by Sam Pink
A car almost hit me.
I think the driver saw me there lying in the street, pathetically holding up my leg to show him the flappy boot, and just forgot about continuing to swear and yell at me.
So dumb.
When I got back to the apartment building, this old man down the hall gave me another pair of boots.
He’s always outside smoking thin cigars and when he saw my boots he gave me a pair he never used.
I wanted to make a card for the old man that had two birds on a branch and beneath the picture it would say, “Good people tend to branch out.”
But I didn’t.
I just took the boots.
My roommate puts on the turn signal and turns.
I smell something strange in the car for a second and then I
don’t.
I would call the smell “leafy.”
It’s insane.
I look over my shoulder through the back windshield.
“Hey you just ran over a plastic bag,” I say.
“So what,” he says.
I settle in my seat.
“So just another victim,” I say. “When will it end.”
“I can’t stand myself,” he says.
It sounds rehearsed though.
I laugh for some reason.
I definitely want to get better about not doing things I don’t understand.
At a stoplight, my roommate takes a leaf off the dash and drops it over his shoulder to the backseat.
He seems very nervous.
He says, “We have to stop by the video store too so I can drop off a video.” He clears his throat and says, “I just wanted someone to come with me man. Sorry to trick you, but I can’t do things like this alone. I’m sorry I tricked you but please, don’t leave me now. Don’t make me go alone man. I was honest at least. I was honest with you. Note that.”
“This will not be forgiven,” I say.
We pass a small billboard that reads, “Embryos are babies too.”
“Embryos are babies too,” I say, watching the billboard go behind us.
“Oh yeah.”
“Yeah,” I say.
He says, “How about cars, are cars babies too?”
“I think so, yeah,” I say. “Or wait, no. No, cars aren’t babies. Cars have motors and babies don’t.”
He lifts his eyebrows, still watching the road.
“Babies don’t have motors. You don’t think so?”
“No man. Pretty sure,” I say.
“Unless you consider the heart a motor,” he says.
“Which I don’t.”
My roommate straightens himself in his seat and puts both hands on the steering wheel.
“Ok,” he says, “what about roads, are roads babies too.”
I think about it.
About a hundred feet up in the air, I see a purple balloon, lost and going higher.
I laugh, watching the balloon over my shoulder as we pass.
The word “brother” flashes across my headhole in neon letters.
“Uh, no,” I say.
“Yeah you’re right,” he says.
“See. Only embryos are babies too.”
We pull up to the video store and my roommate slows the car.
“Just throw the movie by the drop box from here,” he says. “It’ll be close enough. I don’t feel like getting out.”
I lean out the window.
I throw the video out and I say, “There we go.”
The video case hits and slides along the blacktop a little.
I lean back into the car.
My roommate says, “You are my brother.”
“And you are mine.”
We drive away.
I don’t know what time it is at all, like even within an hour.
And I’m thinking a thought that is something like, “Be thankful for what’s left of you.”
“So how about embryos, are embryos babies too,” my roommate says.
“Yeah that was the first thing the billboard said. Do you remember that.”
He laughs, like he’s unsure how to respond.
We drive past buildings I recognize and some I don’t and I think about the happiness I would feel if I fell asleep and woke up and we were entering a state three or four states away.
I have maybe a hundred dollars left in my bank account and today I leave the apartment and walk to the bank to withdraw it.
I just want to see it.
I just want to have it in my hands and then hit myself in the head with it.
In the parking lot outside my apartment building, I see my landlord leaning inside her car, cleaning it.
She comes out of her car when I pass.
“Are you happy at all,” she says.
She squints then pushes her tinted eyeglasses up with her finger.
“Not really,” I say.
Then I shake my head, to confirm that I don’t think so.
“No, not at all. You’re not,” she says. “Are you having fun though,” she says, squinting with her hand over her eyes. “Are you having fun at all.”
“Yes, definitely,” I say.
She smiles.
“Ok, that’s all I want to know,” she says.
