her chest off with a t-shirt you keep in the bathroom when there’re no towels.

The t-shirt is yellow and says “Antigua” on it and people always ask how you liked Antigua but you always have to say, “I haven’t been there.”

“Are you hungry,” she says, pinching her nose clear of some water.

“Yeah.”

“Want to go and maybe get some food.”

“Yeah fine.”

“Are you all right.”

“I’m fine,” you say.

Then there’s silence for a while.

Where it becomes clear the silence always says it better.

She says, “Oh, you got your work clothes on again. Ha, nice.”

You look at your shirt and touch your nametag. “Ha, yeah.”

You leave the room together.

You look back into the apartment for some reason while shutting and locking the door.

Maybe it will be completely filled with bricks when we get back and we won’t be able to get back in — you think.

In the back stairway to the alley, there’s a single piece of bread in an individual package.

The bread is moldy.

A single piece of moldy bread in a plastic package, lying on the staircase.

“Is that just one piece of fucking bread,” your girlfriend says, jumping down the last few stairs.

You say, “Yeah I think so. I’ve never seen that.”

She says, “Jump the rest of the stairs. Let’s see that.”

There are seven stairs left.

“I’ll do four,” you say.

“Five.”

“I’ll do four.”

“That one time you did seven, but then you’ve never tried seven again.”

“I can’t do seven ever again.”

“Is it because it was too amazing.”

“Yes. No it’s because of the broken ankle I got later on, trying a different jump.”

You walk down three steps and successfully jump the last four.

Outside, it’s snowing a little.

And farther away, there’s thunder and lightning.

About once a year Chicago gets a lightning/snow-storm.

You like it.

It reminds you you’re young and still have a lot of time to waste.

A few blocks away you get chicken from a fastfood place.

After the fastfood employee gives you the order, she follows you and your girlfriend outside, lighting a cigarette on the way out.

You watch the weather with each other, just outside the restaurant.

Thunder and fog-dulled lightning.

After some thunder, the fastfood employee exhales smoke and says, “The fuck kind of crazy-ass weather is this we be having.”

“It’s crazy,” you say. “It’s fucking crazy is what it is.”

The fastfood employee laughs. “Ok?”

Your girlfriend is looking in the bag.

“Really hope there’s napkins in here,” she says. “Oh what — no napkins? Wait, oh, here we go.” She looks up. “There’s napkins.”

The fastfood employee nods and says, “Mmm hmm” as she takes a pull of the cigarette. She breathes in and exhales slowly. “I put plenty of napkins in there now,” she says. “People always ‘bout them napkins. S’all I hear in this motherfucker, napkins, napkins. More napkins.”

“Thanks for the napkins,” you say.

“Yeah thanks, it’s good,” says your girlfriend.

The fastfood employee nods, taking a pull on her cigarette and looking at the sky.

You and your girlfriend walk to another fastfood place nearby and sit on a yellow parking brick, eating the chicken.

Food from one fastfood restaurant, in the parking lot of a different fastfood place.

Your girlfriend says, “What if they hire someone to check the parking lot to make sure this isn’t happening. Are we going to get in trouble. Are you ready to die for me.”

“Can I have like two or three napkins, please.”

Sitting on the yellow parking brick, you think about accidentally discovering a secret society of people who buy fastfood from one place and eat it at another place.

The snow is stopping a little, and the thunder and lightning are low.

And guess what, you hate your life but not yourself.

Later at the apartment your girlfriend looks at her laptop computer while you lie in bed.

You’re sweating for some reason.

When your girlfriend is done with the computer you check your email.

There is one email.

It’s from a magazine you sent some writing to.

“Hi,

Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately I’ve decided to pass on your story. The first line was very intriguing, but the piece ultimately turned into a very confusing, unsettling mix of adult content, violence, childishness, and innocence. I found it a little difficult to read.

Best wishes,

(xxxxxxxxxx)”

You close the computer and put it on the floor.

Your girlfriend takes off her clothes.

In her bra and underwear, she starts to handle your dick then she puts it in her mouth and after a little while you orgasm on her chest in three big shots.

You feel better.

You put your hand on her shoulder and say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I started laughing now and said, ‘Finally, the evil is gone!’”

