Saturday, April 30, 2016

They Were Things

"This is a bad idea," I tell Arthur. "Arthur, this is a bad idea." Nonsense, he says, the idea is fine, I just have to get used to it. "Nothing good ever takes getting used to." He starts to say something but he stops because he knows I'm right.

We walk in and I'm wearing all black which is not my thing. You look good, Arthur had told me, you look cool. "But I feel weird," I said, and he said I'd get used to it, and that time I said nothing. The lights are low and I blend in, a floating head, buoying in a sea of limbs. I guess I could be anyone, I could be any one of these people, and that sets me at ease if only a little.

It's a birthday party and I wasn't invited. It's for a friend of his that I've met once or twice but that's whatever. It's a girl who's going to be there. We talked a little a while back, we had some nice back and forths, we have a few friends in common, things were going slow but fine, they were even going but I'm fairly certain that they were there, they were things. And then out of the blue—nothing. Couldn't get a word back, fine, that's fine, it happens all the time. But when you try at something, and you fail, trying again can seem like a waste of time. Especially in an unknown outfit.

We approach the group and I catch her eye. Her head drops. "This was a bad idea," I tell Arthur. He tells me to shut up and maybe he's right. Happy birthday, we say, and Arthur says you remember and birthday boy says yeah hey how's it going. I'm asked if I know the people here, I say hi to those I do and am introduced to those I don't. She gets up and goes to the bar and Arthur elbows my ribs. "Drinks," I say. "Birthday boy, what do you want?"

She's waiting. I walk up. "Hey," I say, "good to see you." She doesn't look at me, she's slightly turned. But the music's so loud, it's entirely possible she didn't hear me. So again I say, and louder, "good to see you." And she turns. She gives that look. I heard you. What. What do you want. And the bartender sets down her whiskey and she pays and walks away. I put in my order with the man and when he comes back he says the drinks are on him. And he gives me that other look: Tough break, kid. And I have to make this trek like a dead man walking, two light beers in hand.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Attractive Offer

No but see pretty and attractive have different meanings to me.

Explain.

Pretty is a more effeminate word. It has that connotation.

OK.

Whereas attractive doesn't even have to be about a person. It can be about anything.

I bet you five dollars you can't jump over that chair.

OK John Wayne.

It can be an offer to do something. It can be a person or an animal or a cake or just about anything.

Exactly.

And pretty?

Pretty can be all those things too. Only just girls.

Girls.

Yeah just women.

Women.

Yeah the effeminate versions of things.

They'll hang you for this.

Yeah they probably will John Wayne. They have before and they probably will.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Chicken and Broccoli

She said it sounded good, nice and healthy. I said it was just chicken and broccoli, broccoli and chicken like it always is. And she said she liked chicken and broccoli or broccoli and chicken, whatever order I was eating it in. And I said, yes, but I have it all the time, and she said that doesn't mean it's not healthy and delicious. Do I doctor it up, she asked me. Yes, I said, always with salt and pepper, sometimes cayenne, sometimes too much cayenne. Or maybe some rosemary or paprika if I find a container in the back somewhere. Usually it's just salt and pepper, that's usually all you need, and sometimes too much cayenne. She said, well, why don't you put on less cayenne, then it wouldn't be too much. And I said we're way beyond that now, that that's a point that's far behind us, that if we're going to put on cayenne it's going to be too much and that's just the way of things. She said, OK, that seemed a little strange but fine I guess, and was there water, did we have water to go around. I said I wait for water. I leave it for the end. I don't use it as a palette cleanser, I don't use it to wash my chicken down, I don't use it to curb the violent spice. But if I don't have water at some point the meal feels incomplete. And I'll admit, I like the way it rushes down and cools me off. I like the hot and the cold, the rising and falling, the stakes. The cayenne makes me feel full and the water makes me feel complete and day after day I can almost forget I'm eating the same thing.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

The Why of It All

I waited for the order but the order never came. I stood by and let good men die, believing the words would be sent to me, called out, wired, written. I waited for those words as cries rang out, cries of help and please and why. I stood with my back to them, those men, I stood with the use of my unbroken legs. I stood because I could, kept my back to them because it was the only way to go on breathing. I took the breaths they could not take, I stared down the sun they never knew, I never slept.  And all the while was help, please, why.

