Dennis' Attention

Sara sat on her haunches with her arms wrapped around her knees, shifting her weight from foot to toe to high heel with no rhyme or reason, creating this awkward sway, as though she were being blown by cold wind coming from every direction. Her eyes were wide and fixed upon my new kitten, Dennis, who was splayed out across the wooden floor. Dennis was wildly oscillating his head in the way that kittens do when focusing on a moving object of considerable interest.
“Awwww, look at the ki-en,” Sara cried, omitting the two t’s in kitten’s pronunciation. The bottom half of her face split open into a huge gummy smile. You could hear spit stretching across the inside of her cheeks. Her teeth were tiny and kinda brown, as if her baby teeth hadn’t fallen out 24 – 19 years before like they should have. They looked soft, vulnerable. She intensified her sway so that her ponytail swished around behind her and the floorboards creaked beneath her oddly distributed weight.
How on earth does she do that in high heels? I thought. Dennis rose to his feet and assumed pouncing position. His head continued to magnetically follow Sara. He meowed and Sara almost lost it.
“Oh my gawd,” she said, “what an adorable ki-en!” I thought she was going to tip over and fall crashing across the wood floors, Dennis bolting away in terror, ruining their charming moment together. But she maintained her balance, keeping her new friend’s interest. Dennis clawed at the floor, piercing through the polyurethane and extracting tiny little splinters.
“Hey!” I said to Dennis.
“Be nice,” Sara said.
Sara somehow managed to untangle one of the arms which had been wrapped around her knees. She wobbled a little, widening her eyes, drawing in a short, sharp breath and pivoting her feet to readjust.
“Haha – my arm fell asleep!” she said, looking up at me and smiling. I made what I felt to be a look of caution and swayed sympathetically with her, hoping she wouldn’t fall, waiting for her to fall. She rubbed her arm against her skirt and leg, consciousness eventually flowing back into the sleepy appendage. She turned her attention back to Dennis, or the ki-en, who was still in ready-mode, his paws positioned in such a way that he could leap into space. Or into Sara. She reached her hand out to stroke Dennis’s face. Her dangling fingers and Dennis approached one another in slow motion. I heard the music from Gone With The Wind playing somewhere in my hippocampus – that music when the two people are running toward each other, madly in love. About an inch floated between Sara’s hand and Dennis’ head. Dennis lifted up its paw to greet Sara. Sara arched her eyebrows and nodded, emphasizing her interest in petting him. Just as her index finger graced Dennis’ whisker he brought his paw down across Sara’s hand, unsheathing his claws at some invisible moment known only to Dennis.
“OW! You little shit!” Sara shouted. Dennis dashed to the far corner off the room, licking his claws and squinting in that way that cats do when they are immensely pleased with themselves. Sara held up her hand and studied it. Four clean claw marks jogged about an inch just under her thumb. They hadn’t even begun to bleed yet.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m used to this sort of thing.” She glared at me severely. I looked away sheepishly. “You wanna go dip a cotton ball in some hydrogen peroxide for me?”
“Yeah,” I said, “yeah, of course.”
I tip-toe ran through the kitchen and into the bathroom. I opened the medicine cabinet, pulled out and uncapped the big, brown plastic bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I didn’t actually have any cotton balls, because nobody actually has any cotton balls, so I unraveled what I felt to be a sufficient length of double-ply toilet paper, crumpled it up, and doused it in 67 cent generic hydrogen peroxide from K-Mart.
Maybe I should give Sara more credit, I thought.
I walked back through the kitchen, wielding a drippy wad of sterile toilet paper. When I reached the living room Sara was still on her haunches, perfectly balanced, once again holding Dennis’ attention with her arrhythmic sway.

Second Coming

I decided to sell my dick to Lance for $237.00 because that’s all he had in his checking account and I needed money to pay my gas bill.

“You sure about this?” he asked, punching his PIN number into an ATM machine.

“Yeah,” I said, “I mean, I really don’t use it that much anymore, and whenever I do, I just get depressed afterwards.”

“Huh. What about…I dunno…like peeing, or whatever?”