She laughs and gets on the bed with you.

Your dick drips, getting soft.

The hair around her ears is curly and you feel ugly.

And you experience a strong desire to be sitting at a desk in an empty schoolroom in the middle of the night.

And an equally strong desire to be on top of Mount Everest throwing rocks down at people climbing up.

Your girlfriend is rubbing some of the stubble on her crotch.

“Hey, do you think you’d want to kiss it, like just for a while,” she says. She makes a punching motion at your face and a clicking sound with her teeth. “Eh?”

“You know I do,” you say, and smile insanely, raising your eyebrows, unblinking.

She leans back on her elbows and opens her legs a little.

She takes her underwear off, and there’s a small cord of wetness that expands and snaps, connecting her skin to the underwear.

It finishes off what’s left of your weak, emotionless self.

It slashes the throat of that self, with the edge of the same shovel it uses to bury it before it has fully died.

She spreads her shaved crotch open a little.

You put your hands on the back of her thighs and push them back.

There are pieces of toilet paper stuck to her asshole.

You lick and kiss between her legs.

She makes a lot of noise and clenches up and gets red in the face.

But no, there’s no romance.

You’ve never romanced anything.

It ends like it always ends.

Where you’re both asleep.

Where you dream about not being able to walk well, yet still having to walk across a large field filled with hills.

Alone and lame, trying to walk across a large hilly field for some unknown reason.

It’s very hard to balance and each step feels endless.

You only have dreams now that make you feel shitty and wasted when waking up.

The kind that seem to change who you are for a few hours.

The next morning you wake up alone.

Your girlfriend is in the bathroom.

You go down the hall and find your boots.

Putting on your boots by the doorway, you imagine Michael Jordan — but a Michael Jordan that has like, neon-blue skin and no eyes.

The blue, eyeless Michael Jordan has your girlfriend’s voice, and says, “You’re my best friend, I hope you know that.”

Two Things About Living in Romeoville, Illinois

#1

I used to work at a bar/liquor store called The Carousel.

It was in Romeoville, Illinois — a Chicago suburb.

I worked in the back area, stocking the coolers.

Sometimes I’d have to go out into the bar to hook up kegs or clean the bathrooms too.

There was a bartender there named Robin.

She was in her fifties.

The guy who got me the job at the bar — Carmen — he told me Robin was in some porno movies.

He wanted to prove it to me even though I didn’t say I doubted him.

So one day after work, me and him went across the street to a small supermarket.

There was a bagger who worked there and he collected porn.

He was the one who told Carmen about the porno.

A few days later the grocery bagger guy brought the movie over to the bar and gave it to me and Carmen in the back area, where trucks delivered alcohol.

Carmen said thanks and took a small bag of cocaine out of his pocket, smashed a little rock on the top of a broken down refrigerator in the back area.

The guy sniffed the cocaine and left through the backdoor.

After work, I went to Carmen’s house in town to watch the movie.

The movie opened with a young Robin lying in bed.

She was wearing a red “sexy” lingerie thing and the bed was in a large, open, unfurnitured room.

It panned away from her in bed, to the window.

In the window, there were two guys looking in.

They were dressed like trainrobbers from an old movie.

They had robber-masks on and were talking in secret.

They crept into the room and walked up to where Robin was pretending to sleep.

She woke up and looked at them.

She put her hand to her mouth and said, “Oh no, am I being robbed.”

Carmen said, “She looks really young.”

“She looks good,” I said.

Then the movie cut to a shot of her on her knees with both the robbers’ dicks in her face.

She started jerking both the dicks off — fingernails on her hands, red and long.

When the dicks were hard she put them both in her mouth.

Then she took one out and kept one in, pushing her mouth all the way up against the guy’s pubes.

“Yeah she looks really young,” I said. “Her butt looks the same.”

“Yeah it looks weird,” he said.

“No I meant I like how it looks. Big hips.”

Carmen cleared his throat and said, “Oh.”

Something else was happening in the porno, but I was thinking about gnawing on Robin’s hips.

Only, in the thought, I didn’t have any teeth, I was gnawing with my gums.

