Sam Pink - The Self-Esteem Holocaust Comes Home

EMPLOYEE: [stops smiling] Oh you’re gross [pause] Absolutely gross. You were born nine months after your mother swallowed her first genuine feeling of hatred towards her own life.

PERSON: I’m sorry [looks at samples] I don’t know what I did wrong.

They stare at the free samples, ugly and uncomfortable under the lights. Very ugly.

EMPLOYEE: It’s fine. Forget it. Let’s talk about something else [straightens her sign, different tone, not completely sincere] I can’t wait to get out tonight. It’s supposed to be nice out tomorrow. I think I’m going to go to the park with my husband and bring some sandwiches. I like to lie in the grass and put the wet dandelions behind my ear — not the dry seedy ones [fixing her bra strap] Sometimes I forget to take them out from behind my ear and my husband and I wake up to find them all over in different places on the bed. He gets mad when that happens. He says he’s worried about them staining the sheets. Fuck him. Fuck him in his stupid asshole.

The person sets the can and the orange on the stand. Then he rigidly holds out his cupped-hand. The employee hums to herself and spreads room temperature cheese on a cracker. Her knife breaks the cracker.

EMPLOYEE: Ah [making fist] I always fucking break the fucking thing. Here [drops another into his hands, whispering] Bullshit.

She eats the broken cracker and he eats his. And they make sure not to look at each other while eating. Somewhere in the avoidance, the person squints and coughs violently, spreading crumbs and some kind of cheese onto the display, and the employee’s face also. The employee stands unmoving, unblinking.

PERSON: [hand to his mouth ready to stifle the next spray] It’s good [coughs and retches hard] Good combination. The crumbs are on my tonsils.

He grabs the can and the orange and walks away coughing, red-faced and retching. There’s a girl working the front register, blowing bubbles from a plastic wand she keeps in a container of bubble solution next to her. She affects customer recognition, finishing a row of bubbles from the wand. Then she rings up the tomato juice and the orange.

GIRL AT REGISTER: Can I see your ID?

PERSON: I have to show you my ID?

GIRL AT REGISTER: No I just want to see it [blows another stream of bubbles] I’m not lying. For some reason I just want to see your ID. [stream of bubbles stops, she dunks the wand again]

He hands her his ID. The girl looks at it, then back at him.

GIRL AT REGISTER: You look different.

PERSON: How so ‘different’?

The girl watches him, alternating between the ID and his face. She dips the plastic wand in the bubble solution and blows some more bubbles. Some hit his face, and explode in lazy sequence. He puts his fingers to his face.

GIRL AT REGISTER: Different — like — you’ve been buried for a while [hands ID back] But only a little bit. Only a little bit buried. Relax — two, three weeks at most. Relax [another stream of bubbles, tries to catch them in her hand] Your driver’s license contains the ghost of a very old you. A very old you that you can recall by name. Care to try our Super-Savers pick of the day? It’s fresh cantaloupe.

PERSON: I’m sending you to hell in my mind.

GIRL AT REGISTER: Good because I don’t know how to get there by myself.

PERSON: [looking at driver’s license] The fastest way to hell is to stand still.

GIRL AT REGISTER: Forever sir [eyebrows up] So no cantaloupe?

PERSON: When I was buried for that little while, I told the worms that you’re not far behind [pause] Relax, like two or three weeks.

GIRL AT REGISTER: [sending more bubbles into his face] I was hoping you did.

The person takes his purchases and leaves the store. He walks on the gravel shoulder of a road as the day gets darker. And he finds a place to sit on a dirt incline beneath an overpass. Holding the can and the orange, he looks out at the refineries emitting smoke, less than half a mile away. He imagines the refineries are cloud factories, and that he is employed there. Every day, he punches in and throws a huge lever — activating the machines that make clouds for the sky. And underneath the overpass he puts his head on the dirt. The coolness bites through his hair, touching his skull. He opens the can and drinks.

THE PERSON: [watching the refinery smoke] No one is ever going to miss me.

He drops the can and it rolls down the dirt into the street, where it spills against the gravel. He opens the orange with his thumbnail. The orange is filled with seeds, resembling tiny skulls. And he imagines the shape of the animal possessing skulls this shape. He sees the skulls take on bodies and walk over him, eating his body very slowly. It does not hurt. He flips out the tiny skulls in watery pops. They fall down the dirt incline. At the bottom of the dirt incline there’s a puddle. Floating through the puddle there’s a dead bird. The person wants to get up and feed the dead bird all the tiny skulls from the orange. But he is too tired. He remains there, watching the cloud factory on the surface of the puddle along the streetside.

Night. In an empty grocery store parking lot, a man and a woman sit in an idling car. He is young and she is old. They are sharing a cigarette. He sits in the passenger seat and she sits in the driver’s seat. And they look out the windshield at the snow, both front windows down.

WOMAN: [scratching eyebrow with pinkynail] Did you ever play tag at recess? Did you play that a lot?

The man takes the cigarette from her fingers.

MAN: Yes. Yes I did.

WOMAN: [slowly] It’s making me happy to think about tag right now. I always liked playing tag. That’s a fun game. Isn’t it?

MAN: [staring out the windshield in a tired trance] In tag there’s only one loser at a time. And that loser is usually the slowest person. And the slowest person will try to look for another person to tag, but the only people they can catch are people that get hurt or have to tie their shoe or they trip. Ultimately it’s hopeless. There will always be one loser at the end. There has to be a loser for that game to work.

WOMAN: No it works because there doesn’t have to be a loser.

The woman turns on the windshield wiper and erases a few pieces of snow. She takes the cigarette back. Takes a pull, idly.

WOMAN: It’s cold outside and I don’t feel like doing anything. We should sit in this car until the snow piles up around it and we are buried. Will you stay here with me and get buried in snow? [adjusts the heater, looks at him] Do you want to do that? Do you want to wait here with me until we are buried in snow?

The man is still looking out the windshield in a tired trance.

MAN: No — that scares me. I don’t want to do that.

The woman takes another pull, then puts the cigarette back between his fingers.

WOMAN: Why? [speaking out the smoke] You want to come sleep in my bed with me then? We can do that too.

The man comes out of his tired trance. He shivers and coughs. When he coughs he tastes something, grimaces. He swallows and coughs again.

MAN: No I’d rather go home and go to bed. By myself. My stomach hurts. I don’t feel good. Fucking awful actually. I’d rather go home.

WOMAN: Why don’t you just come home and sleep with me? I have a big warm bed [pauses] Our only options are getting buried in snow or sleeping in my bed. Which one sounds good to you right now? Hmm?

She looks at him. He stares at his hand on the window trim.

MAN: No, I don’t think I want to do that. I don’t want to sleep in your bed with you [takes pull from cigarette] No offense. But it blisters me to think of that. Please, I don’t want that to happen. Promise me.