“I’ll just sit down to do it. Like a girl, I guess.”

“Yeah you will, girl. No, but I mean, how will you actually pee without a…um…dickhole?”

“I dunno. I’m sure there’s gonna be a big hole in my pubes, so I’ll probably just pee out of that. Sort of like a hot water faucet turned on all the way.

“Haha. Gross. Hey – can I just give you $200.00? It only lets me take money out in multiples of like…I dunno – $20, $40, $80…up through $500...you see what I mean?”

I peeked over his shoulder and saw what he meant.

“Um,” I said, “can you like take out $200.00, put your card back in after it ejects and then take out $20.00? I’ll sell it to you for $220.00, I guess. My gas bill is only $208.93, or something, but I was hoping to have a nice dinner tonight. You know…just ‘cause it’ll be my last night with my dick, or whatever.”

“Sorta like the Last Supper?”

“Um…yeah, I guess.”

“You gonna go, like, jerk off in the bathroom before dessert, or anything like that?”

“Nah – I’m sick of it. Sick of coming.”

"What?"

"I'm sick of coming; I don't like to do it anymore."

“What the hell is wrong with you? Are you suicidal? Coming is like…I dunno…life’s perpetual manifestation, or something.”

“Yeah, but I mean…it’s like, you know that one Bill Hicks stand-up where he talks about how every payload has like 200,000,000 sperm in it? I dunno. It’s sort of depressing to watch all those lives splatter down the drain, or drown in the tip of a condom. Sort of makes sense why Catholics don’t allow contraception, in a way.”

“Well, sperm isn’t really alive, unless you wanna get all metaphorical, or whatever. So you’re trying to knock a girl up, then? Is that it? Who? Still can’t get over Sally, huh?”

“What? Sally and I broke up ten years ago and she’s dead! Are you an idiot? Besides, I didn’t give a shit when she died, and I don’t give a shit now.”

“Wow, you’re thoughtful. I’m just saying, man – that’s how it is in the movies. There’s always some ex-girlfriend stuff going on.”

“Yeah, but not a dead and cremated ex-girlfriend. What am I gonna do, go the Appalachian trail, where her ashes were spread and randomly stick my dick in the mud and hope that some flowers pop up? Hell, you’re the one who was waiting for us to break up, anyway, so take it – buy my dick, stud. I’ll give it to you after we eat dinner, er, after I eat dinner…you know what I mean.”

“Man, Sally and me wasn’t even about…it was only one time and…whatever. Are you sure you wanna do this?”

“Man – yeah, I wanna do this. $220.00; that’s my final offer. I hate to charge you, but like I said – gotta pay the gas bill.”

Lance shrugged, flicked the ATM’s touch screen, said “ow – fuckin’ fingernail,” shook his finger a little, and the machine whirred and clicked and shuffled and spat out ten twenty-dollar bills with tattered edges. Lance yanked the wad from the slot and stuffed it into his back pocket. He pulled his card out and pushed it back in, beginning the diminutive transaction.

I rubbed my jeans and found my slug tucked away, squishing against my inseam. One of those abhorrent montages began Power Pointing in my head as I petted my phallus during our final moments together – the first time I ever saw my own jizz, spurting and dripping from my urethra like freshly decorked champagne; the first time Lance and I confided in being members of the Secret Society of Jerking Off with Alarming Regularity; the first time I fantasized about Mindy Hurst – freshman class president – bent over the filing cabinet in my dad’s study, screaming in delight as I pulled her hair back with one hand, choked her with the other, and shook with unguarded joy as I filled her warm, soft guts with magical plasma – with civilizations of myself – while the football team stood watching and cheering me on over by the bookshelf, lifting up their shirts to reveal the letters of my name spray-painted on their torsos; the first time I ever thought about David Mann, captain of the football team, his dick massive and throbbing violently in both of my hands like a sump pump; the first time it actually happened with Mindy Hurst, and how it wasn’t what I had expected; the first time I left the condom in its wrapper on Sally’s night stand and Trojan Horsed into her world, deploying my men in a fiery coup d'état; when I began to resent Sally when she stopped eating birth control pills once a day and started eating McDonalds twice a day, varicose veins forming in pockets on her thighs like relief maps; the first time I left the dinner sofa during the middle of Seinfeld and tramped into Sally’s bathroom, popping a button off my button-fly jeans as I tore them open, brandishing my flimsy noodle and fighting with it desperately, trying to think about anything, anything! – Sally’s friends, Sally’s sisters, Sally’s parents, bagels, Napa Valley, post-structuralism, the kitten from those “Hang in There” posters; the first time I broke up with Sally because I was bored; the last time Sally broke up with me because I could no longer perform; the first time I heard that Sally blew her head into a thousand fucking pieces with her dad’s twelve gauge, and that I didn’t even care.

