by Sam Pink
A couple others soon suggested the same.
Yes, it was spicy.
Not too spicy, but … well …
The sheep have bahhed, I thought, leaning against the wall with my red Styrofoam plate, tapping it with my plastic fork.
When everyone was done eating, people began assembling the table groupings for the card game.
Shit, it was actually happening.
There was, quite simply, no way out.
Done.
Cooked.
Toast.
You had to play if you were there.
And maybe I wasn’t really there, but I had to play.
Fuck.
My girl’s mom walked by holding a stack of trash plates and said, ‘Jee-suss, if Lou asks me to change the song for him one more dang time … I’m not a frickin DJ, man.’
And indeed, Lou, a close friend of the family’s—who’d incidentally been conned into wearing all white consequent to misapprehending a [Donna Leighy’s?] ruse on the electronic invitation—had been on quite a tear.
He was asking for an interchangeable contemporary artist’s recent song, instead of the cover version of the interchangeable contemporary artist’s song, which had played earlier.
Lou was a handful, to say the least.
He was always joking and then immediately laughing at his own joke.
Always talking.
Always moving.
Trying not to stop something.
Maintaining forward movement.
An avoidance of something.
Pure, full-throttle Lou.
He slapped my arm when I sat down at our assigned table.
He licked a dollar and stuck it to his forehead, laughing.
Then he yelled at my girl’s mom again to ‘find that song.’
Lou was, quite simply, ceaseless in his insistence that my girl’s mom, who at the time was manning an electronic product of some kind in one hand and decks of cards for the various tables in her other hand, was deliberately choosing not to play the song, or wasn’t really searching.
He asked me if I knew it.
When I said that I did not, he said that I did, and began singing it.
Lou’s insistence, needless to say, became increasingly more aggravating as it was abundantly clear that his song, which no one, not even he himself, wanted to hear, had been searched for, and perhaps wasn’t available.
That the universe, using all its strength as a universe of infinite possibilities at any moment, would leverage away the ability to listen to whatever song it was, which would only cause him ten seconds of joy (during which time he’d annoyingly sing the first line, before lapsing into entreaties to others who have either heard it or have not heard it and yes they have).
‘Lou, how about I get you a drink?’ said my girl’s mom.
Then she said the name of a beer slightly before he interrupted, saying the same brand, holding up the bottle and tapping the label.
‘I only drink [beer brand],’ he said, turning to me.
Full-throttle Lou.
We started playing cards, dealt by a woman who’d had a lot of plastic surgery.
If I remember right, her name was Alice, but she recently had requested that she be called Malaysia, which had caused a stir among many at Aberdeen.
Malaysia started dealing.
She tried to explain to me how to play but then other people began explaining it too—five semi-drunken people trying to simultaneously explain the rules of the game.
‘Well, if y’all just gonna talk over me like that, didn’t even have a chance,’ said Malaysia.
I stopped them all and said, ‘I’m good, I think I got it.’
And so we began.
And with great, quiet determination, I started losing.
I lost with passion.
With zeal.
The way others laid down a winning hand I did with a losing hand.
Because I don’t like games.
I don’t mind drinking sometimes, but I want to be doing only that.
And, as luck would have it, even with Lou coaching my hand and assuring me I would win, I lost the third hand too.
Everything was going according to plan.
Soon enough I’d be back at the miniature-sandwich table, leaning on it like a cool dude and absolutely demolishing miniature sandwiches.
Lou won the next hand.
He did motions with his fist and yelled, ‘Wooo.’
I thought about how funny it’d be to quickly tackle him off the chair and restrain him.
‘You gonna stop, bro!’ I’d yell, right in his face, to which he’d reply, screaming for forgiveness, ‘I only drink [brand of beer].’
In between hands, while the dealer was shuffling, I decided to go get Lou and me shots so I could force his drunkenness and perhaps ‘take him out.’
I went to the backyard bar, passing other card games.
I poured a couple huge shots of whiskey and watched a possum creep through the yard, hair and beady eyes glistening in the moonlight.
‘Whattup, bitch,’ I said.
My girl’s dad said, ‘Hey, what are you doing over there?’
He sat in the darkness by the glimmering neon-blue pool.
He was smiling, cigar stump in his mouth.
‘Check it out,’ he said, and took something out of his pocket, holding it by his side, in his palm. ‘Did I show you this?’
It was a small gun.
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘.22?’
‘Yep. We’re gonna go shoot up the golf course later.’
I laughed.
I reached into a weird small side pocket on my shorts, which were not cargo shorts, and took out a small green squirt gun.
‘I bought this to shoot Dotty in the face when she jumps on the counters.’
He lit his cigar, laughing.
‘I’d rather have this one,’ he said, waving out the match.
‘Are you out?’
He took a pull off the cigar and said, ‘No, I’m in the next round. Just waiting for these other losers.’
‘All right, good luck.’
