..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, November 04, 2007

“I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver.
And since he's real busy, you'd have to run up to him fast to give it to him.”
- Jack Handy - “Deep Thoughts”


FICTION:



spiderbites...a 79% true story



chapter VIII: taco hell





All I wanted was a taco. The last three times I asked my partner in crime (at the time) to pick me up some drive-thru Taco Hell, something happened where I ended up not getting any (tacos, that is). It got to be a running joke, me standing there looking down at empty, no-taco hands because of fights, fires, firefights, or simple confusion over store hours. And the night of the Presidential debates, and my unofficial farewell party to Brickwood, Ohio, was no exception.

The evening starts out innocent enough. I’m having Kay, Jay, and Dee, the last splinter faction of my old local crew, over to watch the debates, maybe some thumb wrestling, definitely some laughs. I figure if we have to drink a beer every time our Commander In Chief fumbles and fucks up English like it’s his second language, possibly causing an entire generation to speak with mixed metaphors and stuttering sentence fragments, we’ll be on our way to being drunk fast enough not to care who actually wins. Or for his grammar. To effect us.

An hour passes with me and Jay bored with my Presidential Debate videogame (“rated M for Mature”) and eventually staring in silence at the pre-debate interviews and Sunday evening quarterbacking. We wait and wait and wait for ex-girlfriend Kay and Dee to get back with the food, eyes narrowing, blinks slowly. The girls were put on Taco Duty since Dee lived by one, and we were hoping they’d take this important mission seriously. In spite of how nervous the President looks, tonight everything still seems under control. It’s been years since the first 10 undergraduate Taco Hell incidents, so I’m almost ready to think of it as just another place to get food...where no one might die. Taco Hell, for some reason, is confused around this town for being a vaguely healthy alternative where you’re able to get four groups into your hands in the least amount of time. Maybe not as fast as McDougal’s or Burger Queen, but, hey, it’s pretty fast. Or so I’m told. And eating fast-food is always the great equalizer. Watching their dead eyes at that window makes you regret quitting whatever job you just quit because, shit, it wasn’t that bad, was it? It also makes it real easy for small arguments to escalate out of control quickly.

But they’re running way too late. I decide to call them again and ask them to pleeeeeese remember to hook me up with some tacos on their way over, just in case they started tittering in the car about their respective days of phone tag and taking smack and completely forgot. There’s no answer. I should have known.

Now that I think about it, in spite of the dozen or so times I’ve walked through their door or drove up to their drive-thru window smiling, sweaty ball of money rolling around my hand, I don’t think I’ve ever actually received a taco from there. Or anything. Something has always fucked it up. Drive-thrus have always been a bad idea. Cars mixed with hunger? Think about that. Honking, impatient drivers, garbled instructions, pictures of the food just out of reach? Why not release clouds of bees into the cars to raise the stakes even further? Or put the window up a steep hill surrounded by sprinklers? It’s the very definition of a recipe for disaster.

And sure enough, another half hour later, in walks two girls empty-handed and visibly shaken from some kinda trauma. Their story comes out like this, but louder:

-We pulled up to the speaker to order the food (My food. Sniff) and the chick inside was having trouble hearing us. So Dee says, "No, not bean burrito, beeeFFF burrito." And apparently by exaggerating the letter "F" and by stalling your truck again, sorry, and then having trouble getting it moving again, she sent this bitch into a downward spiral of madness. We pulled up to pay, and she takes the money, Mexican girl, cute purple braids by the way, then fired off all mad, "By the way, don't ever get smart with me again...”

Time out from her story while I explain the strange hiring practices of this franchise. They always hire young, hot Mexican girls. Is this racist, a gimmick, or just equal-opportunity employment? Who am I to judge. I will admit, they usually work fast. So I’m told. Oh, yeah, Kay’s still talking:

-...So I’m like, "What did you just say?" And she’s like, “You heard me.” And I’m like, “I’m afraid I didn’t.” And she just slammed the window and walked over to another employee to rant ‘n’ rave about us, all waving her arms around like she's being attacked by bees...

-Bees?! I fucking told you!

-Told me what?

-Nothing. Never mind. Just my stomach growling.

-Can I finish? Okay, so, at this point, it was taking way too long with the food. And Dee decided to ask for the money back because now she's thinking someone's going to...

Dee jumps in.

-Yeah, I figured someone was gonna spit in the “beeeFFF” burrito. Or worse.

Burrito? Sigh. I’ll never see one in my lifetime. I’m sure glad I didn’t try for that new, certainly unattainable “Choco Taco” desert item I saw advertised earlier today. Oh, my Christ, I’d eat a hundred of those fuckers. Some day. Anyway, Dee’s still talking:

-...so the crazy bitch, Kim, now we can see that her name tag says "Kim," threw the money at me and snarls, actually fucking snarls, "You're lucky I’m in here or I’d come out there and kick your motherfuckin’ ass." So now we’re were getting loud, too, and some other employee came over to calm down Crazy Kim. But she just shoved this other employee up into the air, knocking his head off the heat lamp because now she’s got that crisis-situation super strength, and yells out, "Don't tell me to relax, I’m the shift supervisor!" By this time, everyone was swearing, and Kim was making these moves like she was really going to come outside and attack our car.

-My car.

Jay looks up.

-Actually it’s your brother’s truck.

-Let her finish.

-...so Kay started pulling away, loudly declaring that she's gonna to call the 1-800 number on the window. You know, the one that asks how smooth the transaction went? Right under the one that says “Always hiring?” Anyway, this nutty bitch yells out, "Go ahead, I don't give a shit! They're not going to fucking fire me!” And Kay shouted a final, "What the hell is your problem?" And Crazy Kim answered back with "Your mother!"

Kay jumps back in.

-Which is, of course, ridiculous, since my mother is at home watching Court TV at this same time every day. But, yeah, that was pretty much it. The debate ended with hard stares right out of those westerns you’re always making us watch. And after two or three stalls in your truck to ruin any dramatic exit, we were off! So, yeah, sorry.

-Off in a flash to not bring me food again. Sniff.

-Hey, we tried!

-No, that’s funny. And completely expected.

-You know what I hate? When you say “that’s funny” instead of just laughing.

In their excitement, they start telling the story again, mostly to just Jay this time because he wasn’t paying attention for the first half. It gets a little better the second time through as they start adding extra flavor, raising those stakes, sprinkling in some more important details about the enemy’s appearance. And by three and a half tellings, Kim’s purple braids are not being described as “cute” anymore, more like “clearly styled with peanut butter and hamburgers.”

I’m getting all worked up. Partly because, in my head, I’m picturing Kay or Dee stalling that truck over and over and sloshing imaginary grease all over the parking lot, and partly from being on the verge of fainting from malnutrition and lack of taco love. Looking around the room, everyone and everything looks like a giant taco to me. Even the President. Remember that cartoon with the guy seeing his buddy as a huge steaming chicken on the desert island? Just like that but with a taco. And without the island. And there’s three of them instead of one. And there’s no steam, as most fast food requires reactivation via microwave or it reverts to its natural inert state, industrial plastic pellets or Seamonkey dust. So, forget what I said. They look nothing like that cartoon. Anyway, now I got a dilemma. If it was a guy that was threatening people at some drive-thru, I could just go over there, or say I’d go over there, and pull the little bastard out of the window by his head, his crooked but carefully arranged oversized baseball cap falling slow-motion to the pavement. But here we have this girl-on-girl madness. And we're already 15 minutes into the Presidential throat-clearing that signals the beginning of the debates. Nevertheless, me and Jay start rubbing our hands in diabolical circles and get working on Plan A. Or, should I say, Plan "Egg." This involves taking three raw eggs and pelting the bitch when she opens the window to take our money. I know, kinda weak, but that's all that was in the ‘fridge. I think I was originally saving one egg for each of the three debate candidates judging by the confused faces I drew on the shells. See, it’s much easier to get egg off a face on the TV than it is an actual face.

But if I waste them on this employee, I need to think of a way to do this so that I can still get a goddamn taco. But I force myself to stop worrying about my stomach and think about the “greater good” instead. I drop the three eggs in a plastic bag, and we're getting ready to roll. Then I start to think about “collateral damage.” It should be noted that the phrases “greater good” and “collateral damage” are right now being volleyed back and forth between the President and the Green Party candidate. That and, of course, “World War III.”

But it’s a serious issue. What if Kim is no longer manning the drive-thru after all the excitement she just had? What if we bean some innocent waterhead who’s just working there one day a week for extra beer money? So I decide to call them up real quick to do some recon. When a teenager answers, I ask for whoever is working the drive-thru, claiming someone forgot my food. When an irritable female voice gets on the phone sighing before she speaks, I know it’s Kim. I just know it. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in all my life,” the President tells Red Party candidate. I clear my throat and ask all stern:

-Did you just have an altercation with two girls about 10 minutes ago?

-Listen, sir, that's n-n-n-not what happened, sir...

She starts stammering and going into this alternate reality version of events where she is just a victim who wants nothing more that to happily take money and hand out tacos, love, and smiles forever. I’m confused about something in her tone of voice after the girls’ play-by-play. But then something starts to dawn on me. All her "sirs," stuttering, rapid-fire explanations, and defensive over-enunciation? Is she running for office? Wait, no. Whoa. I get it. This dunce thinks I’m calling from that 1-800 number that they were talking about. Holy balls, she thinks I’m some sort of authority figure. Maybe we’ve got the TV turned up too loud and she can hear that instead. I clear my throat louder, as now I’m suddenly working for Taco Hell. And shit gets kinda strange:

-I heard that you were physically threatening customers and swearing and..."

-That's n-n-n-not what happened, sir. They were causing trouble, and I was just reacting and...

-Well, I’m afraid I must be privy to different facts than you are.

At this point, I’m now trying to imitate every similar conversation I’ve gotten from a boss, but I am, in fact, quoting our President word for word as he denies ever saying too much Arctic wildlife “was an eminent threat to global warming.” She almost whispers a question in my ear:

-Who is this?

-Your District Manager.

Okay, it feels like a demotion after the Presidency, but after I say this, I figure the jig is up anyway. I wait for her to say “fuck off’ and hang up because she's gotta know who her DM is, right? Right? Wrong.

-Listen, sir, they were making fun of me at the drive-thru, and I can't believe that I would get in trouble over this when it's just my word against hers and...

-Well, it's not just your word against hers because (I’m really proud of how fast I pull this out of my ass) there was a vehicle behind them and someone from that car also called the 1-800 number to complain about your behavior.

I should mention at this point that me, her District Manager, is wearing a homemade “I Fucked Your Martyr” T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, twirling three frowning eggs in a baggy, and trying to stifle the three giggling heads leaning in to listen.

-Hey, they started it!

Clearly she’s scared now and folding faster than Superman on laundry day.

-So you were threatening and cursing at customers because you thought they were being rude to you? That is simply unacceptable. Why do you think you can just...

-They started harassing me first! It's not fair that I should get in trouble for this and...

-Okay (big authoritative sigh) when is your next day off?

-Tomorrow.

-I’m going to need you to come in so that we can sit down and talk about this and figure out what should be done.

-Oh, no. It is not fair that I should have to come in on my only day off when I already rearranged my schedule once this week and it's my only day off and it's just not fair that I should be the one to...

And blah blah blah. Kay whispers in my other ear:

-Goddamn, this bitch is big on “not fair.”

At this point, I hold out the phone in disbelief. I don’t know what’s funnier, the fact that this idiot thinks I’m her District Manager, or the fact that me, her boss, can't get her to come in on her day off, even to save her job. On the television, the President holds a hand tight to his elfin, tomato-red earlobe, and a camera zoom reveals an earpiece no one knew he had.

-Are they giving him the questions or the answers?! Jay wants to know.

Suddenly offended, Jay declares this as “fuckin’ cheatin’!” and I motion for him to shush and turn off the TV and squeeze the phone painfully closer to my own head. After another minute of “not fair,” I finally give up and switch tactics:

-When do you work next?

-Sunday. I open.

-Okay, don’t worry about opening the store because...

Time out. This is where some people in management may start getting a disapproving “you've gone too far” kinda look on their mug. Hey, I've only been a District Manager for seven minutes, I’m gonna make some mistakes.

-...we'll take care of that. You just come in later. I’ll meet you at noon so we can sit down and figure out what we're going to have to do.

-Fine.

Wow. That was easy. Apparently, it's infinitely easier to convince someone to stay home instead of coming in. It's a lesson we all remember from grade school where, of course, kids would rather get suspended for ten days instead of standing in the corner for just one.

I hang up, and we’re all laughing our asses off, hoping that she actually comes in late on Sunday and gets canned. We talk about it a lot, drinking and ignoring the end of the debates even after Jay turns the TV back on. I do, however, catch one of the candidates saying something self-righteous about “never judging people by”... what? By something, I guess. Didn’t hear the rest over all the fake applause.

That’s all I remember because I spend most of my time fantasizing about being behind one of those podiums next to the actual District Manager of Taco Hell, carefully explaining our party’s platform with purposeful hand gestures and reassuring nods. I would declare, “My fellow Americans, you can never judge people by the color of their purple hair. However, you can judge people by their favorite books, songs, or movies. You can judge people by how fast they yank clothes out from under a sleeping cat. And you can only judge people by how rude they are on the phone or in traffic...” Dramatic pause. “...or, of course, at a drive-thru, the unholy combination of both.”

When I think hard about this, I am convinced that Crazy Kim flipped out because of the nature of the drive-thru itself. Imagine a phone call where the person you just hung up on suddenly pops their head in the window of your house to get the last word. That would fuck you up, wouldn’t it? And if you’re more likely to be rude to strangers on a phone (like most people) you sure wouldn’t know what the hell to do if their head suddenly popped out of your freezer. Instant confrontations at the drive-thru window is an unexpected, awkward ending to what’s basically a garbled, angry phone call between the hungry and the disgruntled. It’s something that’s not meant to happen, ever. Like time travel. Or a rational debate. Or me ever getting to eat a taco.

To be fair, Kim probably didn’t know how to handle it. It’s kind of like when you’re in traffic and you’re yelling at the car next to you for whatever infraction, then, three miles later, you’re both idling at a red light together. Do you look over? You have to look over. A friend of mine used to be prepared for just that kind of situation. If someone was glaring at a red light, he’d slowly pull out the winter mittens, sunglasses, and motorcycle helmet that he kept in his glove box. Yeah, it was a big-ass glove box. Then he would stare them down at the wheel of his rusted-out ‘92 Fahita. You know what though? No one ever raced him.

In retrospect, it sucks that our debate party was full of such distractions because, since Gray moved away, it’s the most people I’ve managed to gather around me in months. Although I suspect this has gotten more difficult because of the upcoming elections and my tendency to drop my pants and press my groin up against the TV whenever the Leader of the Free World is talking, which is a lot. I keep trying in vain to make my friends understand that the bigger the crowd means the less likely I am to exclaim, “Hey, look! The President’s suckin’ my dick again!” Seriously. Where’s the camera? We could make T-shirts and cut the sleeves off! Wait, where’s everybody going?

So, it’s finally Sunday, and I’ve told everyone I know about the taco hijinks, actually kinda getting tired of the story and starting to doubt Kim really won’t figure that shit out in 48 hours. I was thinking that as soon as she mentions anything to her store manager or fellow employees, they would quickly call the District Manager (the real one, not me) and the cat's out of the bag. So I’m as shocked as you are by the phone call and happy ending to this story:

Kay works at Starfucks near the Taco Hell in question, and Sunday afternoon she calls me to say she just told her coworkers all about the incident. Her words:

-...so, at about 11:00, a couple of the second shifters went across the street to get lunch and came back to tell me the good news. Dude. There was a big sign taped to the door that read, “Will not open until 1:00. Sorry for any inconvenience.” No bullshit, I swear. I got five witnesses who saw the sign.

On the TV, a news anchor is saying that, in spite of the mysterious earpiece, polls are saying that the President won the debate with immigration scare tactics again.