Carmen said, “That guy at the supermarket said her husband made her do pornos. He said he knew her husband and he’d make her do it because he didn’t work. I guess if you mention it to her, she gets pissed.”

“Robin’s nice,” I said. “She always tips me more than the other bartenders.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

I watched Robin getting fucked in the ass and mouth at the same time.

I said, “Hey I pissed in the Bloody Mary Mix a couple days ago.”

“Yeah?”

“Ha, yeah. This one guy at the bar called me a faggot because I had a pink shirt on I think. So I took my plastic thing of juice into the bathroom and emptied it then pissed in it and when I made the Bloody Mary Mix I dumped it in, because the guy who called me a faggot, I know that’s his drink.”

“Cool,” he said. “I think I’m going to make a porno too, man.”

I watched Robin have sex with two guys and I thought about the guy who called me a faggot, drinking my piss.

Working at the bar wasn’t that bad.

They paid me in cash and I found what became one of my favorite shirts in a garbage bag in the backroom, for some clothing charity.

It was blue (the shirt).

Not too long after that, I had nowhere to live so Carmen let me move in.

I lived in the basement.

The other people who lived in the house were rarely there.

One was a masseuse.

One was studying to be a pilot at the college the next town over.

And random other people on and off for a few weeks at a time, who I really didn’t know.

Carmen and I didn’t get along.

As people, we were not amazing.

He was someone who always had to have someone else around to whine to, and I was someone who was whined to because as a person, I was someone who didn’t care what was happening.

Carmen didn’t like me because a few years earlier, he was going to a college close by (the same college as the pilot guy, Lewis University) and I went to visit one night and got him expelled from the school.

After he got expelled he started working full-time at the bar.

Then he got me a job too, not because he liked me but because he knew then I could move in and listen to him whine.

To pay rent, we worked at the bar, sold cocaine and stole a lot of alcohol from the bar and sold it to people around the town, mostly kids Carmen knew from the college.

We made seven thousand dollars the first two months, not including our paychecks.

We just lived and didn’t really do anything, didn’t try either.

Carmen had a nine millimeter pistol at the house.

He bought it off someone at the bar.

He said he was going to sell it for more.

It was shitty.

It was heavy and black with the serial number filed off and the front of it was all chipped and damaged.

He kept it in a sock in his closet.

One day when neither of us had work, we took the gun and drove out to a quarry nearby.

We only had one clip.

I shot it three times fast into the quarry then handed it to Carmen.

Carmen shot the rest of the clip, single shots with long pauses.

Then we got back into his car and returned to the house and ignored each other the rest of the day.

He never sold the gun because it got stolen during a 4th of July party we had.

The night after that same 4th of July party, Carmen was in the basement standing over my bed.

“Hey man, come upstairs I want to show you something,” he said.

There was still some shaving cream around his earlobe and his hair was slicked back and wet from a shower.

I stretched out over my twisted blankets and looked up through the window-well.

I’d slept all day.

The basement was quiet and dry and Carmen looked dead.

He sat on a cardboard box of mine, filled with books.

I slowly woke up and got out of bed.

There was a huge bruise and cut on my knee and I didn’t know why.

We went upstairs and I poured myself some cereal before we went down the hall to his room.

“I made a porno,” he said.

He was bent down by his vcr.

I ate a spoonful of cereal. “I get to see you naked.”

“You bet,” he said, taking a remote control off the top of the vcr and getting into his bed.

“Awesome,” I said. “I can’t wait to see you naked. I want to see your dick.”

I sat on the floor and ate the cereal.

My stomach felt carpeted and wrinkled.

The video opened with Carmen walking away from the camera, in his room.

The room was a blue that was almost black.

I checked the video, then the room, and gathered the camera was positioned on his bookshelf, hidden by some laundry.

Carmen had a bunch of other stuff on his bookshelf too.

Trophies from little league and what looked like a basketball trophy and a picture frame that said “Boyfriend” all over it with inspirational quotes.

In the photo, he and some old girlfriend smiled — their greasy faces idiotic with hope that the picture would one day remind them that for three seconds they acted happy and thought it final.

“Hey have you thought of a name yet,” I asked.

