Sam Pink - Hurt Others

The crackhead loads the last piece of luggage for the businessmen.

He makes a securing motion before shutting the taxi trunk.

The businessmen look pleased.

Or eager to not be around him.

They give the crackhead some money.

He checks both sides of traffic and walks across the street, putting the money in his pants pocket.

The taxi drives away, towards the airport.

And your corner is quiet again.

This afternoon you fuck your girlfriend right after you both wake up.

It’s snowing/raining in Chicago.

And tomorrow you both move out, to different places.

With barely any kissing or touching, you take off your clothes, then hers, and she holds your ass and you’re fucking her as hard as you can.

You take her hands off your ass and hold her down by the wrists.

You move your hips side to side while going in and out of her.

You’re so hard it hurts.

But you don’t feel anything.

It’s not enjoyable, it’s just happening.

You get off of her and sit up while she kneels, sucks on your dick.

For some reason this makes you think about a crime you recently heard about, where a guy kept his son in a dog cage for years, only taking him out to beat him.

You remember that the news reporter said the kid finally starved and then the dad buried the remains in concrete.

Your girlfriend gets on top of you.

She lowers her ass on your hard dick.

You’re all the way inside her while she goes forward and backward.

Her face gets extremely red.

Then she’s yelling.

She keeps yelling, “Shit shit.”

Someone pounds on the ceiling.

Your girlfriend keeps yelling.

You’re too sad to orgasm though.

But also too (something-else) to get un-hard.

You just don’t care.

Instead of orgasming, your dick goes soft at a slow rate.

It feels very strange — like you’re really hungry, sad, and needless all at the same time.

It feels better than orgasming.

You pull out.

You both sit naked on the tile floor, to cool off and rest.

You take a blanket off the bed and wrap it around yourself like a tepee and she does it too.

Brushing crumbs off your asses and legs and feet.

It smells bad in the room.

This is happening — you think.

Comatose, you stare at your smelly dick.

She reaches behind her, grabs her big corduroy purse.

“I brought Guess Who. You want to play Guess Who,” she says, taking things out of her purse.

“I’ll play one game.”

“I’ll play one game,” she says, doing an exaggerated impression of you.

“Because when you lose you just want to keep playing until you win. It’s fucking terrible. Like what happened with Battleship.”

“Because I always grouped my ships together?”

“Yeah.”

She nods.

“Did you like playing Battleship with me though,” she says.

“Sometimes, yes.”

She takes all the pieces to a boardgame out of her purse.

You think about how there really seems to be only one good memory about your relationship.

It was the night someone broke into the apartment through the sliding glass door while you were out, and then stole a bunch of shit and one of the only things left was the tv with the vcr built into it.

Instead of being upset all night, you and her bought five 40 oz. King Cobras and a lot of 25 cent bags of chips and stayed up all night getting drunk and watching television and then when it was light outside you had quick, meaningful sex and fell asleep.

It was good.

It was the only good thing.

“Here you go,” she says, handing you some pieces to the game.

The game consists of two small plastic boards — one for each player — with a few rows of smaller plastic holders that hold cartoon pictures of people, their names printed beneath.

To start the game, each person playing takes a card from a deck and places it at the front of their board.

The goal is to guess who the other person is by asking questions, and eliminating people on the board.

You eliminate people from your board by lowering their picture in the plastic holder, getting closer to knowing the right person.

And after the first few guesses, she’s already winning.

She’s already winning because of a brave guess about the person’s haircolor.

And she opens her blanket tepee a little, clicking down plastic holders on her board.

For what seems like a ridiculous amount of time, you can’t remember her name — just feeling comatose, and like, idly handling your dick and balls.

Like a baboon.

American baboon, handling his dick.

Why can’t I remember her name — you think.

The first name you think is: Maria Consuela Hernandez.

“What if your name was Maria Consuela Hernandez,” you say.

“I like that name,” she says.

“I do too.”

“Fuck, I’m winning,” she says. “Took a big risk with that hair question, but now — ssss — I’m destroying you.”

You cup your hand around your mouth and look up and say, “Dee-stroy-duh.”

She says, “Dude you’re getting destroyed. I’m running this fucking board. And you’re just over there eating dicks all day.”

“Shit, I know,” you say. “I know it.”

She says, “A big plate of dicks, twirling them around a fork like spaghetti.”

She checks her board and the remaining rows, pinching her crotch piercing.

She smells her fingers, thinking.

Thinking with a secret hate.

Trying to win.

This means something to her.

She’s trying hard to win because she hates you.

She wants to degrade you.

She wants to be able to go around and tell everyone how terrible you are at this game.

Shit, did you hear how bad he is at Guess Who.

Oh I heard he’s absolutely shitty.

You watch her think.

Will she guess who you are and win, or will she keep failing.

You look at the person on your card.

Here he is.

“Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey looks really upset.

Like, he looks totally pathetic and helpless.

And this is the moment you and him realize you know nothing about each other, and have nothing to contribute, only take — which doesn’t happen, because there’s nothing to contribute.

Ha fucking ha.

Sorry Jeffrey — you think. I can’t help you.

Your girlfriend puts her hands together and puts both forefingers up to her bottom lip.

She says, “Does your person, have—” points her folded hands at you, “—sideburns.”

You look at Jeffrey.

Jeffrey has sideburns.

He has beautiful, light-brown sideburns.

Don’t tell her about my sideburns, says Jeffrey. You can lie, he says. Lie about it. Say your person doesn’t have sideburns.

Jeffrey, I can’t — you think. No, because then I’d have to win before she finds out I cheated. I’d have to guess who her person is before she realizes I’d made it impossible to guess mine. And right now I’m not confident enough. I’m not good enough to do it. No. I’m going to just tell the truth, Jeffrey. Jeffrey.

Jeffrey is silent.

“Yeah, he has sideburns,” you say, looking down at your smelly and wrinkled dick.

Your girlfriend puts down a few more of the plastic holders, making a fist with her other hand and elbowing downward against the air, her big green tit-vein shaking.

You look at the big green tit-vein shaking.

It’s beautiful.

Hey it’s the big green tit-vein — you think. Hey you. Thank you for this.

And for some reason this transitions into you thinking about a reality where everyone’s death is just a spreading apart into invisibility — and each death is voluntary and self-inflicted — accomplished by detachment from all objects, people and experiences — where death is an accomplishment — where death is people slowly guessing everything out about you, figuring you out.