Sam Pink
Witch Piss
IN THE DOORWAY OF AN ABANDONED BUILDING
There was this guy who lived in the doorway of an abandoned building near me.
And we’d become friends.
I saw him whenever I was out walking around trying to avoid my room or find a job.
Every time I walked by, he’d smile and wave and say, “Oh hey”—always in a good mood and willing to talk.
He had a couple blankets and a backpack and some cups.
I don’t know, I guess I liked him because he was like, “I live in a doorway but I’m still in a good mood, hey.” (He never actually said that, I just thought he might.)
Plus I had no friends.
One night when I passed by the doorway, he sat wrapped up in his blanket, arguing with someone on the sidewalk.
“I’ll get money from someone, watch,” said the guy in the doorway. “Someone will give me a dollar. Screw off, man.” When he saw me, he held out his hand. “Hey man, c’I please get a dollar?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was just going to say, you want some food? Some beers?”
“Yeah man, please. Would you?”
The person he’d been arguing with stared at me.
“Alright, be right back,” I said. “What do you want?”
The guy in the doorway laughed. “What’s the limit?”
“Whatever you want. Have some beers with me, man.”
“No beer,” he said. “Seagram’s.”
He said it like “Theegram’s”—tongue through his missing front teeth.
“Gin or whiskey?” I said.
But he’d started arguing with the other person again. “Screw off man,” he said, making a ‘shoo/get out of here’ motion with his hands.
“Be right back,” I said.
The guy in the doorway said, “Hey man, thanks,” and held out his fist.
I hit my fist against his fist.
The person he’d been arguing with followed me when I left.
It made my neck itch and I felt pissed.
Inside the 7/11, I watched through the window as he gave me one last look above the ads, continuing down the sidewalk.
Fuck you.
I grabbed a King Cobra 40oz. and asked the cashier to get me a plastic pint of “Dmitry” gin from behind the counter.
Couldn’t remember if the guy said gin or whiskey.
Felt like gin was wrong.
Wrong wrong wrong.
Everything wrong!
Back outside, the homeless guy was crossing the street, coming towards me with his blanket wrapped around him.
Cars sped around him, honking.
“Motherfuck!” he said, dodging the last car and hopping onto the sidewalk.
“Boom,” I said, handing him the pint. “Sorry, I forgot, did you say gin or what?”
“Nah, not gin,” he said, then smiled and waved his hand. “But anything’s fine, man. Thanks. I’m just glad that fucker’s gone, haha. Fuckin asshole son of a bitch. Hate that guy.”
“I thought he was your friend when I came up. I didn’t know.”
“Nah, I asked him for money and he said yeah at first but then started giving me shit about how I should have a job, and how I’m physically fine, and this that and the other bullshit. I’m like, ‘Let’s see you spend five years in my shoes, bud. Try it.’”
“Yeah, fuck him,” I said, smiling. “Hate that guy.”
I decided then to only ever encourage people, no matter what they wanted to do.
To get through life by saying yes to everything, so no one could say I didn’t get what I wanted, and also so nobody would dislike me.
The homeless guy opened the door of the 7/11. “Let me get some soda from the place here. They give me free soda.”
Thoda.
Free thoda.
He was holding the door for me.
“No,” I said. “I was just in there.”
So I waited outside.
Thoda.
Thoda thoda thoda.
Smelled like it was going to rain.
Rain down your worst rain, you bastard-ass motherfuckers, I thought, squinting at a vague area across the street.
Yeah.
Yeah, drown me.
Kill me, come on.
The homeless guy came back out and poured the gin into the plastic cup.
We started to cross the street with the stoplight still yellow, but I stopped halfway for a car approaching.
Homeless guy said, “Don’t worry”—pulling on the shoulder part of my shirt.
But I stayed back and so did he, and the car sped through the light.
The force pushed my clothing against me.
“Fucker blew right through that shit, see that?” he said, watching the car. “Holy fuck, haha.”
“Yeah, shit,” I said, smiling.
I imagined how my body would’ve reacted to the collision.
Maybe like, shot backwards into the air where my spine breaks at the waist and my heels kick my own head and then I open back up until my toes kick my face and it repeats until I’m gone up into the sky.
A perfect departing.
A goodbye kiss like I mean it!
“Yeah, so that guy was saying how no one would help me, and this that and the other fuckin shit. I mean, I’m not going to work some bullshit job for three dollars an hour like a fuckin immigrant. I’m a citizen. Fuck that. I’m American.”
“Yeah man,” I said, undoing the cap on my 40. “Fuck him.” I took a pull, put my bottom lip over my moustache area and sucked foam out of the hair. “Let’s go find him and kill him.”
The guy laughed and got back into his doorway.
I stood on the sidewalk and talked to him as he sat there staring out at the street, hood over his head, blanket wrapped around him like a tepee.
He talked about the various Chicago neighborhoods he’d lived in.
“Yeah, Little Village is real nice,” he said. “Humboldt Park too. Oh yeah, but I’d a problem with a group of people around here, though. They’re called cops.”
He said “cops” like “copth.”
“Fucking pigs,” he yelled out into the street, retching at the end of the yell.
I laughed, took a pull off my 40.
Just wanted to drink until I was brave enough to get into a dumpster and hide beneath some bags.
To be collected and crushed with all the other garbage.
All the same.
Take me with, I thought.
I looked across the street and saw some paper blowing around the gutter.
Take me with.
It was the part of summer when temperatures drop at night and it gets kind of cold.
And you can think things and not admit them to anyone else, and that’s what makes those things so good.
Like what if there is an exact amount of this very 40 that I could drink — and not exceed — to make me soundlessly and painlessly disappear.
Things like that.
Things that seem sometimes possible but only at certain times, and only if you didn’t tell anyone.
Because your thoughts are all you have.
I don’t know, fuck it.
The guy in the doorway adjusted his blanket tepee. “Man,” he said, laughing. “Those fucking cops, they push me around, fuckin punch and kick me n’shit. Hate those fuckers.”
Fuckerth.
“Motherfuckers,” I said, grinding my teeth.
And I meant it.
Imagining myself enlarged, inhaling the smoke off a burning cop as he screamed “no no no”—unable to even touch his agonizing face because his skin’s so blistered.
Chicago Police.
Murderers, torturers, gangbangers.
Die and go to hell, you motherfuckerth.
Just kidding/everyone makes mistakes!
Thoda thoda thoda.
“Yeah but, I can live here no problem,” he said, “I know the guy who owns the building. I thweep the block for him every couple days. Private property, motherfucker”—waving at some imaginary person. “Thee ya.”