This little cocksucker’s really got it going out for him—he keeps going this way he’s going to find himself in the kind of alligator water that swallows guys like him whole and spits them out in nasty little pieces. He can’t talk normal, he can’t walk normal, he can’t shop normal—last week he runs into Carmen at JCPenney and tells her he thinks he’s aged 20 years over the holidays cause he spent them cooped up with his dog in his 240 square foot apartment like it ain’t his own damn fault, his family’s phoned him from Columbus can’t he pack up his shit and take the bus and say Merry Christmas to his own damn dad? And she tells him it’s all in his head he can’t even thank her or nothing cause he just says ‘what do you mean it’s all in my head of course it’s in my head, I couldn’t have physically aged 20 years over the holidays’ don’t he know what she’s talking about? She takes him over to the cheeses section cause she wants some ricotta and she asks him, notice how nice she’s being, she asks him which one of these twelve different options is worth buying and he says he don’t even look at the price tags or nothing, if he sees it he just picks it up. He says he wants some beans or something then walks over to the bean rack and shakes his head and sighs and walks back with her all the way to her apartment and bids her goodnight—she’s been telling him about her neighbor who uses up the hot water all morning at 8AM taking a shower every day on the dot and how many men do you even meet in these days who pay so much attention to their hygiene? And this piece of shit marine says he didn’t think that was unusual or nothing cause he takes a shower every morning at the same time like yeah you’re a fucking marine man, look around.
Kid’s like 26 and says he got honorably discharged but it takes three fucking seconds in a bar with him to tell how bull the whole damn story is cause once the beer starts going down it’s going to go down down down until he’s sleeping right there in the parking lot if not kicking the teeth out of any unfortunate piece of shit who walked in wearing a Yankees cap—he’s kitchen staff or something and not a damn person knows why he isn’t laid off yet, piece of shit that he is. Says he’s a student but the only class anyone’s ever seen him in is some econ elective where he walks in and twirls his pen around a pad for 50 minutes before heading back out having said not a single word to the teacher or his neighbor the entire time. Did all the group projects alone, or something.
And that’s not to mention the time when he walks into Reese’s and tries to chat up some sorority bitch like they can’t see straight through him in five seconds flat, tells them he’s a marine and he’s got his dogtags around his neck with the loony conviction that any of that means anything now that the one girl who ever actually ended up going to his damn apartment said he just wanted to keep talking and watch a movie or something after the fuck anyway. That’s the type of marines you get these damn days. Motherfucker’s not even six foot and got Susan a whole necklace for her birthday. Can’t he keep his trap shut knowing that it was all pity that even got him that far? Can’t he tell no one wanted to hear his dumb fucking ass strum some chords on the guitar he picked up two weeks ago at the damn mall? What is this, 2006?
If he’s not pulling it together anytime soon then he might as well pick up that piece we know he keeps in his bedside drawer and take a good look at it with his tongue with the full-well knowledge that there are better men than him who’ve taken that path with the kind of honor and dignity he hasn’t held for a goddamn moment—like Dave Grubber who was 35 with a wife and kids and still felt the need to suck up a shotgun having cheated on that wife with a PR agent—cause even if you were this big a shit in the brief life you lived the one time everyone’s only got praises to sing about you is in your obituary, and God knows we’d like to hear what bull they come up with.