Sam Pink - Person

I watch the number rise on the counter.

And imagine the same counter for me, but it goes into the negatives.

Win.

The old man holds the necklaces in his hand, still talking, still smiling.

“He amazes me,” I say.

We both watch.

We are not touching or communicating.

I like it.

It feels real to me.

It feels like practice.

We sleep on the pullout bed tonight because her room is too cold.

The building is always very cold.

We lie on the pullout bed together and we do not touch or communicate, watching a shopping channel on mute.

She looks at the tv and she says, “I will agree that he is a cute old-man.”

I lean over the edge of the bed and reach to the floor.

“See,” I say. “He is absolutely adorable and he is tremendous.”

“Why tremendous.”

“I don’t know.”

I take my phone off the floor and I alternate between the tv screen and my phone, dialing.

Someone answers.

I focus.

“Hi,” I say. “Hi, is this the necklace channel. Ok. I was wondering if I could talk to the beautiful old man who is looking at me right now with a necklace in his hand. Ok. Sure.”

I push a button on my phone and put the phone back down on the ground by my pants.

“Think I’m going to shut off the tv I’m tired now,” she says.

She shuts off the tv and lies down against me.

“Goodnight,” she says.

“I don’t give a shit about you at all,” I say.

We both laugh and it feels good.

It feels like practice.

“Good night,” I say.

I have agreed to go to a birthday party tonight for someone I don’t know, because my roommate wants to have sex with the birthday girl and he is too afraid and awkward to go to the birthday party by himself.

(And also because I am a humanitarian.)

The birthday girl lives in an apartment building across the parking lot from our apartment building.

On the walk over, my roommate tells me she refused to have sex with him before because, “He didn’t have abs.”

He kicks a rock.

“And she’s fat too,” he says. “So what the fuck.”

I say, “If she wants abs, she will gets abs, and you fail. You have to be ok with that. Don’t make it her fault.”

We manage to kick the same rock across the parking lot, over ice and some areas of snow too.

And we manage because we try.

At the birthday party, there are people all around me and it feels un-good.

Like heat, somehow.

No I don’t know.

I sit on the couch looking straight ahead.

This is my etiquette.

I am proud of how good I have become at calmly not participating in things.

The birthday girl comes up to me and introduces herself and then she starts rubbing my shaved-head, stopping only for a second to fix her birthday hat.

“Can I do this,” she says.

“It feels terrible to me,” I say. “But happy birthday.”

“Thanks, can I do this.”

She keeps rubbing my head.

It feels bad at first yes but then I notice that I’m getting a dangerously fast hardness in my dick area.

Magnet fast.

Dangerous!

Her boyfriend comes over and they walk away together, him looking at me.

He probably wanted to rub my head.

Later on, when I’d really accomplished a good feet-stare, this girl starts falling all over the apartment, yelling about how she is Korean.

She falls over to a person and yells in his face, “I’m Korean!”

Then she does it again with another person.

The apartment is small enough that everyone heard it the first time I think.

I’m pretty sure she accomplished her communication with the first try.

But she keeps telling more people.

She walks all over the apartment yelling that she is Korean.

And for a finale, she falls over behind my back onto the couch, into immediate sleep.

There’s another person sitting next to me on the couch.

He is someone I don’t know and he is rolling a cigarette and he is looking at it.

He laughs.

“She went from yelling to sleeping faster than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he says.

“There’s still hope for people,” I say.

I pick her head up and put a pillow beneath.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, mumbling, “Or I’ll punch your skull off I’m Korean.”

I brush her hair behind her ear with my hand so her hair won’t get in her mouth as she’s threatening me.

I want to see and hear the threat.

And I sit on the couch, looking at the sleeping Korean girl.

A little bit later, my roommate and I leave and we manage to cooperatively kick another stone from the birthday girl’s apartment all the way back to our apartment.

It is amazing.

Once back, we stand just inside by the dark entryway taking our shoes off.

My roommate locks our door.

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

I say, “I know.”

Then he goes to bed and I go out the backdoor to the deck.

I stand on the deck.

It’s very cold out.

There’s a color and ringing to the sky that lets me know it is close to morning.

I look at the clouds and I feel uncomfortable.

The word “humongous” scrolls through my headhole in neon lettering.

The sun’s coming up and my roommate and I are standing on the deck.

We just returned from a birthday party for some girl he kind-of knows.

He has a cigarette and he is looking at where the sun is appearing.

“This isn’t so great,” he says.

I agree by saying nothing.

He finishes his cigarette and puts it out against the bottom of his shoe.

After a very long silence, he says, “Getting older means you have less and less fun.”

I agree by saying nothing.

I have the type of cold feeling that makes your chest muscles, like, bubbly.

Hope I don’t get sick and die.

The dream I have when I go to sleep involves me crawling through a very narrow wooden corridor for a very long time.

I can’t sleep.

My room is cold and for some reason I’m scared to leave.

I want to leave.

The words “death penalty” flash through my headhole in neon letters.

This will never end.

Just go to sleep.

Try again tomorrow.

You are a champion.

No, get up and get some cereal.

Yes, that will help you occupy time.

Ok I will.

Ok good.

My phone rings and it is the girl from downstairs and I don’t answer.

I don’t know what time it is or the date.

I leave my room and walk to the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal.

In my biography this will be the defining event.

This will be the part where I ascend to control.

My roommate’s box of cereal is on the counter.

I take some.

While pouring, I worry.

This is bad.

My roommate will know.

The box will feel less heavy to him.

No.

No maybe not.

No he’ll have to know.

How could he not have an approximate understanding of how much his box of cereal currently weighs.

Ok I’ll just have to put a trail out of the apartment to another apartment so he’ll think someone else took them.

Perfect.

This is perfect.

Yes.

This is good.

I will do this.

When I go to pour, dry cereal spills on the ground.

The plastic bag has been incorrectly opened.

The cereal pieces tap the ground, crushed by my attempts to dance away from them.

Ruined!

I think about just kneeling in the kitchen and screaming, “Fucking ruined!”

It seems rewarding.

Thinking also about walking outside and randomly kneeling and screaming, “I’m ruined!”