She spits her gum into a puddle by her feet.
“Things are going nowhere for you,” she says.
She closes her car door.
“No-way-yer,” she sings, walking away.
The walk to the bank is nice.
It feels nice to walk.
In the lobby I go to the teller window with the most attractive person in it.
“I want to take all my money out,” I say.
“I want to take you out,” says the person at the window, winking at me and running her thumb across her throat. “Here, take this form.”
I fill out the form and I walk out of the bank with all my money.
84 dollars.
And for some reason, in the parking lot out front, I worry that an eagle will swoop down and fly away with my money.
That is why I fear the eagle I guess.
There’s a homeless man pushing a shopping cart near the bank’s drive-through.
I’ve met him before.
He used to sell gym socks by the 90/94 highway entrance ramp.
He’s cross-eyed.
He told me he’d fought in the war.
When I asked which one, he said, “All of them.”
He pushes his shopping cart and I start to walk across the shopping area to avoid him.
Across the parking lot from the bank there’s a small jewelry store.
The store is small, not the jewelry I mean.
I go in.
I have the jeweler show me things that cost around 84 dollars.
Necklaces.
“All these are around that amount,” he says, motioning over the glass counter. Then he motions up and down on himself and he says, “And all this is around priceless, sweetheart.”
I laugh and nod.
I point to a necklace.
“Ok,” I say. “I’ll buy that one.”
“Which one.”
I lean over and point again.
When I lean, I can smell my armpit.
It seems like the jeweler smells it too because he looks at me like, “What have you done, you sick asshole.”
The word “death” flashes through my mind in neon letters.
I see myself saluting it.
I see the right way to do everything but I can’t memorize any of it quick enough.
Goddamn.
That’s happened before.
The jeweler and I stare at each other.
Eventually I blink.
I think he thinks that means he won somehow.
So I pay and let him keep the remaining three dollars in change.
He says, “Does it ever bother you how unneeded you are, almost everywhere.”
“It does,” I say.
And I leave.
A few bl
ocks from my apartment, I stop at the park.
No one else is there.
Spring will come soon.
I can tell.
Hi, hey.
Nothing will change.
Hi hey.
A squirrel runs through the tubeslide and then drinks water pooled in the tire swing.
It is funny to me.
I laugh but feel bad for some reason also.
And I take the necklace out of the bag and then hold the necklace up against the sun and the necklace looks beautiful.
I’m laughing.
I can’t stop.
It’s stupid-awesome.
Yes.
The laughing feels so good.
It occurs to me that there might be gum in the middle of the earth.
That makes me laugh more.
Is there gum there.
It doesn’t matter.
This is so good.
And one day, there will be no evidence of me ever having lived.
No evidence identifiable.
And I’ve thought of no better practice.
In some dirt by the swingset, I bury the necklace.
Pretty deep for what I can do with just my fingers and the still somewhat cold ground.
Then, I’m done.
And it always seems that things are just about to drastically change and be better.
That I just have to wait.
Wait for a giant, gift-wrapped package to float to me, mine to undo.
And inside the gift-wrapped package: an endless orange and an immortal puppy and some money.
I don’t know if I should judge myself based on what I can accept or what I can’t accept but I do know that I always dislike where I am and then look back on where I was with sadness because it is gone.
(That means I am worthless and it’s my fault.)
Ha ha!
I stand in the playground and I feel like I would never be friends with someone like myself.
Never ever.
That I would never do that.
No I don’t know.
It doesn’t matter.
There should be a word for what happens when you begin to ruin a feeling by saying it.
There should be less right-heres.
I wear the same clothes over and over.
I’m pretty disgusting I guess.
And in my dreams now I yell at people but make no sound.
It feels like practice.
ABOUT SAM PINK
Sam Pink is the author of The Self-Esteem Holocaust Comes Home (Lazy Fascist Press), Frowns Need Friends Too (Afterbirth Books), and I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It (Paperhero Press).
Visit him online at www.impersonalelectroniccommunication.com.