“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

IT was odd. I had been renting an usual amount of porn, for no reason other than boredom. The sex clerk confronted me on a Tuesday afternoon. He said I left an empty bottle two weeks ago in his store. He went behind his desk and retrieved the bottle and handed it to me. He then proceeded to lecture. He asked stupid questions like, is this your bottle. It was two weeks ago but I did have a bad habit of predictability. I always mixed my "to go" drinks in a Gatorade bottle. I figured nobody would every question exercise.

I immediately thought and then accidently said out loud, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” It seemed weird that he was collecting evidence of my bad habits. I didn’t like the feeling.

I took the bottle from the rude clerk and threw it in the trash. He then grabbed my new Gatorade bottle and wanted to know what was in it. I told him it was none of his fucking business. Yet, I suddenly felt somewhat offended. I mean, why did he keep that bottle for two weeks? I became pissed off like a drunk girl who passed out a frat party and then discovered she was raped the next morning when she sat on the toilet and shitted cum. Getting fucked in the ass is one thing, but not being able to enjoy it is another.

“Are you stalking me?” I had to ask because there could be no other explanation. I had made the mistake of trying to be friendly with him once. I told him I wanted to take him to the Wendy Williams show. I was lying. I was just drunk that day. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. But that was no excuse for him to keep the bottle. And then he tried to lecture me and I wasn’t going to have it.

I wasn’t going to get a lecture from a clerk at a sex shop that overpriced their porn. We started to argue. I really wanted to know why he kept the bottle. He explained the store had a strict no alcohol rule. I explained it was a closed container. I mean, had the sex shop turned into the airport. Was I to be stripped searched every time I wanted to rent “big black guys and small blond midgets.” I wanted my membership money back. He quickly noticed I wasn’t pleased and ran to his phone to call his manager. I mean, the membership fee was only ten dollars but I wanted it back. I felt harassed. It wasn’t like I was a fall down drunk or something that didn’t happen until four in the morning. My neighbors should have voiced more complaints. On the phone with his manager, he explained that a couple of weeks ago I left a bottle that smelled like liquor was it. He then said he wasn’t for sure cuz he didn’t drink. I guess he scored one for the forty-year-old drop out. He said he called in a friend and had him smell it. I was disturbed. It seemed like a lot of work, like sex shop CSI. I wondered what type of investigating they did in those backrooms. I wondered if unsuspected government workers got cornered for leaving cum stains on the benches? I felt as if I pissed in their bathroom did they keep samples to confront me the next time cuz I missed the toilet. It was insane. It was a sex shop that sold porn where old women took it up the ass from donkeys.

Where was the line?

As I stood there waiting for my money, I heard him say to his manager that I might be “psychotic and unemployed.” The bitch had just called me homeless. I was a little psychotic but unemployed could be argued. I did have a part time job with a temp agency just to make ends meet, but I wasn’t homeless. It was like a midget screaming in a large crowd you have a small dick.

I was dumbfounded. A clerk in a very seedy sex shop had decided he was better than me. I didn’t get my money back. I kept the overdue porn I was to return and canceled my credit card linked to that store. I had to find a new hobby.

Nappy Boogers

Overnight the temperature dropped from a crisp 70 to a bitchy 40 degrees and I was hung-over and not pleased that I didn’t wear a jacket. I wasn’t in the best of moods. Eight o’clock in the morning I rushed to keep my head together and eyes awake. I took a sleeping pill that night to sleep but that morning I felt more like a placid blow up doll, enough to get a desperate bastard off-- but the body knows the plastic pussy wasn’t real. Sleep is supposed to be resetting not cheated. I couldn’t awake. I was still horny.

Arms folded and the requisite Dark sunshades on, I stood in line at the Starbucks with my eyes closed letting the line push me forward. It was my turn. I didn’t remove my sunshades. The cashier smiled at me. It made me feel uneasy. I never really liked strangers smiling at me. I ordered my coffee. I handed her my debit card. She took it seductively. I felt the pull of interest as she swiped my card. Was she flirting or was I still sleep.
The thing about flirting with me is that I am awkward. I find flirting invading my personal space or silly like office banter. I mean, is the morning ever good?
Back to my dick rising, she placed the card in the palm of my hand. Most clerks put some distance between the exchanges of transactions. Some clerks throw the card back at you. Some clerk hand it over like a dirty diaper, only with the tips of their fingers. But she placed it in my palm. I couldn’t understand her problem. She was an okay girl, but it was eight in the morning and I hated the world. Was she flirting? I suddenly got nervous. I have never been a flirt. I am more confrontational. I am more direct. I start thinking of off the wall stuff. I mean, doesn’t flirting lead to sex. It does in the movies.

I can also never tell if someone likes me. I always found it somewhat of an impossibility. It wasn’t that I was ugly, I just never considered myself on the radar. I felt as if each and every time I even considered my attractiveness I had to pause and wait for the joke. Like that time I got on the city bus and noticed everyone was staring at me. The two old ladies in the front seat were just smiling. It wasn’t until the bus driver asked me curiously, “Are you going to put that away.” I didn’t know what he meant. He then you said, “Your dick is out.” I looked down at my pants. I noticed my pants unzipped and somehow my dick managed to slither through the slit of my boxers. And there it was, naked without a care in the world. I guess it felt like flirting. I couldn’t get off that bus fast enough before I was arrested. That was me.

