Person

by Sam Pink

  I take a pencil to the register and wait in line.

  In line I notice the pencil is the brand that is the store’s name.

  It is a 7-11 mechanical pencil.

  When my history is written on the face of my gravestone, the gravestone that is the entire plate of stone moving beneath the earth’s surface, this part will say, “Buys a 7-11 mechanical pencil after being yelled at in front of many people.”

  The woman in line before me is paying.

  As she pays, the man at the register (the man who yelled at me) holds up a container of juice from the counter.

  He says, “Go get another.”

  The woman just stands there.

  The man at the register shakes the juice and says it again, really mad.

  The woman goes and gets another.

  Approaching the register again, she says, “Is it buy-one get-one free.”

  “Yes yes buy-one get-one.”

  I look at my pencil to be distracted, and I think about how the woman just blankly did what an angry man working a register told her to do, without first knowing why.

  Someone yelled at her, and she did what was being yelled.

  This redeems something.

  No, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

  I pay for my pencil and the man behind the register tells me to have a good night.

  I wonder what a good night is to him and then I wonder the same about myself.

  It occurs to me that in order for that communication to work, myself and the man would have to come to an agreement about what it meant.

  I’m too scared.

  It feels like practice.

  I walk nextdoor to a restaurant.

  Inside the restaurant I see some people who were just in the 7-11 with me, so I walk away, and go to a different restaurant nearby.

  I order food and eat my order at a table meant for four, in the corner of the place, keeping my hooded sweatshirt and my coat on, worrying the whole time that a worker will walk up to me and say, “Why don’t you take your coat off.”

  I decide if that happens, I will say, “Because I’m undercover.”

  It doesn’t happen.

  My history is the history of things imagined and not-happened.

  I eat my food without looking up and I write all this down in the white space inside the book I bought, and I try to think about an idea of the not-happened and it seems like I can do it at first but then it becomes unclear and I am not bothered at all.

  And exit the restaurant.

  My hood is on and it’s cold outside, and I make the mistake of breathing in at the same time a long wind goes into my mouth.

  Then walk home, thinking paranoid thoughts about how people are trying to fuck with me somehow and I haven’t figured it out yet.

  Shit is getting bad.

  No I don’t know.

  I live in Chicago and I don’t get along with a lot of people and the reasons are always new and wonderful.

  I’m sitting in my room, listening to it sleet outside.

  The room is very cold.

  I have accomplished nothing today.

  It feels like practice.

  There’s a pellet gun in my hand and I’ve been taking random shots at the wall.

  The pellets just bounce weakly because the CO2 cartridge is almost empty.

  And now so are the pellets.

  This is my career.

  I am amazing.

  My roommate walks down the hall.

  He knocks on my door.

  I don’t say anything.

  He opens the door and stands with his hand on the frame.

  Nodding a few times, he turns and points to the back of his neck.

  “Hey can you check again if there’s any ink on my neck here, it feels like there is. I can’t sleep thinking about it. It’s bothering me. There must a pen somewhere loose in my bed and I slept on it. Last time man, promise.”

  I check his neck.

  There is no ink.

  He leaves.

  I shoot the remainder of the compressed air at my face and it feels nice.

  My roommate has been walking around in the kitchen for maybe fifteen minutes now, checking cabinets and checking the refrigerator, doing nothing.

  I’m lying on the couch listening to the pigeons outside.

  I’ve been pretty worried lately about getting cancer.

  Do I already have it.

  Did I get it when I accidentally touched my eye after being on the subway today and not washing my hands.

  How about when I burned some of my leg hairs with that lighter yesterday.

  (I burned my leg hair because I thought it would help me run faster.)

  (I haven’t tested it yet because it’s still too icy outside.)

  My roommate starts looking through a plastic bag of oranges on the counter.

  “You want to split an orange again,” he says. “I need something to do.”

  He claps at something in the air.

  “Fuck,” he says, “what’s that, is that a spider.”

  “You mean do I want to split one of my oranges again,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, right now then,” I say. “You’re asking me if I want half of something that is wholly mine. That’s what you are asking.”

  He walks over, rotating the orange in his hand.

  “Yeah, I’m asking that,” he says.

  “Ok yeah. That sounds good. I need something to do too.”

  “Should we do this,” he says.

  “Yeah let’s do this.”

  He walks back to the kitchen and begins dumping peels in the garbage.

  Then he turns the sink on.

  “Shit I don’t know why I’m washing this,” he says. “I already peeled it. You don’t wash oranges after you peel them right.”

  I sit up from the couch and look into the kitchen.

  “You washed the orange after you peeled it,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  I brush some fuzz and hair off my pants.

  “Fuzz and hair,” I say.

  Then I lie on the couch again, forearm over my head and eyes.

