Sam Pink - Person

Then an old man comes out of the backroom, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

I ask if they sell pens.

He’s confused.

The store.

Does the store sell pens.

I make a motion with my hand like I am writing and I say, “Pens, pencils.”

He says no.

I walk more and come to a 7-11 store.

I go inside and ask the man if they have pens or pencils.

He says some things I don’t understand and he points to an aisle.

There are a lot of people at the register and he keeps yelling at me to go different ways.

I go to walk down an aisle and he yells at me and motions a different way.

I can’t seem to select the right way.

The way he wants.

Fuck.

He yells more at me and the people in line are now looking and I can only make out a blurry monster around their general area.

For some reason I smile, feeling awesome for a few seconds.

Like, I smile really hard, just watching a man yell directions at me.

This is amazing.

I laugh.

The pencils are by the back near the drink-cooler area.

I find the pencils.

There are people by the drink-cooler and one says, “Yeah, that fucking juice is fucking awesome man. It fucks you up and shit, like, the flavor.”

I take a pencil to the register and wait in line.

In line I notice the pencil is the brand that is the store’s name.

It is a 7-11 mechanical pencil.

When my history is written on the face of my gravestone, the gravestone that is the entire plate of stone moving beneath the earth’s surface, this part will say, “Buys a 7-11 mechanical pencil after being yelled at in front of many people.”

The woman in line before me is paying.

As she pays, the man at the register (the man who yelled at me) holds up a container of juice from the counter.

He says, “Go get another.”

The woman just stands there.

The man at the register shakes the juice and says it again, really mad.

The woman goes and gets another.

Approaching the register again, she says, “Is it buy-one get-one free.”

“Yes yes buy-one get-one.”

I look at my pencil to be distracted, and I think about how the woman just blankly did what an angry man working a register told her to do, without first knowing why.

Someone yelled at her, and she did what was being yelled.

This redeems something.

No, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I pay for my pencil and the man behind the register tells me to have a good night.

I wonder what a good night is to him and then I wonder the same about myself.

It occurs to me that in order for that communication to work, myself and the man would have to come to an agreement about what it meant.

I’m too scared.

It feels like practice.

I walk nextdoor to a restaurant.

Inside the restaurant I see some people who were just in the 7-11 with me, so I walk away, and go to a different restaurant nearby.

I order food and eat my order at a table meant for four, in the corner of the place, keeping my hooded sweatshirt and my coat on, worrying the whole time that a worker will walk up to me and say, “Why don’t you take your coat off.”

I decide if that happens, I will say, “Because I’m undercover.”

It doesn’t happen.

My history is the history of things imagined and not-happened.

I eat my food without looking up and I write all this down in the white space inside the book I bought, and I try to think about an idea of the not-happened and it seems like I can do it at first but then it becomes unclear and I am not bothered at all.

And exit the restaurant.

My hood is on and it’s cold outside, and I make the mistake of breathing in at the same time a long wind goes into my mouth.

Then walk home, thinking paranoid thoughts about how people are trying to fuck with me somehow and I haven’t figured it out yet.

Shit is getting bad.

No I don’t know.

I live in Chicago and I don’t get along with a lot of people and the reasons are always new and wonderful.

I’m sitting in my room, listening to it sleet outside.

The room is very cold.

I have accomplished nothing today.

It feels like practice.

There’s a pellet gun in my hand and I’ve been taking random shots at the wall.

The pellets just bounce weakly because the CO2 cartridge is almost empty.

And now so are the pellets.

This is my career.

I am amazing.

My roommate walks down the hall.

He knocks on my door.

I don’t say anything.

He opens the door and stands with his hand on the frame.

Nodding a few times, he turns and points to the back of his neck.

“Hey can you check again if there’s any ink on my neck here, it feels like there is. I can’t sleep thinking about it. It’s bothering me. There must a pen somewhere loose in my bed and I slept on it. Last time man, promise.”

I check his neck.

There is no ink.

He leaves.

I shoot the remainder of the compressed air at my face and it feels nice.

My roommate has been walking around in the kitchen for maybe fifteen minutes now, checking cabinets and checking the refrigerator, doing nothing.

I’m lying on the couch listening to the pigeons outside.

I’ve been pretty worried lately about getting cancer.

Do I already have it.

Did I get it when I accidentally touched my eye after being on the subway today and not washing my hands.

How about when I burned some of my leg hairs with that lighter yesterday.

(I burned my leg hair because I thought it would help me run faster.)

(I haven’t tested it yet because it’s still too icy outside.)

My roommate starts looking through a plastic bag of oranges on the counter.

“You want to split an orange again,” he says. “I need something to do.”

He claps at something in the air.

“Fuck,” he says, “what’s that, is that a spider.”

“You mean do I want to split one of my oranges again,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“So, right now then,” I say. “You’re asking me if I want half of something that is wholly mine. That’s what you are asking.”

He walks over, rotating the orange in his hand.

“Yeah, I’m asking that,” he says.

“Ok yeah. That sounds good. I need something to do too.”

“Should we do this,” he says.

“Yeah let’s do this.”

He walks back to the kitchen and begins dumping peels in the garbage.

Then he turns the sink on.

“Shit I don’t know why I’m washing this,” he says. “I already peeled it. You don’t wash oranges after you peel them right.”

I sit up from the couch and look into the kitchen.

“You washed the orange after you peeled it,” I say.

“Yeah.”

I brush some fuzz and hair off my pants.

“Fuzz and hair,” I say.

Then I lie on the couch again, forearm over my head and eyes.

I blink a few times and feel my eyelashes against my forearm.

It feels bad.

The word “bad” scrolls across my headhole in neon letters and I see myself saluting it.

Goddamn.

My roommate walks into the living room and hands me half of the orange.

We eat in silence, kind of directing attention to the pigeon sounds, kind of directing attention to the silence.

If I had the opportunity to walk into the room and see myself there, I would point and say, “You’re stupid.”

But, I know I will never have that opportunity.

It seems I keep track of opportunities I will never have more than focusing on ones I do have and could have.

It feels like practice.

I look at the last wedge of the orange in my hand.

“This was a good orange,” I say.