infected vegetables: February 2016

The Stings Don’t Hurt So Bad When You’re Busting Down The Beehive

Before I start, I am going to strip naked and butterfly my torso with a filet knife. I learned how to do the cut after watching some guy slice a pork loin on the internet, not from my father. I will put a trenchcoat on and sew the flaps of skin to the interior lining of my jacket. I will wait in the black mouth of the hallway for you to come home. When you do, I will wait some more until you come up the stairs and turn on the light. Then I’ll jump out, fling the coat open, and yell, “SURPRISE!” You will break a world record. You’ll be the first person in the world that didn’t immediately look down after being flashed by a male in a trenchcoat. CONGRATULATIONS! It will be an honor and you’ll thank me in your awards speech. Then I’ll cut the threads, sew myself back up, and I’ll never want to talk to you again

My dentist examines my teeth, while my eyes are closed.

“Wow, your teeth are finally looking good.” He says.

And I said “Yeah, they really are looking good”

But it came out like “Beaaahh bey villy rawr looking fud.”

He takes the hook and mirror out of my mouth.

“Must have a girlfriend.”

“Nah, only have three friends in this valley. Two of them are girls. One of them is a lesbian. And I can’t risk going down to two if you know what I’m saying.”

“Well maybe you’re growing up.” he says.

“I’m unemployed. But I start at the Mr. Z’s deli on Sunday. If you need some dead animals, I got the hook up.”

He pauses and pushes the gold rim of his glasses back of his nose with his latex covered index finger, looking uncomfortable like a person standing in a crowd of other people laughing at a joke he/she doesn’t get, and disappointed, probably thinking, “kids these days,” while shaking his head from side to side.

“Uh…Oh.”

“Yeah” I say.

His hook touches my front bottom tooth. Then he says the same thing he has said for the past 7 years: “Welp you’re still pig-headed for not going to the orthodontist and getting your bottom front teeth fixed. They’re crooked because you were stupid and didn’t follow instructions. Now they’re ugly.”

My front tooth is introverted and hides behind the other two teeth because it doesn’t want the attention. But he wouldn’t understand that.

“I’m sorry.”

But I’m not really sorry.

And in the act of apologizing, my gums impale themselves on his hook. And they start to bleed.

“You have to stay still…So does this mean you’re going to get them fixed?”

“I don’t have any dental insurance.”

“Welp, maybe when you get older you could afford it.”

(Kids these days.)

“Yeah!” I said, smiling as much as one person can smile after going through a dental appointment.

If you sound enthusiastic, sometimes people will buy into your bullshit. Sometimes.

But when I become a rich ass New York Times best-selling writer I will have the most beautiful fucking teeth you can imagine—at least that’s what my family believes.

People will become cooler by associating themselves with me because they will have to wear sunglasses all the time. My teeth will be that fucking bright.

“Welp, looks like you’re done. Don’t forget your free toothbrush.”

“Thanks! I won’t.”

He unclips the paper towel bib and hands me a plastic bag filled with a toothbrush, a small roll of spearmint flavored dental floss, a small tube of toothpaste, and a business card, as I open my eyes. I think this is what I feel like every morning: TURN THE FUCKING LIGHT OFF! Then I think about grabbing the electric drill and checking the pulse on his wrinkled neck with the metal tip as I whisper softly into the white hairs growing out of his ear, “Whose stupid now faggot?”

They will dance to the vibrations like grass in the eye of a hurricane.

It wouldn’t be thought out but I would have enough time to come up with a list of demands and maybe a half-assed escape.

But I wouldn’t because I don’t like confrontation or any situation including a confrontation with me, anyone I know, or am associated with at that time involved.

But my imaginary self is one bad ass motherfucker that wouldn’t give a shit and would partake in the festivities, escalating any confrontation to the most fucked up maximum level possible.

I’m not very trustworthy, but you can trust me on that.

You can trust me on that.

Sometimes when we’re hanging out together, I contemplate running away and renting an apartment on the sun while you’re in the bathroom because I get that nervous.

My friend drunk dialed me at 3:30 in the morning to ask me if I wanted to chill:

Him: Yo man, whaddareyou doing?

Me: Just getting high and watching tv.

Him: Ah mmmmaaaaannn, want to hang out?

Me: No. It’s past 3 in the morning, and I’m not driving 20 minutes out to your house.

Him: Oh…yeah yure right.

Random Girl’s Voice: Want to cuddle? Actually let’s just go right to tha fackin sex bitch.

Me: Dude, who the fuck is that?

Him: Yeah we’ill cuddle hehe…What? I don’t know mmmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Her: NA! GET OFF THA FACKIN PHONE AND FUCK ME HARD IN MY PUSSY FROM THA BACK!

Me: Are you about to have sex?

Him: Hehehe. Yueah, I’ll be there in a minute…jus fuckin chill let me and smoke this g-bong. Christ!

I hear the flick of a lighter and water hitting the side of a plastic container, which sounds like someone pissing on a wall outside in a back alley that was played on the radio.

Him: YYYYYYYYYYoooooooooooooooooo mmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn I gotta go I’ill hit ya up tamarrow or somethin.

Before he hung up, I was able to stick my hand through the receiver to punch him in the face a couple of times.

Me: Have a great night (friend’s name). Hit me up tomorrow. Maybe we can go up to Slocum or the Tubbs on a hike or something.

Him: HAHA, DIDN’T EVEN FEEL THAT SHIT. Yooooooooouuuuuuuuuu’lllllllllll kna I will. Peace!

He had two black eyes, a broken nose, and a small pool of blood seeped into and stained his bedroom carpet next to a homemade coffee table made out of a broken plastic container with empty beer cans, ashtrays made from aluminum foil, old plates of food with the remnants of whatever dinner was made that night caked onto the porcelain, and a N64 all covered in a film of dust, dog/cat hair, and a mixture of cigarette and pot ash.

But he was smiling.

Cause he was drunk, high, and just got some pussy, which made him happy in life.

Content with life.

Like most men in Parsons, a neighborhood in Wilkes-Barre—a mostly white, blue-collar working class men and women in the northern section of the hive on the border of Plains, a suburb.

But a couple days later when I hung out at a bar with him he wasn’t smiling anymore, but he wasn’t frowning either.

Just straight-faced watching the baseball game on the big black box tv hanging over the bar probably since the late 90’s.

Him: dude why the fuck did you punch me and fuck my million dollar smile up and my modeling career?

He laughed and I shrugged my shoulders.

Me: I don’t know, maybe it was because I got jealous and love you that much.

He laughed again, but his facial expression changed from jovial to completely serious in a millisecond.

If I hadn’t known him since preschool I might have thought I struck some deep chord within him like a psychiatrist, who just got a patient to admit and accept some deeply traumatic event from the past like being touched in private places as a kid by a dirty uncle.

But it wasn’t that serious, but still serious enough that he needed to confess it to an old friend at a bar who doesn’t know anyone that he could tell it to that would affect him in anyway.