I've asked myself the very same, the why of it all. I did not ask it long, and I received no answers, but it seemed to me that asking was the important part. Because I waited, I was told, I listened for the order. And I've thought, perhaps, that maybe it did come. Came from behind those bodies, straining through an air filled with so much waste and sorrow. And I laughed, I admit, brief though it was, that their cries drowned out the very help that they were crying for.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Fly

I thought it'd gone yesterday, the fly, I thought it had gone out the window yesterday. You'd think whatever small part of their tiny brain that found the small hole in the screen coming in would be able to find it going out. I closed the window to the house, thinking that surely he (she? it?) would have gotten out by now. But I heard the desperate tink tink of a minuscule creature trapped, not understanding this prison it had brought upon itself. So I open it and it comes flying in, swarming rambunctiously around my living room lamps, careening toward the light hoping that it's at the end of the tunnel. And it is strange to connect with so small a thing.

Monday, April 25, 2016

A Single Glistening Spot

I could see it on the pavement, I could hear it on the trees. There was no earthly reason why I shouldn't have gotten wet. I walked and I kept walking and I looked down at my shoes. Black leather, dry, not a single glistening spot. My pants didn't get that feeling, my shoulders kept shouldering. I was the untouchable, invisible man, some wondrous thing floating down the sidewalk. And as I started to wonder aloud how such a thing could possibly be, water crashed down into my eye, filled it up, such that all I saw was a drowning world.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

What I've Been Up To

I told my grandmother I would write her a letter but instead I'm looking at old bookshelves online. I do need a new bookshelf, I keep bringing books from back home and leaving them in the closet. Home. I guess it's time to stop using that word.

She prefers the old things. Letters, recipes on index cards, really anything to do with handwriting. I have to admit that I am of the school of thought that believes it's on its way out. It's not completely gone now but I find myself signing my name slower. Am I getting all the letters in, are they in the right order. We're taught so many things that they never tell us we'll forget so soon.

It doesn't have to be that tall, but tall would be nice. An interesting color would be good, although I could always decorate it myself. I'm not much of a crafter, let someone else throw on some olive green paint and distress it for me. What am I paying the $75 OBO for anyway?

It wouldn't take long. I could type it out, get all my thoughts out quickly. That's what I no longer like about the pen, it just can't keep up. I could write a sentence here, look at shelves, another sentence, click to the next page, it'd be over before I knew it. This is what I've been up to.

I spend too much time at my parents'. I am fighting them turning my room into a room they could use. I have a whole life in boxes there. That life is getting transferred to my hall closet. I don't have enough money to put it on display. I have been here for years and have never felt quite right. It's all one big stepping stone. Now are these the things a boys should say to his grandmother?

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Come Go with Me

We get home late and come in through the back door. I tell her to be quiet, my roommates are asleep. I know where to step so the floorboards don't creak but she doesn't, I say shh loudly and she starts laughing and that makes me laugh so we kiss.

I open the fridge to get water and bottles of beer. The light shines down the hall and shows me that the doors are open, my roommates aren't here, they're not sleeping. This gives me license to make more noise than I normally would, to make up for earlier, a few seconds ago. Let's have some, I say. I just got a crappy record player and I put on an old soul record. When the weather gets nice it's all I want to hear.

She turns on a light but I turn it off. I want to live in this moment of darkness and music and dance like ghosts. We knock into chairs and bump into the floor and I step on her open-toed shoes more than once. But we feel the grooves, we're on that line, she's close to me and I feel her breath and it is the freshest air. And it could be any number of things but I can't help but thinking, when did we get so young?

Friday, April 22, 2016

Question

People like that are horrible, but you don't want to turn it into a news story. If you said something like, hey, calm the fuck down, there's gonna be trans people in the bathrooms and you have to deal with it. But these kinds of people, they love making a scene. That's the kind of person who gets all upset and talks to your boss and talks to the press and then nothing turns into something. And even though it would feel good to tell them off, to go to hell, to shut their fucking mouths and worry about the things that really matter in this world... What was the question again?

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Painted

I never liked that parking lot song, "Big Yellow Taxi," sorry Ms. Mitchell. I think that chick and the guy with the hair ruined it for me. A lot of things have been ruined for me by other people. But I had to fish an old purple shirt out of a bag in the back of my closet today. I meant to throw it out years ago, thank God I didn't. I sat down to listen and read and it hits me, how much I loved something I never even knew I loved. Outside the clouds parted and rain started falling, and I walked out to meet it. I stood in the street and closed my eyes and smiled as I was painted, and doors around me opened.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Things You Have to Work On

"OK," I said, "but just so you know this now, I'm already hungry." He laughed and passed me the bowl. It was a small thing, and shaped like a penguin.