Epilogue. A week later, Dee actually calls the 1-800 number to complain about those customer service issues, and she’s given the phone number of the store manager. This woman then proceeds to tell her that she knows all about “the situation” and that “the District Manager is handling it.”

Of course, this begs the question, is she talking about me? Because I ain’t handling shit. It's “not fair!” I declare. I’ve got too many new responsibilities that come with this job title. The truckstop puts too much salt on their fries, kid at the gas station shorted me on change, convenience store has a clerk who stares too much. Mouth hangs open, too. I’m sorry, there's just too many other stores in my district that need my attention.

One last thing. Remember those three eggs with the faces on them? As I was packing up the last of my silverware for the move, I noticed them on the windowsill, next to the phone charger, behind my dead plants and leaking squirt gun, still in the bag, fermenting in the sun to (kissing the tips of my finger and thumb) perfection. I never smelled anything bad. The only reason I know they’d gone over is because someone (still don’t know who) took the time to draw an “X” through all the eyes and a tiny tongue lolling out each of the mouths.

I’d like to say I used them to make a Mexican-style omelet. I’d like to say that I forced myself to eat it on the day of the election. I’d like to say that me and my girl went outside and placed those eggs at either end of a parking space and laughingly mastered how to drive a stick-shift and parallel park on a bright summer day without anyone losing their temper. I’d like to say that whenever she thought no one was looking, she would replace whatever article of clothing the cat was sleeping on with something equally comfortable so that it didn’t tumble onto its head like Sunday dinner off a tablecloth magic trick gone awry. I’d like to say that something meaningful happened to those three eggs, since the story introduced them and forgot about them completely, just like that gun hanging over the fireplace. I’d like to say that they did, indeed, crack someone in the head that deserved it instead of just getting dropped into the trash without any ceremony or debate. But they didn’t.

::: david - 6:02 PM [+] :::
...

“I got a card in my spokes.
I’m practicing my joke.
I’m learning...”
- The Pixies - “Tony's Theme”


FICTION:



spiderbites...a 79% true story



chapter VII: loch ness monster





Once I saw a man so angry he ate his fucking phone, light flickering behind his teeth like he was chewing a firefly sandwich. I could hear a screeching voice drowning in the tiny speaker on his tongue, and I watched the orange glow fill his mouth with the same excitement I used to get lighting the first candle in a freshly carved pumpkin. I imagined what that sounded like on the other end of the line. You think it’s loud when someone calls you up then proceeds to eat an apple in your ear? How about eating the goddamn phone instead? I’m glad I didn’t call him.

He was standing on a street corner, suit and tie, casually watching traffic while his jaw muscles bulged, as if he was doing nothing stranger that working an old piece of gum to prepare it for a bubble off his tongue. One minute he was standing there talking into a small glowing cell phone out in front of his face. The next minute he’s arguing with it. Next minute...crunch. First he bit the top off of it, which didn’t seem to kill it ‘cause the screen was still flashing. Then some teeth must have pierced whatever powered it because the lightning behind his incisors started to fade. His mouth was bleeding down his chin by the time he worked his way to the keypad and the numbers on the bottom.

You know, I’ve been angry while talking to a girlfriend before, but I’ve
never been that angry. In fact, I’ll never think I’m angry again after seeing that shit. I was standing outside of glass when it happened. Whoa, I meant to say “class.” This narrator doesn’t get unreliable until later. So, yeah, outside of class. I was standing on the library steps next to this girl, both of us flipping through our summer semester catalogs, and she was babbling so much about some teacher’s cock (or was it clit?) she wanted to suck that she didn’t even see this amazing thing occur. I tapped her on the head.

-Hey, is that man eating his phone? Holy balls.

-What?

-I said, is that man eating his phone? Because if he is, I want to take his class!

-What are you talking about?

-I’m asking you, is there a class where they show you how to eat fucking phones?!

She wandered off, never noticing the blood running down the man’s chin, so I decided to follow him awhile He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his suit jacket and headed into the basement of a maintenance building on campus. He came out wearing a gray jumpsuit and carrying a stack of red construction cones. Even though it turned out he was a janitor and I’ve never been able to convince anyone I actually saw him eat the thing, I still wanted to take his class.

When I got home that night, I gently put my phone on a pillow, plugged it into its charger and watched the red light pulse on it like life support. I whispered to the phone that I’d never eat it...if it never gave me a busy signal again. And to make matters worse, I was so distracted that day going through the class catalog that I ended up sulking in the corner of a writing workshop all summer with some teacher forever rambling on about a fucking iceberg. Iceberg? Yes, iceberg. Something about too many stories being the part of the iceberg that’s below the surface of the water, then some other crap about the tip of the iceberg having all the information that we need. After ten weeks, I only raised my hand once. I told the teacher that I had a better analogy for her. I said that you really didn’t want anything above the water because, as anyone who’s made the mistake of looking in the toilet before they flush it knows, whatever breaks the surface makes that shit stink. I sat back smug, arms crossed, waiting for the debate to begin.

Crickets.

Instead, someone started talking about how the iceberg metaphor itself was an iceberg. I just looked around for a phone to eat, but the girls were all hiding them between their knees and furiously sending messages. I never took another writing class again because, luckily, my life story appears here magically as someone else’s fiction.

One time, my mom was talking on the phone for five hours, and to try to get some attention, I walked up to her waving with rubber bands tight around my fingers making nine bulging little purple sausages. I got the shit slapped out of me for that. She was even angrier than that kindergarten teacher I showed the same trick to. After the spanking, she ran my hands under the faucet, turned them over and over under stove light, rubbed them to get the circulation going again. I was fine. I wasn’t a sickly child, but I was a child born with scars, wounds, and something missing. I was created without the layer of protection that most babies get. I was exposed to the elements way before anyone else. Her body did these things to me. People think they’re illnesses, but they’re injuries. I’m not angry. I’m stronger because of it. That’s another story though. Long time ago. Ice cubes melting in the toilet.

Oh yeah, back to those people who don’t answer their phones. Here's an open letter to people that don't answer their phones:

Answer your fucking phone.

I know at least five people like this. They sit there all twitchy, opening and checking their phone every three seconds, always shutting it off when it rings. See, I know what you're thinking. You’ve called, I didn’t answer, so I'm a hypocrite. But let me explain. Not only do I not answer my phone, I don't check it either. In fact, when it’s not on a pillow with a tiny scrap of toilet paper for a blanket and a thermometer (power cord) in its ass, it's almost always under the couch so I never have to hear it ring. Ask anyone who's been in my joint. But these people are so fascinated by them, you'd think they just invented phones yesterday. How many times can I say “phone?” Starts to sound weird, doesn’t it? Well, If you have a phone on you that you're stroking all day, just answer the fucking thing? Do you think I'm going to read you a book? Tell you knock-knock jokes? Trust me, I'm calling for a good reason. If I know you have a cell phone and you don't answer it, I'm instantly insulted. Oh, that's right, you’ll send me a text-message later instead. That’s what the kids are doing these days. Sorry, I forgot. Next time I'll try that 'cause I just love to drive off a fucking cliff at Mach 3 while I try to type in traffic one-and-a half-handed. Text-messaging, yikes. Another passive-aggressive invention I’d eat if I could.

Try doing it without a thumb.

* * *

I call Jay about going to this wedding fifty times before he finally calls me back. He’s one of those people who never answers, but always calls back, whether it’s ten hours or ten seconds later. The only thing more annoying would be if he did this in person. Imagine it. You ask him a question, he listens, blinks, walks around the block, then answers you. You see, that’s why phones don’t have sharp edges. It would be too tempting to kill someone with one.

Another wedding? He shouts in disgust before I even say hello. Afraid so, I tell him. Remember Gray? Yes, he does. And he agrees that Gray was a good guy, a “big, affable lug,” and should be lucky enough to have us at his wedding. Jay says he’ll go with me since he’s still got a smoky tuxedo he never returned from some relative’s nuptials last month. But he’ll do this only if I agree to go to the bar in our tuxedos beforehand. Yes, this turns out to be a mistake, but not the worst of the evening. Not even the top ten. He’s done this before. When we first turned 21, he tried to get me to wear a coat and tie to various Happy Hours to pick up secretaries. And all night, I harassed him for wanting to play dress-up like a little girl. All these years later, he’s still throwing out this dress-up idea like it just hit him. Again, he tries desperately to explain:

-Dude, trust me. There’s just something about nice clothes at the end of a day starting to pick up dirt and sweat that chicks cannot resist. Okay, it’s not quite as impressive as going to the bar with coal dust on your face and your flickering flashlight helmet still on, but it’s as close as we can get to that, you know?

No, I don’t know. But I go anyway. This ensures that we’re way too drunk for the wedding and will have to settle for the reception. I have to drag Jay out of the bar as he yells the punchline to the wrong joke over his shoulder.

-So your asshole don’t slam shut! Get it?! Get it?! Goodnight, Cleveland!

On the way there, I feel my brother’s robin-egg blue ‘88 Rancher struggling under the gas pedal, losing power on all the inclines. I was grateful to him for loaning it to me to take out of town until I figured out my own complicated car situation. Then I started driving it. When I give his truck more gas, it seems to hold its breath before accelerating, like a heart with a prolapsed valve skipping a beat before it pumps. When we come down a big hill, picking up speed, we drive past a sign warning of a “Rollover Spot.”

Jay catches me speeding up even more as I turn my head to stare at it, and he slaps me on the shoulder, laughing.

-You know you don’t have to roll over just because they tell you too, right?

At Gray’s reception, our alcohol saturation is on a downward swing, so we stay in control relatively well with the exception of Jay taking over for the DJ and managing to clear the dance floor with a failed attempt to spell out, “We. Love. Eat. Many. Ass. Tonight” with two turntables and piles of albums. He’s still tearing out the album sleeves and writing the lyrics on a tablecloth and insisting he’s “almost got it!” when the DJ finally shoves him aside. It’s outside in the parking lot with the wedding party where shit really starts to unravel. You ever see actual shit unravel? Or try to do it yourself? It ain’t pretty. It breaks.

I don’t know whose idea it was to try to get the picture of the bridesmaid’s fucked-up hand, but I’ll take full responsibility if I have to. But I know that it was Jay who started calling it The Loch Ness Monster. I was starting to think he called everything “The Loch Ness Monster.” The last thing to hold the title was a blurry picture he kept in his wallet of the longest shit ever dropped in a stall on this planet, almost crawling out of the bowl. His own, of course. I say “this planet” because we decided that gravity is the only thing that makes the swirl, and just like the spiders they took on the shuttle, space is where a predictable spiral isn’t allowed.

Remember when I said Jay’s disruption of that movie was his Greatest Hit?
Well, if that’s true, this would be one of the B-sides. Or even just a song. Doesn’t matter. Aren’t you tired of people trying to say something was the best or worst thing in their lives as an excuse to tell you a story? They’ll forget how you started the story once you get going, if you don’t interrupt it too much, especially if it’s something as nasty as this.

I think it was during the best man’s wedding toast when he first noticed it.

-Dude, what’s up with her hand?

Reflexively, I glance down at my own before I squinted to see what he was talking about.

-Huh? I don’t know. You tell me.

-Check it out. Third bridesmaid on the right. Something’s wrong...

He starts to stand up and I jerk him back down hard.

-Sit still, stupid.

-No, seriously. Her left hand. It’s either too big or too small or got something extra...or missing something. No offense, dude.

-None taken.

-Well, what the hell happened to it?

My mother used to say if a spider spun too many webs in the womb (never mind how it got in there to begin with) it could choke off the circulation on whatever parts of the baby are sticking out. And after a while, you could lose a thumb, or worse. Well, I hate to demystify it, but the condition my mom was describing is actually something called Amniotic Fiber Syndrome. Or Tendril Affliction. Or Constriction Band Syndrome. Or something like that. And there’s no medical evidence that a spider is ever involved. Hold on, I think there’s more names for it...

Amniotic Rupture Sequence. Congenital Constriction Rings. And (my favorite) Streeter’s Syndrome, which is slightly more interesting than the rest because it sounds more like an injury. But, of course, no title will ever be as good as my 13-year-old brother’s expert diagnosis, “Prenatal Spiderwebs Cut Off Your Shit” Syndrome. You know, you’d think that mothers would be more forgiving about the good ol’ Thumbsucking Syndrome because, if you’re sucking a thumb in the womb, with all these webs flying around, there’s a better chance you won’t lose it before you’re born. Unless you eat the fucking thing. A fetus doesn’t just have a tail and flippers, you know. It’s got sharp little teeth, too.

Damn. Don’t ever say “syndrome” that many times or it starts sounding real stupid. To sum up, all you really need to know is that the condition means the sac was split and amniotic fluid seeped inside, formed this hard, ropy tendrils, wrapped around the Third Bridesmaid’s thumb like a rubber band that didn’t seem too tight at first, maybe even seemed like something for the baby to play with. But after a few days cutting off the circulation...snap. And that’s exactly what was wrong with this girl’s hand. I give an abridged version of this to Jay:

-Spider bite got infected.

-No shit.

Right then, the wedding party noisily unrolls a portable movie screen and starts the obligatory sideshow of the bride and groom as kids. Did I say “sideshow?” Because that’s what I meant. As he watches the shadow of someone’s child run in front of the screen, Jay’s drunken eyes suddenly light up with bad ideas. It’s horrible and wonderful to see.

-Dude. Dude. Dude. Get her to walk in front of that screen. It’ll be the most fucked-up shadow puppet you’ve ever seen.

I try to distract him.

-Can you make shadow animals?

-Uh...yeah. Of course.

-Which ones?

-Rabbit. Cat. Man. Dog. Man fucking a dog. Clown. Whoa, you know what I can do?! I can do Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster. And the Yeti, the Jersey Devil...and yes, even though few have ever seen it, the Goat Sucker! Also known as the mythological Chupacabra! That too. Although that one looks more like the rabbit fucking the clown. Just wait. As soon as they’re done showing us the first time Gray wiped his ass, I’ll show you.

Five minutes tick by. A groomsman gives a toast, holding up the groom’s cell phone, deleting all the numbers from his contact list to cheers and laughter. “Might as well throw it away!” he exclaims. An attempt to get people to join in my chant of “Eat it!” are unsuccessful and everyone starts tapping their glasses with forks instead. Five more minutes and some polite applause while they wrap up a final, twitchy toast from the smallest groomsman. I begin to lecture Jay on new theories about shadow animals.

-You know, it’s no accident that all those unexplained creatures and
photographs resemble a jumbled combination of hand shadows. In fact, I’ll be that if you like up every blurry picture and had enough time and all the fingers you needed for research, you could prove that...

As I’m mumbling, the Third Bridesmaid finally excuses herself from the table. When she walks in front of the slideshow, Jay interrupts me by almost doing the classic spit take with his beer.

-Holy fuck! It’s The Loch Ness Monster! That’s what her hand looks like!

-Shhh.

-Look! There it goes! It’s huge! See?! Thumb kind of sticks out and up to the side like the tail. That other knob is the head. See it? It looks just like that black-and-white picture you always see...

-What are you talking about “always see?”

-That blurry picture you always see. All fuzzy ‘n’ shit. Someone must have took the picture with their phone when the battery was dying.

-Didn’t happen.

-What didn’t happen?

-You couldn’t take a picture with your phone back then.

-Back when?

-Back then.

-What are you talking about?

He’s getting too loud, and I finally have to shove him out of his chair to shut him up. Then, after some disgusted glances and half-ass wrestling back to our seats, I get more beer and proceed to drown him in alcohol. Instead, we both seen to descend into drunken assholery. I don’t ever remember congratulating Gray or his new wife. I remember Jay saying that when the bride stood next to the groom by the food, “the height difference between them makes her look like a goddamn saltshaker. Small, white, and shaking too much.” And I remember hearing Gray yell something like, “I need some balls bouncing against my chin right now!” but I don’t know why a groom would say something like that unless it was the punchline to a joke. Of course, having played basketball in college, there’s no telling what he was really talking about. See what you get when you combine alcohol with an unreliable narrator? We stumble over to sign the guest book and an argument starts. Jay wants to make one of those page-flipping cartoons of a man turning himself inside out. I become fascinated with the pen.

