Chow Mien
There’s this man alone outside of the bar. It’s late, probably
past one in the morning, and I’m watching this guy from across the street.
He has his arms folded over his chest and he’s leaning against the wall
like he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that it’s crusted
with piss and spilled beer and pieces of old gum. He’s not smoking and
this is what grabs my attention because usually the only people who hang outside
on a night like this, cold enough to freeze your titties off, are out because
they’re smoking. But not this guy, he’s standing there, hands
dug so deep in his pockets he could be scratching his knees and he’s
all slouched over and just staring at the ground. I start to feel sort of
sorry for him after a while because, shit, I don’t know, twenty maybe
thirty minutes go by and he’s still standing there, so still I think
if I went over there and gave him a good shove he would probably topple over
sideways.
I actually think about doing it because I’m so fucking bored, and I've
been picking my own boogers for like half an hour and rolling them into a
little ball between my fingers. I should go tip the guy over or see if I can.
Just for something to do. And I’m about to. I flick my artistic master
piece of a booger into the gutter and stand up. My feet are asleep from squatting
for so long and it takes me a minute of stomping and swearing, steam blowing
icy streams from my nostrils and mouth like I’m on fire when I'm actually
frozen inside, my entire body a block of ice, before I can feel my feet. I
have this paranoia that one day I’ll get gangrene from spending too
much time out in the cold, or frostbit actually, and then gangrene because
I won’t deal with it soon enough, I’ll just let it go and then
end up having to have my leg amputated. My dad lost three of the toes on his
right foot because he passed out drunk one night in a gutter, when I was five
years old, and got buried in the snow. I’ve been scared ever since.
But I live in this one bedroom little shit hole on top of a Chinese place
which isn’t so bad if you don’t mind roaches and the smell of
grease and sweet and sour pork twenty four seven, but sometimes it gets to
me. Especially when my room-mate has her boyfriend over for the night and
I have to give her the room because she pays more rent than me, expressly
for this reason, and I’m banished to the sagging couch that must have
belonged to a very old dog before we found it because it smells worse than
the Chinese place at two in the morning when you’re hung over. The bonus
is I also get to listen to them having sex all night—grunting and moaning
in the bed that I usually get at least half of. It’s enough to make
me want to slit my wrists. Which, incidentally, I tried to do once, just to
get him out of the house. But Lisa’s brother slit his wrists once, and
so she knows what to look for. When I came bashing into their room, my room
actually, screaming that I just slit my wrists and waving them around to try
and get the blood flowing a little, Lisa just said, “Let me see.”
She was straddling said boyfriend, who doesn’t like me much, totally
naked, mid-fuck, and she wants to see my wrists. That’s just like her,
Ms. Reality check. “Oh my God,” she said, “Give me a break
and get the fuck out. Those are little chicken scratches. If you want the
bed so bad you’ll have to do better than that.” At least I made
her boyfriend lose his erection, which was something at least. But he got
it back after a while, and I had to put Band-Aids on my wrists and stuff my
head under a pillow.
This guy is still leaning against the wall. The bar has closed, and the bartender
just locked up and walked right past the guy like he was nothing, a piece
of trash standing propped up against a wall. So I cross over. Jay walking
because it’s two AM and no one’s driving. I tip toe up to the
guy like maybe if I’m real quiet he won’t see me coming, and I
give him a shove from the side, just to see if I can do it. And the guy tips
right over, slam, I can still hear the sound his head makes when it hits the
sidewalk, like a watermelon busting open. And I’m like, Oh Shit. I have
to put my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. Because the guy is dead.
I stand there for a minute staring at him all dead and glassy eyed with his
hands still shoved in his pockets, then I pull my hat down over my ears and
run all the way back to my apartment without looking back. By the time I get
there I feel a little better. I dig through the dumpster in back of the restaurant
and find someone’s leftover chow mien. I take it upstairs. My roommate
and the boyfriend are still at it so I turn the TV up real loud and eat the
chow mien on the couch with my fingers.