He just needed to get it off his chest like an innocent sheltered catholic school girl in a confessional who just experienced her first weekend of drinking, partying, and making mistakes.

Him: Yo, but seriously don’t tell anyone about that call or night, just keep it between you and me.

I nodded silently in agreement.

Me: Okay, I can do that. This will be our secret for life that we take to the graves, the afterlife (if it exists), or if we are reincarnated as hard dicks or flowers. No person, worm, angel, god, ass hole, or bee will ever know.

He chuckles sips a beer out of a small thin glass and puts it back on a coaster made out of a piece of carpet back on the counter of the bar, leans over and talks in a low voice so I can hear over the phillies game going on in the back round at this dive bar a block away from his house that he’s a regular at.

Him: Listen, I didn’t even remember that call, until I was going through my phone from the night before, while taking my usual morning shit drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper, and saw I had a dialed call from you at like 3 something in the morning that was received. And I couldn’t remember what I said or how the conversation went cause of how fucking drunk I was, but after checking my fucked up face in the mirror I knew I said something because you’re my only best friend out of the rest that would do that to me at that time in the morning because you’re a cynical asshole that doesn’t want to hear me being drunk and probably bragging about getting laid while you’re prob tryin to sleep, but one thing I do kind of remember is that you heard the girl’s voice in the background, but after talking to you tonight...

(He took another sip of his beer and kept it in his hand.)

Him: You didn’t know who I fucked, even though you know the person I fucked, and met them multiple times.

He chugged the rest of his beer put his hand in the air with one finger as a signal to the bartender, the meaning of which is the signal for my beer is fuckin empty, I am about to tell someone I trust something really embarrassing, and need the comfort and courage of more cheap alcohol.

He looked down at the grimy barroom floor, then sighed, turned his bar stool toward me, with a solemn expression and excited eyes—like the eyes of a child with a secret who can’t hold it in anymore and has to tell someone, no matter who, even if it’s about themselves.

Him: So I fucked Melissa.

I turned my head to look him in the face, tilted my head to the side.

So confused.

My brain unable to comprehend what it just heard.

Melissa is a girl that he grew up with in her late 20’s that I met through my friend, who is a staunch republican and Dallas Cowboys fan that drunkenly lets you know her views on gun rights, the economy, why Obama isn’t really American involved in various conspiracies, and secret societies all trying and succeeding in turning the United States into a communist country like the Soviet Union was back in the day, and how the government is always watching/listening in on all texts, phone calls, emails, and social media posts.

These same views can all be heard if you become friends with her on facebook, and subscribe to her newsfeed.

She is also a lesbian that you could mistake for Eminem back in the day, who cycles through girlfriends like a poker player with cards, but in the end always folding or losing eventually on every hand, but in her mind never making a mistake and never being wrong; fighting then making up, then fighting again and making up on a continuous repeat until the relationship finally ends.

Before I could even wrap my mind around what he just said, or get a word out, the story started coming out of his mouth like a magician pulling out different colored cloths all tied together out of his throat.

Him: I know. I know, man. It’s fucked up, and I never should’ve done it. FUCK, I never should’ve done it, but I was completely hammered out of my mind. It started out at (Café) 99. I went there with my boy Keith, we ordered a couple pitchers of beer, and then I started playing some pool.

His face lit up for this part of the tale as he took another sip of beer.

Him: I started playing this black kid, who was so cocky and acting like a gangster, you know a nigger—not that I’m racist or anything, you know, but he was just acting like such a fuckin nigger—and I was kicking his ass.

Any time he talks about a sport, or video game that he played against someone, and dominated he repeats how bad he destroyed his opponent and emphasizes the point over and over again so you get it.

Him: You would have been so proud of me, just fucking HOUSING him in front of his bitch. Like I think he only made like 10 balls or something like that out of 5 games. Didn’t lose one fuckin time! That fake ass motherfucker blamed it on me knowing the table, and his stick being crooked after talking all this shit. He was actually so embarrassed he picked up his coat off the back of the chair and left after I beat his ass.

He rubbed his hand over his head through his short hair that reminded me of a freshly cut green on a golf course, and took a swig of beer.

Him: So me and Keith sit down at the bar at our usual spot, watching the Phillies game, and who walks in but Melissa. So we wave her over, she orders a beer and two shots of scotch, and starts talking about how she is pissed and having a bad day cause her and her girlfriend just broke up, and how the bitch threw her phone against the wall and cracked the screen, so she picked up her phone, went into her girlfriend’s bed room, got her computer broke it in half by smashing it off the kitchen counter, got her car keys, and dipped. So we ordered some more pitchers, and she kept buying us shots of jaegar, scotch, whiskey—whatever we wanted. And you know me, if someone’s offering, I ain’t turning it down cause it’s booze and it’s free.

He pauses, finishes his beer, and puts two fingers up to order another.

Bartender: You want anything?

Me: Na, I’m good with my water thanks.

(I think every bartender must want to stick a corkscrew through my eye, and twist until it reaches my brain because I really don’t like to drink, except on rare occasions , and always order tap water at a bar because I’m poor and it’s free, which means another dirty glass to wash, and no tip or profit.)

My friend’s expression transformed from jovial and carefree to serious again as another light beer was brought to him and placed on the coaster made out of carpet because now we were getting to the meat of the story; we were at the precipice, and at this point there is no going back.

He leaned in close to me enough that I could smell the old beer that has already gone down his esophagus, and is now churning in his stomach.

Him: At that point, the Phils game ended, and Keith said he had to go home cause he had to be up at 5, and I was sssssssssssooooooooooo fucked up that I couldn’t even tell you the score of the game, what time it was, or if they won or lost, but they probably lost cause they suck, so Melissa and I decide to walk back to my house, steal a couple of beers off my dad, and smoke some weed. After that, everything gets hazy. Like I can only remember bits and pieces. Like moments in time. I don’t know what led up to it or how it started, but I remember her on her back, legs hanging off the bed, and me fucking her hard—my dick going in and out so quick and getting deep in there. Then I remember her on her stomach saying not so hard, and moaning and screaming so loud that I was worried my parents would wake up. Next thing I know it’s the next morning, she was already gone, and me waking up naked in my bed, which was now broke, and there being blood like all over the sheets, like it was a murder scene where someone got stabbed in an artery and bled out—shit seeped through all the way to the mattress— and thinking “oh fuck,” not having time to wrap my brain around what just happened cause I was too worried about my parents finding out because, even though they don’t go in my room, my mom does my laundry and would be wondering why the fuck I’m throwing these sheets away, or if she found out why the fuck is there blood all over them, which no lie I could come up with could explain. So I put some boxers, a t-shirt, pajama pants, and my slippers on, then quietly tipped toed down the hallway and realized no one was home. So I ripped those sheets off the bed, double bagged that shit in a garbage bag, put some other trash in, then ran downstairs, outside and put that shit at the bottom of the trash can under two other bags. And knew I was basically home free, except for the whole…you know, what happened last night.