Outside in the parking lot, everyone is milling around their cars. Me and Jay are sort of drunken outcasts, banished to each other’s company, and I’m running around with a disposable camera that had been on our table in the reception. I think it was one of those gimmicks where you take whatever pictures you want, leave the camera, and the bride and groom get them developed later. Bad idea. But, at first, I just wanted the free camera. And now, out in the jungle among the fake palm trees in the parking lot, I suddenly think of something better to do with it. Oh, yeah, I lied earlier when I said I didn’t remember whose idea this was.

-Jay. Go find that bridesmaid and ask her directions. When she’s moving her hand around, I’ll snap a picture. It’ll be the first ever photograph of The Loch Ness Monster. We’ll be fucking famous.

Jay sets down his beer and squeezes my shoulder affectionately.

-I’m on the case. And by the way, this is your finest moment. I am proud to call you my friend.

He stumbles over to the bridesmaids and find the one that was third from the right. There she is glowing in someone’s headlights. She’s actually quite attractive, tall, fit, confident, black (I only mention this because it may be important later) and Jay momentarily forgets his mission as he instinctively chats her up. Years later, the only thing Jay will say about this night is that, in order to be so attractive, “she must have had some white in her.” I will agree with him, but it’s because of her hand, not her face.

I continue to creep closer, staying low behind the trees and parked cars. Jay sees me in his blurry peripherals, and his voice quickly changes to bad TV acting.

-So, um, where’s the nearest bar? I would like to keep drinking, please.

She blinks at his change of demeanor, hesitates, but then sighs and points past Jay to the road...with her right hand.

-Just go down to that stop sign and...

-Wait. Wait. Wait. I’ve been to that bar already. Anywhere else, ma’am.

She points in another direction with the same hand.

-Hold up. Hold up...

I can actually hear the wheels in Jay’s head grinding with the effort of coming up with a way to get the bad left hand up into the headlights.

-Uh...uh...what if I wanted to hit a bunch of bars tonight? Where are they all at? Show me them all. You know, so I can plan my attack.

My middle finger hovers over the button with both of them framed perfect in the box. She slowly pulls her bad hand into view. I’m so excited I feel like I’m getting the first clean shot at the President when he lowers his hand in the limo.

-Well, you could go there...or there...or there...or there...

I can’t believe Jay’s ruse is working. Both hands are motioning and moving, and Jay’s head tries in vain to follow them like a sleepy feline. Eventually, she drops her right hand completely and gives us our first full view of the left. There’s no doubt now. That’s what it is. Streeter’s Syndrome.

-...or if you’re looking for a bar that’s open real late, just take a right, go down two lights, turn left, you’ll come to a dead-end, turn right and right and left and left again, and when it goes down to one lane...

Jay attempts that lame cough-while-speaking move, screaming and choking instead.

-Take it now! Now! Take that shit!

The Third Bridesmaid looks confused and suspicious.

-What?

-Nothing, something in my throat. Go on.

-So, you’ll come to a dead-end, turn right and right again when it goes down to one lane. Then it’ll be on your left, right...

-Take it now! For the love of Christ!

Her eyes narrow, and now she’s speaking slow and quiet.

-You forgot to cough that time. Anyway. It’ll be on your right where all that construction is. It looks like it’s closed, but just walk in. It’s open. They’re renovating. That’s where you need to go. Trust me.

-Thanks much!

Jay stumbles back to where I’m hiding, talking too loud, of course.

-You get the picture, dude?

I show him the cool pen I stole from the guest book at the reception and my left arm covered in blue ink. She was repeating those directions so many times, I couldn’t resist writing them down.

-No, man, I missed it. You were too sly. But I do think we should go to that bar she was talking about.

-All right, but I got to hit the toilet one last time.

While I’m waiting outside the stall, I start to feel guilty and think about that bridesmaid and how I want to break my finger sideways, show her my hand, and let her take a picture of it, too. I think of different ways the conversation would go. I imagine her telling me that her hand is injured, but mine is a birth defect. I imagine that she finds me more interesting than pathetic. I’m just starting to feel sick from the glut of alcohol and the smell of Jay’s apocalyptic shit when
another idea hits.

I kick open the door of the stall, yank him off the toilet, and snap a picture of his swirl of waste. I focus on the tip, where it barely breaks the surface of the toilet water. This is a dangerous thing, I explain Jay, and a very important picture. Scientists will fight over this shot, I insist. Get the President on the line. I get so worked up, I drop my cell phone into the toilet with the remains of a long day of drinking. That’s okay, I decide. The phone bobbing in there is like the Titanic, I tell him. It’ll give the shit some scale for my shot. Jay struggles to pull up his pants without standing up. He’s mumbling.

-That’s why it’s pointed on one end.

-What?

-So your asshole don’t slam shut.

-You told that wrong, Jay.

-What? The joke’s two lines long. It’s impossible to fuck up.

-Well, you managed to. Nice work.

-Least I ain’t taking pictures of...

Jay suddenly slumps against the wall of the stall and stares in disbelief. He’s squinting at the shape in the toilet.

-You’re right, dude. It looks just like it. What do you think it means?

It’s a miracle, but her directions, and my transcription of them onto my arm (complete with tiny Sasquatch footprints leading the way) take us straight to the bar. As we enter the neighborhood, I see a sign warning of “Slow Children,” and, for some reason, I know it’s directed towards us and not the locals. I remember having the exact same sign at the end of my road and being teased because of it. It still makes me feel angry and stupid at the same time.

At the base of some creaking construction scaffolding is a glowing doorway surrounded by Christmas tree lights. I hesitate to look around, so, of course, Jay practically runs in to prove he’s braver than me.

You know those movies where someone says something stupid and there’s a noise like a needle scratching across a record? When we walk in the door, it’s just like that. This is because we’re the only white people in the joint. I only mention this because it might be important later. We’re still wearing our tuxedos, and, tragically, I think we look less like British spies and more like assholes who lost their prom dates. Jay, sensing my fear, strides past several glares to the spotlight, and turns a chair around to sit at the base of the stage where a stripper is putting on a less than energetic show. I follow his lead, but climb into my chair like humans were meant to, not like Jay with legs spread, balls exposed, heart on a string.

I get my chance to look around. She sent us here? Now I’m thinking she knew what we were trying to do the whole time. So, does her revenge make her the racist or us? The girl on the stage, a heavyset woman who appears to have had her share of children and bad relationships, moves her routine down to our end, mistakenly assuming that white boys probably have more money. Now the regulars are glaring so hard that I can feel it warming my back, and I fear my alcohol-soaked tux might actually catch on fire. Jay happily gives the stripper some more money. And more money. And more money. And pretty soon she’s sitting in his lap, whispering in his ear. Then she stands up and wanders away, pointing to a doorway covered by a shower curtain with Panda bears on it. In my drunken state, she seems to walk through it without making it move. Jay turns to me, drunk as fuck and drooling.

-Dude. Dude. I’m going back there. Stay out of trouble.

-We need to go.

-She is so cool. And smart, too. She likes all the same songs as...

-We need to go.

-No way. I’ve never fucked a black chick before. I’m just sayin’...I’m stayin’.

He’s up and out of his chair and through the shower curtain before I can stop him.

I’m sitting by myself for about three minutes before a young man walks up to me and promptly pull his own shirt up over his head to expose his midsection. He stands there looking down at me with an expectant look. He’s a perfect specimen. In addition having all his fingers (and probably toes) he looks to be sculpted out of rock, and I’m surprised every time he inhales and his stomach moves. I don’t know what to say except:

-Nice abs.

He walks off and I look around to find the exits. I see a bouncer manning the front door and replacing a burned-out Christmas tree light. I walk toward him, desperate for an authority figure for the first time in my life. I try to come up with idle conversation by the time I get there.

-How about those Red Wings?

He looks down his chest at me. He’s a monstrous, sweaty bastard, but he cracks a smile.

-What are you boys doing in here?

-Good question.

-You know why you’re still alive?

This was an answer I was very interested in hearing.

-Why’s that?

-Because everyone thinks you two are cops.

-Since when do cops wear tuxedos? We’re secret agents, my man.

-Well, it won’t matter pretty soon.

-Why’s that?

-Because this place won’t last another week.

-Why’s that?

He takes a big sigh and leans closer. His shadow eclipses my face, and I feel like I’m on the wrong side of a tree when it’s coming down.

-Well, they’re building the new stadium. And they tried to buy out this property. Only the owner won’t sell. So the city keeps sending in undercover cops to bust the place for soliciting so they can close us up. Every couple of nights there’s a mystery white boy in here asking stupid questions. Or someone stupid enough to bring a camera with him.

I try not to swallow too loudly.

-Not like me though, huh?

-No, not like you.

He grabs my wrist, moving faster than I thought possible for his mass, and he holds up my arm under the Christmas tree lights. He turns over to read it and I hope it doesn’t pop off.

-The cops already know where we are. They don’t need directions.

Then he sees my hand and finally makes eye contact.

-What happened to you?

-Huh? Nothing. That’s what all our hands look like.

He stares a minute then drops my arm, smiling again.

-They might.

Right then, two older white women dressed like an ‘80s music video walk through the door. The bouncer turns away, looking alarmed.

-You better tell your boy to hurry up. If them ain’t cops, I don’t know what.

He walks past me, brushes a shoulder against one of the ‘80s women, and motions for the bartender. The regulars begin turning away from the stage, and the stripper slows down and starts missing the beat of the music. Then a man messing with his belt comes flying out from behind the shower curtain and starts yelling something into the ears of the bartender and the bouncer. I consider ordering a drink to get closer and hear what’s going on, but I know my stomach’s flipping too much to keep anything else down. I pull out my cell phone and start to call Jay instead. It’s wet against my ear, but the ring is loud and strong. You ever drop your phone in the toilet? Don’t worry about it. They love it in there. It’s where most of them end up.

I look to the spotlight where another girl is stretching out before she starts dancing. She’s holding a knee to her naked chest, steady inhales and exhales like she’s all business, ready to run a mile. I start hoping for the bridesmaid to walk out on stage, thinking that could be the reason she sent us here. Then I understand that she didn’t need to be up there to make that exact same point. Maybe it would have been more dramatic to end the night that way, but no one would have believed it.

On Jay’s end of the line, it’s going to his voicemail as I’m yelling into my fucked up hand.

-Answer your fucking phone!

That’s when someone snatches it from my grip, and I turn to again find myself facing some washboard abs and the indistinct shadow of a face lost in the bundle of T-shirt still pulled up over the back of his head. He shows me my phone for a second or two, then rips it in half like a wishbone, handing me back the half with the numbers. I seem to be in the middle of some sort of duel, an impressive display of plumage. I wish for either a lifetime of sit-ups or a full-length mirror to distract him with identical posturing. I take a deep breath, and my next move feels very important. Remembering everything important I ever learned in school, I stick the bottom half of my phone into my mouth and start chewing. A wire dangles off my chin, plastic shards splinter and pop on my tongue, and the numbers from the keypad drip from my lips like teeth.

The shirt comes back down over his head and covers his stomach as he wanders away in confusion.

It may be impossible to actually eat a phone, at least without something to drink. I close my eyes, spit out a mouthful of metal that’s stinging my molars, count to ten, count to ten again, then run through the panda bears. On the other side of the shower curtain are a row of five bathroom stalls with the doors off. In place of the doors are, of course, more shower curtains with panda bears on them. Must have been a sale, I laugh.

Only one curtain is pulled closed. And it opens before I get there, Jay tumbling out onto the ground, pants down around his ankles and the tuxedo unhinged, unbuttoned, and unhooked in five places. Their honeymoon is apparently over as the stripper is taking wild swings at his head while she rolls her skirt back down. She’s screaming at him but looking at both of us.

-What the fuck did you call me, motherfucker?!

-Huh?

Jay is simultaneously trying to cover his head, pull up his pants, and clip back on his bow tie. This is the second time tonight he’s left a bathroom stall from the ground. Before he was finished. The stripper still wants her answer.

-What the fuck did you just say?!

-Nothing! What? Said what? What did I say?

The panda bears are rustling behind me, and I catch sight of the red glow of an exit sign only three car lengths away. I start running, arm down and ready to bull rush him out the door with me. However, the stripper is going to get her answer. And she’s angry enough to be quicker than both of us. She’ll reach him first.

-I said, what the fuck did you call me?!

The flashbulb of my camera in her face is enough to slow her down so I can build up momentum. I silently vow to put tonight’s pictures in a wedding album someday. I see understanding dawn in Jay’s eyes as I get him under one arm like a cop and finally get us both moving in the right direction. He looks back at her with love.

-No! I said you were an “enigma!”

On the way back, I stabbed the gas pedal too hard when we were going uphill and, according to the mechanic who looked at my brother’s truck when we rumbled into town, I apparently “blew my rods” through the engine block. Everyone at the garage wanted to know how we drove the remaining fifty or so miles with the truck in that state. I told them that I’d heard a noise on that hill, and the cab stunk like gasoline for the rest of the trip, but other than that, we just kept on going. The mechanics said we wouldn’t have been able to drive faster than ten miles an hour. And with the fuel squirting out the spark plug holes like that, the truck could have exploded, “should” have exploded, I’m told over a dramatic cigarette exhale and flick. When my brother grilled me and Jay about it later, both of us explained that, besides the gas fumes, which we both agreed smelled great, we never noticed that it took us ten times longer to get home. We’ve never decided if we blew up or not.

::: david - 3:39 AM [+] :::
...

“Big gorilla at the L.A. Zoo snatched the glasses right off my face,
took the keys to my BMW, left me here to take his place.”
- Warren Zevon - “Gorilla You’re a Desperado”


FICTION:



spiderbites...a 79% true story



chapter VI: turn off the water!





My car is idling behind my mom at a red light. I’m waiting for her to go like I’m still hiding behind her leg at a crosswalk. She wants me to follow her and drop her car off at the mechanics then give her a ride back. The day before, someone hit her rear bumper parallel parking, putting a hairline crack in the fiberglass, but damaging her license plate more than anything. The crack in the bumper would be noticeable under even the least powerful microscope, I’m told, and she found it under her veteran, dust-seeking thumb in seconds. Being insured and particular about this shiny red vehicle of hers, a sporty, new whatever it was, she insists on taking it in as soon as possible. Me, I have nothing better to do. Soon I won’t even have a job to go to.

Knowing the crumpled license plate is less important to her than the crack, and since this traffic light is way longer than normal, I inch forward get a better look at the damage. Her numbers are unreadable now, and I’m surprised she’d risk getting pulled over and take her car in before she’d get the plate replaced. I creep up closer. Then a little closer. Closer. The red light is taking so long, I decide to harass her in a good-natured, mother vs. son kinda way.

Seesawing the gas and brake, I make my car lurch like an anxious animal. I see her eyes roll in her rearview mirror, so I lunge even closer. She shakes her head, so I start honking my horn and waving my arms around, acting like some crazy person impatient for her to run the light. I see her adjust her mirror so she doesn’t have to look at me. Quickly losing myself in my new role as a crazed motorist, I lay on the horn and rumble closer and closer and closer until I can gently tap our license plates together. At this point, I’m not sure of her reaction because the cars behind us, next to us, even across the intersection a hundred yards in front of us, suddenly erupt in a symphony of honking and yelling and obscene gestures as they all simultaneously stand up for a poor woman being brutalized. Realizing that shouting the words, “That’s my mom, yo!” would make me sound even crazier, or worse be mistaken for a complicated playground insult, I decide to stay in character and scream back at all the good Samaritans, let them know their help is appreciated but not needed at this time.

-Mind your fucking business!

That’s when the big dude on the other side of the intersection kisses his girlfriend (boyfriend? identical twin?) and climbs out of his tow truck clearly intent on kicking my ass over my shoulders. The horns suddenly stop as this sweaty, swaggering, stone-washed-denim covered beast lumbers across four lanes of highway, past my mom’s car, and pounds on my windshield like I forgot to pay for my fries. I roll it down. But just a crack.

