Sour Cream yells, “Freak Teeth!” over his shoulder and him and Freak Teeth hit each other — walking away with an empty cart between them, going to get more boxes.
More boxes.
On your last break, you sit in the food court area of the store.
There’s an old couple arguing.
They look homeless.
The man has a shopping cart full of garbage.
He’s very skinny and bald, like he has cancer.
You watch him be mean to the woman.
He’s talking in a hushed, but mean way.
He keeps saying, “I told you not to fucking say that word.”
The woman eventually gets up and walks away and the look on her face is very very sad.
The look on her face is like, “Well, ok” and she looks like she’s trying not to cry.
You think about it the rest of your shift and it makes you feel awful, like doing anything feels stupid when someone is as badly hurt as that woman.
You continue thinking about it on the walk home, after work.
You start panicking.
And it transitions to thinking about getting your nose bitten off by someone.
Like, someone biting off all the cartilage and skin.
You can’t stop thinking about it.
The worst part would be the aftermath, just sitting there with a hole in your face, and the air making it hurt and how nothing could be done until you got to the hospital.
So many things I’m not ready for — you think.
When you turn the corner to your apartment building, you see one of the area’s more recognizable crackheads — the guy who wears the big white shirt with a cartoon man on the front, speech-bubble saying “Beer” and then the same cartoon on the back saying, “Sex.”
The crackhead is in the street, talking to what looks like two businessmen going to the airport.
He’s talking fast and using his hands a lot.
The businessmen listen intently as the crackhead says a few things then goes into the middle of the street.
The crackhead starts trying to get a taxi for them, as if he knows the only correct method.
You’ve also seen him sell out-of-date train schedules, or half-used subway cards, or bikes, or whatever else.
Last time you saw him he was selling a deflated football.
He kept yelling, “Go long” and standing back to imitate a throwing motion to other people on the street. He made the Heisman trophy pose a few times too, holding the deflated football.
The crackhead loads the last piece of luggage for the businessmen.
He makes a securing motion before shutting the taxi trunk.
The businessmen look pleased.
Or eager to not be around him.
They give the crackhead some money.
He checks both sides of traffic and walks across the street, putting the money in his pants pocket.
The taxi drives away, towards the airport.
And your corner is quiet again.
Fun
This afternoon you fuck your girlfriend right after you both wake up.
It’s snowing/raining in Chicago.
And tomorrow you both move out, to different places.
With barely any kissing or touching, you take off your clothes, then hers, and she holds your ass and you’re fucking her as hard as you can.
You take her hands off your ass and hold her down by the wrists.
You move your hips side to side while going in and out of her.
You’re so hard it hurts.
But you don’t feel anything.
It’s not enjoyable, it’s just happening.
You get off of her and sit up while she kneels, sucks on your dick.
For some reason this makes you think about a crime you recently heard about, where a guy kept his son in a dog cage for years, only taking him out to beat him.
You remember that the news reporter said the kid finally starved and then the dad buried the remains in concrete.
Your girlfriend gets on top of you.
She lowers her ass on your hard dick.
You’re all the way inside her while she goes forward and backward.
Her face gets extremely red.
Then she’s yelling.
She keeps yelling, “Shit shit.”
Someone pounds on the ceiling.
Your girlfriend keeps yelling.
You’re too sad to orgasm though.
But also too (something-else) to get un-hard.
You just don’t care.
Instead of orgasming, your dick goes soft at a slow rate.
It feels very strange — like you’re really hungry, sad, and needless all at the same time.
It feels better than orgasming.
You pull out.
You both sit naked on the tile floor, to cool off and rest.
You take a blanket off the bed and wrap it around yourself like a tepee and she does it too.
Brushing crumbs off your asses and legs and feet.
It smells bad in the room.
This is happening — you think.
Comatose, you stare at your smelly dick.
She reaches behind her, grabs her big corduroy purse.
“I brought Guess Who. You want to play Guess Who,” she says, taking things out of her purse.
“I’ll play one game.”
“I’ll play one game,” she says, doing an exaggerated impression of you.
“Because when you lose you just want to keep playing until you win. It’s fucking terrible. Like what happened with Battleship.”
“Because I always grouped my ships together?”
“Yeah.”
She nods.
“Did you like playing Battleship with me though,” she says.
“Sometimes, yes.”
She takes all the pieces to a boardgame out of her purse.
You think about how there really seems to be only one good memory about your relationship.
It was the night someone broke into the apartment through the sliding glass door while you were out, and then stole a bunch of shit and one of the only things left was the tv with the vcr built into it.
Instead of being upset all night, you and her bought five 40 oz. King Cobras and a lot of 25 cent bags of chips and stayed up all night getting drunk and watching television and then when it was light outside you had quick, meaningful sex and fell asleep.
It was good.
It was the only good thing.
“Here you go,” she says, handing you some pieces to the game.
The game consists of two small plastic boards — one for each player — with a few rows of smaller plastic holders that hold cartoon pictures of people, their names printed beneath.
To start the game, each person playing takes a card from a deck and places it at the front of their board.
The goal is to guess who the other person is by asking questions, and eliminating people on the board.
You eliminate people from your board by lowering their picture in the plastic holder, getting closer to knowing the right person.
And after the first few guesses, she’s already winning.
She’s already winning because of a brave guess about the person’s haircolor.
And she opens her blanket tepee a little, clicking down plastic holders on her board.
For what seems like a ridiculous amount of time, you can’t remember her name — just feeling comatose, and like, idly handling your dick and balls.
Like a baboon.
American baboon, handling his dick.
Why can’t I remember her name — you think.
The first name you think is: Maria Consuela Hernandez.
“What if your name was Maria Consuela Hernandez,” you say.
“I like that name,” she says.
“I do too.”
“Fuck, I’m winning,” she says. “Took a big risk with that hair question, but now — ssss — I’m destroying you.”
You cup your hand around your mouth and look up and say, “Dee-stroy-duh.”
She says, “Dude you’re getting destroyed. I’m running this fucking board. And you’re just over there eating dicks all day.”