He chugged his beer and put his fingers up to order another as his shoulders relaxed, and his posture in the barstool became more lucid because his confession was over, but his face still held onto a little bit of nervous tension as he awaited my judgment, and maybe an act of contrition.

Him: I still can’t make sense of it, and feel so awkward about it. Don’t know what the hell I’m going to do the next time I see her, going to be one fucked up interaction. So whadda ya think? Like about everything?

The bartender brought him another beer as I smirked, before turning to him, looking him in the eyes, completely straight-faced.

Me: Well, after hearing your story my prognosis is that you fucked your childhood friend, who looks like a teenage boy that dresses and acts like she tough and a gangster, while you were really fucked up one night, which may mean you have gay tendencies, and could be bi-sexual or in full blown denial and completely gay so now I have the confidence to confess my romantic love for you…because yes, I have had a crush on you ever since we met at St. Mary’s when I was in preschool and you were in kindergarten all those years ago, and now there is a chance that we can fulfill that dream, get married, and be in love for the rest of our lives until we die, and have cemetery plots next to each other with our tombstones bearing the love we had for one another in our lives. Plus, you have a broken bed, and now your mattress has a bloodstain on it.

He laughed while he was taking a drink, and spit a little beer onto his lip.

Him: You’re such a cynical asshole, but you’re and will forever be my one and only.

Me: Awww you’re so sweet. How about we leave here, go to your place, smoke some g-bongs, play Mario Kart 64, and go even crazier than you did that night.

Him: Sounds good sugar bear.

He finishes his beer and we hug each other before putting our coats on.

Him: Love you bro. You always know how to take my mind off shit.

Me: Love you too. And next time you see each other just act like it never happened cause it did, but it really didn’t as long as neither of you believe it, and everything will be normal. Don’t worry you’re secret will always be safe with me.

I am going to take a metal file and sharpen my teeth so I can feel less human when I bite into you.

You are going to file your canines down before you bite into me because you’re a vegetarian. And my arm is a cucumber—which really isn’t a vegetable, but you’ll eat it anyway because it’s close enough.

After dinner, we’ll feel sick because we ate too much. So we’ll stare into each other’s eyes and complement one another on our new looks.

When I’m alone at night smoking a cigarette outside, I will piss in different sections of my parents’ yard.

It doesn’t have a fence.

I do it because it helps to keep the stray cats away. And also because I have to pee and I’m too lazy and fucked up to go inside.

I haven’t written in the last two weeks and I’M SORRY. But I have figured out where the point of origin lies: La Tolteca, that Mexican restaurant next to the mall. I spent the last couple of weeks investigating the outer façade of beige cement walls and plastic light up palm trees while on barbiturates and have come to the conclusion that it isn’t an authentic Mexican restaurant at all.

Everything was made in China.

Maybe that’s why I felt nauseous sitting across from you with half eaten beef quesadilla dead on my plate. And the green plaster cactuses with sombreros were equally frightening. But my biggest fear was spilling my guts to you because you recommended this restaurant and said IT’S REALLY GOOD.

Honestly, it was REALLY GOOD. But I blamed it on the beef because you never said you had it.

You got chicken.

And I said: food poisoning.

But it wasn’t food poisoning at all, and I think we both knew that.

True love.

We smoke a bong and carve different body parts off chocolate Santas with our teeth two weeks before Easter.

And we don’t try to define what it means.

Three months ago, my friend’s girlfriend puked on my jacket after I gave it to her because she was convulsing on the brick sidewalk outside a bar in 17 degree weather.

It was her 21^st birthday.

My friend thought she was having a GOOD TIME.

This is normal in Wilkes-Barre.

Her mom picked her up. And she still had my puked covered jacket.

It was my only winter jacket, but I told her to keep it for the night and give it to my friend, Dave, (her boyfriend) another time.

His girlfriend’s mom washed it, but Dave couldn’t meet up with me until another time.

He stopped answering text messages.

This is normal in life.

So I got frostbite, because it was winter.

Well, that’s what I told him.

Then he met up with me in the Barnes and Noble parking lot and realized I still had use of my arms.

I didn’t recognize him.

His girlfriend was in the car.

I didn’t recognize her.

Well I did, but they both looked different.

Like if they got plastic surgery and had traded faces with two other people.

But they didn’t and neither did I.

So he stepped out of his car. And I stepped out of mine.

“Hey man.”

“Hey.”

“Sorry, I’ve just been really busy.”

He kicked the small rocks on the asphalt with his shoes, never looking up. Never making eye contact.

“Uh…Oh.”

He handed me my jacket, which was now clean and not covered in puke, while continuing to look down at the ground and kick whatever remaining rocks were left by his feet.

“I think we’re going to Philly in a couple of weeks to see Keith and those guys. You should come.”

Keith and I used to be good friends throughout high school and for our first two years in college, even though he stayed local and went to Wilkes, while I went to Penn State Harrisburg then transferred to a small art school in Burlington, Vermont. His major was engineering. One day I made a facebook post I can’t even remember about something stupid. He took it as a personal vendetta against him, and took to facebook to trash me in the comments section of the post I made, pointing out every flaw and fucked up thing he saw wrong with me and how I live, (for example: that I’m a pill popping asshole who posts gross and disgusting things that always points out the wrong with the world instead of being normal, which is why I will always be a failure, and die alone and miserable) while all I did was apologize, saying it wasn’t directed at him, and it was a misunderstanding.

We haven’t talked since but I hear he graduated, has a decent job, and goes out to the bars or parties getting shit faced drunk, and fucking a new girl every weekend.

“Yeah, maybe. I haven’t talked to him in a long time. But I got to go.”

I didn’t have to go but I did.

“Alright man, peace.”

He got into his Cavalier. It assimilated into the web of neon lights that surround the shopping district by the mall at night.

I imagined him and his girlfriend dying in a car crash and not finding out about it until someone posts a status update on facebook.

We haven’t seen or spoken to each other since.

Yes, this is normal in Wilkes-Barre.

Yes, this is normal in life.

While pulling out of the shady gas station parking lot—the only one in the city with bulletproof glass protecting the counter—, a guy wearing a black hoodie and drinking a tallboy in a paper bag flashed a gang sign at me. I didn’t know what it meant. I had the urge to give him thumbs up because I never had a gang sign flashed at me before and it was exciting. I wanted to thank him for the experience. But I didn’t cause of the stories about people getting shot and robbed. So I locked the doors, made a left, and drove away from Hazel St.

Looking back on it, I should have rolled my window down, bought him a 40, given him a blunt, and said, “Please shoot me. Put that lead right through my forehead. Let it scramble my brain. And exit my skull. I will write the cops a note that will hopefully get you out of jail. I’m just not great at living, and want to end it now so my highlight in life could be a newspaper clipping.”

“Yeah, this job is mostly about waiting around and looking busy.”

“Oh.”