He turned and hung over the side of his bed facing me.

“What.”

“A name. For the movie.”

“No, I haven’t thought about it.”

I set the bowl down and put my elbows over my propped knees — then held my left wrist with my right hand. I said, “How about, Carmen Hopefully Doesn’t Reproduce Himself.”

He laughed.

“No wait I wasn’t finished,” I said. “It’s Carmen Hopefully Doesn’t Reproduce Himself, Because That Would Suck Because He’s An Asshole.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I like it.”

“Nice soccer trophies by the way,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You should’ve put the camera on the other side of the room so people could totally see your trophies,” I said. “That’d make the whole thing so much more awesome. That way they could be like, oh man, and trophies.”

“They wouldn’t shine the right way in video, I think,” he said. Then he coughed once, loudly, and went, “ehh” to clear his throat.

“What are the trophies for, is that soccer.”

“Baseball,” he said. “Pretty much everyone on the team got one, if they showed up to the last practice and stuff.’”

In the video Carmen and a girl came back into the room.

They talked on his bed for a little bit and then Carmen started taking her clothes off.

The girl in the video wore a blue bra.

Carmen took it off her as she lay face down on his bed.

Both of their faces were poorly lit and there were circles around their eyes.

She laughed at something and pushed her hair back, folding her arms underneath her chin.

He took off his clothes and rubbed her ass with both his hands.

Then he put his dick in her from behind.

She looked behind her, eyes closed.

There was no sound in the video.

He said something in the movie, but it was soundless.

“Nice moves man,” I said. “I totally would’ve done that if I were filming myself having sex with someone and then knew I was going to show it to my roommate.”

“Yeah man,” he said.

In the video, the girl had her face down in the pillow and her hair was all over and it looked like her head had melted then froze.

Carmen cleared his throat and rewound part of the movie. “I wish I could draw on the screen like a sports broadcaster,” he said, lying back down. “Right here, I make the ‘West-side’ sign, see.”

In the video, he made the ‘West-side’ gangsign, looking at the camera.

I surveyed the trophies on his bookshelf.

Besides the trophies, there was also an old map of Illinois folded up on the bookshelf and some crossword/wordsearch puzzle books. And three volumes of an encyclopedia — the complete E and W and Br-Ch.

“Be right back I have to use the bathroom,” he said.

He went to the bathroom.

My stomach made sloshing sounds.

The video was paused — the girl’s head in the pillow and his hand on the back of her head.

She lay face down in her hair.

I was reminded for some reason that a long time ago I seemed to put off thinking about things and said I would come back to them, but never really caught up.

In the video Carmen was facing the camera — his mouth open as if screaming, “No.”

Static widened his face and the hole of his mouth, brushed them across the screen.

The video was paused in-between frames, and they flipped back and forth.

Blending.

Carmen’s open mouth and half-open eyes occupied two areas on his skull.

They whirred fast enough to almost glow.

His eyes and mouth and his expression too — everything in two places on his skull, whirring fast enough to glow.

He looked like a skeleton.

And so did I probably.

And almost everything else could be explained as an intersection between myself and something else, as a skeleton.

I scratched my shins with long loops of my thumbnail.

I moved closer to the screen and inspected the bones of his face and those around his mouth.

Each bone held tight.

But if asked why, they might not have anything interesting to say.

They might just intersect.

The screen buzzed quietly.

And I made a promise to myself.

I promised myself that, after last night’s rain dried off the grass, I’d mow the lawn.

I’d take my time, with Carmen’s shitty push-mower.

I’d get the push-mower out of the garage.

I’d grip the handles hard, pushing, sweating, taking my time to make the grass look nice.

I wouldn’t take any time to clear the fallen branches, I would just push the mower over everything, reducing everything — even if it’s a person sleeping on the grass — even three-hundred people sleeping — even everyone ever.

My feet inside whosever shoes I borrowed, greened, smelling vegetably, hot and sweating badly inside the shoes, without socks.

I’d allow myself no more or less than three breaks, to drink hose water and/or just sit on one of the three front steps, staring at the street.

And after I was satisfied with the way the grass looked, I’d clean off the blades of the push-mower — first with my shoe, then maybe a rag I find in the garage or if I have to, my shirt.

