Jesus Christ, oh Lord on high, oh King of Kings, spare me this woman before I smite her ass. Spare me her shitty taste in food, if you even wanna call it that.
While I chew on the little baby fingers, I close my eyes and try to remember the last time I had a juicy hot dog that didn’t make me want to vomit. I keep thinkin’ that maybe I can trick myself (all of it up inside my mind) into thinking that this is a real tasty hot dog, and that I don’t want to cut this chick’s head off real slowly, and with a toenail clipper.
Yep, I remember my last hot dog. It’s been awhile.
I remember Kyle, wearing his stupid red and white paper hat, fishin’ out chili on to a dog.
Frannie’s Franks.
That’s what he called his hot dog cart. I never knew where he got the name, but he gave me a job when I was first tryin’ hard to settle in and settle up. Matter a’ fact, it was the last time I had me a job. Was about two years back, maybe three, when I took to roamin’ in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, more in the south than I am these days. I was pickin’ cans at the landfill when I seen this fella rooting around for scrap metal. He’s dressed in a striped up suit, whistlin’ to himself like he’s one of those seven fuckin’ elves that lives with that pale princess bitch in the woods.
We get to talkin’ and I find out he’s real excited about hot dogs. “Christ on a bike… who the hell isn’t?” I said to him. So Kyle said that he just opened up a hot dog stand and he needs somebody to watch it for him, just for four or five hours a day while he’s at his day job. I didn’t have much else going on—the cheap fucks at the State Offices in Rhode Island wouldn’t give me any money for my horrible affliction from the big War. They kept askin’ me which war it was, and I said that I fought in the greatest war of all—the battle between the wanderin’ man and the suburban suck-rod. They didn’t find much of a laugh in that, so I left brown logs all over the employee parking lot. It was only like three or four of them, but I’d been holding them in my gut for a few days. I can be a real spiteful shit like that. We wanderin’ men get constipated from not havin’ much fresh water to drink. When we get backed up, and it finally comes out… well… cover your eyes, cover your ears, cover your mouth.
So Kyle… the freakin’ king of the frankfurter…said if I guarded his cart every night, (since he left it out on a main avenue in Providence, so that nobody would ever take his spot) I could get four dollars an hour plus all the hot dogs I could eat. I didn’t mind the gig much, because I was livin’ in the outdoors anyway. Being able to sleep underneath a hot dog cart was a-okay by me. Better than snoozin’ in a dried out drain pipe, which is what I was doing up until the hot dog gig.
M’job lasted about three weeks and let me be clear: I enjoyed those steamy little fuckers to the full extent of my pleasure-buttons.
I even invented a couple hot dogs myself.
Yep, you heard right. Edgar is an inventive son of a bitch.
The Brain Licker. Half a bottle of ketchup, jalapeno peppers, heavy on the onions. Somebody actually threw one at me because they thought it tasted like shit, but I picked it up and ate it, showed them I ain’t a wasteful cunt like they were. I didn’t give ’em their money back either.
Texas Pete. I’d chop up the hot dog into tiny little pieces, almost like it got mashed on accident. Then I would swirl it all up with some barbecue sauce and mustard, and then I’d sprinkle celery salt all over it. Those didn’t make people as mad as The Brain Licker, so Kyle actually gave me a fifty-cent raise for inventin’ a top seller.
I was well on my way to freedom.
And my favorite hot dog creation—The Wanderer. Named it after myself ‘cause the meat was mighty tasty on the lips, just like your old friend here. Zing. Chopped onions, ground beef, spicy mustard, sour-krout (however the fuck you spell it), and diced chili peppers. The chili peppers were a whole new thing on his cart, on account of me buying them at the dollar store on my own dime. Like I said to him, “You’re welcome, Kyle. You unappreciative cocksucker.”
Hell, by the end of the month, I planned on ownin’ Frannie’s Franks outright. Kyle wouldn’t even see it coming. I’m a shark like that, ya’ hear? I had the American Dream goin’ on, inventing hot dogs and eating like a king, sleepin’ through the night with the smell of hotdogs making me have some fucked up hot-dog-related dreams.
I wondered: why should he get all the profits? I take what’s mine, case you ain’t noticed none.
It was a winnin’ sitch-ee-aye-shun. I still got to do my regular wandering-man thing, mostly roundabout Providence. I got to wander, but for the first time, I had a damn fine reason that most people could understand; I was makin’ that green stuff hand over fist, eating hot dogs all day, pocketing my own percentage like I saw fit. Kyle was paying me to gorge on them sweet dogs, and I must have eaten my weight (not even includin’ the buns) five times over. My shits smelled like dirty hot dog water, and I kept droppin’ them off at the unemployment offices on a daily routine, until security started chasin’ me away every morning. The cops got to know my face so I stopped hangin’ around that place. Not like they were gonna give me nothing anyway.
Hot dogs, I reckon, are full of fat and all kinds of bad stuff that ain’t too healthy. I ate ’em since I was a kid, probably three or four times a week, and I never got fat. That wasn’t the way things were no more though. I was fucked mostly because I was gettin’ on my years. I’m no spring chicken. I went climbing “over the hill” a couple years back and it ain’t been the same since. Like my body ain’t my own. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and I’m not sure who I am. I’m not a fatty, but I’m leanin’ in that direction.
So here I am, pushing a cart around all day, getting good exercise all the same, but I started to get fat for the first time in my whole goddamned life, which is the last thing a wanderin’ man like me needs to do. Gettin’ fat is what makes people give up on everything. I seen it on television before.
My extra pounds were hard to hide. Even though he didn’t suspect anything, he suspected my double chin. Kyle called me out, sayin’ I was eating all his profits or some crazy theory like that. Didn’t respect his workers none. Typical. “You know what you are? A capitalist pig-fucker.” I called him that to his face and he fired me right there on the spot, just like any real capitalist pig-fucker would do.
You’re screwing me. You know that? I’ve got a wife and kids to take care of, Eddie. You get that through your skull? You’re fucking fired, he said.
In case you’re wondering who Eddie is, I told Kyle that my name was Eddie. Sometimes I come up with new names (like Duke Suckwell or Rocky Ricardo), or I make ones that sound like other names I use, but just a little bit different. Keeps a wanderin’ man on his toes.
I reckon you better mind your manners, I said back at him. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d wrapped my meaty (pudgy? Were my hands getting pudgy?) hands around one of the topping tins and tossed some shredded cheddar in that fucker’s face. He glared at me like he was a big man or somethin’, like he wasn’t wearing a stupid paper hat with a crude magic marker drawing of a hot dog on it.