“This store is pretty dead most days. That’s why I just clean the windows and whatever other shit they need you to clean. Besides that it’s a lot of standing, cutting shit, and dealing with assholes.”

“Haha. Wow. That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Yeah, I’m not even supposed to be in today but everyone called off and we can’t leave you back here alone cause you have no clue what you’re doing. Yet.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“Not your fault. You’ll get the hang of it. Plus, Larry comes in at five.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Haha, but just to let you know, Larry really doesn’t do shit.”

I cut the tips of my index and middle fingers on a cooling fan trying to fix my parents’ sound system.

My fingernails were long. The plastic blades were effective.

The blood was like a slow oil leak polluting the pavement. But all I could focus on was the plastic cooling fan and how fucked up it sounded. I was nervous that I just broke some part of the high tech digital cable, big flat screen tv, dvd, stereo, surround sound set up, and could’ve in the process ruined some important part that allows all these parts to function, which I can’t afford. I never been in a plane crash, but it reminded me of a small single engine aircraft whose propeller was malfunctioning at 1000 feet above the ground. 1000 feet isn’t 10,000 feet but it’s still high enough.

I did eventually bandage my smashed fingernails and lacerated tips with gauze and medical tape, which was when I realized the injuries weren’t critical, serious, or life changing. I couldn’t even use it as an excuse to call off work. Or as a way of meeting and impressing a girl so we could watch cartoons all day in our underwear on the couch, getting high off of bongs and whatever pills we have, eating cereal (or donuts), and having sex when we feel like it.

Another daydream filed under “Cool shit that would make you happy, but will probably never come true” category.

It hurts to write, literally because I just cut my fingertips in a plastic cooling fan. Fuck!

When I’m reading a Where’s Waldo? book, I always have the urge to jump into the scene on the page, and never see my friends or family again. I mean if you ever really studied a Waldo scene you would realize that the world he loses himself in is fucking crazy: laughing Vikings, soldiers, knights, kings, queens, indigenous people, and an endless amount of dopplegangers—always smiling and having fun no matter if it’s a battle or museum gala. But I think I might assimilate better in Waldo’s world. I like sweaters, stocking caps, looking for things, and adventuring. And I hate work, bars, god, polo shirts, golf, throw pillows, Denny’s, small talk, slow motherfuckers hoarding the passing lane, fracking, The Wyoming Valley Mall, simple important questions, and thinking about what other people think about me.

Wilkes-Barre thinks I’m fucking crazy, but Waldo doesn’t.

Cause he understands that wanting to disappear, and be found by someone whose attention and time is solely focused on you for a short period sometimes is okay.

Only six people read what I write anyway, and out of those six, only two give a shit.

I need to make my shit, more disgusting, more offensive, more controversial, more pop culture, more academic, more unintelligible, more violent, and angrier. A lot angrier. And more hopeless and depressing. Like a smile on a serial killer’s face when he’s going through the details of the murders and funerals.

I will piss five of them off and widdle the number down to one.

Then the masses will recognize me.

I will split the throat of Oprah’s book club open with a boxcutter.

I will shit all over The New York Times’ Best Seller’s List, before I head across town to the New Yorker with a homemade shiv concealed to get through security and cause maximum fucking damage.

I’m going to go spread eagle all over that ass.

SPREAD FUCKING EAGLE!

Important words sometimes fall out of my mouth onto pieces of paper and arrange themselves into incomplete sentences.

If you’re walking by, I will cover them up with a well-placed arm and pretend I am sleeping.

It will feel like the fourth grade again.

And the fourth grade was AWESOME!

So fucking AWESOME!

And I know I said earlier that true love was smoking bongs and carving body parts off chocolate Santas, but I was wrong.

It’s actually eating bowls of cereal in bed with a complete stranger and watching cartoons all day, never acknowledging each other.

“Welp, that’s why we shop at Wegman’s.”

She pushes her glasses up her nose still scowling because she didn’t get her personal rotisserie chicken because the person who was working before me didn’t take her order, threw in a random amount of chickens, which were on sale and that take an hour and 45 minutes to cook, and had to get one that is the same size with the same seasonings, but came out of the oven 20 minutes earlier, and had to sit under the heat lamps.

And had to be the last one in the coop, which means turning the oven back on, running to the meat room cooler with my busted ass cart— the grids covered in layers and layers of chicken fluids from years and years of daily use—after I finish with her, sticking the chickens onto metal rods that hook into two rotating wheels in the oven, and then explaining and listening to unhappy people who want the rotisserie chickens that are on sale why there aren’t any left right now and how the next batch will be done in almost two hours, how I don’t have the ability to speed time or instantly cook the chickens, and giving them some deal on something else I’m not supposed to, but have to because the customer is always right.

“Here’s your pickle loaf.

I hope it makes up for the rotisserie chicken”

She inspects it thoroughly, takes a piece out, eats it, and asks for one or two more slices with her fingers as she chews cause I already weighed it out, and priced it.

She swallows and clears her throat, lips still in a scowl.

“Welp, just let YOUR manager know that the person before you

screwed you.”

“Okay,

Thanks And Have A Great Day!”

The customer is always right, especially when you work by yourself for 24 hours out of a 36 hour week for $8.05 an hour always being promised by your manager for weeks then months that your super special raise is coming, you just gotta keep working harder, and please try to get out on time.

“You too.”

And I don’t work at Wegman’s.

And I didn’t tell my manager.

And I didn’t get screwed by my co-worker (even if my co-worker jokes about it).

This lady must’ve really thought I was a fuck-up.

To think I wouldn’t have realized that I got screwed, my ass would’ve probably been sore.

But, the customer is always right, especially an old lady on senior citizens’ day.

Pull the zipper sticking out of the skin on my forehead, and expose my skeleton. Bare bones in a barren place. Orange water lapping the edges of the creek in our backyard.

If you see me walking around with a full syringe of mercury and box wine dangling from my jugular, use your fingers to plunge the solution into the blood stream. I will allow you to rail my personality off the receipt we just got from the mini-mart. We just have to wait for the wind to slow down enough to form a shape that we can clearly make out with our eyes.

Is tearing up during a wedding speech a good or a bad quality?

Is tearing up during a wedding speech for your best friend a good or a bad quality?

(You don’t have a best friend. But you used to. Used to have different ones, multiple ones at some points, but now you don’t and it bothers you like a stomach ache where you can’t decide whether to shit or throw up first because your body doesn’t give you the time.)

Is tearing up during a speech for two complete strangers who just got married.

Good?

Bad?

Is tearing up. Not at wedding. Puddles are the congregation. Cheering. Clapping. Wiping the corners of their eyes with the shredded remains of a tissue. Puddles swirling in the breeze holding onto the parking lot. Is giving a speech. So sentimental. Making sure to make eye contact. Before someone calls the Wilkes-Barre PD.

Fuck public speaking and eye contact.

Last year, we were underwater, but not completely submerged. Maybe half-in, half-out. But that’s still a gross exaggeration of what actually happened. Maybe submerged wasn’t the right word—I’m sorry, the mixture of dust and household chemicals has me feeling nostalgic.

