Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

Stomach swollen with blood and muscle.

The girl next to you puts the magazine on the table.

“Here it is— top five signs. Are you ready. Or no, let’s take this quiz instead. It says, ‘Beach Quiz.’”

“Beach quiz beach quiz,” you say in an excited voice, slapping your thighs.

The other people at the table start talking about whether or not the show on the breakroom tv has vampires in it and the girl reads you the quiz.

You watch her face as she reads the quiz.

She says, “Ok, question one—” then looks somewhere else on the page, “Oh wait. Oh this article’s called ‘The naughtiest thing you’ve ever done.’ Should we read that instead.”

“What did the person do,” you say. “If it’s too naughty, don’t tell me.”

She scans the article, pushing her glasses back against her face.

“Oh god,” she says, “This is retarded. It says, ‘I stole my roommate’s man in college.’”

“My roommate’s man,” you say.

“Yeah,” she says. “It says, ‘I stole my roommate’s man, for a dormroom fling.’”

You say, “Wait, what happened — there was a dormroom fling you say.”

She reads from the magazine. “‘We cut class, but he still gets an A+ in my opinion.’”

“It’d be funny if someone confessed to a brutal hit and run accident, in vivid detail,” you say. “Like if that was the naughty thing the person did I mean.”

The bald bearded man says, “Hah, it’s like, ‘When I drove away, I could see him clutching a bloody crack on the top of his skull, crawling in the street.’”

The lower level manager is staring at the tv, holding a miniature piece of pizza up to his face.

He says, “‘Broken glass clung to his face and he crawled blindly in the street over his own blood.’”

No one says anything for a little bit.

“That’s not funny,” says the girl reading the magazine, turning to another page.

A skinny guy with razor scars all over his arms is typing something into his phone. “It’s funny, sweetie,” he says, snapping a baby carrot with his front teeth.

You hold out your apple to the girl with the magazine.

“Do you want some of this apple. It’s great.”

She takes the apple and bites it.

She hands it back, not looking up from the magazine.

You watch her wet mouth chew.

This is beautiful — you think. This is 100 %. This is freedom.

The way she’s bending the magazine, it looks to you like one of the articles on the front cover says, “College Hernia Blood!? Hwqja!”

Sounds like a good article — you think, feeling the impossibility of knowing where to look.

That’s a recurring feeling for you: Where should I be looking.

On the back cover of the magazine there’s an advertisement.

You read it out loud. “Max-out your volume, with Aloe and Avocado.”

The girl turns a page and says, “Max-out, bitch.”

Chavon says, “We live maxed-out.”

The guy sharing headphones with her rhymes: “Maxed-out/fact is, crack’s clout/and we smash clowns/stash cash-mounds in mattresses here in Uptown.”

Chavon says, “Nice.”

The lower level manager sets down a piece of his miniature pizza and says, “Hey did you staple the receipt to the magazine cover.”

The girl looks up from her magazine. “What.”

She flips her hair to the side.

Anger.

You feel in love, for however long a half-second is.

Knowing a half-second is long enough to be in love.

The manager wipes some grease off his goatee.

“You’re supposed to staple the receipt to the cover so we know you didn’t just take it,” he says. “Otherwise how do we know.”

The girl immediately gets loud. “What. I’m not going to ruin the magazine I just bought. I paid for it earlier. Check the fucking security footage if you need to. God.”

You hit the table with your fist and say, “Check the footage”—in a way meant to encourage animosity between them.

The bald bearded guy says, “Check the footage.”

“I’m just saying, that’s policy,” says the lower level manager. He wipes his fingers on a napkin. “You’re supposed to do that.”

You look at her and say, “You’re supposed to do that.”

“Ok fine, now I know,” she says, flipping her hair to the side and looking at the magazine again. “Fuck. I’m not going to steal a fucking magazine this stupid. God.”

The lower level manager looks at his miniature pizza, then you.

He says, “Hey, before I forget, can you certify the new stockroom trainee before you go home today.”

“Yeah, I’d love to — absolutely,” you say, hitting the table with your hand again.

“Alright, thank you sir,” he says. “It’s some guy with freckles.”

“Guy with freckles?” you say, pointing at the lower level manager.

He looks at you, a little confused. “Yeah.”

You hit the table with your hand and say, “Ok great, thanks.”

This morning it takes a lot of effort to stay awake after waking up — which is becoming normal.

It’s around seven a.m.

You stay in bed, going in and out of sleep, body hurting.

People make noise at the bus stop outside.

People are always outside.

Always around.

You half-dream/half-imagine a large pile of shit you keep putting your head in then taking back out.

When you pull your head out of the shit, terrible strings of pulp are wrapped around your head and face.

But then, you have regular air.

And after one breath, you put your head back into the shit.

And do it slow enough to really feel it.

Because it could never be different — you think.

And your complaints diffuse to the renewed beginning of traffic sounds, ambulance sounds, airplane sounds, people sounds, and television sounds from another apartment.

Trying to wake up.

Somebody walks past your window, on Clark Street.

He screams/sings, “Everyone gonna die, gonna die, gonna die” —sustaining every third “die.”

His singing voice is a combination of singing/yelling/laughing, and he walks down the block gone.

Your neighbor.

Three million others too, surrounding.

You quietly sing, “Everyone gonna die, gonna die, gonna die.”

It’s a good song.

Yes.

A fine song, for the beginning of another fine day.

Yesterday at work one of the managers was helping you throw out garbage and she said, “Guess what, I think I met my future husband last night, on a date.”

She had her front teeth over her bottom lip, excited.

You said, “You met your husband from the future?”

Then you thought about how his time travelling would change your life, and how you’d never even notice, because this thought would be one of its results.

Fuck!

“We went out last night,” she said. Then she swung a bag of garbage into the compactor, leaning forward to avoid getting garbage juice on her shirt. She checked her breasts and said, “He’s from South Carolina. He’s an engineer and he’s six foot one”—opening her eyes wide then returning them to normal wideness.

You said, “So that’s already three facts you know about him. That’s good.”

In your Kiiidddzzzz bed, you think about her breasts shaking as she swung bags of garbage into the compactor.

And your dick gets very hard but you’re too tired to touch it — trying to wake up.

The room is lighter.

Same color as always.

You let your dick be hard, lying on your back on your sweet fucking Kiiidddzzzzz bed.

The front door to the apartment building slams shut, and then footsteps come up the stairway.

Someone knocks at your apartment door.

More knocking.