I touched my zipper to make sure it was intact. Those zippers are sneaky. I was now awake at Starbucks. Somebody appeared to like me and I questioned if I should flirt back. I wondered where it would lead. I didn’t have much time. The morning coffee rush was brutal. Am I supposed to tell her my name? Am I supposed to say something trite like “Would you like to meet for coffee” to the girl who works in a coffee shop. I wanted to know her criminal history. I wanted to know if her grandmother had diabetes. I wanted to know her credit score. But I kept silent, best, the second I opened my mouth it was over.

And then it happened. The joke. I heard “nappy boogers.” Somebody was calling me “nappy boogers.” I felt my anus contract. I turned around and it was some woman cutting the line rushing towards me. She looked familiar. My third grade teacher would call me “nappy boogers.” I hated that bitch. I told myself that it couldn’t be her. I was two thousand miles away from childhood. I immediately touched my nose. It was my OCD. My nose leaked constantly as a child. My third grade teacher used to say I was going to die with a head of naps and nose of full of captain crunch boggers.
“It’s me, Ms. Arkansas.” It had to be some type of joke. She hugged me. She grabbed for my nose and swiped her index figure in it like a white glove. I retracted. It was Ms. Arkansas. What the fuck? I turned to the cashier who now looked at me as if I vomited an afro of crusted mucus all over her counter. I turned away. The flirting was over. I told Ms. Arkansas she had the wrong person. Nappy boogers don’t live here anymore.

Cows vs. Ants

“Did this motherfucker just fart on my pinky finger” I wanted to say out loud but the scream cowered in my head. No one flinched, but the oxygen stopped as the smell of the obvious vibration of foul heat arrested the air. You couldn’t ignore a grown man with lactose problems. But no one spoke a word. They just guarded their borrowed place in the overly crowded metro, turned the music up on their headphones and refused to make eye contact. The red line was having problems again. The last problem killed some people. I figured I let the fart go.

Living in the “protest” city or DC, it seems that mornings are the worse. Everybody is always in such a rush or confused. The busiest metro stop in DC has to be the red line, Gallery of fools place or Gallery Place. It’s where all the major metro lines exchange its people. Spit out and spat on, they move like fireflies slamming against a lonely nightlight just because. Getting off trains, getting on trains, waiting for a train, to go only god knows where. Nobody cares. It seems everybody got to be somewhere important or not. I remember when I didn’t have a job-- and I would be coming from some club or one night stand probably smelling of liquor and bathless weeks -- and I would greet the morning ants and cows with dark sunshades and wonder if they pitied a mid twenty something year old man with no place to go but bed at 8 in the morning. Now, I am an ant. I don’t notice anything but strange farts and my metro stop.

The metro traffic of blah blah humanity is like cows and ants. The slow moving or the mass of electricity. Lights on or lights off. Everybody always seem to be rushing, get out of my way rushing or just in the way. I used to love being in the way.

The cows. The slow moving cows, confused. They graze. They seem to always be in the way of the rushing ants. The cows, often tourists or someone directionless. Cows in general seem to be on a never ending vacation or drunk. Probably why they are so easy to tip over or kill and make great burgers. The meat seems lazy. In the rush of life, cows just get pushed out the way. The stampede pushes them where it wants. And then they just start running, scared shitless from the barking of someone who thinks he or she is more important.

I like the part when the metro door opens and everyone rushes to the escalator. And then there is the swipe of the metro card for exit. No one likes the person who messes up the flow. The directionless. It’s always the cow who gets to the swipe and sometimes just looks at the machine, confused. The world suddenly stops. Traffic jam. The stampede becomes aware of itself and we are no longer-- but I who is a hour late for work-- and I who is getting a divorce-- and I who farted on that train.

I don’t mind the jam, it gives me time to think. I can finally slow down. Work can wait another second.

And then there are the ants. As a kid, I liked watching ants cuz they are also seem as if they’re rushing towards something life threatening. I’ve never witness an ant just chilling. I’ve never seen an ant on vacation. They seem to know direction. Get food and protect the queen. It was so simple.

I feel as if I am an ant. Alarm clock goes off and I wake up, rush, get dressed, watch the clock, out the house, make it to the metro, get on train, stand, get off train, work, clock out, back on train, and suddenly I am home until the alarm clock goes off again. In the morning with my uniform on: blazer, shirt, tie and dress pants, I feel as if I look like I do something important. I don’t. I pretend and hope no one finds out. I am on corporate welfare.

I feel as if all those who look like me, in the same uniform look as if we are rushing towards something. Just like ants. It’s simple. Work. Get food. Feed the Queen. Hide bad habits. But who the fuck is the Queen. And what has she done for me lately.

I barely see the world in my rush of instinctual importance until I stumbled into the cows. I was once a cow. Reincarnation is a prankster.

The cows, they just sit there, like they do when cars pass them on highways in the country. They don’t notice the rushing. Cows don’t even say raise their head to say hello. The cows, tourists, directionless. The alarm clocks goes off again. I rush. I am an ant now, dreaming about cows. I need a vacation or a burger.