Last year. Water. Under. We were impregnated with the infected decay of organic material mixed with turpentine. The evacuation was better than any rager we had during high school. Even better than the party at that hollow mansion with the beer keg we stole from the country club. Even better than that night of speedballing off the vapor trails stalking her mood swings. Feeling bi-polar in most facets. Sitting on porches. Drawing smiley faces eating each other in the condensation on the transparent panes of our 40’s.

Flood of 2011. We will always forget the exact details and fill in the blanks with chit-chat, and white lies without definition.

Okay. This is confusing. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

One true fact: our town was on the weather channel. THE FUCKING WEATHER CHANNEL!!!!!!!!!!!!

We finally made it.

When my hand turns into a gun that touches my temple, I will imagine the sound and blood. Together in unison like a full pot of coffee breaking on linoleum. The drip, steamy and hot-to-the-touch. Falling off the counter at a steady pace.

It will be a release of something which I cannot describe to you yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Be patient.

Is a good lesson to learn.

Or a waste of time.

Everything is different from person to person.

A concealed razorblade dragged across a forehead for dramatic effect. Their eyes are hungry, and I'm cooking under the spotlight. Blood simmering. Skin wrinkled. Whole chunks coming undone.

I come out of the half-eaten bedroom carrying the aroma of used-cooking oil and stale beer under my arm in a briefcase. Trying to look important. Wearing a maroon stained suit and hundred dollar dress shoes inundated with broken toes and water, I will take out a mortgage on the bench on the corner of the Boulevard and Northhampton St. with a backpack of turkey and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread. Washing it all down with a swig of neon green soda.

Please swathe my body in a blanket of newspapers if I start to shiver. Or interveinously inject me with microwaved chicken noodle soup from a can. Because I am a disappointment who will never help anyone do anything important ever, which is why you should cover me in bubble wrap, put me in a cardboard box, and duct tape it shut when the time comes— look for the signal, I think it will be a fingertip sliced on a mechanical saw, or a holy book written in smudges on a mini-van's rearview window. Then put me in storage at a dive bar or an all-american chain family restaurant. Or don't.

Loyalty is unreliable. I will cover my friends in fishing hooks baited with profile pictures and twenty dollar bills and watch as they are snagged in mouths. Sinking past the weeds into mud. Then, I'll cut the line. And sink back into a deep meditation as I watch an old projector launch flickering black and white images onto the grey canvas of on the inside my skull: Eyes burried under concrete. A tongue motionless. An arm abandoned. Urine dripping down the cracks of the rock face like an old man removing his glasses as he cries at a funeral. A spinal cord under the protection of a child lock. A fly with broken wings fidgeting in front of a four year old girl with a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

Sociability is overrated.

I can’t pee in my parent’s yard anymore because I got kicked out of house two days later after pissing my dad and sister off on my birthday. I went outside to smoke a g-bong after a seven hour shift at work. They wanted birthday cake, and couldn’t wait so the held my mom at gun point until she gave in.

The last words my dad ever said to me were, “Reading those whacked out books, and writing gross whacked out shit. You need some fucking help if you think that’s what life is, because you are going nowhere. You’re just a waste.”

The last words I ever said to my dad were, “I hope you enjoy fucking the new chrome exhaust pipe of your Mustang and masturbating in your hot tub for the rest of your life until you die.”

Now, I live with my aunt. And my parent’s yard is the new location for feline orgies.

“This is going to be a significant moment. A change!”

Fuck that.

I am standing on the porch smoking a cigarette behind the crowd of people gathered on the stairway.

Mel is in the street about to symbolically release an orange birthday balloon into the sky.

Her hand holds the purple string attached to the bottom of the balloon.

She looks uncomfortable: shoulders hunched, face frozen in an awkward expression like a cartoon ice cream freezer pop, straight blonde hair blowing in her eyes.

Her roommate lights her up with flash photography.

“Dude, Mel this is going to be a real fucking significant. Like a breath of fresh air or something. And I have documented the event as it occurred.”

“Yeah!” someone says.

“Go Mel!” someone else says.

Alone and observing in the shadows, I remembered something my third grade teacher said about the ramifications of releasing balloons into the air. She said they have the potential to pop over the ocean and kill a whale.

Rubber lodged in the blowhole.

My third grade teacher is dead because of a brain tumor, and I never really liked my third grade teacher—a full year of lunch detention.

Her roommate turns around and lights up the crowd kidnapping another moment in time.

“Dude these photos are going to come out so fucking great! Yo, did I tell you guys that I’m going to be doing a photo shoot in Philly for _____ Magazine sometime next month? It’s going to be so fucking rad man. I mean I already did a shoot with some porn stars, but this could mean the big time.”

I think about what constitutes the “big time” for her roommate and think about its relevance.

Mel is still standing in the street holding a balloon and looking uncomfortable.

Real uncomfortable.

The honest kind of uncomfortable which you see in high school locker room showers.

I think about a car coming around the corner too fast and hitting her on the hip, her doing a backflip, and landing on her feet, looking around to see if we all saw what had just happened.

I think about cutting off her roommate’s tongue, gluing it to his forehead, and calling him a unicorn for the rest of the night, while someone else took photos to document this moment in time.

Her hand let’s go and the balloon hovers upwards following a path of ascension.

Snap.

“WOOOOO!” someone says.

“Yeah!” someone else says.

Flash.

I think about a whale dying.

I think about shooting the balloon down before it disappears, and ruining the whole moment.

Mel reaches the sidewalk, newly baptized.

Still uncomfortable.

I think about how I am a piece of shit, and a horrible person who should drown in a bath tub of chocolate pudding.

So pointless.

(In the end that magazine that contacted him was actually a fraud scam based out of Philly.)

Today at work behind the deli counter, I saw a forty year old man with a tan round face examining the quality of a box of glazed donuts.

He was wearing a black t-shirt that said: “I can suck dick better than any girl on this planet!”

The “suck dick” was written in rainbow lettering.

A tall bald man with a shaved head in a beige winter coat wiggled his way through produce until he was next to the guy who can suck dick better than any girl on the planet.

He reminded me of a construction worker, the bald guy.

He had to be.

His hands were large and calloused.

Permanent dirt glued in between the fingernails.

I thought about talking to one of them, but I always get nervous around celebrities.

I had a question to ask.

The man who can suck dick better than any girl on the planet put the box of donuts back on the table that serves as our bakery—our store doesn’t have an in-store bakery, which means all of the baked goods are brought in from the corporate factory bakery, put on the table in front of the deli, and marked “fresh.”

“These donuts look like shit! They’re already hard as fuck!” he said to the construction worker while moving his hands in a circular motion.

“Yeah! And for $ 3.99? Rather just go to Dunkin Donuts. Ya know? They’re made by those Indians, but at least they’re made daily.” the construction worker said to the guy who can suck dick better than any girl on the planet.