I grabbed the shots and went back inside.
I passed by Lou’s wife, Sue, to whom I was introduced by my girl.
I did a weird forearm-touching-her-hand greeting, holding a spilling shot in each hand.
‘So I heard you’re a writer? What do you write, what kind of writing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you a book later. I have some in the trunk, I think.’
She mentioned a book she’d recently enjoyed and had I read it and it was a movie too.
‘Do you think about that when you’re writing? About it becoming a movie. That’s kind of what you’re going for, right?’
‘Yeah.’
My table called me back.
‘Nice meeting you,’ I said, walking back towards the room, spilling the shots a little.
Lou had on sunglasses now, doing an air guitar with his leg up a little.
‘Cheers,’ I said, giving Lou the shot. ‘How did that song go again?’
We drank the shots and it seemed to conquer him.
I myself was feeling, at that point, pretty ‘Italian.’
The card game proceeded with a series of forgotten rules and splintered conversations, where few were paying attention to the game and those who were were losing.
I lost the next two hands and was out for good, eliminated.
Malaysia was ahead of everyone.
Her zeal and no guts/no glory attitude had carried her through round after devastating round.
Absolutely crushing.
A clinic.
She ate us up like so many miniature sandwiches.
With a feigned look of surprise on her surgeried face.
The kind of look that says, ‘Why yes, I WILL be eating your children now!’
Oh, Malaysia.
She won the final hand and held up both her arms, cheering and moving her butt side t
o side in her chair.
Everyone complained mildly, then got up and kept partying their respective nuts off.
Malaysia remained at the table restoring cards to various decks.
‘So, you think you get it, now, kind of?’ she said.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ I said.
‘Good.’
She smiled and hummed, putting the cards away, then went back into the kitchen to face certain defeat in the next round via the venomous Donna Leighy.
I sat at the table, in the quiet.
Just kind of staring.
I grabbed a napkin off the table.
The napkins had hearts, spades, diamonds, or clubs on them.
Pretty nice.
My girl’s mom was known for big, elaborate parties.
I remembered a story my girl told me about her mom.
How when her mom was twelve, for her sixth-grade birthday party, she invited her whole class over.
And she and her siblings cleaned up their trailer real nice, like spotless, even behind the sofa.
And they all dressed up.
They had a cake and cool decorations and everything.
But nobody showed up.
9
I checked my email to look for an address for a painting I still had to mail.
I had two new emails.
One was from someone I’d met a couple years ago at a reading.
We’d kept up through emails.
He once mailed me a free laptop when I didn’t have anything to write with.
His seventy-year-old mother bought it off a home shopping channel and never used it.
The package he mailed the laptop in also included some pornographic stick-figure drawings and a plastic bag containing what looked like the bones of a small animal.
His email today said:
Can you draw a picture of a guy bent over backwards with an erection that makes him also look like a unicorn? I can’t really draw things I want to draw unless they’re a) stick figures b) guns c) stick figures carrying boxes. I have an idea for a website that there’s a strong 50/50 chance I’ll actually do. Pretty much, the unicorn dick dude tells you everything you need to know about the website. So, no need to explain that. I would pay you for it, if you could. I could pay you like a solid $50. I have cash right now. In like two weeks, though, I’m guessing I’ll only be able to pay you about $20. After 2.5 to 3 weeks, I’ll have to IOU. I’m good for it. The only thing I really care about is that neither the man’s nor the unicorn’s eyes look the same. For some reason, I don’t trust people in drawings who have matching eyes. It’s cool if you can’t. I wanted to animate it from a guy jerking off, then bending back and becoming a fucking ripped-ass Clydesdale unicorn, but mine looks stupid. Also, a writer named [x] told me she was too afraid to talk to you at some stupid reading and tell you she thinks you are a bad-ass. I thought I would tell you that because it’s nice. PS also I could trade you. Do you need any rusted iron or part of a broken AC unit? Don’t stress over anything too much. Like if you mess something up, just leave it. Messed up shit is kind of comforting. As long as there’s a unicorn face with a dick and an assface, it’ll be sweet. I can do more drawings, if you think it’ll help [he’d included an attachment in scribbled stick-figure dimensions, of the ripped unicorn with the dick and the assface]. Is it better to mail you a check or do you have a PayPal account. I could get a 50 from the bank, tear it in half, send you half now and half when you’re done. Thanks a lot, man.
The other email was from someone I hadn’t talked to before.