I put the pipe up to my mouth and put my thumb over the little hole. "How long do I inhale?" I asked.

"Just a couple seconds, then hold it as long as you can, then exhale." He handed me the lighter. "You'll, uh, need this." Black and white with dice on it. Everything was black and white.

I brought the lighter up, held it sideways, tried to light the thing but burned my finger. I did it over and over again. How are you supposed to not burn yourself with a sideways flame? He had to do it for me, like a daddy helping his son with his first fire.

I held it as long as I could and started coughing. It felt like death, it felt like shredding, it felt like unpleasantness. And it struck me that most things like this, the drugs and alcohol and cigarettes, that none of them are very nice the first time around. They're things you have to work on, they don't come naturally to a lot of people. But there's enough people who've worked on them enough to make other people want to work on them. And so this was my moment. Was I going to put in the work?

"You want some water?" he asked.

"Nah," I said. "But you can pass those chips."

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Bonfire

I ache, the late nights and early mornings and falling asleep again and too much booze and the chili fries I ate too fast just now. Birds are chirping but it's not even three in the morning, but what do they know. My shoes bang against the cracking sidewalk, worn wooden heels, echoes against all those locked doors. I open mine, the heat is on, it's so warm, I've been walking so quickly, I ate those fries so fast. I forego badly needed water and start stripping en route to my bed. My jacket, shirt, my undershirt, pants, hair, everything smells like fire. A bonfire, the burning ash, the smoke that always finds its way to me. How does it always find its way to me? I leave it in a pile, pull my pants off over my shoes, kick those off, a piece of heel falls, bits of ashes cling to my wardrobe. I look in the mirror and bits of ash cling to me, a scattered Ash Wednesday, and I think about what I believe in. What hope I keep clinging to like so much ash. And I fall into bed, and that scent stains the sheets, and as I fall asleep I know that it's the only thing I know.

Monday, April 18, 2016

About Mikey

I actually don't think that Miley just likes me. Like, the other day I asked if I could sit with him at lunch and he said no, I actually like to sit alone. And I laughed and he gave me this look that was, like, why are you laughing. And then he went back to dipping his pizza in ranch and I stopped laughing. I never knew people dipped their pizza in ranch until middle school and I still think it's weird.

Did I show you this text I sent him? I said that we should hang out sometime and grab coffee becauae he said a lot of cool things about Jane Eyre in class and they were things I wanted to say but I wasn't sure if they were right. And he just, like, said them. Because they're opinions, you know? They aren't wrong or right or anything because they're just opinions. I mean, people have opinions that are wrong because they're horrible things and prejudice and evil and whatever, but they're wrong because of those reasons, not just because they exist. If that makes sense. Anyway, he didn't text me back. I don't even remember why I have his number.

I will say that high school is different than I thought it would be. But in a good way! All those stupid cliques you worry about in middle school just sort of evaporate. Or maybe they don't evaporate, they're probably still there, but I guess people are so wrapped up in their own friends that they forget to make fun of other people for not having any. Or I don't know. Maybe we're getting better. Maturing. Ma-toor-ing. Haha.

Wait I remember now! Why I have Mikey's number. Oh my god this is so funny. Or sad. It's probably both. I sat behind him in pre-calc last year and he had just gotten a new cell phone and a new number, and he was writing it over and over again in his notebook. Probably so he wouldn't forget it. And I looked over his shoulder and peeked at it. Oh my gosh. Such a loser. I can't even remember if I've texted him since then. Oh my gosh, was that the first thing I ever sent him? Did he even know it was me? Oh my gosh, do I text him again? Do I tell him? What do I do?!

Maybe he does like me and he doesn't know how to say it. If that's the case I wish he'd say so. He could say that, it could really be that simple. But I guess things that are simple aren't always easy, right? I mean, you'd think they'd be. Simple, easy, we just go back and forth between those things like they're the same thing.

Did you hear about Justin's surprise party?

