It occurs to me that these are the ones likely to find me in the morning. I hope it’s the thug son and not the nurse.
I probably went straight home to bed and slept for days on end. The first thing I usually do after waking is take a nap. This is probably unimaginable to most people. They’d tell me I should go see a doctor if they ever cared enough to suggest such a thing.
I would tell them to stop themselves and mind their own for once in their lives. It’s probably funny that the first doctor to examine me without beating me will be performing an autopsy. Perhaps they can figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. Maybe it’ll turn out I did have anemia all along. That would be funny, too. Although, I don’t really know what they’ll find and I don’t think I care and since I don’t know anything about this, I should stop myself already. I do hope they send the report to my mother so she can finally have some answers, if she is still alive. She is the kind of person who can live a hundred years and never once consider hanging herself in the backyard, so I’m sure she will be around to receive the report. Perhaps I will request they find her. I should think they’d comply with my final wishes, particularly when it comes to a one-hundred-year-old mother. I can’t imagine being as old as she is now, can’t imagine how much sleep I’d require at that age. This is yet another reason I will hang myself in the backyard today. I hope I will have the energy to do this right and I’m sure I will. I trust they will perform an autopsy, as I believe it is customary. I’d like to think they’ll find that I had something that no one else in the world ever had. I’d like to think that after I’m gone they will say something like this about me in the autopsy report. Perhaps they’ll even name this condition after me. Maybe then my mother can know once and for all what was wrong with me and that it was no way to go through life.
Anytime, Sweet
THE WAITRESS DELIVERED the food and drinks in a single carry.
I was like everyone else in the diner. We were a congregation of unhealthy people with no alternatives and no resources. I’d been coming here every day for weeks.
Earlier I had walked through a hard-hat area without a hard hat. The sign said I should beware, but I never pay attention to signs, am never wary of anything.
Lately I’ve had heartburn every night and wake up with a headache every morning.
I told the waitress thank you. I told her she was impressive. She looked me in the face and smiled. I felt genuine warmth coming from her. I could tell she was a good person.
She said you are very welcome. I wanted to give her another compliment, so I said, You have nice tits. She smiled again, said, You are a sweet one.
It was true. I’ve always been sweet. People tell me this.
The headache always starts at the top and then works its way down in every direction. I almost fell to the ground when I walked through the hard-hat area, but I steadied myself on a bicycle rack. I’m sure no one saw me as this happened. Certainly someone would’ve tried to help.
She asked if I would like to touch them and I said of course.
I touched them for a solid minute.
All around the restaurant, people were eating and drinking and discussing current events, the people in their lives, how it was going all wrong.
No one saw what we were doing and I’m sure no one would’ve minded, no one would’ve tried to help.
She asked me what I thought and I said they were wonderful.
It was true. No one could disagree. They were wonderful.
This is what I wondered as I touched the waitress’s tits: I wondered if she had a happy childhood. I wondered if she participated in after-school activities, like bowling or Girl Scouts. I wondered if the mouse running roughshod in my apartment would realize his mistake soon. I wondered if my ex-wife was feeding the dog. I wondered how much longer I could live on bacon and eggs, home fries, and coffee. Finally I wondered if it would be like they said, like a piano on the chest.
This is when I took my hands off her tits, picked up my fork, and dug in.
I told her thank you again and she said, Anytime, Sweet.
I smiled for her real wide.
I went back to the eggs and the rest of my life.
Welcome to Someplace Like Piscataway
I DON’T KNOW WHERE my sister lives, but I think it’s here in Piscataway. I can’t think of another town or city that she might live in and I can’t think of another reason we’d be in Piscataway. I’m almost sure that’s where we are. I remember seeing a sign that said WELCOME TO PISCATAWAY and have no memory of another sign saying NOW LEAVING PISCATAWAY or WELCOME TO SOME OTHER PLACE. We are driving around trying to see if anything looks familiar, but so far nothing does. I have trouble recognizing things, streets, buildings, people. I once ran into my sister on the boardwalk in Atlantic City and it took me five minutes to figure out who she was. I believe this was before I visited my sister here in Piscataway, but I might be mistaken. Perhaps I visited when she lived somewhere else and it was there that she told me she was moving to Piscataway. I remember she served tea and played the cello. I asked when she learned to play the cello and she said she’d been playing since girlhood. This I disputed. I told her I didn’t remember her ever playing an instrument, said she was mistaken. She said she only played in her bedroom with the door shut. My sister is one of those who has answers for everything. This might be one reason I have a hard time recognizing her. I can hardly understand questions myself, let alone the answers, which is probably why we don’t talk to each other much. I think my sister is a social worker and I seem to remember her saying she worked in a hospital. I don’t think she is a doctor or a nurse, though. I’ve never seen her in one of those coats and I’d like to think if she were a doctor or nurse, I’d know this about her. There’s only so much you can keep from anyone, let alone family. I do know that she’s never been married and I’m pretty sure she’s a virgin. You walk around her house and you know no one ever has sex here. Her house is like a museum is why, every piece of furniture from some bygone era, everything shiny and gleaming and too clean for anyone’s good. She can talk about her house for an hour straight without taking a breath, going on about where she found that love seat, what she paid for the sconces, what book gave her the inspiration for the new chandeliers. I try to nod and ask questions during these lectures, but I feel like an idiot. I’m not sure why she turned out this way. Our parents didn’t keep house like this, never paid attention to how anything looked. Maybe that’s why, maybe it’s the apple falling forty-eight miles from the tree. She’s a recluse, my sister, but the rest of us are people persons, or at least I am. I always need to be around people, the noise they make. There’s a lot I don’t know or understand about my sister, but I do know that she loves animals and is concerned with their welfare. She feeds feral cats and saves puppies and protests companies that torture chimpanzees and chickens. She knows I’m allergic, so she kept her own cats in the basement the day I visited. I think she has four of them. This probably says everything anyone might need to know about my sister. I wasn’t allowed in her bedroom growing up, so it makes sense I never heard her play the cello. I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed in her bedroom and I’m not sure who disallowed it. If I had to guess, I’d say it was my sister, but it could’ve been my parents, too. No one in the family ever trusted me. Also, I had my own problems trying to keep healthy and out of the army. Our father wanted me to enlist, said it would make a man out of me. I told him I had other plans. He said I should at least take the civil servant’s exam, that it was good to have something to fall back on. You can’t reason with someone who thinks like this. My sister never talks about our father, even though she takes after him, but only sometimes, in some ways. I can’t remember ever seeing them in the same place at the same time. Maybe she was inside her room with the cello while the rest of us were outside trying to keep healthy and live our lives. She said she was best at Bach concertos but didn’t feel like playing them anymore. She said that part of her life was over. This is how she talks, as if everything has some other meaning. I started stirring the tea right after she said this about her life. I wanted to go home, play some poker. I’ve been making a living at it for five years now and there was a tournament starting that night. I don’t think my sister knows that I’m a professional poker player. We don’t talk, like I said, and she probably wouldn’t care regardless. She kept on about the cello, said she played her own compositions now, pieces she called “Death March for Summertime Five and Ten.” I told her she played very well. I told her it made me think of aquatic animals, which it did, like whales drowning in shallow water. This is when she threw the bow at me and told me to fuck off. I didn’t mind because that’s the way she is sometimes and I was expecting it. She learned this from our father. Whenever he was home, you had to walk around the house with your head down unless you wanted some color in your life. He didn’t like people looking at him was the issue. He wouldn’t get physical, but he’d dress anyone down for looking him in the eye. I’m not sure what explains such a thing, but I am sure my sister is the same way. She’ll say,