by Sam Pink
I stare at the ceiling, on my back.
“Shit,” I say. “In that same class I had my first sexual experience. I was like, standing in line to get my homework checked and Ernest elbowed my arm and when I looked up I saw the teacher bending over. I could see her tits pretty good. The feeling was like, ‘I’m alive.’ That was a pretty significant class for me now that I think about it. I learned a lot then.”
She turns to me like I have just happened.
She says, “Huh I remember my kindergarten teacher used to tell us about how he worked at like, some industrial job once and how he’d have black crust in his nose at the end of the day and then he’d have to scrape it out with his fingers every night. I remember that scared me—when I’d think about him doing that.”
I watch the number rise on the counter.
And imagine the same counter for me, but it goes into the negatives.
Win.
The old man holds the necklaces in his hand, still talking, still smiling.
“He amazes me,” I say.
We both watch.
We are not touching or communicating.
I like it.
It feels real to me.
It feels like practice.
We sleep on the pullout bed tonight because her room is too cold.
The building is always very cold.
We lie on the pullout bed together and we do not touch or communicate, watching a shopping channel on mute.
She looks at the tv and she says, “I will agree that he is a cute old-man.”
I lean over the edge of the bed and reach to the floor.
“See,” I say. “He is absolutely adorable and he is tremendous.”
“Why tremendous.”
“I don’t know.”
I take my phone off the floor and I alternate between the tv screen and my phone, dialing.
Someone answers.
I focus.
“Hi,” I say. “Hi, is this the necklace channel. Ok. I was wondering if I could talk to the beautiful old man who is looking at me right now with a necklace in his hand. Ok. Sure.”
I push a button on my phone and put the phone back down on the ground by my pants.
“Think I’m going to shut off the tv I’m tired now,” she says.
She shuts off the tv and lies down against me.
“Goodnight,” she says.
“I don’t give a shit about you at all,” I say.
We both laugh and it feels good.
It feels like practice.
“Good night,” I say.
I have agreed to go to a birthday party tonight for someone I don’t know, because my roommate wants to have sex with the birthday girl and he is too afraid and awkward to go to the birthday party by himself.
(And also because I am a humanitarian.)
The birthday girl lives in an apartment building across the parking lot from our apartment building.
On the walk over, my roommate tells me she refused to have sex with him before because, “He didn’t have abs.”
He kicks a rock.
“And she’s fat too,” he says. “So what the fuck.”
I say, “If she wants abs, she will gets abs, and you fail. You have to be ok with that. Don’t make it her fault.”
We manage to kick the same rock across the parking lot, over ice and some areas of snow too.
And we manage because we try.
At the birthday party, there are people all around me and it feels un-good.
Like heat, somehow.
No I don’t know.
I sit on the couch looking straight ahead.
This is my etiquette.
I am proud of how good I have become at calmly not participating in things.
The birthday girl comes up to me and introduces herself and then she starts rubbing my shaved-head, stopping only for a second to fix her birthday hat.
“Can I do this,” she says.
“It feels terrible to me,” I say. “But happy birthday.”
“Thanks, can I do this.”
She keeps rubbing my head.
It feels bad at first yes but then I notice that I’m getting a dangerously fast hardness in my dick area.
Magnet fast.
Dangerous!
Her boyfriend comes over and they walk away together, him looking at me.
He probably wanted to rub my head.
Later on, when I’d really accomplished a good feet-stare, this girl starts falling all over the apartment, yelling about how she is Korean.
She falls over to a person and yells in his face, “I’m Korean!”
Then she does it again with another person.
The apartment is small enough that everyone heard it the first time I think.
I’m pretty sure she accomplished her communication with the first try.
But she keeps telling more people.
She walks all over the apartment yelling that she is Korean.
And for a finale, she falls over behind my back onto the couch, into immediate sleep.
There’s another person sitting next to me on the couch.
He is someone I don’t know and he is rolling a cigarette and he is looking at it.
He laughs.
“She went from yelling to sleeping faster than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he says.
“There’s still hope for people,” I say.
I pick her head up and put a pillow beneath.
“Don’t touch me,” she says, mumbling, “Or I’ll punch your skull off I’m Korean.”
I brush her hair behind her ear with my hand so her hair won’t get in her mouth as she’s threatening me.
I want to see and hear the threat.
And I sit on the couch, looking at the sleeping Korean girl.
A little bit later, my roommate and I leave and we manage to cooperatively kick another stone from the birthday girl’s apartment all the way back to our apartment.
