Youth.
How have you lasted.
The best days put together wouldn’t even amount to a week.
Your girlfriend comes back into the room, drying her chest off with a t-shirt you keep in the bathroom when there’re no towels.
The t-shirt is yellow and says “Antigua” on it and people always ask how you liked Antigua but you always have to say, “I haven’t been there.”
“Are you hungry,” she says, pinching her nose clear of some water.
“Yeah.”
“Want to go and maybe get some food.”
“Yeah fine.”
“Are you all right.”
“I’m fine,” you say.
Then there’s silence for a while.
Where it becomes clear the silence always says it better.
She says, “Oh, you got your work clothes on again. Ha, nice.”
You look at your shirt and touch your nametag. “Ha, yeah.”
You leave the room together.
You look back into the apartment for some reason while shutting and locking the door.
Maybe it will be completely filled with bricks when we get back and we won’t be able to get back in — you think.
In the back stairway to the alley, there’s a single piece of bread in an individual package.
The bread is moldy.
A single piece of moldy bread in a plastic package, lying on the staircase.
“Is that just one piece of fucking bread,” your girlfriend says, jumping down the last few stairs.
You say, “Yeah I think so. I’ve never seen that.”
She says, “Jump the rest of the stairs. Let’s see that.”
There are seven stairs left.
“I’ll do four,” you say.
“Five.”
“I’ll do four.”
“That one time you did seven, but then you’ve never tried seven again.”
“I can’t do seven ever again.”
“Is it because it was too amazing.”
“Yes. No it’s because of the broken ankle I got later on, trying a different jump.”
You walk down three steps and successfully jump the last four.
Outside, it’s snowing a little.
And farther away, there’s thunder and lightning.
About once a year Chicago gets a lightning/snow-storm.
You like it.
It reminds you you’re young and still have a lot of time to waste.
A few blocks away you get chicken from a fastfood place.
After the fastfood employee gives you the order, she follows you and your girlfriend outside, lighting a cigarette on the way out.
You watch the weather with each other, just outside the restaurant.
Thunder and fog-dulled lightning.
After some thunder, the fastfood employee exhales smoke and says, “The fuck kind of crazy-ass weather is this we be having.”
“It’s crazy,” you say. “It’s fucking crazy is what it is.”
The fastfood employee laughs. “Ok?”
Your girlfriend is looking in the bag.
“Really hope there’s napkins in here,” she says. “Oh what — no napkins? Wait, oh, here we go.” She looks up. “There’s napkins.”
The fastfood employee nods and says, “Mmm hmm” as she takes a pull of the cigarette. She breathes in and exhales slowly. “I put plenty of napkins in there now,” she says. “People always ‘bout them napkins. S’all I hear in this motherfucker, napkins, napkins. More napkins.”
“Thanks for the napkins,” you say.
“Yeah thanks, it’s good,” says your girlfriend.
The fastfood employee nods, taking a pull on her cigarette and looking at the sky.
You and your girlfriend walk to another fastfood place nearby and sit on a yellow parking brick, eating the chicken.
Food from one fastfood restaurant, in the parking lot of a different fastfood place.
Your girlfriend says, “What if they hire someone to check the parking lot to make sure this isn’t happening. Are we going to get in trouble. Are you ready to die for me.”
“Can I have like two or three napkins, please.”
Sitting on the yellow parking brick, you think about accidentally discovering a secret society of people who buy fastfood from one place and eat it at another place.
The snow is stopping a little, and the thunder and lightning are low.
And guess what, you hate your life but not yourself.
Later at the apartment your girlfriend looks at her laptop computer while you lie in bed.
You’re sweating for some reason.
When your girlfriend is done with the computer you check your email.
There is one email.
It’s from a magazine you sent some writing to.
“Hi,
Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately I’ve decided to pass on your story. The first line was very intriguing, but the piece ultimately turned into a very confusing, unsettling mix of adult content, violence, childishness, and innocence. I found it a little difficult to read.
Best wishes,
(xxxxxxxxxx)”
You close the computer and put it on the floor.
Your girlfriend takes off her clothes.
In her bra and underwear, she starts to handle your dick then she puts it in her mouth and after a little while you orgasm on her chest in three big shots.
You feel better.
You put your hand on her shoulder and say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I started laughing now and said, ‘Finally, the evil is gone!’”
She laughs and gets on the bed with you.
Your dick drips, getting soft.
The hair around her ears is curly and you feel ugly.
And you experience a strong desire to be sitting at a desk in an empty schoolroom in the middle of the night.
And an equally strong desire to be on top of Mount Everest throwing rocks down at people climbing up.
Your girlfriend is rubbing some of the stubble on her crotch.
“Hey, do you think you’d want to kiss it, like just for a while,” she says. She makes a punching motion at your face and a clicking sound with her teeth. “Eh?”
“You know I do,” you say, and smile insanely, raising your eyebrows, unblinking.
She leans back on her elbows and opens her legs a little.
She takes her underwear off, and there’s a small cord of wetness that expands and snaps, connecting her skin to the underwear.
It finishes off what’s left of your weak, emotionless self.
It slashes the throat of that self, with the edge of the same shovel it uses to bury it before it has fully died.
She spreads her shaved crotch open a little.
You put your hands on the back of her thighs and push them back.
There are pieces of toilet paper stuck to her asshole.
You lick and kiss between her legs.
She makes a lot of noise and clenches up and gets red in the face.
But no, there’s no romance.
You’ve never romanced anything.
It ends like it always ends.
Where you’re both asleep.
Where you dream about not being able to walk well, yet still having to walk across a large field filled with hills.
Alone and lame, trying to walk across a large hilly field for some unknown reason.
It’s very hard to balance and each step feels endless.
You only have dreams now that make you feel shitty and wasted when waking up.
The kind that seem to change who you are for a few hours.
The next morning you wake up alone.
Your girlfriend is in the bathroom.
You go down the hall and find your boots.
Putting on your boots by the doorway, you imagine Michael Jordan — but a Michael Jordan that has like, neon-blue skin and no eyes.
The blue, eyeless Michael Jordan has your girlfriend’s voice, and says, “You’re my best friend, I hope you know that.”