“The deal’s off,” I announced.

Lance turned around, holding up a twenty dollar note. “Huh?”

“Trust me – you don’t want what I’ve got. I’ve known you for years, and…man, I can’t even get it up anymore. I honestly haven’t had an erection in like, six months. I don’t wanna sell you a lemon.”

“Dude,” Lance said, “I don’t even believe you. That’s bullshit. Man, you’ve just gotta stop beating yourself up and...wait, hold on, I’ve gotta take this – hello? Hey, what up, Preston? What’s the matter, you stuck on Dragoncastle again, you fuckin’ dork?”

Lance wandered off with his cell phone sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear, talking loudly to someone called Preston, apparently. I took a seat against the ATM machine and flicked my dick listlessly through my jeans. I closed my eyes tight.

When I opened them, I saw Sally sitting in a gazebo that looked sort of like a giant chocolate cupcake outlined with vanilla frosting, surrounded by night sky – like 3:00 AM-caliber darkness with no light pollution. Sleet fell like darts, sticking into the surrounding grass and breaking onto a cobblestone path in musical little clinks and clanks. The cobblestone path was black and white and led to the gazebo. In fact, pretty much everything was black and white, except for Sally’s face, which was bleeding severe red – from the eyes and the ears and the nose and perhaps from some other orifice that had been poked or shot into her. I gasped for air and got a mouthful of sleet. I spit the needles of sleet onto the cobblestones and approached the Gazebo. Sally’s hulking father, who I hadn’t noticed until now, freight-trained down the cobblestone path, wearing a black and white plaid lumberjack shirt, which was tucked into white Wranglers, which were tucked into black SWAT team boots, which crumbled cobblestones beneath them. I acquiesced off to one side and his shoulder still plowed into me, knocking me to the ground. I expected to take a kick to the ribcage, but the sound of his footsteps faded away behind me.

“Hey,” I heard Sally say, “Come here. Please.”

I stood up, wiped off my shirtsleeves and shook it off, as they say. I composed myself and walked carefully over to Sally to get a better look at her. Her wounds had vanished and she had some bizarre, religious-looking headpiece on. Like a nun’s, but not really. I took four steps up the marble staircase of the gazebo and sat down next to her on the white marble bench.

“What happened to your face?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it was all bloody and gross before. Now it’s fine.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, my dad beats the shit out of me sometimes. I’m dead, though, so it doesn’t hurt – plus it heals quickly.”

“But doesn’t that bother you?”

She just smiled and laughed. It started to occur to me that I was in one of those dreams in which one can control his actions – a lucid dream, I believe they’re called. I had so much to ask Sally, but I couldn’t think of a single question; it’s like when you walk into a record store and immediately forget all 27 albums you’re trying to find.

“Hell,” she said, “you can punch me all you want.”

I thought about this for a minute; it was a lucid dream, after all. And if Sally said it didn’t hurt…

“Really? I mean, you won’t be like, mad at me or anything? This is all very strange, and I’m just sort of curious, and you know how society says you can’t hit women, and I know you dumped me because I couldn’t get it up, but this isn't about revenge or anything, and it’s like how sex and violence are sort of in the same…”

“Shut. Up. Honey, I’m dead. What matters is how you feel about it. Let’s see what you’ve got. C’mon – give it to me.”