It is amazing.
Once back, we stand just inside by the dark entryway taking our shoes off.
My roommate locks our door.
“See you tomorrow,” he says.
I say, “I know.”
Then he goes to bed and I go out the backdoor to the deck.
I stand on the deck.
It’s very cold out.
There’s a color and ringing to the sky that lets me know it is close to morning.
I look at the clouds and I feel uncomfortable.
The word “humongous” scrolls through my headhole in neon lettering.
The sun’s coming up and my roommate and I are standing on the deck.
We just returned from a birthday party for some girl he kind-of knows.
He has a cigarette and he is looking at where the sun is appearing.
“This isn’t so great,” he says.
I agree by saying nothing.
He finishes his cigarette and puts it out against the bottom of his shoe.
After a very long silence, he says, “Getting older means you have less and less fun.”
I agree by saying nothing.
I have the type of cold feeling that makes your chest muscles, like, bubbly.
Hope I don’t get sick and die.
The dream I have when I go to sleep involves me crawling through a very narrow wooden corridor for a very long time.
I can’t sleep.
My room is cold and for some reason I’m scared to leave.
I want to leave.
The words “death penalty” flash through my headhole in neon letters.
This will never end.
Just go to sleep.
Try again tomorrow.
You are a champion.
No, get up and get some cereal.
Yes, that will help you occupy time.
Ok I will.
Ok good.
My phone rings and it is the girl from downstairs and I don’t answer.
I don’t know what time it is or the date.
In my biography this will be the defining event.
This will be the part where I ascend to control.
My roommate’s box of cereal is on the counter.
I take some.
While pouring, I worry.
This is bad.
My roommate will know.
The box will feel less heavy to him.
No.
No maybe not.
No he’ll have to know.
How could he not have an approximate understanding of how much his box of cereal currently weighs.
Ok I’ll just have to put a trail out of the apartment to another apartment so he’ll think someone else took them.
Perfect.
This is perfect.
Yes.
This is good.
I will do this.
When I go to pour, dry cereal spills on the ground.
The plastic bag has been incorrectly opened.
The cereal pieces tap the ground, crushed by my attempts to dance away from them.
Ruined!
I think about just kneeling in the kitchen and screaming, “Fucking ruined!”
It seems rewarding.
Thinking also about walking outside and randomly kneeling and screaming, “I’m ruined!”
Instead, I leave the cereal on the counter and go back to bed, no longer excited about being myself.
Not excited about being fertile either.
Not really excited about some other things that have names if I really think about them too.
And I have one long word in my head that is millions of words bent together.
The giant word laughs at me whenever it wants.
And no, there is no such thing as a weekend when you don’t do anything during the week.
And yes, I want something definitive to happen.
I think tomorrow I’ll burn myself on the stove so people will feel sorry for me.
Not sure.
It seems like you just have to have an idea about where you are going and that makes things better.
My feet are too cold to sleep maybe that’s it.
And all my socks are gross—too gross for me.
This is the defining moment, when I have enough self-esteem to say yes to better socks and better hygiene.
Goddamn.
It’s morning and the girl on the first floor has an actual bed and I am pretending to sleep in it.
She has her arms wrapped around me, kissing my back.
I think I have acne on my back.
Goddamn I hate myself.
She’s been awake for thirty-eight minutes, trying to wake me up so I’ll have sex with her.
I know thirty-eight minutes have passed because I have been facing the alarm clock the whole time, opening my eyes randomly to check the time.
Time is the slowest when you’re pretending to sleep.
I forgot to brush my teeth last night.
My mouth tastes like there’s shit in it right now.
Whenever I push on this one molar with my tongue, it tastes like, some kind of shit-plant is sporing.
I’m really worried about how much I keep forgetting to brush my teeth.
I think it’s because my roommate buys bubble-gum flavored toothpaste.
And I always want to swallow it right away.
And every time I swallow it, my stomach really hurts.
Like really hurts bad.
Like it gets so cramped I can’t stand sometimes.
The toothpaste fizzes up right away too.
Fuck.
I don’t know why I am so upset about the toothpaste but I really really am.
The girl next to me stops kissing my back and she gets up and leaves the room.
When she is fully gone from the room I open my eyes and stare at my boots, near her broken closet door.
The words “You are a pussy” scroll through my headhole in neon letters and it makes sense.
And I sit there and eat it.
I scream in my head.
It takes forever.
