It wasn’t gross.
But calming and quiet to see.
I could appreciate it.
I took the keys out of the hydraulic lift and returned them to my co-worker.
“Here you go champ,” I said.
Then I went to pinch one of his nipples.
He backed away.
“Look out champ,” I said.
He covered both his nipples with his hands, backing up a little.
“Good God,” he said. “Calm down.”
I imagined his nipple between my top and bottom front teeth and then me ripping it off.
Felt good.
Calming and quiet to see, his holed-out nipple bleeding into my mouth.
“What do you think you’re going to get for lunch, man,” he said, tucking in a part of his shirt that’d come out during my attempt to pinch his nipples.
There were purple stretchmarks on his stomach.
“Well,” I said. “I suppose, I’ll be getting whatever the fuck I want.”
“Certified,” he said, miming a pump-shotgun motion then shooting it at me. “Boosh,” he said, and stepped back a little from the imaginary recoil.
I touched my stomach with both hands then held both hands up and looked at them and said, “Fucking certified.”
And we both laughed some fake laughing for each other.
Then walked in different directions to different stock rooms to keep working on whatever we were supposed to be doing.
I thought about a wooden palette dropping on my head.
And how maybe it would be worse for the palette to fall from only a few inches up, rather than many many feet.
Because then you would really feel it.
Maybe.
Maybe I hadn’t ever felt anything.
Maybe the turtle won the race because he didn’t start, he just walked away.
Fucking certified.
After work I went across the street to a Chinese take-out restaurant.
It was called ‘The Chinese Connection.’
Inside it smelled like burnt oil.
A Chinese man with mild gigantism worked the counter.
“What I get you,” he said, combing his bangs to the side with his fingers.
I ordered fried rice.
He raised both his hands and said, “No rice any kind anymore.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
Then I realized the restaurant was going to close soon.
I ordered something else.
“Ok, wait little bit,” he said, and went back to the kitchen.
I stood at the counter and noticed a small fountain by the wall, where water dripped down from a top rung onto a lower one, then onto another lower one and then somehow back up to the top, recycling.
Looking at it felt really nice.
The employee came back and added up the price on the register. “Nine dollar. Be ready ten minute.”
I paid.
I said, “Where did you get this fountain, it’s nice.”
My elbows were on the counter and I was on my toes, lifting myself up and down.
Without looking up, he nodded towards across the street at the store where I just started working, and said, “Over there, twelve dollar.”
I said, “Oh, nice.”
I thought about telling him how I work there, but then it didn’t seem to be important.
It went from immediately seeming important, to definitely not.
He walked back into the kitchen area.
The fountain kept going.
I watched, waiting for my order.
It was so nice to watch and hear the fountain.
A very tiny sound.
I folded my arms on the counter and put my head down and started to laugh.
I thought — Nobody knows I’m here except me and the guy who took my order.
Walking home with my food, I passed a gradeschool.
There was a light still on in one of the rooms.
I walked up to look.
The room was empty.
On the chalkboard there were pictures of everyone in the class.
Each picture was inside a construction paper balloon.
I stood by the window looking in, but I couldn’t read any of the names beneath the pictures.
I tried to read the names but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t read the names.
MOONSHINE
I drank moonshine once.
I was at a party where I barely knew anyone.
At some point, the guy who lived at the house came up to me and some other people and said, “Hey, would you be down to drink some moonshine. I have some.”
The other people around me said no and walked away to do something else.
But I said yeah.
The guy said, “Yeah? Here, hold my beer.”
He went to hand his beer to me and then took it back.
“Wait, why’m I giving you this.”
He looked confused for a second, then went to set the beer on the carpet.
He stood back up and said, “Fuck.”
He walked away.
He came back with an unlabelled plastic bottle.
He held it up to the light and looked at it.
He said, “Shit’s actually eating through the bottle in some places.” Then he looked at me and said, “I got it from this guy at my work. His dad makes it. It’s not bad, taste-wise.”
We went outside onto the deck.
There was a guy and a girl kissing on the deck.
I’d kissed the same girl earlier when she sat on the couch where I’d fallen asleep for a little bit.
Me and the guy went into the yard.
We stood behind a tall bush and he lit a cigarette.
It was threatening to get light out.
The house was across from a library.
People who looked like employees started pulling up in their cars.
The guy uncapped the moonshine and drank some.
He closed his eyes and shivered and exhaled and it felt hot in my face.
I drank a half-mouthful and immediately saw double.
The library, the yard, a fence and some cars, all doubled.
I talked to the guy a little bit about something I didn’t know anything about probably, then I think we each agreed to get punched in the face by the other.
Then we went back into the house, where the only people left were sleeping or going to sleep.
I tried to sleep on the same couch I’d slept on earlier.
No one had taken it.
Going to sleep at parties was something me and my friend Rabb invented.
You just walk through a big crowd of people and lay down somewhere and try to sleep.
I was still seeing double, and when I lay on the couch, I noticed the girl I’d kissed earlier was sleeping on the floor.
I thought I’d be able to sleep right away.
But I just lay there, feeling weightlessness and pinned-downedness at the same time.
Dreams happened where I was basically still awake, watching a waving yellow color.
At some point, the girl on the floor moved up onto the couch with me.
We kissed each other for a while and when she felt my dick was hard, she undid her pants and mine and rubbed her bare ass on my bare dick until I ejaculated.
We didn’t have a condom and she wouldn’t let me without a condom.
I ejaculated hard, breathing out into the area between her breasts, which smelled good enough to remind me I was garbage.
Later I woke up with my pants stuck to me and my jaw swollen.
Probably around noon.
People were talking in the kitchen.
It was the girl who rubbed her ass on my dick and the guy who owned the house and someone else I didn’t recognize.
We all went out onto the deck and stared into the brightness, not really talking.
We drank some more moonshine and I ran around the backyard holding a bedsheet around my neck like a cape.
I kept falling.
Everyone was laughing.
Neighbors
This afternoon I was lying on a sleeping bag on the floor of my room, waking up and trying to stay awake.