Sam Pink - Rontel

Fuck everything except me.

*

Fell asleep for an hour or so and the first thing I heard when I woke up — already sweating, already feeling sick — was some drunk guy on the street, yelling, “There you are! Thought you was hiding, eh!?”

I wanted to yell, “You’ll never get me!”

But I had a headache and my mouth was dry.

I sat up, looked out the window at part of the Chicago skyline.

Kill you — I thought.

My girlfriend was already out of bed, in the bathroom.

Today we were supposed to go to this one-day beekeeping class.

She asked me to come with her a while ago, and I said yes.

So today I was going to a beekeeping class.

*

We stopped at a grocery store on the way.

Everyone had to bring something to eat.

“What should we get,” my girlfriend said. “Should we get fruit, or a pie, or.”

“Let’s just bring a lot of gum,” I said. “And a single bottle of shampoo.”

“Think I’m going to get a blueberry pie,” she said, extending her neck as if to see where the pie was in the store. “You know? Fuck it, that’s good right.”

“Fuck it, here’s your pie. Take it, fuckers.”

“Exactly.”

“It’d be funny if we brought it in and like, a big part of it was already eaten,” I said. “Plus, I’d like to do that because I’m very hungry right now.”

She said, “Yeah,” but didn’t look like she meant “Yeah.”

She went to get the pie and I wandered around.

*

In aisle four there was a scuffed-up, barely-thawed hotdog on the tile.

This is it — I thought.

This is the saddest thing ever.

Can’t get any worse than this.

Escape.

I had to escape.

It was traumatic.

I left the aisle.

But after wandering, I wanted to return to the aisle of the hotdog.

So I did.

And when I got back, two girls exited the aisle, stepping around the hotdog.

They had disgusted looks on their faces.

One said, “That. Is terrible.”

The other said, “Ew, I stepped on it and it rolled a little, ew.”

They both laughed.

I went to find my girlfriend.

Wanted to tell her about the hotdog development.

She was in line waiting to pay.

The line was long so again I returned to the aisle of the hotdog.

What haven’t I learned — I thought.

I stood at the end of the aisle with the hotdog.

A woman pushed her cart towards us.

Here it comes — I thought.

This is it.

Having returned to the aisle of the hotdog, I accept this fate.

The woman rolled over the hotdog with her cart, unknowing.

And the hotdog crumbled some more.

And I felt insane, trying not to laugh as I got back in line with my girlfriend.

To pay and leave.

*

At the bee class, everyone grouped in a small multipurpose room, putting food on a table.

I looked at the different foods on the table and considered walking up to each, eating some so everyone could see, then loudly denouncing the quality of the food, saying “Next,” as I walked on.

A fifty-year-old man came up as I set our pie on the table.

He wore khaki pants and a dress shirt underneath a pale yellow sweater.

He had eyeglasses and his hair was combed to the side.

He set two quiches on the table.

“Got a vegetarian one,” he said. “And, for you carnivores, this one has sausage.”

He looked at me and the pie I had set down.

He said, “Some people like hot pie, some like cold pie. I, personally, love it.”

Then he didn’t say which he personally loved.

And I wanted to know!

His name tag had “Bill” on it.

“You’re Bill,” I said, and shook his hand with both hands and held the shake for a long time.

“Well,” he said, smiling a fake smile, “How long’ve you wanted to know about bees.”

“Ever since I can remember,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets, lightly touching my testicles with my left hand.

He said, “Oh.”

“Yeah since my youth, basically,” I said.

People began sitting for the class.

Bill sat with us.

He and my girlfriend talked — because excited and polite people find and keep each other.

Bill talked quietly, but with amazing enthusiasm.

He seemed to be “fascinated” by a lot.

Many of the things my girlfriend said left him “fascinated.”

When Bill asked my girlfriend what she did for a living, she said, “I teach tenth grade chemistry.” She said it as if for a moment she didn’t know if she did or not.

Bill said, “Oh fascinating. That’s cool. I think everyone should know more chemistry.”

And he meant it.

My girlfriend said, “Yeah, science is cool.”

I said, “How much spinach can you make with science.”

Lately I’d been using “spinach” to refer to money.

“ So much spinach,” she said.

The tone of her voice suggested she didn’t enjoy my company right then.

What a shame!

“So, with science,” I said, “basically, you get that spinach.”

“My wife has magnificent spinach in her garden,” Bill said. “It really is a lovely thing.”

I said, “Oh, she got that spinach?”

The beekeeping instructor began trying to use the microphone and someone said the volume made her ears feel “absolutely awful” so the instructor said he wouldn’t use the microphone but then someone else introduced herself alongside her mother and said her mother couldn’t hear well, and the bee instructor asked the mother if he should use the microphone and she smiled and nodded — not hearing what he’d said — and the daughter said, “Just go without the microphone, it doesn’t matter,” and he stepped away from the microphone and began the lecture.

*

Shortly after he began, I considered raising my hand and saying,

“Yeah, I can kick your ass,” while leaning back in my chair — maybe then look around at others to see what they thought about that.

Maybe point at someone and raise my eyebrows, “You” getting off my chair, letting it hit the floor loudly, “you think anything about that.”

And everyone would know then I could kick his/her/anyone’s ass.

The instructor delivered a long speech about beekeeping and I drew pictures on my complimentary beekeeping packet.

The instructor seemed very worried the whole time.

I kept expecting him — after everything he explained — to say,

“But I mean, who gives a shit, right,” and then look around shrugging and doing this laugh that’s more like sniffing.

Some of the phrases I heard while drawing pictures on my complimentary beekeeping packet:

“…which is a very gentle time in a honeybee’s life.”

“…can anyone speak to that: apple-scab spraying.”

“…he’s a third-generation Bosnian beekeeper.”

“…I get stung about once a week, although sometimes I won’t get stung for three or four weeks then I’ll get stung four or five times at once (sniffing laughter).”

I stopped drawing and pictured him out working with bees — getting stung — saying, “Ow”—getting stung again — saying, “Ow”—getting swarmed — screaming — and his scream is the scream of a person you don’t think matches how he looks.

*

One of the people attending the class kept asking questions and/or introducing himself to the conversation.

He kept referencing having lived in Hawaii.

I wrote, “He’s from Hawaii,” next to some drawings in my bee packet.

Then I tapped my girlfriend on the shoulder and tapped the pen against the words.

She read it and nodded.

I wrote, “I want to fuck your hot pussy,” and tapped her.

She read it and said, “Shh,” smiling.