-What up, my man?

-Get the fuck out of the car.

-Naw. I think I’ll stay right here. But, hey, listen, thanks for...

He starts rattling the door handle. Luckily, it locks automatically when it’s in gear, a feature probably created for situations and innocent jokes gone wrong just like this one. He spits on my window. He’s been eating something black. Probably a truck tire.

-I said get out. What the hell’s wrong with you attacking that woman, motherfucker?

-Whoa. What business is that of yours anyway? Don’t eat my car, dude.

Nothing, not even a smile. I switch gears and try some institutionalized babbling.

-Back off! I’m a crazy driver gone crazy! No telling what I’ll do next! Whoop!

He grabs the roof and shakes my car hard enough for me to quickly abandon the ruse.

-Okay! Joke! That’s my mom!

-What?!

-That’s my mom up there.

This seems to make him angrier. He shakes the car harder, and I grab the steering wheel thinking he might flip me over. Or maybe take me and the car home under his arm easy as a football. He screams at me through the window, back of his tongue bright green, the color in nature that says “stay away!” It’s likely from a sports drink to wash down that tire. The street light must be broken. Staring up, I have no doubt that this is exactly what happens at every broken street light. If one never changed, they’d be hundreds fucking dead.

-Then why the hell are you attacking your mom?!

-I wasn’t attacking her, chief. Her bumper’s already scratched. We’re on our way to...

The rest of the cars around us are honking again as the light finally changes. My mom’s head is out her window and peering back at us now but not showing any signs of intervening. I’m thinking he’ll never get off my car. Sorry, “the” car.

I count to three, unlock the door, and step out onto the road. Tow truck man steps back, momentarily surprised. I lean in close to talk to him over the noise. Quiet, intense conversations are supposed to diffuse situations like this, according to my stepdad. Up in his face, the tow truck man smells good to me for some reason. Dangerous and flammable, like gasoline or my real dad’s garage.

-Seriously, man, it was a joke. And I appreciate you sticking up for my mom here, but there’s really no reason for it. Just ask her.

Fists still balled and white-knuckled, he turns to her and shouts.

-Lady, is this your son?!

My mom seems to smile in slow motion as we both understand how important her answer will be. Don’t you do it, I’m thinking. Don’t you do it. But I can’t help smiling, too. Sighing, she gives in. Over the horns she admits it with a nod and a shrug. For some reason, I find this whole moment way too touching. I swear I’d hug her if I wasn’t knee-deep in angry, squawking traffic. Then she shocks me with the actual words.

-Yes, he’s my son.

Amazingly, this doesn’t convince the tow truck man of anything.

-Bullshit! Prove it!

Now we’re both as confused as he is. Defeated after all this debate, I finally take the low road and give him a shove. Why not, right?

-Don’t yell at her, asshole. She doesn’t have to prove anything to you.

-You ain’t her son!

-Fuck I ain’t!

I go to shove him again, and he catches my hand. Bastard’s strong. He’s twisting bone and muscle the wrong way and I’m losing my balance. Over his shoulder, I can see a car in the crowd sporting a pink license plate that reads IFAKE-IT. Then he’s hesitating, flinching at something he sees, too. He turns my fist over to see what’s wrong with it. He knows something’s off, but the realization that starts covering his face is painfully slow. He squints as he finally understands that my thumb is missing, and an idea lights his eyes up like a pinball bumper. He raises my arm high like a referee showing the crowd I won. Even though, in his mind, it’s just the opposite.

-Okay, lady, if he’s your son, how many fingers is he holding up?!

An hour later when we’re leaving the mechanics and she’s climbing into my stolen car, my mom hesitates before locking the seatbelt.

-One last stop. Take me to the license bureau, Jeeves.

-Does Uncle Chuck still work there?

-You know, I’m not sure if he...

Then she trails off looking around the interior, eyes narrow. Finally, she turns to stare at me a solid minute before she says:

-What’s different? You look different. What did you do? What’s changed?

Took her long enough. I don’t answer. She turns my face toward her.

-You’re really moving then?

This question I do answer.

-Yep.

-Again?

Back to not answering shit. I stare at the wrinkled license plate in her lap and remember something I need to do before I leave town. And from now on, until the end of my story, when I say or think the words “my car” I’ll be referring to this one I’ve stolen. That’s what has changed.

* * *

It’s not a real license plate, although you might not be able to tell while admiring such a masterpiece of deception. And it’s shockingly easy to make. Hey kids! What supplies do you need to create your own just like it? Side of a cereal box, magic marker, keen eye, unhealthy obsession with a neighbor...

Didn’t you ever wonder why the front and back of cereal boxes are exactly the same size as every vehicle’s name tag? This is why. Check out my handiwork. You’ll never know what car might be carrying one (or two, depending on the state) just like it. Look real close at what I made and you can even see the rust I drew on the tops of the screws. Hell, even the highway patrol would look at my little sketch of a faded, dog-eared registration sticker, frown over the top of their aviator glasses, and say, at the very worst, "Sir, I think these plates are expired."

So here's the history of it, and, as a bonus, some good reasons not to get too obsessed with someone who’s obsessed with someone who’s obsessed...with washing his car.

When I first moved into this apartment, I started to notice peculiar things right around summertime, right about the time I first started leaving the windows open. First, I noticed that the hot, high-pressure showers were getting weaker and weaker. This made me quite angry as that’s one of the deal-breakers when I’m looking to rent an apartment. Maybe because my dad would pound on the bathroom door every morning for me to get the fuck out and yell, “The only reason anyone should be in there is to wash their ass! How long does that take?!” Long, dad. Especially when you’re already late for school and the strong, hot water is a beautiful, deafening roar in your ears.

And then, one day, my shower started getting downright cold. Fighting the urge to scream, “Turn off the water!” at the shower walls like a mental patient trying to impress the face on the soap, I wrote it off as shitty plumbing and reminded myself to call the office, not thinking too much of it at all by the evening. Then I flung open the window the next day to soak in the morning warmth and sounds of the slowly awakening world. Sniff. Look at them birds. Look at that little butterfly. Why did it crash to the ground like that? Because my peaceful symphony of summer was quickly buried under the punishing beats of “Sports Jams: Volume Nine.” Remember the commercial? With the guys trading straws to drink from the beer cans attached to each other’s helmets? A very sexually suggestive promotion, I remember thinking at the time. And the collection seemed a bit overpriced, too, or I would have bought it for my brother. Guess it wasn’t too expensive for everyone else because every morning I’d open my window with a toothbrush in my mouth playing hide-and-seek with the corn flakes still in my teeth and...

"You ready for dis?!" Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

I’d be like, "No, dude. I ain’t ready for this," head shaking, toothbrush sagging miserably.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've got some shit music of my own that I wouldn't wish on anyone that didn’t lose a bet, but this was coming from the parking lot every morning (including weekends, sometimes at night, too) just like clockwork. Where was it coming from, you ask? A tail-gate party? Cheerleading practice? Warm-up for the dance-fighting competition at the Ohio State Fair? Two time travelers from the ‘80's buttfucking in a convertible? The lamest poltergeist in the history of hauntings? Nope. None of the above.

It was the Wild Pony.

The source of the my morning’s new pulsing soundtrack was some little dude in huge sunglasses with a brand new (at the time) 1999 Stallion XP, all shiny and chrome and baby blue. And he was out there, hose roped around his shoulder like ammunition, lovingly rubbing it with a rag so hard you kept waiting for a genie to pop out of the tailpipe. The mystery was solved. That’s where my water pressure and heat was going. Another minor mystery was solved much later when one of his sleeveless T-shirts depicting a cartoon of his car triumphantly breaking free of the Earth’s atmosphere explained to the world that the “XP” in his baby’s name meant, of course, “Xtra Pussy!” Oh yeah, one last thing, and this is the most important detail of all. He had a personalized license plate that read, I shit you not:

WLD-PNY!

There was an exclamation point on it. I swear. Okay, maybe there wasn’t. But there could have been. There should have been. I watched him a while, scoffed, spit my toothpaste foam and cornflake bits out the window, and tried to forget. Until the next morning, of course. It was 8:00 a.m., a split-second before my alarm when I’m already awake and watching the numbers anyway, dreading any noise and flinching like I’m watching a cat playing with a balloon and...

“You ready for dis?!” Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Then the next morning. Then the next. And the next. Wild Pony was waxing and stroking his car every goddamn day. Didn’t he have a job to go to? And whenever he finished, smug and satisfied there was nothing but that doughnut glaze on the perfect blue surface, he’d gently park it under the Joshua Tree, a lonely, gnarly Spruce, the only sign of vegetation and shade at the far end of the parking lot. And if someone dared to park too close to his baby, maybe confused enough to park under that single tree to, say, protect an actual baby from the harsh sunlight, he’d run out to move his car five seconds later.

I stared at him from my window, my cereal spoon deep in thought and bobbing like a diving board, watching him leaning on the Stallion with his goofy sleeveless shirt and not a muscle in sight. I was becoming enraptured. Friends and relatives would say I was in love. And I would patiently explain to them that, no, everything about him was just making me angry. Yep, that’s love, they’d say. But it was anger, I swear. And I could prove it. For example, the way he'd leave a towel hanging out of the trunk after each waxing? I'd stare at that white towel dangling there and think “For the love of Christ, why?!” Then I’d remember that one movie, what was it called? “Bruiser?” “Cruiser?” In the flick, this cop goes undercover in leather bars to find some killer who's stalking only gay men. The cop, noticing a certain fashion trend in these places, tucks a bandanna in his right pocket one night and quickly gets scolded by some leathery leather dude because right pocket means you like to “take it in the ass” and the left pocket means you like to “give it in the ass” and a yellow bandanna means you like "watersports" and a red, white, and blue bandanna means that, of course, you'll shout out "America, love it or leave it!" when you're getting railed. Okay, my gay coworker (some of my best friends, I swear) probably made the last one up when I tried to explain all this to him, and I might actually have this whole left pocket/right pocket thing backwards (so is it ever worth the risk carrying a bandanna ever again? I’d rather wear plaid into South Central) but I started to wonder about the significance of Wild Pony’s white towel hanging out of his trunk 24/7, and I couldn’t help but study his physical appearance even closer. His chronic lack of sleeves made this real easy.

He really was a miracle of evolution. Skinny arms but a bulbous gut, actually scrawny and fat at the same time. All he needed was glasses, one short leg, maybe a missing thumb, and he would be voted “Darwin’s Least Likely,” just one creature above those flies that last an hour.

So, besides imagining all sorts of signals this clown might be sending me with his towel-in-the-trunk thing, I started calling friends to describe the scene. And they kept insisting that I shouldn't get obsessed watching a neighbor (“again?!”) asking me, all serious, “What do you care if he waxes his car every day?” and, of course, ending the conversation with a confused, “What did you say his name was? “Wild Tony?” How do you know this?”

Then one morning as I was straining with my tongue to loosen a compacted bit of cereal from the center of a back molar and shaking the last of the cornflake gravel off the bottom of the empty box to dust my milk and squeeze out just one...more...bowl (saves money) the pulse of the dance music suddenly stopped. I ran to the window wanting to yell, “You still got three songs to go, asshole!” and watched him finish up waxing his bumper early, without the usual flourish of his scrawny arm and dramatic locker room horseplay snap of the towel at no one. Then he picked up his bucket of supplies and turned to wander across the parking lot to the corner where the dumpster sat. He walked up behind another car and cautiously looked around. Another car?! The empty cereal box collapsed in my grip. If I’d been drinking from a Styrofoam cup, it would have exploded. Not that impressive, I realize, but I have ripped a phone book in half before. It took three weeks and most of my summer vacation.

I watched Wild Pony lean down and pop the trunk of a slouching, beat-up, rusted-out 1972 Grenade. Over his shoulder, I could see the overflowing piles of cleaning supplies and rags burying a spare tire, and I realized that this dirty secret of a car was where he stored the milk for his baby. His blue baby always parked safely under the tree at the best end of the lot. For some reason, I was as shocked at this revelation as if he’d popped the truck to expose a pile of actual babies. Or worse, those spring-loaded snakes from the fake peanut can. Seriously, that is scarier. The fact that Wild Pony had another car that he hid next to the dumpster so scandalously, the fact that this noble, metal monster was ending its long, distinguished life on the road as a storage locker for someone to lovingly caress and fondle a new fiberglass toy...it saddened and angered me. I sat glaring at him from my window ledge, as usual making myself later and later for work for reasons impossible to explain to a boss (“he’s being unfaithful to his car!”) and I started to carefully tear the sides off the empty cornflake box in frustration. Then, in a moment of clear-eyed inspiration (you’re allowed exactly three in your lifetime) I sat down cross-legged on the floor and emptied the box of crayons I kept on top of the ‘fridge for when I babysat my nieces into the protective grade-school diamond of personal space between my knees. And it was there that I began to create a license plate for the WLD-PNY2.

I ended up having to use a sick day to get the heads of the screws just right. They were usually the hardest part since you have to use the strange, almost invisible gray crayon. My boss hung up before I could finish explaining all this to her.

That night, I snuck out and taped my perfect new vanity plate onto the ‘72 Grenade so that he'd finally be forced to give recognition, respect, maybe even a bit of love, to this ugly stepchild in his family, and maybe, someday, he'd crank “Sports Jams” out of an old 8-track, blown-speaker sound system in this sad, slumping, bumperless, rusted-out ride. Of course “Sports Jams” for an 8-track might sound different as I think they played football without helmets back then. But maybe one day he'd proudly drive that car slowly around the parking lot to the tree, ashamed no more, pale skinny arm hanging out the driver's side window, sunlight actually turning his skin red while I watch, sticky white towel resting on his swollen beer belly, sunglasses high on his pointy head, finally proud enough to show his eyes to the world. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. The next morning, this new, painstakingly handcrafted license plate had been flung about fifty feet into the cornfield next to our building. I like to pretend that the car shrugged it off instead of him. And I think it makes some kind of sense, that plate ending up in a cornfield and all.

Eventually, I went back down to the low road for a solution to my shower water heat/pressure problem, so I just cut the hose Wild Pony had been using and threw the coil into that field, too. I noticed that the crows were scared shitless of it, thinking it was a snake. That made sense, too, as I remembered the family’s ducks from my childhood running for cover every time I tried to hose out their feather and shit-encrusted water bowls. I’ll tell you about our ducks later when there’s less chance of making a point and me getting depressed.

And, on the bright side, the experience did teach me how to make a fake license plate that could pass a cursory police officer’s drive-by or maybe even a second or third glance at a traffic light. On the down side, soon after, and to this day, I see vanity plates everywhere, but I can’t completely blame him for that. At first, I thought it was a welcome distraction from trying to find meaning in every street sign I passed. Too bad that didn’t last.

The thirteenth scariest letter I ever got in my life was from the state of Ohio reminding me that certain letter combinations of characters and digits on license plates were “unacceptable.” 90% of these are apparently anything that tries all sneaky to phonetically spell “fuck,” “shit,” “hell,” “tits,” or “ass.” I didn’t remember trying to get one of those lame gags, but to receive that letter, hell, I guess I must have way back when. I was still angry for being singled out because one look around and you can see they’ve been asleep at the switch for years with all the “ass” plates still slipping through. I still see them around daily. Sure, you’ll get the occasional “fuck you, too,” sorry, I mean, 4Q-YU2. And once I saw a backwards “fuck you, too,” sorry, I mean, “2U-KCUF,” on the front of an ambulance. Sorry, I mean “ecnalubma.” There’s no way it was an accident that you could read both this plate and the name of the ambulance in your rearview mirror when it pushes through traffic behind your car in an emergency. Where was the state of Ohio that day? But none of those are anywhere near as frequent as the ass plates. Hell, just the other day I saw someone declaring themselves an ANL-ETR in a church parking lot. The more restrictions, the more creative people will get when it comes to “ass” variations. And for some reason, it’s much easier to sneak these past than it is for any other forbidden word. It almost makes you think that there’s something else going on here. Something bigger than us? Something our cars are trying to tell us? Maybe not. Come on, what can you really say in seven letters or less? A lot, it seems, if you look around on the road. Of course, there’s always the chance that these messages I’ve deciphered for years are accidental, incidental, and that I simply bring the translation with me.