Sunday, April 17, 2016

The Laws

For every action there is, they say, an equal and opposite reaction. Or not "they," but Newton, he said it. Push a chair and the chair pushes the air just as hard. And they—and I'm pretty certain it was them—say that for every bad thing you say to me I need to hear five positive things to erase it. That sounds about right. And I know, from experience, that for every good and decent thing on this planet there are a thousand terrible ones, and that's being generous.

I'd like to think we live in a beautiful world. That there is give and take, balance, and everything happens and anything is possible only through a shifting of energy. But as each day goes by (and therefore one more day lies ahead) I see that it is a world of diminishing returns. That we do have a system, and we do have laws. But the laws are broken. I'll go to bed and I'll get up, but I'll never be quite as rested as I was when I was smaller, simpler, and living under someone else's roof.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Song

Nice Chinese man, woman with a grocery bag, big scarf, big scarf, wraparound hood. Girl with a dolly, trolley (stroller), eyebrows painted on, bag of wings and tator tots and a man saying don't play your music so loud, please don't, I don't want to hear your song. Getting off, hold the door, leather jacket, leather jacket, sweaty brow, black woman, too many people licking too many lips. Kids siting handicap. Touch and a kiss. Parents with kids who are both throwing fits, throwing Skittles, I'm sorry, they're saying, we're trying. We're all trying, buddy, to the back of the line. A man with a wig, a girl with one too, a whole family in wigs, on their way to a masquerade dressed up like fools. But they're smiling and damned if I'm not smiling too. The weather is out, sun is clear, sky is bright. Merry Christmas to all and to all rock all night.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Get Off at Damen

We take the brown line north, we get off at Damen. It takes forever to get there, the distance between Sedgwick and Chicago is a lifetime. We get off at Damen, I get turned around but you right me like you always do. It's maybe a little chilly but we keep our jackets open just because, the perfume and the cologne free to mix and mingle and terrify the strangers. We see the door, the line, we put our name in, we have to wait to wait. We go down the street, under the signs, looking through the windows and their closed-up doors. Lamps and soaps and maps and hand-me-downs, lives old and new and over and just beginning, and everyone's jackets are open. It takes long to get here but we remember when we have. We sit on a bench and look at him, her, then, dogs, the pigeons almost seem smart. The sun is winding down, the voices rise, the jackets stay open, we are in defiance. We are in love, and we walk hand in hand, down the streets, farther from the place. Every place looks happy, every person looks good, and it gets dark and we know it will be a late night. The phone rings and we're too far just to walk. We get on the nearest brown line, take it north, and we get off at Damen.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Run Cold

It is a cruel trick that nature has played on the unhappily married. That a hand I should love could touch mine, and my blood run cold, and the metal tighten its grip around my finger. It is a symbol, it means forever, it reminds you of the bad ahead and the good behind. Hello, it squeezes me, remember me. I know you do. I am not going anywhere, and neither are you. I was never one for holding hands.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The First Few Minutes

It would seem fitting, then, to wake up in a feverish state of half-hallucination and never know what was real for the first few minutes or so. A thick layer of cinnamon and dough, a thicker layer of Campari, an icing of greasy cheese. I was supposed to meet you but even I don't like being around myself like this, and I'm around myself all the time.

You said you'd call and I said I'd answer. I didn't watch the pot and hope that it would boil over. But I've always kept one eye trained to spot the simmer, to flitter around and hope for the rest of me. I had enough to deal with in my stomach, on the couch, the lines on my face. I needed a nap, a shower, an ice water, a nightcap, a good night's sleep, a run, a salad, more fruit, more tea, more tonic, more time. I need to give away my cell phone chargers, the extras, so I have only one, and that one I need to hide. So I can let it die and realize that things will go on tomorrow even if they stop tonight.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Orange Peel

The long cold and acidic orange, the great identity of these winter mornings, a table and ten years away from you. All of it a sleep, starting as something and ending another, one sad retaliation after another. Bits of peel and crust and the leftover cereal, the grounds separating in the bottom of my mug. I could try to open it, the door, the beautiful door, but I fancy myself a Schrödinger. She could ask me, she could try, but something tells me she has already, that perhaps she's been trying all this time. Dark purple, sunken eyes, blinks as slow as fresh dripping honey, and suddenly it hits me I'm the only one who's slept.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Sitting at Your Clock

