take the kids inside

[takethekidsinside]

Exchange Student

This piece was originally published in the Brown Jug in 2015

We still hadn’t found a subletter by the beginning of the semester and because most of us would rather that room be filled, we brought in Josie’s recently thawed Paleolithic man to live with us. He had been found in Denmark, so we knew there would be some cultural differences to deal with.

He was a funny guy, the Paleolithic man. Hairy, curious, like a monkey. They are close to monkeys, the Paleolithics, but he had a wide-eyed optimism about the day ahead that I’ve never seen in any monkey.

He would get restless sometimes, and we speculated that he wanted to hunt. We thought grocery shopping might have the same effect, so we took him to Stop & Shop, where he spent an hour stalking the aisles with a long wooden spear, in particular the refrigerated section with the meat.

One day, my roommate told me NatGeo was showing a documentary on the Paleolithic era, so we livestreamed it for the Paleolithic man. He missed the first half because he was at the DMV, but when he got back he was very moved.

The documentary followed one character: a Paleolithic woman named “Eve,” through the everyday life and tribulations of the Ice Age. The Paleolithic man said he knew Eve and that even though she had some garbage friends in the tribe, she was really down to earth. He hoped she was doing well. Unfortunately, toward the end of the show she and a couple others got crushed by a falling rock, and the Paleolithic man got really down. He stopped talking for the rest of the night. It was a sad evening for all of us.

He couldn’t handle certain noises. The heater made him think of saber-toothed tigers, which would make him really freak out. Also, he associated my iPhone alarm with having to wake up early in the morning because he had the same one.

He would most often walk around half naked, with his torso exposed, and we were jealous of his body. He was really cut, and he looked like he exercised, but all we ever saw him eat was junk food, so we thought maybe soon he’d get really fat. None of us had ever seen a fat Paleolithic man. We couldn’t even imagine what that would look like, and we were excited to find out.

When the semester was up, the Paleolithic man had to leave. He said he’d be going back to Denmark to get frozen, and that maybe, someday in the future, he’d thaw again and come back stateside. We told him we were all going to miss him, and he gave us a bunch of great hunting and pagan worship sites to visit if we were ever in Denmark.

After he left, we were cleaning his room before winter break, and we found a paper he had written for a sociology class. There, in very elemental English, he wrote about the great time he’d had with us in America. The paper had a big red “D” written at the top. The teacher was not happy, although she did like how he connected it to Marx. We were proud of him. We hoped wherever fate took the Paleolithic man next that the Mother Goddess would be watching over him, keeping him safe, and checking his mailbox every once in a while to clear out the spam.

[takethekidsinside]

Pup manor

This piece was originally published in the Brown Jug in the fall of 2015

In 1904, Ivan Pavlov receives a 5,000 ruble grant ($100,000 by today’s standards) to facilitate continuing research in classical conditioning. Pavlov takes the money as a sign that he needs to widen the scope of his research, and he immediately gets back to work.

The first thing he needs: more dogs. Purebreds. In the past, Pavlov has had to make do with three stray mutts. This will no longer be enough. Receipts retrieved from his archives show a purchase of fifty purebred dogs, including twelve Pomeranians, five Great Danes, and a litter of three Basset Hounds.

To house the animals, he invests in a much larger home in the outskirts of Moscow, with one room to each animal, to ensure observation can happen at all times throughout the day. He names it “Pup Manor.”

Pavlov now sets in motion the experiment he had originally intended to execute. Many have praised Pavlov for the simplicity of his method: ring a bell every time you feed a dog a piece of meat and, after a while, the dog will salivate with anticipation on hearing the bell. However, Pavlov knows that more components are necessary.

That summer, he organizes the first of a series of daily turkey feasts. Each night, the dogs are placed around a long dinner table, with napkins tucked into their collars. They are made to eat turkey and mashed potatoes from porcelain bowls. Instead of ringing a bell, Pavlov plays American ragtime on a white grand piano. Pictures from this time show Pavlov behind the piano in a white suit, smiling and singing as a table of fifty dogs get ready for a white chocolate cake.

Pavlov intends to greatly deepen his understanding of classical conditioning. He observes that dogs can learn to anticipate a yearly winter formal if he writes it on a calendar in the beginning of December. Furthermore, he notices that, early on in the fall, the animals begin to think of good themes to suggest for the dance.

Seeing that his dogs are taking up most of her husband’s time, Pavlov’s wife Seraphima begins to delve deeper into the debaucherous Moscow lifestyle. In one incident, during one of her husband’s dog-galas, Seraphima invites a group of hard-partying socialites who will end up fistfighting six of Pavlov’s Corgis. In the months following, Pavlov observes that the Corgis dry-heave at the mention of vodka. His marriage never recovers.