It read:
Before I start rambling I’d like to summarize the entirety of what I’m going to type out, in case you’re in a hurry. I just wanted to tell you how important your writing has been to me (hopefully my youth doesn’t make you feel like a Young Adult author). I really just want to do what I can to convey to you how much I’ve looked up to you the last four? five? years. This is going to be super ridiculously long and filled with useless information so it’s cool if you don’t read it lol. I found your writing when I was thirteen years old. I came across something you posted and thought it was essentially the funniest thing ever. So, I started following your writing, ended up buying your first book and just became completely enamored. I was a really weird and depressed kid and a few months after finding your work I had a mental breakdown and had to start going to therapy and taking medication. It was kind of a mess. But, throughout all of the prescriptions and hollow loneliness I felt like I had an ally in you, although I’d never met you and knew you only through your writing. It’s weird but I felt like I knew you. I felt like every time I picked up something you wrote that I was getting a big bear hug. Obviously I didn’t understand everything in your writing (I was a jaded 13-year-old, not a prodigy) but every time I go through some of the books of yours I own I feel like I get it a little bit more. I wouldn’t say I got better over the next two years, but I came out as trans and that was really significant for me. That same year, all of my friends moved away and my therapist died. After my coming out there was a lot of drama. Kicked out of my house. And it was hard. But, during all of that adolescent frenzy I felt like I could go back and read some of your poems. Sometimes I’d pore over them and feel like my feelings had been validated, and other times I’d read them and plan my suicide. Both were equally important to me. I get that I can’t understand your situation, but I feel like I can relate sort of? I know what it’s like to live with mental illness. I remember not leaving my bed for weeks and having anxiety attacks every night for six months. Having to build up a personality from scratch and hating everything I had created. I get that just because someone ‘loves’ you it doesn’t mean you have to love yourself and the way that can fuck with your head, but I really want you to know that I do want to grow up and be like you—intelligent, funny, and kind. You’re the kind of man I’ve wanted to be since I was a little girl, so to say. When I started reading your work, I was a fucked up preteen girl with no friends and no sense of self. Now I’m an impressively less fucked up teen-aged boy with friends! And sort of goals! And maybe that’s why you and your writing mean so much to me. It was a constant state during the darkest time of my life. It’s something I can look back at and say, ‘This was me. This is inside of me. I am these words.’ I don’t think I’ll ever not consider your first book to be one of the two important books of my youth. I just wanted to finally tell you how much everything you’ve done has meant to me, and that I’ll always consider you an ally and role model. And of course, I hope whatever happens, you end up satisfied. Because out of everyone, I think you deserve it most. Thank you for brightening my days and making me laugh, cry, and just feel something emotionally during a really shitty time in life.
‘More drawings?’ said James, my favorite employee at the post office. He put the package onto the scale.
‘Yeah,’ I said smiling.
He complimented the wrapping job.
I agreed, briefly explaining how I ‘combat wrap’ with boxes and duct tape.
‘I can see that,’ he said.
10
I heard back about a liquor-store job.
They left a message on my girl’s phone.
Basically the same job—except less pay—I had before moving fifteen hundred miles away.
Sideways we go on this gradual lowering.
Floating out into the endless middle with a hole in your head, like always.
There you go, man.
There you go.
Anyway, I called the place to set up an interview.
It was exciting.
The way I handled the phone call.
It was so definite.
Yeah, I’ll be there at eleven.
Whatever works for you.
Oh, eleven works for you?
Then I’ll be there at eleven.
Because whatever works for you works for me.
Don’t you see!
You’ll see.
I’ll make you see.
<
br /> Is that a good thing to add during the interview: ‘I’ll make you all see’?
‘Ok,’ I said.
I ended the call and tossed my girl’s phone onto the bed near her.
She was still recovering from a small pinch of a weed brownie I’d given her.
‘That’s how you do business, junior,’ I said. Then I laughed. ‘You quit one job to move 1500 miles away and get a slightly less-good job.’
The next day, I was five minutes early for the interview.
The place was called Wine Depot and More!
And I didn’t want to be in the store five minutes longer than necessary.
So I waited in the parking lot, sweating, staring at the stupid fucking sign.
With the stupid fucking font and the stupid fucking logo: a cartoon bunch of grapes.
Oh man.
Those grapes.
Tell you what.
Just killed me, those grapes.
Fuck.
Why.
Why did they put the grapes on the sign.
Where do you work? What? Oh, the place with the fucking grapes on the sign? Fuck you!
I went inside and immediately felt like shit.
It was a shitty place.
The kind of place that just made you feel like shit.
My main focus was not knocking something over.
There were sampling tables run by cute girls.
Clean aisles and soft music and actual wine that didn’t have a violent-sounding fruit name.
A clean and well-organized liquor store.
My shirt absorbed the third of probably five sweats for the day.
I met with the manager.
He was a little younger than I was.
He had that classic manager look/personality.
That which is held so deep down inside.
All the pain of the world.
Every single ounce.
But you’re not allowed to talk about it.
Shit, you’re barely allowed to breathe.
Just finding spots for tiny breaths in between the crushing.
The continual crushing.
The call-offs.
The inventory.
The stock.
The asshole customers.
The carts.
The skin irritation along the back hairline.
Having receipt paper.
Having change in the registers.
Having to interview someone like me.