The construction worker giggled as he grabbed the guy who can suck dick better than any girl on the planet’s left ass cheek through acid washed jeans with one of his large calloused hands.

“Let’s go babe!”

“Alright.”

They disappeared around the corner like every customer does, but they were not like every customer because they were smiling, giddy, hand-in-hand.

The question I wanted to ask was: “Is it really all about oral sex or is there something else to it?”

Because they were the happiest couple I had ever seen so far in my entire life.

Popchurrr!

“What the fuck was that?”

“Gunshots.” she said nonchalantly.

Carrie and I were smoking cigarettes on her porch at 8 Park Ave around midnight.

Wilkes-Barre was bathing in a downpour of rain as old fast food bags, cigarette butts, napkins, ripped condom wrappers, and other pieces of trash floated down the stream of water on the left side of Northampton St.

Her cat, Spiderman, was tight-rope walking the green banister between us in search of a hand because he wanted to be petted.

“That definitely was close to Cody’s house. It sounded like they both came from that direction.” I said pointing left with my index finger down the street, pointing out the obvious.

“I know. It’s chill, I’m sure he’s okay. Probably passed out on the floor with his head in a pillow with that show about the guy with no teeth who pulls woodland critters out of invested homes or properties running on the tv. Live Action!”

“Live Action!”

Spiderman purrs as he rubs his head against the back of our hands covering them in a film of loose hairs before sirens speak up in the distance.

“Gotta love Wilkes-Barre.”

“Glad to be back.”

I tear my room apart, one wrinkled shirt at a time, until there is nothing left but a headache and torn out pieces of brown hair spread across the carpet. A one-track mind does this to a person. It causes them to get down on his or her knees with an LED headlamp. It causes them to scan every fiber of carpet until he or she can map out the geographical terrain of “under the bed.”

“Motherfucking asshole! Shit! Shit! Shit! I just had it on the FUCKING bed and it’s FUCKING gone! What the fuck! Goddammit you cunt!”

I speak in foreign tongues, begging for mercy to a nonexistent force, which is never a good omen, but my body is desperate for closure. My eyes are pinned; eyelids pierced with fish hooks.

It suck big time ass when you lose something important in your room knowing you are the person who lost it. And now I’m having this experience in front of an audience of close friends. And I’m starting to think they are in on it.

I’m the worst person in the world, and I haven’t even hit the bottom, and probably never will because I’m in one of those never ending holes just swimming in air and pressing the glow button on my wrist watch every three minutes to check the time.

My hand cold cocks the lower jaws of the dressers. My feet kick old plastic bags filled with expired Christmas candy in the ribs until they cough up hard gummi bears and chocolate santas. My mind contemplates the best way to gouge out a hole in the eyes of the beige painted drywall without my uncle finding out.

A one-track-mind possessed with no ventilation system. If there was a better part of me, it’s dead from smoke inhalation.

I’m never going to find this bag.

After pissing two more hours away in a never ending hole, I opened my bedroom door and walked downstairs. The audience had already departed. My aunt asked me what was wrong. I lied and I said I lost twenty bucks.

She gave me twenty dollars and two Xanax.

After that, I figured someone stole it or I lost it, whatever.

After that, I figured out how to crumpled my room with me inside into a ball. A six year old picks the ball off the ground, and shoots into one of those plastic basketball nets they hang above the garbage. The six year old hits the front of the rim, walks away into the kitchen, sits at the table, and destroys a stack of Double Stuffed Oreos with a glass of milk and a mouthful of baby teeth.

Parked.

In a car.

In a car with rust spots.

In the backseat of a car with rust spots.

Three people in the backseat of a car with rust spots.

Three people passing a blunt and listening to the radio talk about dead people in different parts of the world in the backseat of a maroon car with rust spots, which is parked next to a splintered telephone pole; two in the front, and two outside.

Seven people laughing.

Three out of seven throwing up behind a beat up white work van from the 80's.

Hoods up.

Smiling.

Showing our bloody gumlines off to the world.

Listening to the cups exhale as the syrup swirls through the soda under the streetlight.

A fleeting catharsis hot-wiring two heady hemispheres for comfort.

Floating.

Spent my last five on a piece of pizza (chicken wing.)

My magic trick is making a minimum wage pay check disappear in a day.

My other trick is the ability to maintain until next Friday.

And tonight, the moon is showing off a pompadour composed of clouds.

And tonight I pretended to pee in a urinal in a casino bathroom while someone handed me pills.

Hoods up.

So Reckless.

And, yes, we are currently taking donations and kind-hearted words spoken softly into a cell phone.

Getting dome.

Preserving blood from a nose bleed.

Passing time.

Nothing else to do.

“Man, Moses is such a dick! He had them right here then he just went to the casino.”

“Eh, whatever.”

We got into Cody’s beige 90’s Toyota pick-up and drove on Wilkes-Barre Boulevard towards Parsons. We both lit up cigs as we passed businesses surrounded in Christmas lights. Cody rolled his window down and put his elbow on the arm rest on the door as he ashed his cigarette. His eyes widened in anticipation for the upcoming tale to be told.

“Yo, so peep this. A couple of days ago, Ari was with this dude, Kasper. So my boy gets drunk off of whatever whatever, and decides he wants to go to the Red Roof. Dude leaves but forgets his box of shells for his .44 at my house. So he asks me to go to him and drop it off.”

We pass Hollenback golf course, before hitting those two stops signs, and making the left at Philly Subs.

“I go to him and drop off the shells, and come back home. Then, like two hours later, homie decides he doesn’t want to stay at the Red Roof cause there were cops around or something, and takes a cab with Ari back here. Both of them were on the front stoop and as the cab was leaving, dude pulls out his gun and decides he wants to shoot the cab. Ari was like, ‘Yo you’re not gonna do that right here.’ Cab rounds the corner, out of sight, so Kasper points his gun straight forward, and pops one off. Then Ari was like, ‘You gotta go.” And the dude took off after he asked her if he could fire more shots.”

We pass the Turkey Hill before making a left into the Mohegan Sun Casio, aka one of the fakest, corrupt, piece of shit places in our area where a lot of residents come to blow away life savings on slot machines, horses, cards, alcohol, and/or expensive sushi.

“Fuck dude, that’s cray. Were your parents home?”

“Yeah, they were. I don’t know how they didn’t wake up.”

Cody pulled the truck into a spot in the upper parking lot, and we started walking towards the entrance.

“What’s really crazy is I’m pretty sure me and Carrie heard those shots the other night when we were smoking cigs on her porch. We knew they were close to your house but didn’t think that you, or anyone else we knew was involved. Shit that’s so fucked.”

“I know, what’s really crazy is a couple of nights later, he was driving his car on Kidder St., sober, and somehow hopped a curb, went down an embankment, avoided three trees and a bush, before he crashed his car directly into the Denny’s dining room. Hahaha.”

“No way. I saw that picture in the paper the other day. It was the same dude?”

