Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

It’s your secret bathroom.

Whenever you use it, you feel like you’re being followed, until the overwhelming relief of getting inside and locking the door.

You get inside and just stand there breathing the fake fruit scent from the air freshener.

Today you take off all your clothes and fold them, putting them on the ground next to your feet.

Sometimes you’re only able to shit if completely naked (socks and untied boots still on).

And to the tune of “This Is The Song That Never Ends” you sing, “This Is The Man With No-o Friends”—lightly picking a scab loose on your shin the whole time.

A lot of shit comes out of you.

It lands in a clay pile above the water on a mass of toilet paper someone left in the bowl.

Smells truly sickening.

You sit there, staring at the shitty water.

The walkie talkie on your equipment belt goes on.

“Eyy Billy here, just talked to a customer for a while about potting soil for a while but, um, I’m coming to the backroom now and I’m by the hygiene aisle so I’ll be there up there soon. It’s so hot in the store today isn’t it. Jesus frickin Christ knock it off with the heater, right? Heh heh alright.” The walkie talkie goes off. It comes back on. “Oh one more thing, if anyone needs a lawnmower, I’m try’n sell one. So”—he pauses—“Okee. Wahhh.”

Flushing away the shit, you wonder about when you’ll not be paying attention and end up dying at work — like in a machine, or falling off a ladder, or meeting a vengeful skeleton that has risen from entombment in the concrete of the stockroom floor.

*

Outside the bathroom, Sour Cream is unloading a palette of small Christmas trees onto a shelf marked “Clearance Items.”

He always makes sure to follow you so he can keep talking about things you don’t want to talk about.

He always finds you because he doesn’t like to be alone.

If he’s alone he probably just imagines dicks — you think. Dick pandemonium all around him. A rotating tower of dicks coming at him. “Get the fuck away from me, dicks!” he yells, as the shadow of the dick machine covers him.

“Alright man,” he says, lifting a box and stacking it. “What about. Alright, shit. What about the girl at the front desk. Vanessa. Listen to the whole thing before you answer now, guerro. Would you, lick her asshole for a million dollars.”

It seems like he’s going to say more, so you wait.

He doesn’t say anything else.

“Is that the whole thing,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says, pushing a stray Christmas tree limb back into a box. “A million for the asshole. Just like, go buffet on that shit, jo.”

He’s been on the ‘million dollars’ thing a lot.

‘Buffet’ too.

You say, “I’d do it for a lot less than a million. Probably even for free. Actually yeah, for free.”

“Damn, jo, you’d do that?” he says. “Total asshole though. All around it, bro. Like the whole radius and shit.”

He makes a gesture with both his hands like he’s framing a painting or a camera shot for a movie then he puts his face by the frame and opens his mouth, tongue flipping all over.

The sound of his tongue flipping around hurts your chest in some weird way.

“Same answer, yeah,” you say.

He claps and says, “Damn jo. El guerro like eating some ass? That fucking ass buffet? You do that?”

“You’re saying you wouldn’t do that, even if someone was going to give you a million dollars.”

“What. Nah man. Hell nah.”

“So you’ll come here four or five times a week and make an incredibly small fraction of a million dollars, but you won’t lick a cute girl’s asshole for the money. That’s your stance.”

He makes a clicking sound with his teeth. “You fucking bogus, guerro. Entirely fucking bogus.”

He hydraulically forklifts down another palette of Christmas trees.

You take turns stacking the boxes on lower shelves.

“How do you say ‘octopus’ in Spanish,” you say. “I feel like an octopus when I’m working hard, like—” and you make a swirling motion with both your arms going around your waist.

“Pulpo,” he says.

“It’s like I’m El Pulpo sometimes here.”

He laughs twice in a high pitch, and claps once. “El Pulpo, witcha greasy-ass mullet. You fucking sick motherfucker.”

You continue stacking boxes.

Some of the boxes are open along the sides.

Staples and wire treelimbs scratch as you lift.

You say, “Tell me how sexy I am again, you little shithead. I want to hear it again from those pretty lips.”

“Chill faggot,” he says. “Fucking kill you.” He clicks his teeth and says, “Man, hope I get out early tonight, jo. Finna fuck this one bitch that live by my gramma’s place.”

“Nah, you’re a virgin,” you say.

“Nah,” he says. “Nah, big-dick style, babygirl. Thought I told you.”

You’re looking at his rat tail.

Not bad — you think.

“How long did it take you to grow your rat tail,” you say, nodding backwards and pointing at the back of your neck.

“Like, three months, nigga,” he says, holding down his pointer-finger with his thumb and spreading out the other three fingers.

His pinky nail is really long.

“What if I grow a rat tail and let it get way longer than yours,” you say. “How would that make you feel.”

He doesn’t answer.

He checks his phone, holding a box upright with his other hand.

He needs to be demeaned by a bigger rat tail — you think. He needs to be shown his place on the rat tail foodchain. How long is the longest rat tail ever. Doesn’t matter. It can be exceeded. It can be done.

Sour Cream throws a box up onto a shelf and pulls his pants up. “You all right man?” he says. “You look like, sick or some-shit. You ok? You getting skinny on me, guerrito? What’s good. Don’t get skinny on me now, babygirl.”

“I’m good,” you say. “As long we’re together, I’m good.”

He puts a box up on a shelf and some fake pine needles fall out of the box onto his face. “Chill faggot,” he says.

You lift a box and stack it on the one he just stacked.

“Sour Cream, it’s time to destroy America. Don’t you think. It’s time. You either help me or I kill you first.”

“It’s big-dick time, babygirl,” he says, snapping.

“Big-dick time,” you say.

“Ell yeah,” he says.

And you watch him stack another box.

His rat tail shakes.

*

You pass the last ten minutes of your shift standing by the punch-out clock.

There’s a girl on her cell phone, yelling at someone.

She’s openly crying, walking around the locker area.

“No but that’s because you an asshole,” she says, looking intensely at the ground and pointing her finger down at the same time. Her hand is tattooed. “Ass, hole. Like, you the very part of the asshole where the hole touches at all points.”

“Asshole,” you yell, in the direction of the phone.

The girl on the phone raises her hand.

You high-five her.

*

Outside it’s windy.

Your infected ear clicks and goes close to deaf while you’re walking home.

At the corner of Broadway and Montrose, a sick-looking man stares at you until you stare him into not staring.

You pass a section of Blood Alley that goes behind a pizzeria.

You see a group of men in wheelchairs, gathered in the alley.

They hide small pipes in their sleeves, smoking crack.

They’re from a retirement home nearby.

They’re veterans.

You recognize them from Census work you did at a soup kitchen.

Maybe you should become friends with them.

They seem fun.

The only friend you have is your ex girlfriend and you don’t actually like her and she doesn’t actually like you.