Sam Pink - Rontel

First he just brushed his head as he walked past.

Then he came back around and put his forehead against my leg and did half a rotation and kept his head there.

Then in the opposite direction.

“We should shave his head again,” my brother said, returning to the videogame.

Last year we shaved Rontel’s head.

Only his head, not the rest of his body.

It looked really weird.

His head/skull was extremely small underneath the hair.

Made him look like a bug or an alien.

Rontel liked it though.

He went around rubbing his head on things more.

He’d rub his head back and forth on the corner of a wall for ten minutes without stopping.

And the way he’d shut his eyes while doing it seemed to convey deeper satisfaction as opposed to when his hair was normal length.

My brother said, “This time we need to shave lines into him so it looks like he’s wearing a shirt or some shit.” Then he yelled “fuck” at the TV.

He twisted the controller a little, crackling sounds.

Then he motioned towards the other controller with his foot.

“Oh, I’ll watch,” I said.

But he motioned to the controller again, scratching the side of his head really hard.

Usually I’d just sit there watching him play, as I silently terrified myself with bad thoughts, waiting to feel tired.

But he needed me.

I was the top scorer in the game.

So I sat down on the floor and played.

We were the Chicago Blackhawks.

Rontel jumped back onto the arm of the couch and lay like a gargoyle.

I put my head against the arm of the couch and Rontel licked the back of my neck twice.

While the game reset, my brother said, “Oh man, this guy I saw coming home the other night. There was this guy with a Bears coat on and a thick moustache with big ass sunglasses, like the mirrored kind.

We were on the Green Line train. He was so fucking drunk. And he showed me a long, like, some kind of case he was carrying. It looked like it was for a pool cue maybe.”

For some reason, I waved my hand dismissively and — using a voice I’d never used — said, “Ah, those no-good stinkin drunks.” Then, using the same voice, I said, “I hates them no good stinking juh-runks.”

It seemed insane.

I felt fully insane for a few seconds.

Kept waving my hand downward, dismissively, saying, “Bah.”

Rontel was making pigeon-sounds on the arm of the couch behind me, licking my neck.

My brother didn’t say anything.

“So what about the guy,” I said. “He was just drunk and had a pool cue bag.”

“No. He was like, laughing, and he looked at me and smiled and pointed at the case. Then he goes, ‘Guess’w’s in the bag.’ I told him I didn’t know. Then he asked me to guess what was in the bag a few more times. Kept smiling every time I told him I didn’t know. Finally, he’s like, ‘S’rattlesnake. Iced’em wit my bir hands.’ Then he was like, ‘D’I’iced a rattler wit my bir hands.’ He kept saying that. ‘D’I’iced him.’”

“Iced him,” I said.

“‘D’I’iced’em.’ Like, ‘I iced him.’”

I kept imagining a man lunging at the ground with his bare hands in the classic “strangling pose,” missing a few times, groaning each miss, but then capturing the rattlesnake and icing it.

Really icing it.

I thought — These are the days when man ices the rattlesnake.

My brother slicked Rontel’s hair back with his bare left foot.

“I’ma ice you with my bare hands, Rontel,” he said.

“Give him the business,” I said.

My brother said, “Give him the fucking business.”

“Giving him the business” was a phrase we’d been using.

It was one of the programmed sayings in the hockey videogame from 1997.

If someone got hit hard in the game, the announcer might say, “Ooooh, he gives him the business .”

My brother said, “S’rattler”—using the guy’s voice. “D’I’iced him.” Then he leaned to the other end of the couch and head-butted Rontel, saying, “Hyuhh, hyuhh” with each head-butt.

Every time my brother’s head hit Rontel’s head, there was a small hollow sound.

The small hollow sound was both funny and sad.

Rontel just lay there blinking.

If the head-butt was especially hard he’d close his eyes, his ears down all the way.

“He gives him the business,” I said, feeling like what I really wanted was to meet a new woman and develop romantic feelings towards her and have sex with her once, then repeat that many more times with others and call it a life.

No, jump out a high window and call it a life.

“Hyuhh, hyuhh.”

My brother used the videogame announcer voice and said, “Ooh, giving him the business,” as he rapidly head-butted Rontel.

Rontel just lay there clenching his eyes shut, ears down.

My brother stopped.

“Shit,” he said, trying to focus.

He looked unsteady.

Then he said, “Hyuhh, hyuhh” real fast and head-butted Rontel twice more. “All right, no more.”

Our game began.

My brother always just selected this one really big player and then went around knocking people over while I scored goals.

It was funny to see him needlessly hitting people.

The sounds were funny too.

Like, “Urgh” and “Bwuh.”

One sounded like, “Hyuhh.”

Sometimes my brother would just skate around a player he knocked over, and then knock him over again when he got up.

Over and over.

“The violence,” I said, watching a replay where my brother’s player elbowed someone in the face and injured him for the rest of the season.

We were already up 3–1.

I’d scored three wonderful goals.

Finesse.

“Fucking finesse,” I said. “Violent finesse, motherfucker.”

“Who want that violence,” my brother said.

Upstairs, people screamed at each other.

There were stomping sounds and screaming.

Then — while the game was showing a replay of my brother hitting someone into the opposing team’s bench area — I looked across the room, out the window.

Across the courtyard — in another second story apartment — a slightly overweight woman showered.

I could see her through the bathroom window.

Every apartment in the building had a window in the shower.

She looked good.

Her chubby shoulders and back were wet.

I want to fuck you so hard — I thought.

Then I heard an audience in my head and they all said, “How hard!”

But I didn’t answer.

Baby, I don’t even know how hard I want to fuck you.

Baby, I’m scoring goals, I don’t have a job, I don’t have a future, I’m NO-good, hm.

And I imagined myself telling her that, rubbing my chin thoughtfully and staring at her thighs.

The attraction was not entirely sexual though.

Like — maybe if I were in that shower with her — I’d just rest my forehead on her shoulder while the water hit us both.

Is that sexual.

Actually that seems sexual.

Maybe it is sexual!

I scored another goal.

It was extremely impressive.

Not even going to describe it because I already know I could never do that.

Anyone witnessing it would be impressed though.

I looked at Rontel and thought about how pretty he was.

How much I loved him.

How, actually no, if he died it probably wouldn’t affect me.

Like, there was nothing to be taken from me that would affect me.

Like, I’d trained myself to feel no harm.

True sadness.

Let me show you how a real man endures true sadness.

When I focused on the game, my brother knocked someone over and then I skated up to the fallen player and tried to shoot the puck into his face.