“Ooooooh,” and nurses scattered, and someone called out for paper towels and repeated, “Paper towels!” and somebody else started patting my grandmother’s back, and somebody else got locked out of their house because somebody else didn’t leave the key, and somebody else bought the deodorant and somebody else bought whatever that girl on the beach was selling, tampons probably, and somebody else is dying because somebody else is always dying, people are always suffering and dying, and I just sat there holding the spoon, smiling nervously and then laughing nervously and then just laughing, and then laughing so hard my eyes started to water and everything got blurry, and none of it was funny at all.
T HE B LOCK , T WICE
I once dated this girl who was skinny and flat-chested and could tap dance. Her name was Carey and she had a tiny lower jaw. When she was younger some of her bottom teeth had to be pulled to make room for the rest, and those came in crooked, pointed in different directions—maybe that’s why she dropped out of college. She waited tables at an expensive restaurant, made pretty good money. When she doodled, she doodled barns. She had blond hair and blond eyebrows, little blond hairs on her fingers, drove a blue Suzuki Sidekick. When she would come over I’d kiss her on her lip-glossed lips and say, “What’s up? How’s your blue Suzuki Sidekick? You’re my sidekick so why don’t you go tap dance on my kitchen floor.” She’d giggle. “I’m serious,” I’d say, and I was. I loved watching her tap dance, her little legs going, her little black shoes clicking louder than they should in celebration of nothing or everything in particular.
On weekend nights I’d go to the restaurant she worked at and drink at the bar. After she clocked out she’d sit next to me and we’d talk and pinch each other’s legs and stomachs, hold hands, watch how much the other servers tipped-out the busboys, whisper about injustice over discounted liquor and free chicken. Sometimes fish. Sometimes Joey, a lanky white kid who washed dishes, would come out front for a few minutes and rap for us, make words rhyme that didn’t— I’m a hellion, explore vaginas like Magellian —things like that. We’d hang out till the place would close up, eleven or twelve or four a.m. depending on I don’t know what, then we’d go back to my apartment, where I’d put on some ragtime and sit on the floor, watch her tap dance on the white tiles of my kitchen, applaud and cheer, laugh, shout nice things. “Better than Ben Vereen!” I’d yell, tackle her and take her clothes off, have unprotected sex with her for a minute.
The dessert chef at the restaurant was Billy Something, and Billy Something made a terrific baked Alaska and an OK crème brûlée and a weird-looking face when I staggered through the double doors of the kitchen late one night and grabbed him by his white coat collar and slammed him into the wall and said stop rubbing my girlfriend’s shoulders you fuckin’ dickhole. He had also turned Carey on to coke, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that he felt comfortable rubbing her shoulders in my presence, and that she seemed to like it. I was still shaking him when Joey and this other guy whose name I can’t remember but he had thick eyelashes, they hooked me by the armpits and dragged me outside, the whole time asking me if I was cool.
“You cool? You cool? You cool?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not cool. Stop asking me if I’m cool … asking me if I’m cool is making me not-cooler.”
They lit me a cigarette, lit themselves cigarettes, pep-talked me and told me to wait, left me sitting alone on a concrete square around a magnolia tree. I talked to myself about cannolis and motherfuckers while I pitched pieces of bark mulch at a brick wall. I spit and zipped my jacket’s zipper up and down and up, down and up, down, waited. Carey never came out.
The front door of the place
T HE B LOCK , T WICE
I once dated this girl who was skinny and flat-chested and could tap dance. Her name was Carey and she had a tiny lower jaw. When she was younger some of her bottom teeth had to be pulled to make room for the rest, and those came in crooked, pointed in different directions—maybe that’s why she dropped out of college. She waited tables at an expensive restaurant, made pretty good money. When she doodled, she doodled barns. She had blond hair and blond eyebrows, little blond hairs on her fingers, drove a blue Suzuki Sidekick. When she would come over I’d kiss her on her lip-glossed lips and say, “What’s up? How’s your blue Suzuki Sidekick? You’re my sidekick so why don’t you go tap dance on my kitchen floor.” She’d giggle. “I’m serious,” I’d say, and I was. I loved watching her tap dance, her little legs going, her little black shoes clicking louder than they should in celebration of nothing or everything in particular.
On weekend nights I’d go to the restaurant she worked at and drink at the bar. After she clocked out she’d sit next to me and we’d talk and pinch each other’s legs and stomachs, hold hands, watch how much the other servers tipped-out the busboys, whisper about injustice over discounted liquor and free chicken. Sometimes fish. Sometimes Joey, a lanky white kid who washed dishes, would come out front for a few minutes and rap for us, make words rhyme that didn’t— I’m a hellion, explore vaginas like Magellian —things like that. We’d hang out till the place would close up, eleven or twelve or four a.m. depending on I don’t know what, then we’d go back to my apartment, where I’d put on some ragtime and sit on the floor, watch her tap dance on the white tiles of my kitchen, applaud and cheer, laugh, shout nice things. “Better than Ben Vereen!” I’d yell, tackle her and take her clothes off, have unprotected sex with her for a minute.
The dessert chef at the restaurant was Billy Something, and Billy Something made a terrific baked Alaska and an OK crème brûlée and a weird-looking face when I staggered through the double doors of the kitchen late one night and grabbed him by his white coat collar and slammed him into the wall and said stop rubbing my girlfriend’s shoulders you fuckin’ dickhole. He had also turned Carey on to coke, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that he felt comfortable rubbing her shoulders in my presence, and that she seemed to like it. I was still shaking him when Joey and this other guy whose name I can’t remember but he had thick eyelashes, they hooked me by the armpits and dragged me outside, the whole time asking me if I was cool.
“You cool? You cool? You cool?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not cool. Stop asking me if I’m cool … asking me if I’m cool is making me not-cooler.”
They lit me a cigarette, lit themselves cigarettes, pep-talked me and told me to wait, left me sitting alone on a concrete square around a magnolia tree. I talked to myself about cannolis and motherfuckers while I pitched pieces of bark mulch at a brick wall. I spit and zipped my jacket’s zipper up and down and up, down and up, down, waited. Carey never came out.
The front door of the place
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