Three Ton Coworker - Pie
". . . that i may rip in me a / portal through which you take up dwelling domicile and / out of which flows transgression like a slit sack of maggots." —Gordon Massman, "1483"
After I turned off the television and swallowed the last of the bourbon, I put down the tumbler she had purchased me at some point when were were still getting to know one another. I thought about refilling the tumbler. I thought about jerking off. I thought about how, the other day, when I was wiping down the handles on the treadmill with a paper towel onto which I had just sprayed some disinfectant—
When I was seven, I looked up out of the rubble of what could have been literal decimation but was not, and laughed at the way people talk about God. I saw a woman whose foot was covered in blood, and I thought that all of the skin had been removed. I saw a man pull his fork back through his cheek and out of his mouth. He turned to the person next to him and said, "I don't know if I swallowed that piece of pie or not."
There was no light in the room, and I ran my finger around the rim of the glass. I could just as easily have sprayed the paper towel with bourbon. I thought about smoking a cigar. I thought about how sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes it isn't. I felt myself begin to stiffen.
I don't know what happened. One minute I was wiping down the handles on the treadmill, the next I was in the locker room, looking at myself in the mirror through a rapidly blackening eye. Louis, who sits behind the front ask, was standing behind me, and saying something about if it had been him, he would have, and I started laughing.
I was still laughing later when I pulled into my driveway, and I remember chuckling a little as I picked up the tumbler, and tossed it through the television.