I scooted back a little and studied Sally’s face. She looked the same as she had ten years ago – sort of an oval head, dimply face, too much make-up, blond hair that looked black, because of some stringy, almost Hassidic-looking black curls spiraling from the brim of her religious-looking headpiece. Her eyes were still perfect, though. She sat cross-legged, facing me. She wore a black blouse and a short, black skirt. She was a little plump, but in a rather adorable way, in spite of her varicose veins, which were still present and accounted for. She was smiling. She looked great, honestly – better than she had when we first started dating and were so in love with one another. I threw my fist into her cheekbone and felt ten-thousand tiny bones snapping between my fingers; it sounded like I’d just punched a bag full of Corn Flakes. Disbelief and horror had never been so delightful. I shuddered involuntarily and cracked a huge grin.

“That was so Awesome and weird!” I shouted. My voice boomed light-years into the darkness. I pulled my fist away. Oh, but her mouth was a disaster! She began spitting out teeth, blood trickling through the gaps and onto her thighs. She chewed up some of her broken, bloody teeth and swallowed them like chips and salsa. Then she started laughing.”

“See?” she said, coughing up the shards of teeth she’d just swallowed, “I’m fine!”

“But you look…”

“Close your eyes.”

I did as I was told.

“Now open them.”

She looked just as she had before I smashed her face open. What a fucked up dream; I wanted to know more.

“So, um,” I said, “this isn’t real…I know I’m just dreaming this…but while I have you here, what’s up with you killing yourself? I mean, what did I do?”

Sally laughed, fanning herself with a restaurant menu she was suddenly holding for some reason.

“Oh, you,” she said, “you’re so fucking narcissistic. You think this has to do with the fact that you couldn’t get it up, don’t you?”

Aw, man, I wasn’t expecting this, I thought. I just wanted to punch her in the face some more, blink, and do it again, though only because it was fun and satisfying – not because I was mad at her, or anything.

“What’s that,” she said, “you wanna punch me some more?”

“What? How’d you…”

“I can read minds, travel to people’s dreams, boast shocking resilience – you can do a lot when you’re dead, honey.”

“No,” I said, “That’s so…strange. No, I mean, I’m just curious. Why did you kill yourself?”

“You don’t even care about why I killed myself! Well, you do, but only if it relates to you and your dick – your dick that you fought with like a water hose in my bathroom, wasting all your jizz on my linoleum, not on me; your dick that you’re trying to pawn off on poor old Lance…”

“No!” I interrupted, “I called the whole thing off! I can’t let Lance live with my pain! Can’t I just stay with you? I mean…I still love you!”

“No you don’t, and no you can’t. Besides, Lance has a dick of his own, dear. Believe me.”

“This is so...yeah, I know you and Lance, whatever, after we broke up, but I don’t care…”

“Don’t you want to know about how big Lance’s dick is? How it plowed through me? How every time his heart beat, his vein would throb against my clitoris as I dug my fingernails into his back? Don’t you want to hear about how he didn’t even look me in the eyes? How he buried his face in the pillow you left on my bed after I left you, screaming into it?”

“What? Why are you…”

“Having seventeen orgasms in twenty minutes was probably the last great feeling I ever…”

“Stop it. Just…shut up!” I craned my neck, looking for an exit. Only black and white surrounded us.

“Look,” she continued, “I knew from a very young age that I was going to kill myself. It’s just…I don’t know. Intuition, I suppose.”

“How could you know something like that,” I said, “I could maybe see like bi-curiosity starting early on, but you really knew you were going to kill yourself? That’s insane!”

“Well, I mean, we’re all going to die, anyway, right? Why not expedite the process a little?”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Then why are you selling your dick to Lance for $237.00?”

“I’m not! I already told you – the deal is off! He’s just on the phone, talking to some guy named Preston right now.”

“Who?”

“I dunno – some guy; one of his role-playing dork friends. Sally, look – I’m obviously dreaming, or having one of those gnarly American Indian mystical journeys right now, but I’m finished. I’ve learned my lesson, or whatever.”