  I blink a few times and feel my eyelashes against my forearm.

  It feels bad.

  The word “bad” scrolls across my headhole in neon letters and I see myself saluting it.

  Goddamn.

  My roommate walks into the living room and hands me half of the orange.

  We eat in silence, kind of directing attention to the pigeon sounds, kind of directing attention to the silence.

  If I had the opportunity to walk into the room and see myself there, I would point and say, “You’re stupid.”

  But, I know I will never have that opportunity.

  It seems I keep track of opportunities I will never have more than focusing on ones I do have and could have.

  It feels like practice.

  I look at the last wedge of the orange in my hand.

  “This was a good orange,” I say.

  I wipe my mouth on the inside of my elbow.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah it was.”

  And there is goodness in the room.

  I look at the goodness and check to see if my roommate is looking too.

  He is not.

  Does he see it.

  He does not.

  The goodness hangs in the middle of the room and I take a breath.

  It feels good.

  I breathe the goodness into my chest and hold it there.

  Feeling like I want to individually ask everyone on earth if he or she is ok.

  Feeling like I’d better get started while I still have young-enough legs.

  My roommate says, “Good orange.”

  Then neither of us says anything.

  And while it’s quiet I wish myself luck with everything I decide on, and I decide to wait until tomorrow to do anything.

  I cough and it makes my eyes water and some drops go down my face into my ear
s.

  I’m lying on the couch listening to the traffic sounds outside.

  The tv is on and my roommate walks around the kitchen, doing nothing.

  He makes a sound with his mouth that expresses he is doing nothing.

  He moves some dishes around in the sink to get something out.

  Then he steps back quickly when the dishes kind of fall and make a scary noise.

  (The noise is very scary to me.)

  I put my forearm over my head and I laugh.

  “I just saw a commercial where someone falls down,” I say. “On tv.”

  I stare at the tv and listen to the sounds outside and I think about how one day I will move out of this apartment and into a new one.

  And then another.

  And how I will use my most trusted moving technique.

  (You start by throwing almost everything you own in the garbage or in the alley.)

  My roommate walks over to me, rotating an orange in his hand.

  “Do you want to split an orange again,” he says.

  “You mean, do I want to split one of my oranges again,” I say.

  He looks at the orange.

  “That’s what you’re asking, right,” I say.

  He spins the orange in his hand and he says, “Yeah did you want to split this orange. It’s the last one.”

  “Ok so you did mean: Did I want to have only part of something that is entirely mine. You did ask me that, about wanting to only get part of the thing that is mine and is the last I have of its kind.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ok. Yeah, that’s fine.”

  We split the orange, sitting very still on different couches while we eat.

  I detect some new kind of ouch in my headhole and it feels permanent.

  The word “ouch” scrolls across my headhole in big neon letters.

  My roommate says, “For some reason I expected there to be like, a little giraffe inside the orange when I peeled it.”

  “I am glad there wasn’t,” I say.

  We laugh.

  I don’t have a bed.

  I sleep on a sleeping bag, on the floor in my room.

  My room is small.

  I wish it were even smaller though.

  Right now I can take like, two steps one way across, and three the other way.

  That seems like too much.

  It always seems like too much.

  It would be awesome to just walk up to someone on the street and grab him or her by both shoulders then scream, “It’s, always, too-much.”

  It feels embarrassing when I require too much of the world.

  My ideal room would only have room for like, three of me lying down.

  Or maybe just some kind of harness I could hang from, outside.

  Yeah, but I sleep on a sleeping bag, on the floor in my room.

  And I like it yeah.

  It’s good.

  I’m not trying to be dramatic.

  I like it.

  One thing I don’t like though is when I’ve worn the same socks long enough to hurt the hair on my feet and legs and ankles.

  That’s the situation right now and I don’t like it (just being honest).

  Yeah, so lying down on my sleeping bag bed I always daydream about the completely leveled landscape of Chicago, yeah.

  Were mind enough, I’d have done it by now!

  Cool, dude!

  And you would have come across the Midwest and had to pass an empty place, me standing in the middle of it, laughing.

  Cool, dude!

  I can see my breath in the room right now.

  It is always very dark in my room.

  It is always dark in my room because the lightbulb in the ceiling fan stopped working and I am never going to change it.

  I am never going to change the lightbulb for no other reason than knowing I will never change it.

  There are times I still look at the fan and even try the switch, yes.

  But I will never change the lightbulb and I know this room will always be really cold.

  Haha.

  When someone calls something pointless, and it’s meant as an insult, I am confused.

  No I don’t know.

  Another thing I don’t have right now in addition to a bed, is a job.

  Right now my job is lying on my sleeping bag in my room while thinking about getting a job.