“Same dude.” Cody pulled out his smart phone, “Yo, I finna about to finish this game of Words With Friends with Carrie, just gotta play this triple letter, triple word, and it’s over. By the way, Moses said to meet him in the bathroom. Only place where there aren’t cameras.”

“Word.”

We open the glass front doors and pass drunk thirty/forty/fifty somethings in polo shirts, fur coats, suits, high heels, and silver and gold wristwatches, old beer and martini olives stagnant on their breath. We walked around the outside of the floor, and watched some guy in gold-rimmed glasses lose a hundred at the craps table, before we ducked into the bathroom. Moses was already in there washing his hands in the sink.

“Yo playas. What’s up?”

“Not too much. What’s good with you?”

“Nada. How many do you want?”

“Four a piece.”

“Okay, eighty each.”

While Cody and I counted the money out, the guy with gold-rimmed glasses who just lost a hundred at the craps table busted into the men’s room, and occupies an open urinal. We pocketed the money and wallets before he saw anything. Moses walked into a stall and locked it. Cody did the same, which meant there were no more available. I went up to an open urinal, unzippered, pulled my dick out, and pretended to take an abnormally long piss. The guy with gold-rimmed glasses finished up, washed his hands, splashed some water on his cheeks, and left.

Moses and Cody emerged out of their respective stalls as I zipped back up.

“Alright, now that that asshole is gone, let’s make this quick.”

Cody handed Moses four twenties, and got four roxy 30’s.

I handed Moses a twenty, two tens, and four fives, and got four roxy 30’s.

“Thanks man.”

“No problem. I still got like half a script, so just hit me up if you need any more.”

“Word. Will do.”

When we got back to the truck, I ate a roxy, crushed another up and blew it off the cover of service manual located in the glove box, next to a scale, two pipes and ¾ of an ounce of weed. Cody ate a roxy, and coaxed the truck’s transmission into drive.

Three months later, the truck was on the morning news—embedded in the tan brick wall of the abandoned store front of Park Hill Furniture.

The beige 90’s Toyota pick-up was drunk, going 70 down Park Ave in the direction of Northampton St. with Carrie riding shotgun. It tried to take the right onto Hill St. but breaked too late, hopped the curb, went through a telephone pole, before being stopped by the brick wall.
Carrie was okay. She got out of the car, and started walking around Wilkes-Barre until she was picked up by some people who told her to stay at their house until everyone has their stories straight.

And while she was there, everyone got their stories straight.

Cody’s dad came out and talked to the cops, even though he was pissed at Cody, he was still his father and protective of his son. Told them that some kid was in the basement that one of Cody’s friends just met, and no one knew him really at all. And when Cody was passed out, this kid saw the keys to the truck lying on the ground and took them and the truck. Like 25 minutes later before any one was up or realized what happened, the truck was embedded in the beige bricks of what used to be Park Hill Furniture. The kid was like 5’10” with shaggy black hair, medium build, and wearing a plain navy blue hoodie, and black jeans. He said his name was Tom, but no one knew his last name.

He is still on the loose and the case remains unsolved.

We should slice the earth in half and eat it like a watermelon.

After our stomachs are full, we will smash the left overs against the side of a brick building.

Squirrels, pigeons, flies, ants, stray kittens, and rats in plaid button down shirts, tight jeans, and thick black frame glasses (without lenses) will consume the remains behind the orange painted dumpsters.

Tonight, the invisible person living inside of me is pissed off. This person is screaming all the fucked up things that are wrong with me into my ear, pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until that person goes silent, and gives up out of frustration.

This person is disappointed. I feel guilty. And this is where it all goes to shit. This is where that overwhelming feeling of thinking about everything that’s wrong with me all at once starts. That feeling like your mind is popping out of your skull due to the pressure exerted on your body from paranoia. This is where I think about killing myself immediately with some household object/chemical in an act of contrition. Tonight it is a cinder block to the back of the head.

“I need a cigarette.”

“Another problem on top of all the other problems. You’re such a fucking failure, resembling all of the people you hate. And the people you hate are your friends. And the only person you hate more than your friends is yourself. Kill yourself some more! Lose a finger. Smash your temple off the pavement after losing traction in the rain. Do heroin. Keep working at your bullshit job at a deli for $8.05 an hour. Keep hanging out with people you have nothing in common with. Keep hanging out with people who do nothing but rip people off, masturbate to self pics of themselves, nod out, play words with friends on their smart phones, and talk shit. Keep going fucking nowhere. Stay in Wilkes-Barre. Just to let you know, you’re neither smart, kind, or cool, you’re just a dumb bastard who is wasting away one day at a time. Eating once a day. Mostly shitty food. You chew really fucking weird, and turn Carrie’s air conditioner off because you think your lines are going to blow away, which pisses her off, and starts a fight. Plus, you call yourself a writer, even though you are too afraid of rejection to submit anything. Rejecting yourself before someone else does. Depending on others. You are the fucking problem, and you realize that, and that is your most pathetic quality of all.”

This person is now on a carpeted floor inside my head, rolling back and forth in the glow of two clocks, one going up labeled “past”, and one going down labeled “future”, muttering, “we’re going to die,” repeatedly. He/she knows it’s over when the numbers on the clocks match-up, and that’s why this person is in the fetal position. Because he/she can’t do anything about it. Stuck in limbo.

Both of us thinking: it’s only a matter of time.

Today while cleaning the rotisserie at work, I changed the lyrics to the beginning of Danny Brown’s “Blueberry” from ”Pop that pussy for a gold nigga, 31 comin slow nigga,” to “Pop that pussy for a broke nigga, 25 comin slow nigga,” because it made more sense in regards to my situation.

Fuck. That sounds stupid.

“Deli, Line One! Deli, Line One!”

9:55pm.

I’ve spent the last six hours and fifty five minutes by myself — my coworker called off because of an ear ache— cutting lunch meat/cheese, cooking rotisserie chickens, frying chicken, making subs, dishing out potato salad and coleslaw, racking raw chickens, breaking down and cleaning three slicers, wiping the counters, cleaning the rotisserie oven, covering the salads, doing the food logs, windexing the windows, cleaning the deep fryer, sweeping the floors, changing/taking out the garbage, mopping, talking to myself, and listening to a guy in an American flag wolf t-shirt telling me to “fuck you and fuck off” after not knowing the price of broccoli.

I prop the mop against the counter.

“Shit.”

I pick up the phone.

“Deli, can I help you?”

A strangled crackly high pitched voice comes through the phone speaker.

“UUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, yes, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmm IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII would just like to know if you have deliiiiiiii meat there, llllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiikkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeee ham, turkey, aaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnddddddddddddddd uuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmm if you cccccccaaaaaaaannnnnnnn cut it?”

“Yeah. We do. But we’re closed for the night.”

“TTTTTTTTTTTTTThhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttttttt’sssssssssssssss ooooooooooookkkay, IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII’LLLLL be coming tomorrow. Whaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttt about cccccchhhhhhhhheeeeeeeesssssssssssssssseeeeeeee? Like American?”

