Sam Pink: Hurt Others

He lived in an apartment with his mom, a few blocks behind that warehouse.

Someone said, “Yeah you know what though, fuck him. He was a dick, man. A fucking dick — to everyone. Fuck him. I say fuck him.”

“Yeah man, fuck him. Remember how he’d rub his bare dick on the younger kids in the locker room.”

Someone else said, “Yeah dude. And that one kid threw up on his own feet because he was so scared. What an asshole, yeah. He was a fucking asshole.”

Everyone became quiet.

And the quiet was incremental, measured by the wind through the open car windows.

I pointed towards the driver’s side window, and said, “You can take a left up there and just drop me off at the entrance so you don’t have to turn around.”

The driver rubbed his chin and the wind blew through his hair.

As we turned into the apartment area, he looked at me and said, “He deserved to fucking bleed to death in my opinion. Fuck him, you know.”

The others in back had begun a new version of the conversation.

“No man, I’m not glorifying him. All I’m saying is — fuck, all I’m saying was what I already said. He’s dead. I was just telling you guys, I didn’t know if you knew. That’s all I said, I mean his mom seemed pretty sad when I saw her—” he sat up in his seat a little more. “But yeah, I know what you mean. Fuck him.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

As I got out of the car I could hear them from the back, still arguing — quieted by the sound of the car leaving.

They drove off and I was playing a drum solo in my head that no one will ever hear.

I buzzed the buzzer next to the name Shah.

Rabb came out wearing blue Dickies pants and no shoes, socks, or shirt.

Right away he laughed, and said, “Yeah sorry, I let my brother’s friend borrow your shit. Sorry. I think it’s gone pretty much. I don’t know.”

He laughed again then quickly got serious, idly staring at something in the air.

Then he was nodding and looking at the ground.

I stayed for a while and we sat on the curb at the end of the cul de sac and finished a case of beer he took out from beneath a broken swing chair in the apartment common area.

I said, “Ryan Francis died.”

Rabb said, “Who.”

Then he showed me his leg, where one of his friends tried to tattoo the star of Islam, using pen ink and cigarette ash.

He said, “It looks pretty shitty but—” then he laughed.

I used to have a small television in my room.

One side was kind of burnt from someone leaving incense by it.

Only public access channels worked.

And I developed a hatred for some people in public access television commercials.

People I’d never met, just watched on public access television commercials very late at night.

There’d be commercials about guys who’d mistakenly bought too much merchandise and had to sell it for very low prices, in a warehouse somewhere in the city, but just barely inside the city.

And I’d hate them.

There’d be shows with two people sitting in a room discussing Chicago politics.

And I’d hate them.

There was this one commercial for a barbeque restaurant, and this guy takes a bite of some food and yells, “Awesome stuff!” and the camera zooms in and out with the words “It’s awesome” at the bottom of the screen, blinking, right next to a smiling cartoon of a pig head.

Having seen that commercial however many times, I then hated the man who said, “Awesome stuff.”

I’d deliberately watch the commercial and wait for him to say, “Awesome stuff” and then feel hatred towards him.

I’d try to convince myself not to hate him.

But it’d still happen.

Why — I’d think, feeling hopeless and tired in my room. What is it that I hate about the man in the barbecue commercial. Maybe it’s just the way he says it. I guess I don’t hate him though. I’m just being dumb. It’s weird.

Honestly though, I always liked watching tv because it was a good way to silently panic while making it look like you’re not.

Books work too.

Last night walking west on Montrose Street I passed a woman out walking her dog.

The dog was very big.

Its hair was black and shiny.

As we passed, the dog stopped and nudged me with its head.

I petted it.

The woman said, “That’s weird, he never lets anyone pet him.”

I scratched the top of the dog’s skull for a little bit, in silence.

“Have a nice night,” I said, looking at the dog.

“You too,” the woman said.

And we walked opposite ways.

I smelled my fingertips and there was dog stink on them and I thought, “So good.”

SUMMARY #2

Yesterday walking south on Clark Street I thought I saw a puddle floating towards me, but it was just a section of newspaper blowing across the street. The first thing I thought when I saw it coming at me was, “There’s a puddle coming at me” and then I felt adrenaline. (It was just a section of newspaper though). But it took me a while to calm down.

For a few weeks last year I had a job as a nanny for a rich family in Chicago.

My friend was a nanny and did babysitting work at hotels and this one family asked her to become their nanny but she couldn’t so she asked if I wanted the job.

I said yes.

I’d worked with kids before.

I used to work at a daycare.

I was the “Nap Assistant.”

That meant I watched a room with 10 to 20 kids in it — supposed to be napping — while the teachers got lunch and had meetings.

The kids were between the ages of three and six.

I helped them get their cots arranged and then I watched over them, maintaining order.

Maintaining order meant reading them books, whispering their names from across the room and motioning for them to stop talking and go to sleep, preparing the snacktime food, talking to kids about things to keep them from doing something else that would wake kids up, reading the same book over again, denying attempts by girls to become their boyfriends, sitting by potential loud/misbehaving kids as a source of discouragement, agreeing to play soccer or other sports at recess, agreeing to play legos after naptime, agreeing to sit next to someone at snacktime, and helping outside at recess and doing anything else until the end of the day when parents came.

This one Chinese kid named Hardy always came up to me at naptime, with a ring of dry snot in his nostril.

He’d pinch his genitals and look sideways and say something like, “I like fruit punch and tacos.”

Hardy was really cool.

He always behaved.

I think he only got upset one time (because he missed his mom) and cried a little bit and then was embarrassed about it.

Other than that, Hardy was cool.

Whenever I asked him why he didn’t do something he was supposed to do, he’d say, “Want to know something—” then he’d make shit up to keep me from talking.

Some of Hardy’s jokes were pretty good too.

Most of his material involved “wieners,” but I could sense he was expanding.

There were a lot of kids.

There was this girl named Ariel.

She made me promise to be her boyfriend “before Maria”—if I decided to have a girlfriend.

I said, “I’ll pick you as my girlfriend first if I decide to have one.”

There was a very tiny girl named Aruj and she always slept the entire nap time.

Every day she slept the whole time.

And every time she woke up she’d either cry or shake her finger at me and say, “Vutt is so funny, mister.”

I had to carry her a lot.

Felt like I had her in one arm a lot and would just forget about her.