* * *

The next time I see her, I prepare to ask my mom about the last leg of her trip to get a new plate, but I don’t have to since she’s already complaining about it. She can’t believe they made her take an eye test. “An eye test?!” At almost the exact same time, we both suddenly exclaim, “How many fingers am I holding up?” and start laughing.

-Did you see the license plate?

She looks up to remember.

-What, was it trying to be cute, something like “under tow” or, wait, “camel tow?”

-No, that’s too many letters. I think it was “T-O-W-D-L-Y-N.”

-What’s that supposed to be?

-It said “tow the line,” you know, like “toe the line?”

-You’re reaching, son.

I ask if she ran into Uncle Chuck at the license bureau, and she scoffs and says she thinks he quit there as soon as he sold that idea to the phone companies. Ah, the “idea.” His legendary “one good idea.” I was so jealous of him when all that happened. Have been since I was little.

Then she asks where I’m off to in such a hurry and I finally get to say, for the first time in awhile (even though, technically, I still got a day or two left), “Not to work!”

Feels good. Free time and no money is a wonderful combination. Without looking for something to buy, a stop in a used videogame shop can be much more interesting. Out of habit from my (old) job at the bookstore, I can’t help but start alphabetizing some games on the wall and moving all their spines flush with the edge of the shelf while I listen to some homeless-looking guy talk the ear off one of the employees.

-...because most of these games from 2001 were my idea, and you can tell if you look real close when a character gets shot. You want to know how? Ask me how...
I stop in the “R’s” and decide to rescue the employee by interrupting with a simple question about store hours. The homeless-looking guy glares like I cut in on a wedding dance with his daughter, and while the employee’s pointing at the sign on the door, he leans in to whisper his thanks. Not for the rescue though.

-Seriously, dude, you don’t have to organize our games. Thanks anyway.

Losing track of the homeless-looking guy, I quickly leave the shop. A fried blonde in a tiny red car zips past with a plate that reads CHEAT-ER. I swear she’s the one that said “IFAKE-IT” earlier. I wish I could make it say NOZ-BLEED instead. A block down, I find my homeless talking another ear off a hot dog vendor.

-...originally, I designed them pointed on both ends so that there was no danger of your mouth slamming shut and biting your tongue while you ate...

I walk up around him and buy a hot dog I don’t even want and, because of recent developments, can no longer afford. The vendor seems to be thanking me for rescuing him by hooking me up with so much chili it buries the bun, but I can’t be sure behind his sunglasses. Then, a block up, I see the homeless-looking guy waiting in line for the bus. When it pulls up, I notice the license plate on the back is scorched black from the diesel pipe exhaust and air conditioning leakage running up and down its ass end eight hours a day. I hesitate, realizing that all bets are off if I set foot on a vehicle without a name or number. It could take me anywhere. Something like that has no accountability. Then I remember all the movies where views from a police helicopter show that, unknown to the passengers inside, a bus’s identification number is actually screaming at the sky at all times in huge, man-sized script painted across its roof. So I get on and wait to see who he bothers this time. But, of course, after following him around so much all day, the first person he locks onto is me. Trying to figure out why I look familiar, he spins around, trots back, and plops down in the neighboring seat with a smile and a sigh. He smells like old burgers.

-Do I know you, man?

-Don’t think so.

-Do you like my bus?

Then he proceeds to talk my ears off. And, of course, there’s no one to rescue me.

Outside the window, I see a vanity plate on a lobster delivery truck that reads BIG-BUGZ. I think about this a minute and realize that, yeah, if you put one on someone’s foot when they’re not paying attention, that’s exactly what they are. He sees me looking and nods towards the truck.

-You see that? I invented those. I was the first one with a vanity plate on my car. Ever.

-Really.

Notice the lack of question mark. When I use that word, it never sounds like a question.

-You don’t believe me?

-What’s your name?

Being a smart ass, I don’t let him answer. I think of the most random combination of numbers and letters that I can.

-Wait, let me guess. Is it QTX-739?

His eyes widen.

-Close.

Eventually, I’m so unresponsive to him that he moves to sit next to a man in a suit with so many sharp corners he looks dangerous to bump into. To my surprise, this businessman talks to him freely. The homeless-looking guy stops the conversation for a second to cock a thumb in my direction and whisper “thanks” to the man in the sharp suit for letting him sit next to him. I hear him tell this man that he sees vanity plates everywhere now. Just like me. Chicken or the egg? Who can tell. That wasn’t a question either.

When I get off at the next stop, I see a green convertible slumped on the side of the road surrounded by gray ash stains and the charred husks of dead road flares. It seems to be sagging closer to the even ground as I stare at it. Its front tire is missing, and the plate doesn’t read THUM-LSS even though it should.

I really need to find a nemesis. Bad. Or maybe just a job.

Back in my car, my shoulders hunch when the truck in front of me explosively loses a layer of tire tread. None of the cars around me flinch. On the radio, the DJ is talking about people who call in having “metal” disorders because of the hard rock ‘80s music they request all day. I’m kind of sick of his voice, but it’s the strongest station I get in this car. I didn’t have reception problems before. I think it’s because my antenna got bent in one of those car washes. At the next gas station, I get out and bend it around my wrist so it look more like it should, like it used to. And for a second, it won’t let me go.

I see some kids in their mom’s minivan with a plate that says RUN-AMOK, then a mile later, a plate on a brown ‘70s van that says X-CHNGD. It reminds me again what I need to do with my plates before I leave town. Of course, now I’m thinking there’s a good chance that license plate actually said EN-GAGD instead. The van was moving to fast to be sure. I think I’m figuring out why I’m always studying these plates, and it’s not because I want to be a cop when I grow up (I want to be an astronaut!) It’s because it’s where your eyes go naturally when something drives by, the exact same place your eyes will go when a girl walks past you. Just ask any designer jeans company where they put their name and why.

When I see someone on a bicycle with a license plate attached to their back, I’m tempted to upend them with a carefully placed shoe in the spokes so that I can stick that tag to the ass of his tight track suit where it belongs. Sorry, I meant “her” ass. Right next to the white towel.

There’s a spider on the gas pump I’m using, its web spun just high enough to avoid the movement of the hose. It’s plump and healthy, apparently unaffected by the fumes or the meals it snatches saturated in oil and ash. I walk around my car and check the cereal box taped over my license plate. A corner is curled out, so I bend it back down. It’s not quite dirty enough to look real. But it’s getting there.

* * *

Back in grade school, I was good friends with a girl whose dad had a hay ride around his property every year. He would fill a topless trailer with straw and grass and hook it to his tractor. Then he’d sniff a flask of mystery fluid, hold it up to the tractor’s headlight, tuck it away in his coat, and start weaving a group of about twenty of us as close to the roadside ditches as he dared. It was fun but scary as shit, and I doubt parents would have let their kids attend if they saw him sneak those swigs from the flask, snickering while he tried to tip the trailer as far as he could without spilling. And one thing about hay people don’t realize...it hurts. It’s like sitting in a pile of half-sharpened pencils, if the pencils were also flexible enough to work their way up your shirt and down your pants. I’d watch the girls scratching and shaking the hay loose and wonder how it managed to worm its way down the backs of their belts into places us boys weren’t allowed yet. And once that flask was empty and the tractor stopped weaving so hard and settled on its long trek around the six-acre property line, most of the kids stopped squealing and reflexively formed the impenetrable groups they always had. One year, however, I had a plan.

There was a kid from another town who’d just moved here who was still working that otherworldly hint of seductive “stranger danger,” as the girls called it, with the rest of our class. We called him “Crazy Mark” even though I’m pretty sure he gave himself the nickname. I noticed he seemed bored in the corner of the hay ride, not gasping at any of our close calls with the ditches. And, in spite of an unremarkable face, clothing, or build, I noticed all the girls couldn’t take their eyes off him for more than a few minutes at a time. I brooded over this for about half the ride, then moved to sit down next to him and talk some shit on the rest of the passengers. Jay wanted nothing to do with these hay rides and was off on some random vandalism or I’m sure I wouldn’t have needed this new kid as a substitute. But I kind of liked him. We were about as close as friends could be after a wobbly. eight-minute lap around a dead bean field. So I finally popped the big question in his ear.

-Hey, let’s stage a fight to freak everyone out.

I’d never been in a fight before, so this plan worked for me on several levels. He started giggling and agreed that this would be a good way to shake up the trailer since at least two girls were now sleeping. So, the next time the trailer straightened out and its wheels found the rows tilled into the field so we could keep our balance, we both stood up. I made sure most of the eyes were on us and gave Crazy Mark a hard shove in the chest, yelling:

-What did you say?!

I must have shoved him a little harder than I intended because he wobbled and pinwheeled his arms a moment and looked kind of stupid. Then he must have totally forgotten our plan from a whole nine fucking seconds ago because hauled back and punched me in the face hard enough to dump me over the side like a bowel movement. I don’t even remember the tractor stopping, but I do remember alcohol on someone’s breath while they were carrying me. My dad’s still convinced it was a drunken nurse in the emergency room. And, somehow, I ended up a dislocated jaw and a reluctant friendship with Crazy Mark as some sort of unspoken apology. After graduation, I even sold him my car, a piss-yellow ‘88 Sundog. Signed over the title to him the day after I made the last payment. And as anyone who makes a last car payment can tell you, that’s precisely when it starts to fall apart.

He called me complaining about a wheel that actually flew off (!) when he took a sharp turn. I sighed and intoned into the phone all calm and fatherly, “Son, that’s your car now. Do I call you and tell you about my car?” Then hung up. But he’s got more reasons than that to be angry. Over a girl, of course. What else? More flashing back in a second. Right now, I’m in a hurry. Got to get two birds with one stone and all that jazz.

* * *

It’s sleeping in the exact same spot I saw it five years ago. A yellow dog curled up in the corner of the employee end of the parking lot at Ike’s Truck Stop off I-75. A garage-sized dive where Crazy Mark’s been working his whole life at a dead-end job I got for his ungrateful ass. I run over towards the dog, low to the ground with a screwdriver in my teeth like I’m in the trenches of World War II. If they fought with screwdrivers on D-Day. Careful not to wake it, I quickly removed the license plate from the Sundog, then replace it with my own. My heart’s pounding. This is fun. I feel like I’m swapping collars on sleeping dinosaurs. I wipe the dirt from his plate with my thumb. RPX-732 was his number, my old number. His plate is rusted and oil-flecked to perfection. And this might be hard to believe without a picture, but even in the harsh sunlight, my cornflakes box replicas look completely identical. I put the metal plates from my stolen Cavalry onto his Sundog, then put the new cardboard impostors over top of them. I’m not sure what exactly the plan is, except maybe to create maximum confusion for the police and the reader. However, I am hoping that when he eventually discovers the cardboard plates are fake, he’ll assume that I sold him the car this way all those years ago. Maybe it will buy a little more time when I need it the most, I don’t know. That’s called “foreshadowing.” I know it seems like a big leap to hope he will make this assumption, but, hey, he didn’t name himself Crazy Mark for nothing!

I hesitate, wondering if I should have given him a vanity EATS-AZZ plate instead, as apparently tags advertising anal action are actually less conspicuous than random numbers these days. No, RPX-732 is it, always has been. My old number that I chose all those years ago simply because a computer program told me that it was the number and letter combination least likely to be noticed. And it’s true. Even in staged scenes of heightened drama or violence, laboratory test subjects could not remember seeing this license plate at all. Not even a car. Try it some time.

Once his plates are secured to my green Cavalry, I turn to stare at my old ride. Crazy fuckin’ Mark. What the hell happened to you? I heard you were engaged to that girl we both dated (sometimes at the same time) and I also heard that you smacked her in the face when she broke up with you. I step closer and check the rubber seal around the driver’s-side window. It’s still crusted with white, oil-based paint. I smile, remembering the time when it was my turn to date that girl and I came out of a record store to find the words “Fuck You!” painted angrily across the glass.

I could never prove that you did it, but I’m happy to see that you were never able to get all that paint off either, motherfucker.

I pull a random key from my pocket and try the lock. It opens without a sound, like I never even sold it to him years ago. I feel bad, like I should have hung onto this car after I paid it off, like I’d worked and earned the right to own this car only to decide in that exact same instant that I never wanted to see it again. How many times does that happy on someone’s wedding night? Yeah, I’m looking at you, dude.

I climb behind the wheel. I don’t even have time to look around before I know that I do not like it back in this car after all. I feel like I’m sitting in a cold puddle of something bad, and it’s slowly seeping through my jeans and crawling up the crack of my ass. It’s almost as uncomfortable as the memory of that itchy hay ride. Finally glancing around, I see the most random, pointless collection of compact disc and cassettes cracked and scratched and littering the floor. I need to get out now. This is what would have happened if I had stayed in this car, stayed in this town, stopped treating my music with respect and started smacking them around.

* * *

I think about her often because I know, and I’m sure she knows, she’d have been better off never crossing paths with any of us. The girl in question, we’ll call her “Gee,” as in the letter “G,” because she had a license plate that me, Jay, and Crazy Mark all got excited about when we thought it said GOD-LESS, almost killed at least one of us. With only a clever license plate, a pretty face, and a nice ass to go on (a “black girl’s ass” according to Jay) we thought this particular girl that stopped to rent movies every Thursday from the video store we all worked at was the most utterly fascinating creature none of us knew. The better-looking, the more “complicated,” right? And even after a closer inspection revealed that her license actually said GODD-ESS instead, we just chalked that up to her being cheeky and ironic instead of just a shallow idiot. I dated her first. Then Crazy Mark about a year later. She didn’t want anything to do with Jay, and he’s been in love with her ever since. However, her and Mark didn’t last too long, and when it was over she stopped in the video store that he’d long since quit (but I couldn’t seem to break up with) and showed me some disturbing poetry she said Mark had been leaving in her bird bath and bathtub when no one was home. I assured her that he was “harmless and only a bad poet” and to “just forgot about the whole thing” and to “thank that God of yours that Jay wasn’t the one writing you poetry instead” and “why the fuck has a ‘bird bath?” She muttered something about there being nothing harmless about bad poetry and wandered out the in door. So then, after hearing all this, I remembered back a couple weeks earlier when Jay told me, “Hey, we had a friend in common!”

He was working at a restaurant near his new apartment in the city, a high-end spot named “Jay’s” which he claimed was completely incidental and swore he was not pretending it was actually his place when he parked his car every morning and gazed lovingly up at the sign while doing leg stretches. Yeah, right. Anyway, he said another guy in the kitchen, the head chef (this was Jay’s cooking phase, right before his park-ranger phase) was living with this girl, Gee, and guess what his boss had been up to? Jay explained it all complete with at least one sound effect:

-He’s fucking at least three chicks on a regular basis. He comes back from the parking lot on his 15-minute and brags about it, shaking my hands all proud, sometimes shaking my head, then wiping who knows what sticky shit all over my shoulders. Sure, he might be lying. But he’s elbow-deep in something out there. His face comes back in grinning like a glazed doughnut and his fingers look like he just waxed a car or delivered a newborn calf. Once he playfully backhanded me in the face. Splotch! It was like that time the giraffe woke me up with its tongue when we passed out in the zoo.

-You passed out in the zoo. And how does anyone “playfully” backhand someone?

-That’s what I’m saying, dude!

So I filed this information away, along with Jay telling me about Head Chef trying to sell him a bunch of guns (!) Apparently, he was also this survival nut, and me and Jay were on the cusp of our gun phase (right before his military phase), something that lasted one whole trip to a shooting range and is a story for another time when it guarantees to be very symbolic. Here’s a sneak preview. I get away with pointing a gun at a cop, which makes it the fucking feel-good movie of the year.

