He was eligible for a 401(k). He read up. You can retire comfortably at 65 if you start saving at 23, said Forbes.com. Even with a relatively low yield of 6%. Every 401(k) he’d had earned 1%, lost 2.5% in fees. As for saving at 23: median household pre-tax income is $51,989 per year. Who saves on 40 grand net with a kid. It costs twice that for a school where gas huffing sasquatches don’t commit Rwandan machete genocide. Nobody has money. Nobody gets returns. We’ll all work till we’re dead. Eating shit, having to smile about it.
If I was married– if my wife could work part time. Cover rent. That’d be something. But there aren’t wives now.
If you’d invested back then you’d have money now, stupid, said Forbes.com. The interstitial Quote of the Day brought to you by Hewlett Packard. Hewlett Packard made printers that existed to lie about how much toner they had. So you’d have to buy more toner from Hewlett Packard. When the machine told you your half full toner was empty you were encouraged to mail the old cartridge to Hewlett Packard, for the environment. Hewlett Packard then sold it to someone else. The CEO of Hewlett Packard ran for president. No one shot her.
If I cut back I can save two grand a month. How much more do I need. He searched Windows for “calculator.” It tried to sell him something. A feature of Windows 10 was you couldn’t just search files. You simultaneously searched the web with Bing, which offered monetized suggestions. They sold you the machine and the machine sold you things you auto-paid every month until they became invisible. He paid for Microsoft Office every month, for iCloud every month. He paid for his car every month; when he took it in for service the man told him he couldn’t check the brakes. These tires are so bald it’s dangerous for me to take the wheels off. You shouldn’t even be driving this car. They’d sold it to him a year ago. We offer factory spec tires: 900 parts, 400 labor. Financing was available.
He went to another web site and typed what he had and what he made and a 6% return and waited to hear how long until he could stop. The phone was ringing. The web site said 25 years. It was his birthday. He was 40.
Second Date
I want to suck your cock, she said. They were in her son’s bedroom. The boy was about 12 and he was sleeping. And I want you to suck my cock, he said. But he didn’t. They’d been doing coke for 90 minutes. It was cold in her house. He could feel his dick like a slimy canned mushroom.
He let her kneel down and take it out from his too tight pants and his day glo pink American Apparel underwear. There it was: a blue acorn. Her mouth was warm but there was a little coke in her spit and it made him feel like her tongue was wearing a medical glove. Listen, he said. let’s wait for this bump to wear off. We can talk.
She looked up at him and made sexy eyes. It was his birthday. He was 36. There was a small party outside; unrelated. People in her room. He had a trapped chunk of coke burning into his sinus by his eyeball. They’d been impatient chopping it up with his Costco card. He needed to block one nostril, hang his head back and snort up a big full breath of air through shuddering coke snot to get the rock into his throat but he couldn’t. He had to make a serious face back. Otherwise she’d feel insulted. Just let the little coke nugget abrade his flesh and bones, probably smoke through to his brain and give him a stroke. What can you do. I really like you, she said. He wanted to play Xbox.
It was his birthday but he’d had to buy the coke. Despite progress sex roles persist. The dealer came to Van Nuys in his cream colored Oldsmobile. You had to go out and sit in the car with him with the flashers on in the street. He was from Nicaragua. I’ve always wanted to visit Central America, he said, handing over folded cash. Don’t, said the dealer. Is very bad place.
Will he sleep through this, he said softly. Yeah he takes anti anxiety medication. His cock was still out in the chilly air and she went at it again. It worked this time. Bend over– here, he told her. She put her palms on the dresser and he pulled her skirt up and her panties down. They’d met on OKCupid. She worked for the public radio station. After a minute she said I want you to get me pregnant. I want you to choke me she said, but he was already cumming. As he pulled out dripping on the dresser he saw the boy’s eyes were open.
No Exit
Every morning he thought: I can’t do this one more day. Often by the 5 offramp where a line of buses switching freeways made a bottleneck behind a blind curve. He’d be going fast around the bend and suddenly slow buses like a herd of elephant. Behind them an 80’s Jap pickup with six extra feet of steel pipe hanging out the back. Sometimes with a red rag tied on it. Sometimes not. Drivers from lawless places.
Pipe right at eye level and once a week he almost got lanced in the face like a jousting accident. He’d read about a woman killed by a flying manhole cover. She was driving and an oil truck bumping over it set it spinning like a giant Chinese star. Through the windshield into her eyes like the Simpsons’ dog with the frisbee. My luck it’d just make me uglier, he thought. Ugly blind and retarded. Then I’d step in the manhole.
It was Valentine’s day. He’d dated a hooker once. Her busiest day of the year. The johns all wanted to talk. How do you have so many lonely men and 9/11 only happened once. So many lonely men yet science spent billions finding zero calorie sweeteners. Nothing on growing teenage girls in axolotl tanks. Billions spent to make a robot kick a soccer ball when who the fuck asked for one more soccer player. Drones controlled from a storage locker outside Vegas precisely target tables at Yemeni weddings but the killer at the joystick can’t get a second date. They made a movie about Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with Siri. Hey Siri, he said. Do you want to talk to me. I’m sorry– I don’t understand that.
The way she said “that.” He could sense contempt. He thought about ramming today’s Mexican truck pipe. Maybe gripping it two handed like something out of 300, forcing it all the way through his brain. Instead he went to work. Around one he realized he forgot his lunch at home.
The Zombie Zone
Marcy Pendergrass was putting up the Halloween decorations. The one hot girl in the office. He’d been promoted but his cubicle was the same. Gray desk behind a gray wall five feet high. She held two rolls of fake police tape with cartoon letters. Do you want the Vampire Zone or the Zombie Zone, she asked.
I don’t have a preference.
He’d been looking at a grid of consumer packaged goods branding executives. Now he tried not to look too hard at Marcy Pendergrass. She wore a black tennis dress to work. She’d crouched to pick up plastic spiders, to embed in webs she’d stretched outside his boss’s big glass office. Right across from his cubicle. He saw her panties. The color of toothpaste. Then just pick, she said.
Vampire please.
I knew you’d pick that.
She said it sweetly. But he still thought: then why the fuck did you ask. She slid behind him to string up the tape by his printer. Got on tiptoes. Her hip grazed his arm, shifted the cloth of his dress shirt and gave him ASMR. His neck hair stood up. He hadn’t been touched in three weeks. The warmth coming off her made him self conscious about his posture. Her breath made the cubicle humid. Jesus Christ, he thought, I am turning into a vampire.