  Right now I am doing my job.

  And I can hear my roommate walking around in the hallway.

  I remain very still so he will not find me and then begin a conversation.

  I have no job.

  Yesterday I completed an online application for a job as a martial-arts instructor.

  I kept thinking that what I would do is, I would lie that I had really good martial-arts skills.

  Then I would see how long I could get away with working at the place before they found out I had been improvising fighting moves that only seemed effective but didn’t actually work.

  I even thought of names for the moves, and also their origins.

  To the first lesson or whatever, I would wear only underwear and say that that was the traditional apparel for my discipline.

  Then I would give a name to my discipline and a geographic location—probably mountainous—where I was trained.

  It would be nice to even get away with like two weeks working the job because then I could maybe have grocery money for a while.

  I just want to buy groceries and sleep on top of them.

  Yeah.

  I’m hoping to find an advertisement for a job that entails worrying when removing your hand from your pockets because you always think you are dropping something so you turn around and check the ground and shit but nothing, but maybe something, but always maybe something.

  I don’t know what I’m talking about.

  A couple of nights ago I was in my sleeping bag bed reading and waiting to feel weak enough to fall asleep.

  I heard a girl somewhere in a different apartment.

  It sounded like she was trying to orgasm.

  I didn’t hear anyone else, just her.

  No, I heard her and the bus and traffic sounds from outside and my own ears ringing (just being honest).

  I heard those things too.

  The girl voice tried for a while and then I couldn’t hear her.

  It sounded like maybe she got bored.

  Or maybe she has soundless orgasms, just to herself.

  That would be fucking radical.

  Total containment.

  I would understand that.

  I want to blow up inward haha!

  Your eyeballs have no bedtime because they never close their eyes haha!

  No I don’t know.

  I like reading alone in my room on the floor waiting to go to sleep.

  It’s the closest thing that makes me think the word “perfection” and have the word “perfection” flash through my headhole in neon letters.

  My roommate knocks on my door and I try not to move.

  My heart is beating fast.

  He knocks again and then leaves.

  I win.

  This is but one of the many victories I have exampled as a human among humans.

  I have no equals.

  My strength goes unmatched.

  My roommate returns and knocks on my door again.

  He says, “Hey man you got some mail. It looks like coupons. I’ll just put it under the door here for you.”

  He tries to push the mail through the bottom of the door and the mail bends a lot and it takes him many pushes to get it through.

  He walks down the hall and I am one person being one person again.

  Last night at four in the morning, I went to the ice cream place across the street from my apartment and I bought an ice cream cone.

  The guy behind the counter seemed really excited that I was there doing that.

  I wanted to ask, “What day is it.”

  I judge my health now by how hard my fin
gernails feel.

  And I find myself grinding my teeth all the time now.

  The front window of the place I buy my dinner at tonight has this shitty-looking computer-designed logo of a man in a chef’s hat, winking.

  Underneath the logo it says, “Jimbo’s.”

  The place is called Jimbo’s.

  And here’s Jimbo, all his features drawn in circles on the front of a window, for the city to see.

  It’s terrible; I hate it.

  And I can barely stand I’m so sick opening the door to go in.

  A man somewhat resembling the logo works the register.

  “You must be Jimbo,” I say, pointing to the logo on the storefront window. “You have the same circle face and everything.”

  The man at the register wipes his hands on his apron and he nods.

  “Yup,” he says.

  He turns and gets the order from an oven behind him.

  Paying, I say, “Wink for me man.”

  The man behind the register winks.

  I smile and nod.

  He says, “Bingo, baby.” Then he winks again and says, “That’s Jimbo, baby.”

  He wipes his hands off on his apron, smiling.

  He hands me my order and I hold it and I don’t remember what it is.

  “Alright,” I say, looking back and forth a few times from my order to the man at the register. “Bye, Jimbo baby.”

  “Bye.”

  At home I eat.

  When done I take out my phone and dial.

  Someone answers.

  “Hello, Jimbo’s, how can I help you.”

  I can barely breathe.

  I say, “Jimbo baby—”

  There is a pause.

  “Yeah, what is it,” he says.

  “Nothing man, what’s up with you.”

  He says, “Who is this.”

  It’s very hard to breathe.

  “Jimbo, it’s me. Jimbo baby, it’s me. I was in before. Come on. Just—I’m calling to say, I really fucking appreciate the quality of the tomato you used in my sandwich.”

  “Who is this.”

  “Jimbo, baby, just, for real. Just listen. Most of the time when you get tomato from somewhere, it tastes like pencil erasers smashed together. Not yours though, Jimbo. Know, Jimbo baby?”

  He clears his throat.

  “Fuck that,” he says. “I’m Jimbo baby. Believe it.”