I don't want to be buried in a coffin, because my corpse will be devoured by maggots and worms. I don't want to be cremated, because I don't like the idea of being engulfed in flames and turned into a pile of dust. I don't want to be tossed overboard or buried at sea, I don't want to be scattered to the wind or set adrift in a boat. I don't want to be stuffed like a cat or dog or owl and placed in the corner to be a conversation starter at terrible cocktail parties. I don't want to get sick and I don't want to fall, I don't want whatever I'm in to crash into anything else. I don't want my final thoughts to be panicked ones, to think of all the things I'll never do and didn't do and could have done better. I don't want to cry or scream or clutch onto an unknown stranger. I don't want to be connected to anyone in that way, and I sure as hell don't want it to connect anyone else. I don't want to be forgotten but I'm terrified of being remembered, that I'll be remembered the wrong way, that too much will be cut out or refined. I don't want to leave you behind and wait, because I don't know what time is like anywhere else or if it exists at all. And even if it doesn't for me it will for you, and I wouldn't have you sitting at your clock for all the world.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

I Get I Guess

All I did was reach down to tie my shoes and when I came up I was lightheaded. Things faded and went slightly dark, someone asked me if I was OK. And not entirely, no, I wasn't. I wanted to sit down, I wanted a glass of water, I wanted to know what I'd done. But that's what I get, I guess, trying to tie my own shoes.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Shellacked

I couldn't think of anything else to say than all of the most horrendous things I could think of. And I thought of what my mother told me, what her mother probably told her, if you've nothing nice to say better not to say anything at all. Keep things to yourself, push it down and pull something nicer over. My insides are a black tangled mess with layer upon layer of gloss and positive shellack, you could cut inside me and look at the lines and know my age. And I couldn't say what I wanted to say, I never can, and so I pressed it down. One day these words will shoot out past my toes, through my fingers and eyes, all the wickedness in me will be expunged, a hollow shell in its place, a me, ready to be filled again and again. But with what, I wonder. With what?

Friday, April 8, 2016

A Matcha Made In

At least we know now that it might've worked. That even if the times didn't match up, there were still individual ones where I wanted you and you wanted me. Maybe in some other reality they're synced exactly, we're sitting holding hands and drinking matcha, saying all the things we could do but probably how we'll only stay inside. We're lazy and that's OK, because even if it took an infinite universe for us to exist, we do.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Street Fight

Don't take a longer blink and say that's all it is. Don't put your head down there on that pile of blankets and loose clothes saying you'll get up. There will be no stretching and there will be no putting up of feet. And if there is a hand resting upon your forehead... well, it better just not be there.

Don't try to fool yourself. Your body is stronger than you'll ever be, it could whoop your brain in a street fight. There is no logic, no reason, no common sense so do not even try. Resistance is futile. You will never win the battle against yourself. The body wants what it wants and it will always find a way to get it.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

What's Inside

All the way to the store she's laughing, saying how any word sounds like something alien if you repeat it enough. Stop and look at any collection of letters and after a while you'll think there's no way that you know what they mean. When we get there she goes off on bananas, then oranges, then all fruits in general. How it's amazing, here's this layer and we peel it back and throw it away and devour what's inside. So many foods are like that. So many things are like that, I say, and that gives her pause, right there in front of the organic papayas. And I could see a hundred million foodstuffs and shoes and relationships flash in and around her, her, struggling to stand with the sudden weight of an entire life thrust on her all at once. Chocolate, she said. I need chocolate.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

A Way to Get Things Done

Not enough could be said. He was a weapon basically. He was a way to get things done. Moonlight tiptoed into him and sorrow siphoned out. The worries and the rumors all subsided by way of truth, and once you knew it there was nothing else. Fact was too small a word. It was purer, more distilled, you knew him as you heard his footsteps. A razor and a wire, a gun and a brick, these were like fingers. You point, you push, you pull, you forget. Companions and compatriots, commiseration and cacophony. An old coat, a hat, the exhalation of smoke. It is men like he who make you think of monsters, make you turn to the storybooks and fairy tales. But men are only men, and men exist. To tear, and break, and kill, and forget.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Eighty Hours

And it's true that tonight the sum of my decisions are worse than the parts. That I feel worse together than I ever possibly could alone. I wait stretched across the couch staring at the slatted window-light, the outside always begging itself to be let in. Soon enough I'll have done that on my own.

My toenails are long, my hair is dirty, my stomach makes sounds only found in nature. There are men who live like this every day. They wake up and feel the same, they wonder why nothing's changed. Me, I wonder why nothing's changed after spending eighty hours trying to do the opposite. Now a little time to myself and this is what I get.