Fast forward back (can you do that with an 8-track?) to when I start seeing Gee regularly again at the video store for the first time in couple years. Her plate still doesn’t say GOD-LESS no matter how hard I prayed, but now, after I watched her put her movies in the return slot and try not to make any noise doing it, I started liking her all over again. I think it was just from thinking about all the conversations and drama going on around her that she was unaware of, maybe my knowledge of her Chef’s secret recipes, or maybe just the way she was being wronged, I don’t know. But I wanted her just like the old days so I decided to strike up conversations every chance I got. It was fun for a couple of weeks, even though she had no mysterious poetry bombs to report. Then one day it was all awkward and she said she’d seen me “driving behind her the other day,” then nervously asked if I knew anyone else that lived on her street because she thought she saw my car there, too. I immediately understood that this was Crazy Mark driving the car I’d sold to him, the car I’d owned when me and Gee were together. I tried to explain all this to her, and she seemed unconvinced and wary. Then, the next time she came in, she told me that, yes, Mark had been around recently. He’d walked straight into her house a couple weeks ago, and Head Chef had to “gently” restrain him until the cops showed up. No shit, I said. I asked her if she saw my car. Then I asked if she thought Mark was mistreating it. She blinked, frowned, sighed and left, either thinking my concerns were misplaced or clearly just tired as fuck of us crazy bastards. And right then, I made a decision that I knew I’d probably be punished for some day. Hasn’t happened yet though.

I called up Crazy Mark and got the scoop on that incident. Of course, his version of events was radically different. He claimed that he’d only stopped by as an afterthought to give her another small, 42-page poem, and that Head Chef attacked him for no reason and held him on the ground at gunpoint with a knee on his throat. No “gently.” He went on to say that when the cops showed up, that gun had mysteriously vanished, and that he was going to be charged with trespassing, assault, and attempted kidnapping. If he could “just prove there was a gun involved,” he was sure he could get all those charges thrown out. I said, “Holy shit, dude, Jay works with this asshole, and he’s trying to sell him guns all the time.” I actually heard Mark’s brain shifting gears on the other end of the phone. So I threw a little more sugar into his gas tank, I mean, a little more seasoning into his pot.

-Hey, did you know that this cocksucker is fucking around on her, too? Nails everything in town on his smoke breaks? Laughs about it to everyone in the kitchen where he works, all the while twirling six-shooters on his hips? Someone should do something. None of my business though. Anyway, how about those Red Wings?

Mark cleared his throat and calmly said, “No, I didn’t know that,” then got off the phone.

About a week later, Jay told me he was being summoned to testify in court about Mark’s case and “thanks for involving me, fuckface,” and I went on with my life for awhile. Then Gee came back into the video store right on cue and told me she was single again. She caught the Head cheating. I asked her for details but get none. So we dated for a couple more months while I avoided Mark’s calls, and, of course, the same things that had made us incompatible back then made us incompatible all over again. After our second (third? fourth?) break-up, we went our separate ways. Then one day, I was finally bored enough to rekindle my friendship with Crazy Mark, curious what he knew.

First thing he asked me was, “Where you been?” I said, “Nowhere. Where you been?” He said, “Jail.”

He told me that he sorta lost his mind after I told him about the Head cheating on Gee. After that, compounded with the trespassing, assault, and attempted kidnapping charges (most of them dismissed, however, when Jay testified about the gun), he decided to get some righteous revenge. Just as I’d hoped he would. Apparently, he popped out of the bushes and bashed the Head within an inch of its life with a convenient block of nearby firewood, breaking its collarbone so that it was unable to “make a proper omelet ever again” (Jay’s words) and sent it crawling down the street convinced it was mugged (Chef’s words). Some “strange” (Mark’s words) that the Head had been banging came running out of a parked car all blustering, and the commotion woke up Gee who finally caught him red-handed. And red-headed. Red fucking everything.

Covered in blood and spouting sonnets, Crazy Mark was quickly arrested and did a couple months in jail. And Gee came back to me right on schedule so I could effectively get her out of my system. Everybody wins! I call that a happy ending because the fucker shouldn’t be stalking people in my car and, more importantly, making me look bad on hay rides. And even though I finally seemed to convince her that it wasn’t me following her around in the Sundog, I know all that time that she thought it was me made a lasting impression that the truth could never erase. It’s like starting off a conversation with bad news, an insult, or a horrible lie and then quickly adding, “just kidding.” Sure, you might get the laugh, but that split-second that they thought you were serious stays with them forever, even if they never recognize why their feelings for you have changed just that teeny tiny bit (fingers about an inch apart).

So that’s why I’m leaving the state wearing his plates, officer. Sort of. Make any sense? I hope not. Doesn’t matter anyway, see you at the shooting range! Who cares. At the least, I’m just trying to stack up enough confusion for authorities to wander away with their eyes-crossed if I’m ever pulled over. And what are the chances of that? Suspenseful music playing in the background.

* * *

I see a small white car with POEM-4VR written on its ass. I almost get mad until I decide that one saying POET-4VR would be much more pretentious. I remember a girl who had “poem” tattooed across her lower back and I laughed and asked her why she didn’t get one that just said “picture” instead. At that, she turned over, locked her legs at the ankles, and never did give me the combination.

Hey, speaking of ass! Weren’t we? I’m driving to work again. I know I said I quit. I’m almost done. It’s my third or second-to-last day, and I nudge the drunken, invisible rabbit that’s not in the passenger seat next to me to point out a plate on a honking, irate ‘70s sedan that reads URNZ-WAY. Even though that’s impossible since I’m behind it, that shit’s so true.

At the bookstore, we’re in the eye of the hurricane these days with the Thanksgiving frenzy finally dying down before the Christmas assault begins. For most of the workday, I manage to stay out of trouble, for seven of the eight hours anyway. Then I’m out on my last 15-minute (27-minute) break before we have to start rolling out the carts for the shelvers tomorrow. I’m having a loud conversation with Jay behind the building, our backs against the propped-open receiving room door, something that our employee handbook frowned upon. Literally. And I’m not misusing “literally” like most of my coworkers do daily. Page 87 of the handbook really does have a frowny face right next to two cartoon hooligans smoking and jackassing around by a dumpster. Did I mention that Jay worked here with me for a whole week during the holiday season? He actually got fired on retail’s legendary “Black Friday” last year, the same night a tuneless woman was belting out Christmas carols in the music section and a wonderfully angry, stinky, maliciously defecating penguin on loan from the zoo was tracking shit everywhere and running amok in the kids section knocking down the displays it didn’t like, which was all of them. This might sound like the kind of day when every extra employee could be helpful no matter how incompetent. Hell, even a quadriplegic could lend a hand. But not Jay. He was done by lunch. Someone must have had a good reason for his dismissal. But, apparently, whoever rehired him must have forgotten his crimes because here he is again back on the payroll, name tag hiding in his shirt so customers won’t ask him questions, currently stashing music, movies, and chocolate deep in the dumpster to sneak back and pick up later.

Me and Jay are talking loud about a particular topic close to my heart when a café girl I dated at least twice comes rolling out the open door with a dolly full of empty boxes. She’s tossing them in the recycle bin without breaking them down, just like she always does, so I say something about how it’s going to be too full tomorrow for the boxes from the morning shipment, and they’re not coming to empty the dumpster until next Wednesday. She keeps loading the unbroken boxes without a word, so I turn back to Jay and get back into our conversation. And before long she’s rolling the dolly over my feet in a huff, having apparently gotten an earful of colorful images to the fucking brim.

Someone gets offended. Then another someone must have squealed to the management on me. I know this because someone else comes back to tell me I’ve been told on. If this sounds like a lot of “someones” and “telling,” it is. And the someone at the top of the food chain that’s saying I need to come to their office is someone that wasn't even present for my short yet informative lecture that I’m still not quite finished with. Come on, isn't that circumstantial evidence or hearsay or something? And now it’s screwing up my plans for walking out before my last day because I don’t want anyone to think this is the reason why. Especially that girl from the café. I sigh at my boss without looking at her. I’ve gone all five years without ever making eye contact with her, even when I was reporting a fire.

-Sorry if anyone’s offended. But, in war time, this is known as “collateral damage.” Now, I’m pretty sure I got 3 minutes 26 seconds left on this break.

Successful in getting another pair of feet to stomp away, I kick the side of the dumpster to get Jay’s attention again, trying to get back on my train of thought, but still distracted by what people seem to think is inappropriate to talk about. Jay’s head pops up from under a pile of bags sagging like dirty diapers with loads of coffee grounds. I’m ready to make fun of him, but I can’t stop thinking about how I say things in front of someone I know wouldn't care (at least didn’t used to care) and how it’s out of my hands if she decides to give a play-by-play to someone else, someone I would never have included in my five-part, ongoing, receiving room lecture series on...

"The Men Who Eat Ass And The Girls Who Love Them."

What’s so offensive about that? Nothing. It’s not like this activity is not being advertised on at least a third of the license plates in town right this second. And I swear a car drives by to prove my point at exactly this instant.

-Look, Jay, there goes one right now!

-No, that one just said FREUDYN.

-Oh. Remind me to look that word up.

Okay, so she walked in right as I was saying “...so, I’m furiously eating this chick’s ass, right...” but the thing is, and this is something my coworkers never understand, you’re not really eating anything. You could, but you don’t really need to. Your nose is deep in there, and that’s enough. If you would have been one of the three people listening to me explain my high school science project in 1988, you would have understood that the reason you can’t taste anything when you hold your nose is that eating and smelling are pretty much the same thing (grade: D+) and to prove this, all you need are clothes pins and soft drinks. I also tried to prove sight and smell were connected by using firecrackers and barbecue sauce, to no avail. Grade incomplete.

Doesn’t matter what you’re really doing though or what you call it. It’s right there at eye level anyway if you just back up and take a breather and a long, good look. Everything the kids are calling it...a twitching, pink rabbit nostril, an Asian cartoon squint, a red balloon knot. And, sure, you might get carried away, get lost, take a wrong turn up in there. But you’ll know when this happens because the zap on your tongue like you’re testing a 9-volt battery will steer you right back on course. What I’m trying to explain is that talking about these things at work, or even in class, is like talking about a first kiss. This is not casual vulgarity. This is not dirty limericks or knock-knock jokes. I am describing an intense act of commitment. This is true love, and only the serious should apply. And it doesn’t matter what she is like out in the world, how she presents herself or what she wants you to see.

One girl washed her feet first every time, but never brushed her teeth. One girl always turned the alarm clock over, even the green glow was too much light in the room for her. One girl defiantly turned on the lights I’d just turned off, got on her hands and knees, crossed her feet at her ankles, and invited me onto her back into the “winner’s circle.” And even when she got tired, she still kept everything up high, her upper body collapsing on a pile of pillows. Bold as hell, she’d even fall asleep like that sometimes, hugging the pillows too hard to give up even one. And one girl needed noise in the room, ceiling fan on high, static between stations. Once she even got up and ran over to turn on the shower, comforted that roar on the other side of the wall covered up the sounds of whatever we were doing. I would leave it on after we were done, expecting the voice to demand I turn off the water and go to class, ready to tell him it was raining.

But no matter what any of them did to remove these senses from the room, I still got the best of what remained by punching that time clock and going to work. Taste. Amplified so high I felt like I might overdose before I got a chance to fuck.

I say none of these things today to try to shock those employees, even one that was in that position (she never brushed her teeth). I swear I was just reaching out to a friend in a dumpster, honestly sharing something beautiful. Listen to me, do you have a pencil and paper nearby? It’s a scene you can draw with only four lines and a circle. Draw the circle and four lines coming down out of it. At first, you might think you’re seeing a baseball or maybe a four-legged spider with its legs down, like it got tossed in the air, but then your brother will explain that he’s tricked you into drawing on the first page of they hymnal the back of a girl’s thighs with someone’s head buried in the middle.

Don’t have a pencil and paper? Don’t worry. You’ll recognize it when you’re there, trust me. If you’ve got two handfuls of ass and she’s comfortable on her elbows with whatever you’re going to do back there, let go with one hand for a second and pat yourself on the back because, son, you are finally in a real relationship. She’ll always remember you behind her like that, and you’ll always think about it, even after the inevitable break-up, even if one day you see her in the grocery store buying those pickles and you pretend like you’re just shooting the shit about who saw who and who said what and who did who back in the day. And the whole time, you’ll both be thinking about you behind her on your hands and knees, too, your tongue painting the perfect line that divides her body in half, the line that makes humans geometrically perfect, the line that makes two of every part of you, the line that held her up all her life, just like when you saw her straddling that swing on the playground, turning that block of wood on its side when she
thought no one was looking.

Do you finally hear what I’m saying? How many times do I have to fucking say this? I’m not trying to disgust you with details like the pain in my neck the next day, the dime stuck to her left cheek, the red hand prints on the backs of her thighs, a half-moon scratch from a fingernail when my tongue lost track of that line and my body slipped fast to one side.

I am simply trying to tell you that the last time I did this, it was the only real thing I had. And no one else will be real to me until I can do it again.

-And another thing, Jay, then I’ll drop it, I promise. At work, I should not be held responsible for the exaggerated end of a telephone game that probably didn't give my speech the justice or hand and face gestures that it deserves. They don’t have had the technology available for an accurate reenactment unless they’re back here with us. Shit, unless they recount these crimes at a bowling alley, it’s a safe guess that they didn't have access to the same overhead projectors that we do in this here receiving room.

Jay’s eyes suddenly light up, and he stops stirring bags around in the dumpster.

-Good idea, dude!

-What?

-Bowling! Let’s go bowling to celebrate the “last days.”

-Why?

-Isn’t that how we celebrated our “first day?” Wasn’t it me, you, and that girl that was just back here throwing that shit away?

-I don’t remember.

After our shift, we walk down to the bowling alley at the end of the shopping plaza. And here’s a quick bowling tip I pick up that night. Throwing it harder doesn’t help. It just bounces more and makes the locals (sorry, I mean, “locas”) frown even more. Another thing that makes them frown? Drawing four-legged spiders, otherwise known as the official “man eats ass” logo, on the overhead scorecards. Strangely enough, this gets misinterpreted as a drawing of a bowling ball making a field goal through the infamous 7-10 split. And this somehow comes across as taunting the bikers in the next lane.

You’re probably thinking Jay wants to bowl just to fuck with me. I mean, where else can you find a sport that more clearly requires a thumb? Sure, I could just bowl with my other hand, but trust me when I say it doesn’t matter. You actually only need one hole in that ball to throw it any kind of distance. But even if you take away the hole where you’re thumb goes, those other two holes side by side make all the sense in the world. Remind you of anything?

I’m bowling for the first, probably last, time in twenty years because I want to say goodbye to everything around here. And it has changed, of course. And it didn’t even wait for me to come back and realize this in a suitably dramatic fashion. It changed before I even left town. The sad, hilarious snack bar at this bowling alley was always pretty bad, but now it’s even worse. It’s just gumballs, snack cakes, and jawbreakers in a bucket next to the rental shoes for like a quarter each. The variety is half-unwrapped and look like a handful of stuff that someone found stuck to the bottom of their kitchen junk drawer. I watch two people touch the shoes, then their noses, then the jawbreakers, and I quickly put my quarter back in my pocket. We don’t even finish our frame.

When I’m leaving, I see a license plate sparkling in the parking lot that reads RU-486. Right next to it is a right-to-life bumper sticker. On the same car. Come on, that can’t be accidental. Someone at the license bureau counter was being funny, I’m thinking. Maybe the owner of this car walked in with one of those grotesque partial birth abortion buttons, like a proud parent with a son posing in his filthy football uniform, and maybe the clerk just couldn’t resist assigning them this particular plate. I’m relieved when a car finally goes by with a plate that says nothing at all. It’s a concept car, futuristic-looking, something I don’t recognize. The color is even unidentifiable, even if I had my biggest box of crayons for reference. The plate reads LV-426. One letter shorter than usual, but that’s all. Other than that, it doesn’t mean shit.