Putting away the mower in the garage, I’d take several deep breaths to enjoy the gas and oil fumes.

Then I’d get a broom if there was one, or borrow one from the guy who’s always sitting in a chair in his garage, four or five doors down.

He’d mention the Chicago Cubs, because they’d be broadcasted over a small plastic radio behind us in the garage.

And I’d broom the clippings off the sidewalk, back into the lawn, where they’d maybe get raked over the grass again, distributed nicely.

Maybe then I’d hose off the sidewalk, drink some of the hose water and put some on my face and back of neck and sweat and feel good and sit on the front steps eating a bunch of those things that are like, frozen juice inside a plastic sleeve, where you push it up through the sleeve to bite it and always wait until the end when you can drink the fully melted juice and it’s so awesome, it’s so worth it.

And then probably the kids who live down the block would come over.

And I’d let them stand around and talk to me because I know at their house they get beat because at night it’s audible from down the block.

They’d stand around asking questions to keep me occupied while one or two of the others tried to get into the house or fought each other, or attempted to get me to buy lighters for them.

And every time I’d decline doing something bad for them, the kid who was like, maybe three or four (the most evil one) would say, “Tumm on, man. Peez. Peez man.”

Carmen walked back into the room and unpaused the movie.

We watched the movie and it was boring but I felt good on account of it being summer.

“The Midwest is beautiful during the summer,” I said, opening up the map of Illinois from Carmen’s bookshelf.

Carmen was on his back, lying in bed.

Without turning, he said, “It’s the fucking greatest.”

#2

Eventually, we damaged so much stuff in the house, we all had to move out.

A couple weeks before we moved out, I was out walking around, looking through the garbage.

This was around the time people from the college started to move out of apartments and find new ones, throwing out shit that was still ok to use.

In one of the alleys I passed, someone had thrown out a chair.

The chair looked nice.

I went to look at it.

While I was looking at it, there was a yell from down the block, and then the sound of something moving.

Out from between some garages, a teenaged person came at me in a jogging trip.

He was yelling.

He had on an old, dirty Chicago Bulls wintercoat even though it was like ninety degrees out.

He came up to me and stood there, breathing hard and smelling like piss.

Old piss.

Under one arm he held a brown paperbag.

He put it on the ground.

The brown paperbag was wet and crumpled.

He also held a bulge in his coat as his breathing calmed from the run.

He wore Velcro boots on the wrong feet, and all over his face there was bad acne.

It was a boy from the abusive family down the block.

“Muh. Motooz,” he said. “Motooz.”

Sounded like, “Motooz.”

I couldn’t tell.

Yolky stains covered his black sweatpants and it looked like there was something retarded about him.

I couldn’t tell.

I stayed where I was, just standing.

Transferring weight between his Velcro boots, he said, “Motooz,” over and over.

“Muh, motooz.”

Over and over, pointing to himself.

Smelling like piss.

“Motooz. Motooz.”

“Motion,” I said. Actually, I was asking.

“Mo-tis,” he said slowly, pointing to his chest. “Ah Mo-tzis.”

I couldn’t understand him.

“Moat-ziss,” he said.

“Moses,” I said. Actually, I was asking.

He nodded and smiled.

“Ah Motooz,” he said.

One of the pimples on his chin looked very swollen and painful.

It was yellow and full.

Birds lined the telephone wire.

“Motooz. Twigk,” he said. “Motooz twick.”

He reached for his pocket.

“Twigk,” he said.

“Trick,” I said. Actually, I was asking.

He nodded and smiled.

“Z, uh twigk,” he said, licking at the bad chapping around his mouth.

And I thought about Michael Jordan.

Thought about a transparent projection of Michael Jordan, and the projection went into my body and I absorbed it.

“Twick-uh,” the teenager said. “Z twick.”

He unzipped his coat.

Out from his coat fell some small beige bodies, into his hands.

Baby rabbits.

Their eyes were still swollen closed.

They moved around in his chapped hands and he yelled, smiling.

A bad smell came from the Chicago Bulls coat again and I thought, “Michael Jordan” and saw Michael Jordan’s face inside my head, smiling at me and saying, “Die, Die, Die” and all his NBA championship rings were floating over his head.