Things outside the apartment building are moving and making sounds.
The sounds make me jealous of something I can’t picture.
I just want to go outside and never come back.
Go into the sounds.
I get up and put on my underwear.
In the kitchen, I look at the ground and the word “dumbass” forms in the tile.
The word “dumbass” laughs at me, and the laugh is mean-sounding, evil.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Thank you.”
She hands me a cup of water and we stand in the kitchen together and I try to think of something that is going exactly right.
There has to be something right now that is right—that exists as anyone would want it.
We make no eye contact.
Her and I.
We get along.
“Will you go to the store with me,” she says.
“What,” I say, even though I heard correctly.
We’re silent some seconds more.
Then some seconds more.
And these seconds see the deaths of other seconds, see new relationships formed by some random act of binding, see many others through the same silence.
“What,” I say, again.
I have an urge to throw my cup against the wall.
I don’t though.
I don’t because I know I will sit there and pick up every piece out from the carpet.
Just leave.
Leave her apartment.
Ok.
I pour the water out in the sink and then I finish dressing and leave.
Outside I feel very stupid.
Like the air is effecting a bad chemical reaction with my skin and face.
Everything looks unfamiliar.
There’s nowhere to be.
I walk to a park a few blocks away and sit on a bench with my hands over my ears.
It’s cold out.
In some ways it is the best moment of my life.
In some ways I am always telling the truth.
I leave her apartment and go to the park nearby.
I sit on the swingset at the park until I’m really cold.
Eventually, a homeless man walks up to the metal garbage can by the swingset.
He looks through the garbage can.
Then he takes out some old chicken legs and eats them.
I watch him eat the garbage.
I want to say, “Pass that shit dude.”
But I feel too shy.
He comes up to me and searches both his pockets, holding a chicken leg in his mouth.
He takes out two plastic dogs.
“Want a dog,” he says carefully, lips around the chicken leg.
“How much man.”
“Whatever you give me,” he says.
I give him almost a dollar in change and I take a small plastic dog.
I secretly name the dog, “Mega-Dog.”
The homeless man takes the chicken leg out of his mouth with his pointer finger and his thumb, like a cigar.
He looks at the other plastic dog in his hand.
I notice.
“I’m breaking up a marriage,” I say.
He laughs.
“You awful,” he says.
He keeps laughing and he goes back to the garbage, takes out more things.
I see the words “good job” scroll through my headhole in neon letters.
And I feel like the mayor of a small room with no one else in it.
I leave the park and walk.
And I decide I don’t like waking up.
And I decide I want to walk in a straight line until I am very far away, but I also know every straight line walked is a commitment and every straight line is many other straight lines and they intersect and sometimes they overlap completely.
I haven’t slept in two days so I feel tir
ed now, lying on my sleeping bag.
My feet are very cold but I am ok.
In the long transition to sleep I entertain a complex paranoia about a group of people who will be assigned to review each action I have taken throughout my life.
And once dead, I’ll meet them in council.
There will be a group assigned to review my “thank-yous said” to “those not said.”
There will be a group assigned to review every face I’ve made just after waking up.
There will be a group assigned to review how I treated people who asked me for help.
And a group assigned to review the times I felt bad but didn’t tell anyone.
A group assigned to review the times I deliberately threw crayons into the small fan my third grade bus driver positioned by his face.
And a group assigned to review bugs I needlessly stepped on.
A group for this nap I’m taking too.
And in the paranoia, I see myself getting dressed-up to go before them and answer questions.
I’m very nervous before each council but I try to be brave.
“This nap you took—” someone says.
“Yes?”
A mean-looking woman in the middle of the panel, she clasps her hands together and she says, “Tell us about this nap.”
When I wake up, one of my legs is numb.
And I remain awake in my sleeping bag, staring at the blinds until the black behind gets more blue, then lighter blue, then white.
Sometimes I definitely feel a sense of accomplishment but it’s never after accomplishing something.
My roommate and I are driving home after buying paper towels for the apartment.
A slapping sound happens against the bottom of the car and I look over my shoulder through the back windshield.
“You just ran over a cardboard box,” I say. “Looks like it had already been run over though, so you’re good.”
He switches hands on the steering wheel and he says, “Thanks for telling me. Keep me notified.”
I drum on my thighs.
“I will,” I say.
Then I look down at the new boots I am wearing.
I went for a walk a few days ago and the entire bottom part of my right boot came off and like, I fell into the street.
It was really fucking pathetic.