As we head to my car, I overhear two men leaning against the building and talking about asses. Go figure. I’m hoping maybe it’s the end of the telephone game I started at work, and maybe my lecture had already crossed the globe to end up back here in this strip mall, containing unrecognizable slivers of my original back room confessions. It may very well have been, but hearing these guys talk, things seem to be less about “ass” than they are about each other. This should have been my first clue. I’d like to have argued with them, but I not worldly enough to be part of the debate when one of them confidently declares to everyone in earshot:

-I’ll tell you why it’s better. It’s better because the ass has more muscles than the pussy.

Jay hesitates with the car door half open, mouthing the words “what’s better?” at me in shocked, horrified silence. Myself, I take an extra long blink. But I still think about what that meant.

When they find out I’m moving out of town, they move up my last day so I won’t be there one extra morning by myself. Another day at a job I already quit? I know, I know. It’s like taking your ex to prom a week after you dumped her because she already bought the dress. Something I did twice. This will make my last day officially the third longest night of my life. And I think I told too many people that I was going to take a shit in the bubblegum machine because this last day seems very carefully monitored. The key to that machine isn’t where it’s normally kept, jangling on the back of the door to the supply closet, a spot that was also a great hiding place, by the way, when the bookstore got too busy to face. If you get in that closet, crouch down and turn off the light, keeping your hand resting on the doorknob, you can get real comfortable with that added tickle of fear in your stomach like you got when you were a kid and getting away with something. And if you feel that doorknob start to turn, you can quickly stand up, hit the light, and act like you were looking for paper towels to fill up the bathrooms and causally walk on out. Sometimes you’d get just five minutes hiding in there like that. But sometimes you’d get thirty. Makes you believe in fucking heaven.

It turns out I’m required to turn all my keys in early. Telling enough people that you’re going to drop a log in the bubblegum machine will turn a management staff to all-business just like that (snaps fingers). Problem is, now I feel like I have to shit in there or else it means I was all talk, no action. Unacceptable. What kind of legacy would that be? At least I already made a sign for my prank, out of a cornflakes box, of course:

“Hey, kids! The winning color today is brown! This is, however, dependent on what I ate after I made this sign and my current level of nutrition! Stay in school, kids!”

Obviously, the sign took three boxes. I stick it to the machine and look around. I won’t miss any of them. The two or three people I actually want to say goodbye to aren’t even working. Okay, there’s one good memory I have. There was this poor mouse that got stuck trying to force its head and paw out of a cracked light socket and must have gotten electrocuted a long time ago, unseen behind some shelves in the back room. I found him when we were rearranging to make room for the release of the kids’ newest “Larry Nutter” novel. I assume that if the name goes unrecognized when an alien unearths this memoir, that’s its own punishment, so I won’t bother to explain the plot. But the scene uncovered behind those shelves was so strange, this little skeletal mouse head sticking out of a crack in the plate over the prong holes, that it was a sight that made no sense to me at first glance. I actually stared at it for at least fifteen minutes before I even realized what I was seeing. Poor little bastard must have touched the blue wire. Apparently, it didn’t watch enough movies to know that you’re always supposed to cut the red wire instead. Or is it the other way around? I took a picture of this discovery with the camera the manager had bought and designated "Larry Nutter Pictures Only!" for the upcoming release party. And I got in a little bit of trouble when they developed them since apparently there is a magic mouse featured as a main character throughout half the books.

So, I pushed my luck by swiping the picture and sticking it next to the information desk with a note that said "Larry: The Final Chapter" and got sent home early for my troubles. The suspension felt like a vacation, but the punishment must have taken some wind out of my sails for pranks because the next one (turned out it was my last) was only a half-hearted rearrangement of all the little monogrammed notebooks at the cash registers so they’d read “BALLSACK.” No one even noticed. Or worse, they never said a word if they did. And you’d think people that worked at a bookstore would take the time to read. Eight letters. That was the problem. Too long to put on a car. Told you it was time to quit.

But being unemployed again feels friggin’ great. My sleep schedule instantly flips back to what it should be. Dreaming by 5:00ish. Up by the crack of 1:00ish. If this sleep routine always happens to humans naturally without alarm clocks then this must be how the body wants it to be. Why do we fight it? It’s not like I’m trying to stay awake all night and then sleeping in. It just happens. There must be thousands of years of evolution behind this biological clock, and who are we to monkey around with evolution?

Speaking of evolution (weren’t we?) when I drive by the bookstore the next night after they’ve closed, the lights are out inside, but I can see a row of shadows stacking all the chairs on the tables in the café. I pull a quick U-turn so my car won’t be mistaken for my car, and I see my headlights reflect off a long constellation of eyes. Do human eyeballs do that now? I knew it was only a matter of time before our eyes reacted like the animals I see watching me from the sides of the highways. I once read in a fifth grade science book that animals’ retinas only started to reflect when cars’ headlights first started sharing the roads with them. I wish I still had a copy of that textbook to prove this right now, but I heard it was pulled from schools for having an illustration of a caveman taming a dinosaur like a bucking bronco.

A large truck circles the lot behind me, and the glint of extra lights on the roof makes my heart jump. Then I realize that the extra lights are yellow, not red and blue. And the license plate reads, of course, IFYT-FYR. I grind my teeth and wish for a button on my dash marked “flamethrower,” maybe right under the one marked “oil slick,” for just these kinds of emergencies, when there’s no time to follow them to where the fires aren’t burning and shame them from a safe distance. I fumble with the switches and knobs on the dashboard anyway, satisfied with the clicks and hums of heaters and fan blades instead of weapons, closing my eyes to imagine the truck silently explode, an early sunrise in my rearview mirrors, something I hope to never see again. Mornings, I mean, like getting up early for work. Not exploding firefighters.

At the end of another burned-out strip mall, I find a car exactly the same as the one I’m driving, same color, make, model, and year. I creep closer with my headlights off so I don’t scare it. Is it mine? I can’t tell. These little green cars are everywhere. If I’d have known they were this popular I would never have bought mine or stolen this one. As I roll around behind it, I see a vanity plate that reads ICU-LOKG. This makes me angry and ashamed for a ridiculous second, reminding me of those girls’ T-shirts that read, “Hey, my eyes are up here!” all tight and stretched across swollen chests. Then the headlights flash on and it drives away fast even though I could have sworn the driver’s seat was empty.

And I see another car just like mine, exactly like this one. It’s parked across the street, in the middle of a vast, empty parking lot, directly under a fluttering insect-covered light like a star on stage for his curtain call. I drive close, get out, and approach cautiously, trying not to wake it up this time. I walk up to it from the back so that it can’t see me. Its license plate reads MAY-FLYS and I stop. This feels like a trap. I pull a loose key from my pocket and slide it into the slot. I know it will turn easily in the lock, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Doesn’t feel right. Too many coincidences with the mayflies and all. Even if it would have read STO-LEN, or screamed LOOKBEHINDYOU, I couldn’t be more suspicious than I am right now. I turn around quickly to leave, thinking maybe that should be the last key I try. I think that’s a good idea.

And no more bookstore jobs. Yeah. And no more video store jobs. Yeah! And no more music store jobs. Okay, maybe, like an exchange student once told me, “movies, books, and music is all America’s good for,” but I think I’ve done all I can for our nation, shitting in bubble gum machines and all. Or at least wanting to. And too many favorite things eventually make you irritated at something you love, like a hateful, childless third-grade teacher nearing retirement. Handle movies all day, and you’re less likely to watch one when you get home. And without movies, I always end up falling back on my shitty taste in music. And you don’t want to know what happens when I get desperate enough to slide back into books. You ever heard the phrase “Judge a book by its cover?” That’s all I know how to do. They say that a book cover with a monkey or anything purple is the most popular for a young, uneducated boy to purchase. Purple because that color was supposedly very hard to find in nature, the octopus ink that the wealthy used to stain their clothes was at one time considered a status symbol. No one’s sure about the monkey factor though, but God help me if I see a book with a monkey writing a letter with an octopus. I’d buy a hundred goddamn copies.

Driving again, I think back to the only job I ever really enjoyed. It was when I was around 9 and worked alongside a handful of other cousins for my grandpa’s excavating company. The job lasted an entire afternoon, three whole hours, and it was the most satisfying employment I’ve ever had in my life. Our mission was to scramble around high piles of dirt and mulch and pick out all the rocks. Eventually it regressed into a rockfight (or was it a cockfight?) with moments of “king of the hill” declarations and noogies and painful tickling assaults, but it was still sweaty and satisfying in a way I’ve never found since. That dirt smelled so good I almost wanted to eat it. And as crazy as that sounds, this condition is actually more common that you’d think, possibly even hereditary. Not long after that grandpa died, my grandma and I were sitting in her breezeway cracking the ends off green beans while cats did figure-eights around our ankles, and she told me a strange story.

It seems one day she got the urge to eat potatoes raw with the skins still on. Then she wanted to eat them before they were even washed. Then she wanted them as soon as they came out of the ground. Then with the dirt still on them and not even a casual wipe on the pant leg to knock the big chunks of soil off. Then, one day, she ate a handful of earth as casually as you’d eat an apple. After that, she said, she went to the doctor and he gave her some iron supplements and the cravings stopped. But when I think about that day on the hill, I honestly don’t think it had much to do with a lack of vitamins. Standing on a mountain of dank, black dirt, the thick, heavy smell of it filling your nose like the dark hair of a drunken smoker leaning in close to talk to you in a crowded bar, I was this close to diving into the pile headfirst and trying to chew my way to China. Fingers a half-inch apart.

The day after me and my cousins gathered those rocks, my grandpa fired all of us. Not because we were just about worthless and way too easily distracted, but because he’d just gotten himself a new piece of equipment. It was trackhoe (or maybe it’s called a backhoe), a huge, snorting yellow dinosaur with a long arm and a bucket with a huge opposable thumb. My cousins ran home scared when he first fired it up, but I watched that bucket bite holes into the ground all day, sometimes glancing at my hand, knowing the real reason I’d been replaced.

I decide to make a list of all my old cars.

Where they were, who I sold them to, where they crashed, why they crashed, who slept in the back seats with me, who slept in the front seats, and, most important, what color they were. You know, just in case my new car needs to know. I look for a car wash to hide in and do some thinking for this list. How long does an automatic car wash last? And do you really have to leave when the flashing sign tells you to? I try to think of one that’s nearby, since idling and contemplating your life in a roaring cocoon of water and suds sounds friggin’ phenomenal at this moment. It would be the ultimate dramatic shower for the hero in a movie. How often do you ever see a car lean up against the nozzle and let hot water run down its headlights while it stares dramatically at its front tires and wonders what it has become? Not enough.

I find a car wash, another old, do-it-yourself one. Out of order. I immediately forget about the list while I’m circling the bays and see an abandoned car rusting away inside one of them. I’m shocked to a windshield broken in the exact same place I last punched one, and I get a nervous squirt of acid reflux on the back of my tongue as a reward. I drive closer and see it’s covered in bird shit, missing a door, and filled with leaves, sticks, and the audible rustling of countless rodents. It’s an ‘88 Stallion and has the obligatory vanity plate to advertise this particular model. I wish I had the time or the cereal boxes to make a quick WLD-PNY3 plate to attach to it on the off chance that the Wild Pony himself rides by with his skinny arm out his window to see it. But I’m not as interested in the WO-HORSY on this tag as I am in the fact that it’s covered head to toe with bumper stickers advertising a sports team of some kind. This beloved team must have been the “Polar Bears” judging by the faded white monster giving the grinning thumb’s-up. But I have no idea what sport is it since the edge of the sticker that would have shown what kind of ball it had in its paws has long since worn away.

Last summer, all in the same afternoon, I saw a CAT-LUVR, DOG-LUVR, RAT-LUVR, and a RAT-EATR. Guess which one made me turn to the stranger next to me on the bus and ask, “Why? Seriously. Why?”

I think back to my short-lived, ill-conceived campaign of animal rights activism when me and Jay ran around crossing out any “S” or “the” on flags and windsocks and bumper stickers so that cars were actually declaring “I love Rottwiellers!” or “Shark Fan On Board!” instead of just rooting for a team. I laugh and hope a real polar bear tore up that upholstery and made a nest of that back seat, however unlikely, and maybe it’ll surprise the owners if they ever return.

I’ve always been annoyed by people who exaggerate the importance of their mailbox by saying with a sniffle, "it's a federal offense!" to mess with it. I'm so sick of hearing this, and not just because I was involved in some random mailbox destruction in my youth (Wednesday) but because people seem to think they're suddenly in the FBI when they heard that "federal offense" phrase about the mail one too many times and, holy shit, they just realized there’s a box on a pole by their driveway that might be protected by some strange government forcefield. It’s as if their mailbox is suddenly going to have a circle of men in black suits with earpieces trying to figure out exactly how I (I mean, “some kid”) climbed up the pole to shit inside and managed (just barely) to put up the flag with their foot at the same time. So, that being said, you can imagine how surprised I was at the guilt I felt for ripping the mailboxes for my apartment building off the wall this morning.

I go down to get my check, sighing because I’m running out of money fast and need to move out of this place by the end of the week. I open my mailbox (not a box, just a slot really) and reach inside hoping for my last paycheck, fully expecting a mousetrap. Instead, I find a check for 50 cents. Seriously. 50 cents. Someone from the post office actually took the time to write out a check for “50 cents and 0/100ths” and mailed it off with a 40 cent “America: Love it or Leave it!” stamp. Flashing back to all that arguing with the postal clerk that day makes this victory seem a little more like an insult. But I proudly endorse and display my check on the 'fridge with a note for my landlord to discover after I’ve left. It says “for damages” even though I probably could use that 50 cents as I regularly take my checking account right down to the fucking nub. It’s sad, but sometimes 50 cents is all that stands between a comfortable life with my movies, music, and books and having to eat them to stay alive.

So I go back down to the mailboxes, embrace them like I’m hugging my biggest grandma (my dad’s side of the family), and wrestle the entire thing off the wall. They come down easily, leaving behind baseball-sized holes in the plaster from the bolts. I set them down next to the radiator and tiptoe back to my apartment. I wish I had my own house, my own mailbox, so that I could kick it over or shit in it all I want, depending on what it gave me each morning, never having to worry about other people letters or dubious laws.

It turns out there’s another letter in my box, pushed up high where I couldn’t see it. No return address, but it’s from the girl me and Crazy Mark used to be with. It’s about my old car, of course. I’m disappointed the letter isn’t from my old car, but I read it anyway. It’s old, but the envelope had gotten wet, so there’s no telling when she sent it. According to the letter, Mark is still stalking her, still driving my old car. And she “just doesn’t know who it is anymore.” In the letter, she explains that the only thing she’s sure of is the car. That part of the letter actually makes a lot of sense. And it’s been so long since I’ve seen him, I wonder how much he looks like me these days, probably a lot like me if he hugs the steering too close, drives too slow, weaves and looks around too much, or parks behind those pine trees near her bedroom window like I used to. In the letter, she’s threatening me with a restraining order if I don’t quit cruising her job, her school, her bird bath. And she says I’ll have to pay for what my tires did to the yard. If I had time, if I wasn’t moving so soon, I’d explain to her that, to clear this up, she doesn’t need to talk to me, or Mark, but obviously to the car in question. I could call him up and shame him into stopping his stalking, but I won’t. And for all I know, this letter was sent before we got back together that last time. I deserve this letter. I always have. Here’s why. Wait, I already told about that.

* * *

Besides when I had to walk to work every day down those railroad tracks with that hamburger radio, there was one other time I was without a car. This was a strange summer, and I almost didn’t get through it with my identity intact.

It was the summer of the dragon by the dumpster.

Remember when I said back at the beginning of this story that I resisted the urge to scream, “Turn off the water!” like, quote, “a mental patient?” Well, as fond as I am of that phrase, this time I was talking about an actual mental patient.

