A Message To All Draw-ers of Dicks
(I wrote this as a tribute to all the people in my school who really like drawing dicks on things.)
Dear Dick Connoisseurs of My Dorm,
It’s thirty years in the future, two in the afternoon. You’re on your laptop (the same one you have now), sitting at your kitchen table. You’re playing Runescape. The graphics have not improved at all.
You’re playing Runescape because you don’t have a daytime job. You work night shifts, as a short-order cook at a Denny’s about ten miles south. Tonight, when it’s time for you to go to work, you’ll leave your dull teal doublewide home, trip over a lawn flamingo (wearing a colourful seasonal wreath), and proceed to your driveway. You’ll get in your car, which is a beige 2002 Chevy, accidentally scrape your mirror against the green minivan parked next to you as you pull out, and drive along the 226 until you get to Denny’s.
The lawn flamingo (and the colourful seasonal wreath) and the minivan belong to Donna, your third wife. You met Donna at Denny’s. She was your daytime manager. Now she works at a different Denny’s, about ten miles north. She’s still the daytime manager.
You wish you were a daytime manager.
You pause Runescape because the phone is ringing. You pick it up. It’s the principal of the high school. Donna’s teenage daughter from a previous marriage, Winona, has been suspended. You’re not surprised. This happened last month, too, and the month before that, and before that again. The principal wants you to pick her up.
You leave your house and trip over the lawn flamingo (and the seasonal wreath) on the way, even though it’s broad daylight. You get in your beige Chevy and pull out, not scraping Donna’s minivan because it isn’t there. You get on the 226 and drive to the local high school, which is about ten miles west. Winona’s waiting outside, smoking a cigarette. She flounces into the passenger seat.
“Put that cigarette out, young lady,” you say as you start the car.
She glares at you and grinds the cigarette to death on your dashboard. That was the same thing she did last time. Your dashboard is a mosaic of little melted circles from Winona’s cigarettes.
“Your mother and I are very disappointed in you,” you tell Winona.
“Fuck you,” says Winona, and rolls down the window.
You get back on the 226, hoping to get home in time to do another raid. You’ve gone about 5 of the 10 miles home when something under your dashboard makes a hideous grinding noise. You consider pulling over, but the car has all ready made the decision for you. It stops just as you roll into the police lane. You try to start it. It turns over, than dies again. The dash goes dark.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Winona.
It’s two thirty in the afternoon and no one else is driving on 226, because no one drives on 226 when they could be driving somewhere else.
“Can’t you fix it?” asks Winona.
You pop the hood. You are mystified. Curse your liberal arts education! You call a tow truck. The guy tells you it’ll be at least an hour.
“Fuck this,” says Winona. She makes a call.
Twenty minutes go by. You sit in the driver’s seat, and Winona sits on the guide rail for highway 226, staring moodily out over the dead, black soybean fields that stretch for miles, probably until they reach the various Denny’s where you cook and Donna manages. It starts to drizzle, but Winona stays outside. A slick black car pulls up. Winona gets in the passenger seat. As the car drives away, she gives you finger.
The rain gets harder. You sit in your car, staring blankly at nothing at particular, alone on the highway, until the sun the sky turns dark grey and it gets hard to see the scrubby patches of forest in between soybean fields.
The tow truck guy arrives. He lets you sit in the passenger seat while he jacks up your 2002 Chevy, hooks the front of it, and hauls it back onto the truck. As he does, a few pipes fall off the bottom of the car.
“You should probably get that fixed,” says tow truck guy.
The tow truck guy is a guardian angel. He drops the car at a garage next to a Denny’s that neither you or Donna cook or manage at, and then drops you in front of your doublewide. You give him everything you have in your wallet.
“Take care, man,” says tow truck guy.
You walk up the lawn. It’s dark. You trip over that fucking flamingo and get inside.
“Where did Winona go?” demands Donna. “What happened to the car?”
“I don’t know,” you tell Donna. You have to be at work in two hours. Maybe, just maybe, you can at least get some raiding done. You open your laptop.
You consider crying. But just then, you hear a hissing noise outside. You run back out to your front lawn, vaulting over the remains of the flamingo and the seasonal wreath.
I’ve spray-painted a dick on your lawn.