I’ve had prank phone calls from punk ass kids in my time at the deli, and it’s now 9:57pm, I’m supposed to be out by 10:00pm or I will be yelled at by my store manager Cindy for fucking up payroll by a couple of dollars.

“MMMMMmmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyy wwwwwwwwiiiiiiffffeee used to love American cccccchhhhhhheeeeeeesssssssssssseeeeeee, bbbbbuuuuttttt sssssssssshhhhhhhheeeeee ddddddiiiiieeeeeddddd of cancer a year ago. Bbbbbbbuuuuuttttt right now, I just reallllllyyyyyyy want American ccccchhhhhheeeeeesssssssseeeeeee. You know?”

I hung up, finished my work, and left.

The next day I found out the person I thought was prank calling me actually had a speech impediment, and his wife did die of breast cancer a year ago.

I apologize profusely, telling him I had a long day, but whatever I said wasn’t going to make up for how I acted. Like tires spinning in dirty snow. Stuck.

Just more evidence to add to my case file of being a shitty person and asshole.

I want to be consumed by a swarm of killer bees when I’m on my lunch at work.

I want to be mummified in honey, bee corpses stuck to my skin, so I can be remember, frozen, swollen, and puffed up. A new local tourist trap.

Seems fitting. Right?

Because the stings don’t hurt so bad when you’re busting down the beehive.

Some of us are homeless. Schizophrenic. Depressed. Criminals. Painting walls. Carrying handguns in our waistbands. Smoking cigarettes. Or bowls. Or L’s. Or g-bongs. Or heroin. Or crack. Or pills. Shooting. Sipping. Surviving. Hustling. Snorting. Functioning. Dirty. Broke. Joking about suicide. Not really. Not eating. Selling. Suffering. Shitting. Talking shit. Living off someone. Presumably family. Parents. Driving home at 2am. Working for just above minimum. Or unemployed. Sitting around on couches. In parking lots. Stoops. Porches. Street corners. Playing video games. Hiking. Kicking a soccer ball. Watching The Life of Mammals with David Attenborough on Netflix. Sleeping til noon. Til two. Not dreaming. Disillusioned. Unmotivated. No self-belief. No reason. Posting something meaningless on Facebook to piss people off. Addicted. Within the confines of the hive. Wilkes-Barre. The Wyoming Valley. Northeast Pennsylvania. USA. Two thumbs way down. Frowning. All day. 24/7. Disenfranchised. Apathetic. And alone. Trying to forget. Escaping. Not really. Smelling like shit. Experiencing withdraw. Sweating. Stomach aches. Shaky hands. Missing the vein. Deviated septum. Asthmatics. Wheezing. Polluted. And poisoned. A contradiction. Ripping on anyone we come into contact with. Planning on getting even. Planning robberies. Muthafuckas. Speaking busted Spanish. Drinking forties and/or pints of liquor out of fast food cups. Walking. Running away. Dividing. Never organizing. Never going to the doctor’s. Never doing anything. Never going anywhere. No plans of stopping. Kinetic energy. Wasted. Failures. Dead. Dead. Dead.

The some of us make up the most of us.

And the most of us wish we were killed by bullets addressed to “whom it may concern,” because it’d be quicker and less painful.

570.

Bring the violence in 2013.

Extended clips and drugs.

Here, we like to eat that body up.

“They die for theirs so we die for ours.”

Wilkes-Barre.

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

The air conditioner drone is combining with the late night reality tv show dialogue spewing from the speakers on the bottom of my aunt’s flat screen forming a sound with a particular aural frequency and pitch, which persuades my thoughts to turn suicidal.

An hour ago, I was on Carrie’s porch with her and Shannon smoking a bowl and watching lightning bolts stretch from cloud to cloud to cloud. Shannon was telling Carrie a story about how some guy tipped her sixty bucks at her restaurant job as a waitress because of how she treated him, and “made him feel special.” I couldn’t think of anything to add that seemed important enough to say. I was somewhere else.

I was in the middle of a shallow mountain creek where the Tubbs runs into the Blue Bottom Dam. The water was shin high, as I walked up stream from rock to rock—flat, smooth, and chilled by the stream. Each step stirred up the sediment on the creek bottom, which formed brown clouds to swirl around each foot. The sun was not the sun; it was more like a motion detector light installed in a driveway, turning on and off, off and on, as the light poked through the trees. I went thirty yards in before I planted a stick in the middle of a stream, and turn around. I found a lime green caterpillar on a twig in the water, picked it up, brought it to the sandbar where my sneakers were upside down in between rocks and sand, then placed the twig with the caterpillar down on the ground—out in the open, it will probably be eaten by a bird. I didn’t do anything heroic, just slipped on my sneakers and tied the laces, picked up my book bag, and started hiking out. On and off. Off and on. There are buttercups growing on the side of the trail next to the decomposing corpse of a skunk, skull exposed, and being licked clean by a cloud of flies. I don’t smell or feel anything.

Back on Carrie’s porch, I didn’t smell or feel anything, just picked all the scabs off my back and smeared the blood around my fingertips.

I just wanted to go back home.

To calm down with a sedative dose of television.

Too concerned about tomorrow to focus on what’s happening today.

Shit, I stopped listening to the words that were being said because they had the same aural frequency and pitch as the sound that is currently playing in my aunt’s living room. And it sounds like static.

White noise.

Pppppppppppppppppppppsssssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

BUT LISTEN!

Don’t try to process the information.

Just let the feeling course through your veins and up to your head naturally. Let it tingle the back of your legs on its way up. Let it dry your mouth. Let it get embedded in the back of your brain. Let it make you sick. Let it blur your vision with tears. Let it overwhelm you. Let it put you to sleep.

But don’t let it consume you.

If it does, you’ll start to fall out and disintegrate, piece by piece, particle by particle, off and on, like an abandoned building over run by seeds sprouting, and cracking the walls and foundation until you forget about its existence.

I hope we can both freak out together. I hope we can break windows with our fists to distract ourselves from our day to day lives. I hope we can barricade ourselves in the bathroom, in the dark, in the tub, until morning, checking the door with flashlights, lying next to each other, sweating out the toxins as we whisper in each other’s ear, “that it’s going to be okay,” even if we are pessimistic about the future.

Because most the people I have talked about have disappeared.

Because it seems like it is always breaking apart and turning back into the same shape.

And that shape has the geometrical properties, which represent disappointment and resentment.

It is 3:47am.

Thinking about taking the chef’s knife out of the block on the counter, and self-medicating by poking holes into the center of every major artery while curled up in the middle of the kitchen floor. And what the tip of the knife would look like illuminated under the skin.

On and off. Off and on.

Pppppppppppppppppppppsssssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Close your eyes.

Relax.

Let the world slow down for a moment.

And listen.

Because tomorrow comes too quick, and this is our last chance to savor what’s left of today.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

The Stings Don't Hurt So Bad When You're Busting Down The Beehive