Tomorrow I could do something different. But if living in the past is ill-advised than living in the future is inconceivable. I can only see tske what comes to me with what little grace and maturity I've managed to cling to. And I have tried, I have, I am, and I still will. But it's greater than me, than all these parts I call my own. Do I want what I have? It doesn't matter. I have it now.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

After the Airport

Besides being what could be a pretty good title for a thing, "After the Airport" is just as it sounds: What you should do after you arrive at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

COLLECT YOUR LUGGAGE
Did you carry it all on the plane? Did you check a bag? Whatever the case, make sure you have all your luggage with you. (Ed. note: A lot of suitcases look similar. Adding a piece of flair specific to you that you will recognize can help with confusion later.)

TEXT ME
Let me know you've landed with a quick and simple text message. "Here!" and "Landed!" are both popular options. Conversation to follow.

GET TO THE CTA
Follow the signs that say "CTA" or "TO CTA" or whatever they say, I can't remember. You will go down an escalator, walk down a hall, go through sliding glass doors, probably pass a trumpet player, I think get on a moving walkway, and generally feel like you are in that Berenstain Bears book, Bears in the Night (and, yes, it is BerenstAin and not BerenstEin, strange as it seems).

BUY A CTA PASS
Train fare is $2.25 for the first ride, $0.25 for your first transfer (within 2 hours), and $0.00 for your second (within 30 minutes of the first). HOWEVER. They charge you $5.00 to get on the train at O'Hare. I don't know why. Chicago has a lot of money problems. It's bad.

GET ON THE TRAIN
You want the one going to Forest Park. This shouldn't be too entirely difficult, as there will be a sign that says "Next Train" with an arrow pointing to the train and also it will be the only train you're able to get on.

NOW COMES THE TRICKY BIT
Not really, but that line is a Fawlty Towers reference and I like saying it as much as I can. Depending on the text message conversation we had earlier (see: "TEXT ME") I will tell you to get off the blue line at either the Milwaukee/Grand stop or... somewhere else. Maybe in the Loop, maybe earlier, we'll see. Probably... yeah, we'll probably just stick with Milwaukee/Grand.

MEET UP WITH ME AND BEGIN TO HAVE A FUN VISIT
Self-explanatory.

THE END
See you tomorrow.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

You Should See Your Face

He looked down at me and laughed. "You should see your face!" he said, and he took out his phone and took a picture and showed me my face.

"What the hell?" A classic prank, shaving cream in a sleeping man's hand, tickle with a feather, hand to nose, an old favorite, simple yet effective. "It's three in the morning, man."

"April Fools!"

"It's three in the morning, man. That shit ended hours ago. Three hours."

"My day starts when I get up and ends when I go to sleep!" He laughed. I threw off the covers and went to the bathroom to wash.

I saw my face. I looked like the old man, the Santa Claus every boy in a bubble bath makes himself. And as I let the water run warm and splashed it on my face, I watched as the foam broke apart in the water, sliding down the drain, as he leapt into his bed with his bedsheets covered in the same stuff. I looked up into the mirror, saw my face, and smiled.

Friday, April 1, 2016

Jumbo Slice

"Can you slice that for me?"

"I dunno," he says, "we're a pizza place, we don't really know how to slice." He says it smilingly but the guy behind him rolls his eyes. They deal with countless drunks on a nightly basis. I am not one of them.

"Wanna buy this brownie?" he asks me. "I keep sticking it by the oven so it's nice and warm." I say no, although it it tempting despite the sense.

The record, they say, is seven. I don't know how any one person could sit here and eat seven of these things. Must've been mighty hungry, or crazy drunk, or gotten some really bad news. What it would take for me to eat a near whole one of these pies.

He slices it down the middle. Back at home I open the box. "Get Parmesan or peppers?" and I have to shake my head no. We fold the pizza hotdog style but it's still cumbersome to eat. Too long and too thin and there's a reason they cut it the way they do. I always say to try it like the house says before you go changing things.

Late nights are a time all their own, they are reserved, set apart from tomorrow and even earlier today. You can get away with things like this, you're not even yourself, you can explain it all tomorrow. Box after box piles up, a carpet dusted with chilli flakes. Tomorrow we won't be hungry but it doesn't matter because tonight we were and we ate.