“You want to go back to your impotent world where you date girls until they fatten up, so you can leave them to blow their brains out alone in a government subsidized apartment? You haven't learned shit.”

“Hey! You’re the one who claims that your suicide was predetermined – you can’t renege like that.”

“Well, if you haven’t noticed, logic really holds no ground after death, but I’ll let you have this one. But I really did love you.”

“Then why did you dump me? Why did you leave me hanging, while you boned my best friend in some ridiculous…whatever?

“So you do care.”

“Yeah? So?”

“See, was that really so hard?”

“I…well, yeah, I mean, I guess it took me ten years and I had to bust your face open, but…I guess I was just, I dunno, jealous that you got here first. That’s why I said that I didn’t care.”

“Look – like I said, I knew from a very young age that I was going to kill myself. Just because your stupid dick is broken doesn’t mean you should."

"What makes you think that I'm suicidal?"

"You just said that you were jealous that I got here first."

"Oh, man...I mean, it's not that I'm suicidal...it's just that I worry all the time that everything in life will become so grueling that I'll eventually become suicidal. It's like I have a fear of suicide, if that makes any sense."

"Then do something - make yourself busy. Hell, go marry a nice girl, adopt a child, and please just shut the fuck up about how miserable you are. I’ll be honest – I felt bad for even dragging you into my existential crisis in the first place. But I belong here. Sure, Dad beats my face in every now and then, but it makes him happy. I was born to be a martyr – just not in the world you live in and the one I chose to leave.”

“Wow. This is all a lot to swallow.”

“I know, honey – and I choked on it. Doesn’t mean you have to, though.”

She smiled at me. I felt warm. I grabbed her by the back of her headpiece and kissed her on the lips. She kissed back, tasting like fruit punch and cheesecake for some reason. I tried to nibble on her under bite to see if he teeth tasted as good as she seemed to think earlier, but she laughed into my mouth and pushed me away.

“No, no,” she said, “that’s enough. The more you live, the more I’ll love you when you come to my world.”

“Yeah, but what if I live to be like 95, and I’m all wrinkly and gross and full of veins?”

I held up my wrists and cringed. Sally chuckled. She lifted her leg and lay it across my lap. She took my wrist in her hands and stroked them with her fingernails.

“Then I’ll play your veins like a violin, and you can play mine like the bagpipes.”

I squeezed her right thigh and closed my eyes, moving my fingers over her veins like brail. I smiled.

“Besides, how do you know you aren’t dead?”

“Huh?”

I opened my eyes and Lance was still on the phone.

“How do you know you aren’t dead, Preston?” he asked.

I rubbed my eyes and looked up at Lance, who jostled me with his work boot, screwed up his face into a twisted smile and threw up his free hand in that “what the fuck are you doing?” sort of way. I looked down. I was squeezing my right thigh, massaging a tremendous lump growing beneath my hands and under my jeans.

“No dude,” he said into the phone, “If there’s a skull floating above your guy’s portrait, it means he’s dead, not poisoned…yeah…no, if your dude’s poisoned, then he has like, a little beaker of purple juice with steam coming out of it…yeah, I don’t know why they changed it in the sequel, either. It's little inconsistencies like that that make ChumSoft such a lousy software developer. Look man, I gotta cut out; my best friend just got a boner. Ye…yeah, I know, it’s not as weird as it sounds, though. Look – I’ll tell you about it later. All right man – peace.”

Lance slapped his flip-phone shut.

“Man,” he said, “Preston doesn’t know shit about RPGs; fucking idiot.” He looked down at me, cheesing like a creep. “Well, well, well – look who’s got Bugs Bunny digging through his jeans!”

“Huh-huh!” I chuckled stupidly. “Man, wait till you hear this dream I had.”

“Dude, I don’t even wanna know. Actually, you know what? Fuck it – I’ve got $220.00 cash. Whadaya say fuck the gas bill and two dicks go out to dinner and talk about dreams, huh?”

Lance reached out his hand. I slapped it, held on tight, and he pulled me to my feet.