I thought I’d gotten used to a life of temperature changes in the shower by the time I hit college. It was simply an unpleasant, mildly annoying fact of life. Someone could be brushing their teeth six blocks away and it might affect you, but you couldn’t really blame anyone. It’s kind of like the weather. You can’t get too angry when the temperature outside drops, right? If the rain gets warm or cold? I always try to keep this in mind when the water in the shower changes. I try so hard.

I was living in a tiny, converted-office apartment with a girlfriend. Can’t remember her name, almost remember her car. Barely her color. And next door was another Crazy Mark. Even though his real name was Mike Miller, I called him “Crazy Mark II” because they’re everywhere. And “Crazy Mark II” sounded better, “Crazy Mark Too” even better, and I was too used to the way my friend’s name sounded to stop. I’d recently gotten fired from some bush-league carpet cleaning business/chop shop garage and couldn’t afford to get my car fixed anytime soon. Then I dropped out of college. I remember nothing about that college except seeing a man eat a phone, and very little about that car except it was stick-shift. And it was orange. And without a job or transportation, me and the apartment began to merge. I didn’t do anything for days at a time, barely grunting hello and goodbye to the girl I was sharing those days with. All I could tell you about her is she was white and didn’t have any favorite things.

So, I was in the shower one morning and could hear my neighbor through our ridiculously thin walls fumbling around in his tub, chasing the soap or a toy boat or a girl scout or something. Then he bellowed so loud I thought he was standing there under the spray with me.

-Turn off the water!

I must have been in shock because I did exactly what I was told before I could stop myself. Then I toweled off and spent the rest of the day with my ear to the wall, listening for any more instructions. I didn’t tell my roommate, but confused her when I got up early the next morning to see her off. Suddenly, I had a mission. I waited until I heard my neighbor’s shower running and quickly turned on my own hot water. Right on cue:

-Turn off the water!

I turned it off. Then turned it on again.

-Turn off the water!

Turned it on...

-Turn off...

...then off again real quick.

-...the water!

Then on again. Then I experimented with different ratios of hot and cold. It didn’t matter. It all made him furious. I smiled and listened while this monster crashed and banged his way through the most frustrating shower of his life, then went on with my day of doing nothing. The next morning I was up before the crack of noon. “Have a good day at work, hon!” Smooch.

-Turn off the water!

I was having fun with this new routine until I noticed something that was happening on my girlfriend’s way out the door. Whenever she would leave, I would hear the neighbor stumble across his apartment, open his door, then quickly close it. When she got home, I asked her if someone was walking out with her every morning, maybe leaving for work when she did? She sighed and looked down at the ground.

-Well, I didn’t want to get you all upset, but the neighbor peeks his head out and watches me walk down the hall.

I dropped whatever I was holding. I wish it had been a drink for dramatic effect. Or maybe a basketball so I could keep dropping it over and over.

-Are you fucking kidding me?! Wait, what does he look like?

I was protective of her, but understandably curious about this voice I’d been tormenting.

-I don’t know. I just saw this big mop of curly hair, then he was gone.

-No shit. No. Shit.

The next morning. “Good day, baby.” Big smooch. Then I was peeking out the door watching her walk down the hall, ass shaking like she’s all business, headed out to bring home the bacon to her deadbeat boyfriend. And after she was about halfway to the stairs, I heard bumbling footsteps and saw that mop of curls framing the back of some large man’s cranium, peering out to watch her with me. I shouted:

-Hey!

Both of them turned around, but his door slammed before I could see his eyes. I smiled and yelled to her surprised face.

-Hey, baby, could you grab some more soap on the way home?

That night, we shared theories about him and wondered how he could afford to stay home all day without a job or school or anything. We got so excited that we were happy for about 48 hours before I started sulking again about my employment situation and ruined both our moods. And the next morning in the shower, the booming voice confused me with a question instead:

-Why aren’t you in class?!

I yelled back through the wall:

-Fuck do you care?! Then:

-If I was in class, who would turn off the water, you fuckin’ freak!

I heard him mumbling to himself and stomping around, and eventually I pounded on the wall to stop his tantrum.

I eagerly told my girlfriend all about it when she got home. And we were up all night with brand-new theories, so late, in fact, that she had no time to take a shower before work the next day. Her sudden change of schedule right after mine must have thrown my neighbor way off because his head was nowhere to be seen when I watched her walk down the hall. However, I did notice an envelope peeking out from under his door. My curiosity overwhelmed me and shirtless and shoeless, I tip-toed down to peek at it. It wasn’t sealed, and inside was a note from his caseworker (!) saying that she’d be around next week to make sure he “got his groceries okay.” The letterhead on top read “Maumee Mental Health Board.” And this is where I discovered his name, Mike M. Miller.

This new information I didn’t tell my girlfriend since I didn’t want to scare her with all those alarming “M’s” in the same letter, and, even more important, I didn’t want her to insist that we move. She just assumed I started calling him Crazy Mark because of that other guy I used to know.

Again, I’m in the shower, and now we were having almost entire conversations.

-Turn off the water!

-It is off!

-Why aren’t you in class?!

-I am in class!

-Why aren’t you at work?!

-This is where I work.

-Leave me alone!

-You started it.

-Turn off the water!

-Turn off the weather!

That night, the landlord called. Before he could speak, I was all over him.

-What’s going on with you housing mental patients here? Do you get a discount? You realize that crazy fucker stares at my girlfriend every day, right? How would you like me to bring him over to live in your goddamn garage instead?

The landlord waited for me to finish, then explained that he’d been receiving complaints about me, not Mr. Miller, “Mr. M. M. Miller,” I corrected him, and no amount of explaining could convince him that I wasn’t the one yelling about water, weather, and class schedules every morning. “In fact,” he told me, “Your neighbors have started a petition to get you evicted.”

At 3:05 p.m., around the time I’d be running in late to work or my last class of the day, my neighbor left to apparently try to go “get those groceries okay.” I’d never seen him out in the wild, so I was dressed and running out my door right behind him. I almost wore a suit and tie I was so goddamn excited. But it was an unremarkable trip, and for some reason his appearance was even harder to remember in the sunlight. Except for the curly rats nest of hair, I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a crowd of showering, babbling mental patients. However, things got real interesting at the end of our walk. When we turned the corner around our apartment building, he yelped in fear, dumped half his food, and bolted up the stairs. Half hour later, his caseworker stopped by, and I listened with a glass to the wall. Her voice was so smooth and soothing, I wanted her to work on me next. Told you it was a “she.”

-Shhh. There is no dragon, Mike.

-There’s a dragon by the dumpster. I saw it.

His voice was high and girlish when he talked to her, not the guttural trumpeting I got through my shower wall every day. He sounded small.

-There’s nothing out there, remember?

-There’s a dragon there right now, I swear!

What the hell was he talking about? I went back out to take a look. Next to the dumpster was a rolled-up mattress wrapped in black garbage bags and rope. Next to it was a wet pile of moldy pickles and the shattered remains of a jar. This must be the dragon, I decided. Was the nutjob trying to feed it pickles? Once I really looked around, it was clear it wasn’t the first time he’d dumped his groceries. He’d been scared so many times that there was enough combinations of meats and vegetables out there to make a week’s worth of tacos, the healthiest of fast foods, because, according to the sombrero-wearing lizard in its popular commercial, “Tacos gots all five food groups!” I told my girlfriend about all of this, and she finally started getting scared, but for all the wrong reasons.

-You followed him?

-Yeah.

-Why?

-I was looking for a job anyway.

That was the last time I got to lie to her.

The next day, my neighbor went to get more groceries to feed his monster, so I followed him again. When we got to the dumpster, I screamed:

-Look out, Mark! Mattress dragons!

He dumped his milk and orange juice and pickles again and ran up the steps to his room, slipping to his knees twice on the way, screeching over his shoulder in his little voice:

-My name’s not Mark!

Crazy fucker, I thought. How does he even know what his name is?

The next day, I followed him again. My family would say we were in love, say me and Wild Pony broke up. He didn’t get groceries anymore though. The caseworker would leave them in front of his door, either sick of the argument or finally acknowledging the very real dangers of dragons by dumpsters. His walk was all straight lines, purposeful, like he was working up the courage to go to a grocery store. But mostly we just walked around the block three or four times. He never noticed me following him either, and any classmates that recognized me and said “hello” never seemed to see him.

The next day he didn’t walk toward the center of town. Instead we wove our way around miles of residential houses, sometimes taking short cuts through back yards and bushes. The only time I saw him show any emotion is when he flinched and started running when a delivery truck passed by with a TACO-HELL license plate. His wandering went on for weeks. Then, one Sunday afternoon, my girlfriend showed me the newspaper and announced she was moving out. There was a sketch on the front page that she was convinced was me. Under the drawing was a fear-mongering, poorly-written article about a man peeping in windows all around campus. I told her that I was only following our neighbor, and maybe they did see him in their yards, but only remembered me instead. Or a combination of the two of us? Maybe this is why the sketch resembled me so closely?

She didn’t buy anything I was selling.

Years and years later, I moved into an efficiency apartment by myself and, maybe because of my mental patient neighbor’s constant pep talks and reassurance, I set about finishing that last class I’d dropped. It was an art class, the female body, and the teacher kept trying in vain to convince me to start my sketches with the line down a woman’s back, even if she was facing forward. I, however, always started at the eyes, and my proportions suffered, my creatures ending up confused, sad mutations that clearly grew up near reactors and power lines. Like a child’s drawing of a five-pointed star when they’re afraid to cross over their own lines with that simple unbroken trail, all five points hung and curled like limp swastikas. I ended up passing and graduating, barely, and felt with one more class, I might have finally understood what that line down the back meant.

During this time, I noticed a classmate opening and closing the trunk of his car every day, caught in some helpless, hopeless, obsessive compulsive loop. I started to imitate him, parking right next to him whenever I can and slamming my trunk, too, hoping he’d notice and resist doing it so much. Instead, the other classmates started looking at me more and more suspiciously until the teacher cautiously approached me one night to finally ask what I was doing. Halfway through my explanation, she stopped me and said:

-Why are you talking about yourself?

I was never able to sell her any of it either.

Here in my hometown, my uncle came up with the idea of dialing license numbers so that you could talk to any car in front, behind, or alongside you on the highway. As long as you could see the plate, you could punch in the combination of letters or numbers and be instantly connected to another driver’s cellular phone, more like calling the car than the driver, actually. It seemed like a match made in heaven as most phone numbers and most plates have seven characters or digits. My uncle told my mom he got the idea from an orientation video they showed him at his new job for the license bureau. It was a quick history of license plates and how, before there were so many cars on the road, the identification tag was just a short series of letters, almost always a word that could be easily remembered.

Sort of like the first phone numbers, he exclaimed, light bulb flashing over his head. Some cars even had a name, like a pet, and my uncle decided that was probably why old cars in movies were in such good condition, as you were more likely to take care of a machine if you thought of it as something with a name instead of a number. You might even be inclined to give a neighbor’s car an affectionate pat on the hood on the way by, maybe tell them damn kids to stop throwing that football over it, maybe even stop to wipe of a patch of bird shit if you had a handy white towel dangling from your back pocket. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I believed the only reason old cars were so shiny in the movies was because those were actually toys lining those streets. One day, all cars would end up rusting out in garages or abandoned car washes in spite of cute names or easy-to-remember numbers.

However, my uncle thought it would be a great idea and catch on fast, just like that nutty text messaging, and several of the cellular companies agreed with him. But similar to texting, it turned out to be the absolute worst of all worlds and not only caused a driver’s least healthy instincts to surface, it also gave them a convenient voice. Everyone discovered that the reason highways aren’t piled high with random murder and wreckage is because our hatred for every perceived insult (cutting you off, driving too slow, driving too fast, driving too wrong, etc.) was usually handled harmlessly with a quick glare or obscene gesture. Except for the off chance that two deaf people would have a clash of complex ideas and heated debate on the turnpike, throwing page after page of angry sign language out their windows, drivers had no actual voice expect for a fast “Fuck you” then “Fuck you, too!” Dialing the license plate in front of you and instantly getting that car on the line changed all of that.

In the first week my uncle’s brainstorm was activated, road rage incidents multiplied by a thousand. A law was passed that said you couldn’t even talk on your phone anymore while driving, let alone call another car. This law was quickly passed in other states, too, under the assumption that phones had always been a dangerous distraction in a car, like listening to headphones or doing a crossword puzzle or thumb wrestling, but few people know the real reason for that law. It is because a phone was seen as more like a weapon during that particular Spring in our town.

Even now, if a cop around here sees someone answer a phone too fast, even standing next to a parked vehicle, they might find themselves in a quick draw situation with a state trooper. Or, if you brought the phone up to your head too quickly, you could be tackled to thwart a possible suicide attempt.

To this day, some people are still suggesting more restrictions. There’s talk of the law against tinted windows being repealed, and people are encouraged to have as many suction-cup teddy bears clinging to their back windshields as possible to distract any eyes from locking on to each other at dangerous speeds, to encourage fuzzy, happy thoughts on the road. Only half-jokingly, a documentary on prostitution was shown at a town hall meeting where college students suggested we adopt a pimp’s blanket policy of “no reckless eyeballing” for his stable of women. And while a citizen’s arrest might never be serious as a young girl being put under the notorious “pimp arrest,” both punishments turned out to be surprisingly similar when pranksters posted them side-by-side on the door of the town hall. The rules were just listed in a slightly different order:

“Look down at your feet, your hands, or the road at all times. And do not make eye contact unless there is a car coming right at you.”

* * *

I go back to the grocery store to look for my car again, and I find a yellow Cavalry instead. It’s definitely not mine, old and dying, maybe dead already, hopelessly parked next to row of abandoned gas pumps with their hoses rattling loose in the hot breeze. The license plate reads TOP-FULE. Never mind the shit state of this vehicle, I just can’t understand why they didn’t spell it right. It would require the same letters to spell this boast correctly. I wish I had enough cereal boxes to attach to its bumper to spell out, “Stealing fuel could cost you your grammar. Or your thumb.” Yeah, that’s a lot of cereal this week. A second glance reveals that the plate actually read TOP-FOOL instead.

I keep looking for my car, and it’s nowhere to be found. If someone took it, it would make perfect sense, as clearly keys really don’t mean shit. Any key works anywhere. I’ve already proven that. Maybe I should take my theory a step further and see if any car key will open any house, or any house key will actually start a helicopter or any key to a diary will bring roadkill back to life. It reminds me of another time I was without a car (okay, busted, that’s more than three times, but I swear it’s less that a hundred) and I went shopping for a new vehicle with my stepdad. Everything I looked at, he would frown, exhale deeply, and say, “Aren’t you too old for that? Don’t you want a car that is big enough for a man?” By the time he was done with me, I was ready to ask the salesman if they had a goddamn bulldozer I could lease. Maybe a backhoe instead? Or was it called a trackhoe? One with big robot thumb on the bucket? Hey, where’s that salesman going? Can I please lease a fucking blimp? Where’s the goddamn submarines parked, sir?

Then I think I see another car I used to own at the far end of the lot. A brown ‘99 Skyline convertible. Can’t be sure though. I run over with a random key, but it doesn’t work at all, won’t go in even three teeth deep. I throw it over my shoulder and smash the driver’s side window with my elbow. I start to reach in to open the door when an old couple suddenly runs towards me, dropping armloads of groceries to the asphalt. I forget about the window, excited and wanting to talk about my car and what they think of it. But judging by the way they fumble with their phones and all the screaming, I quickly deduce they’re scared of something. I don’t understand it. My elbow’s barely bleeding. And you’d think they’d remember me from when I sold them that car three winters ago, or maybe that time two summers ago when I ran up at a red light and knocked on their door to remind them that they were sitting inside something that I once loved. Come to think of it, they had the same strange looks on their faces back then. I thought I was knocking on someone’s front door just to say “hello,” but the way they fumbled with the locks and ducked down, down, down that day, you’d have thought I was knocking on their heads instead.

I reach into my pocket for a key, feeling the teeth with my thumb, suddenly understanding how perfect it could fit into someone’s ear.

::: david - 5:58 PM [+] :::
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