“Nice bunnies,” I said.

He pulled back.

There was a thick moment of distrust between us.

Holding the rabbits, he stared at me.

I thought — Michael Jordan is a baby rabbit.

“Motooz,” the teenager said.

He seemed confused and upset, trying to control the baby rabbits.

Then the wet paperbag on the ground moved a little.

It felt to me like the situation had already happened and I was being sent back to review what I’d missed, but I couldn’t figure out what I’d missed.

“Motooz,” the teenager said again, kneeling.

He was trying to keep my attention.

He set down the baby rabbits on the edge of the alley.

The baby rabbits were on their backs, moving in place, and trying to get on their feet.

I wanted to be in one of their bellies sleeping.

But I wasn’t.

The paperbag moved again, just a little.

“Twick, twick,” the teenager said, kind of nervous.

He undid the twisted paperbag, and took out a huge toad.

The toad was dark green and puckered — kind of moldy looking.

Looked heavy in his hand.

“Twick, twig,” he said. “Motooz, twigk-uh.”

He was getting upset.

“I’d like to see a trick, yes,” I said. “Show me a trick.”

He set the toad down on top of the paperbag.

“Twigk twick,” he said loudly, pinching the crotch area of his sweatpants.

The smell of piss and shit got stronger.

The toad breathed slowly, ribcage expanding on either side of its face.

And I couldn’t help but associate the piss and shit smell with the toad.

The toad was garbage.

Shit and piss toad.

“Twick,” the teenager said, again. Then carefully, “Z, uh twick. Z, trick.”

“Ok do the trick,” I said.

He pinched a baby rabbit by the loose skin around its neck and then held the baby rabbit near the mouth of the toad.

The toad blinked.

Nothing happened.

Something wasn’t happening.

Something wasn’t working.

Something was wrong.

I felt gravity happen inside me.

A different gravity from the one happening outside my body.

The teenager in the Chicago Bulls coat cried, and scratched his face with his free hand.

What a pussy — I thought, unable to tell who I thought that about.

Who’s who.

He pushed the baby rabbit against the toad’s mouth again.

“The trick isn’t working,” I said.

He flicked the toad’s eye.

The toad tensed.

Another flick to the eye.

The toad jumped forward, eating the baby rabbit.

Only the baby rabbit’s hind-legs remained, sticking out from the toad’s mouth.

“Motooz,” the teenager said. “Twick.”

And he calmed down, smiling.

He stood and clapped, looking at me.

I joined in the clapping.

It was hard to tell who’s who.

Everything smelled so bad.

We watched the toad finish the rabbit in labored swallows.

I thought — This is the world at present including everything that has ever happened.

And I felt entirely the same.

“Motooz,” the teenager said. “Motooz twig.”

Then he stomped down hard, missing the bulk of the toad, but snapping both its hind-legs under his Velcro boot.

And the hind-legs hung there, stripped and broken.

Soft looking bones came out of the skin.

Trying to move, the toad could only circle.

Its front legs scraped the ground, grabbing wet dirt but getting nowhere.

This is the toad’s entire life, including everything that has ever happened — I thought.

And it was hard to tell who’s who.

The teenager in the dirty Chicago Bulls coat scratched his face again, upset as he watched the toad circling.

He yelled and ran away, back down the alley gone.

Gone as he came.

Backwards along the same path.

Only the toad remained, circling pathetic, with some very small stones sticking to its skin.

And I thought about how someone seeing all of this from very high above sees something with its legs stripped and broken.

Just circling.

And I thought about how it would be hard to tell who’s who.

Content

Sam Pink
Hurt Others

Bees

Love

Twizzler

Thing About When I Worked at a ‘Treasure Island’ Grocery Store in Chicago, Illinois

Socks

Shoes

Ryan Francis

TV

Summaries of Two Walks I Went on Recently

Juliana

Thing That Lists the Scars I Have

Crackheads

TRAINING

MOONSHINE

Neighbors

Section That was Edited Out of the Novel The No Hellos Diet

Fun

Two Things About Living in Romeoville, Illinois

#1

#2