Thanks to Pavlov’s research, we know a lot about classical conditioning in its application to dog grooming and pampering. High-end dog hotels, chauffeur services, and dog-event planners are forever indebted to his invaluable research. Dog-luxury research since Pavlov has expanded on, but not modified, the basic ideas he set forth during his time at Pup Manor, and advanced CAT Scan technology is now confirming some of his most far-flung theories on a neurological level.

Though Pavlov died in 1936, the lineages that his dogs left behind compete and bring home awards, to this day, at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

[takethekidsinside]

Meet Kyle Tiggs, Ashtonbury High Football’s Most Essential Player

 This piece was originally published in the Brown Jug, in the fall of 2015

It’s 6:30 in the morning, and the whole Ashtonbury High School varsity football team runs drills on the turf. From the bleachers, it’s not hard to distinguish captain Kyle Tiggs, the team’s quickly rising superstar.

“He’s our essential player right now,” says coach Ujwal Greer, wearing several layers to stave off the morning cold. “He’s the only one that knows how to play football.”

In the last ten years, Ashtonbury High’s football team has been under a long drought, defeated year after year, before second round, by rivals in Plymouth, Sterling, and Norwalk. But all that seems poised to change with Tiggs, whose fierce determination and basic knowledge of football’s rules make him this year’s most promising varsity athlete.

“He’s a born leader,” says fellow teammate Ricky Costa. “He tells us where to stand on the field. He lets us know when we’ve scored a point. It puts everyone at ease, knowing there’s someone at the helm.”

Seeing him carry himself on the gridiron, it’s clear that Tiggs is in charge. Coach Greer watches on as twelve confused athletes mill around the field. One of them is holding the ball, and looks at us helplessly. But when Tiggs walks on, the team perks up. He tells everyone to make a line, and they follow suit. Some don’t understand, and sprint to the touchdown line.

“It’s a start,” says Greer with a smile.

Senior athlete McKenzie Roberts reminisces on how much has changed since his first year on the team: “We used to gather in the locker room during halftime and try to puzzle out game mechanics,” he tells the Daily. “We would suggest possible rules, and then go out into the field and play according to what we’d figured out,” he says. “We usually didn’t know how we were doing.”

Though many are optimistic that the Ashtonbury Curse will soon lift, progress has been slow. During a recent game against Waterton, several players made a human pyramid in an attempt to ‘dunk’ the ball through the goalpost.

With Tiggs at the wheel, however, anything seems possible.

“It’s the beginning of a new era at Ashtonbury,” says Coach Greer. “I’m hoping to learn the sport myself at some point soon, most likely.”

[takethekidsinside]

A Pair of Shoes Should Last You a Year

This piece was originally published in the Brown Jug, in the spring of 2014

A pair of shoes should last you a year, if you wear them right. Many people don’t know that, and that’s a problem for the footwear industry, whose business plan is based on planned one-year obsolescence. If my shoes haven’t been shredded to tatters by the end of a year, I’ll do it myself with a sickle. It’s not enough to buy a new pair. It’s about principle.

I didn’t know any of this before my sister married her husband Dylan, a shoe impresario given to long Thanksgiving Day diatribes on his gripes with footwear consumers. “They don’t understand how we stay afloat!” Dylan would say. “This is how we make our money, and they’re ruining everything!” The footwear industry is the tar pit of the stock market, a black hole of investment. Nobody knows this because most shoe companies have names that start with the letter Z (Z-Shoe, Z-Foot, Z-Gen), so they’re always at the bottom of the stock market lists, long after readers have gotten bored and moved on to something else. So year after year, great and savvy entrepreneurs put it all into shoe stocks, and year after year, it gets swallowed into that financial whirlpool.

Dylan used to hang out in front of shoe stores, preaching at passers-by. “These should last you all a year, no more and no less,” he would say to shoppers circulating through the mall. But nobody listened anymore: Everyone was too focused on their smart phones, playing a game where you fed and raised a virtual horse for slaughter. It was a very popular game that engaged people across all age, gender, race, and class spectrums alike. The older users liked the responsibility of caring for a virtual live being. The younger users liked the bright strobing colors and loud Korean pop music that played during the loading screens. There was something in it for everyone, a true game for the people (volksdraffe). But no one spoke to each other. They had become a race of moving vegetables, and nobody knew this more than Dylan.

“I can’t stand him anymore,” my sister said about Dylan as we sat in the kitchen late one night after Thanksgiving dinner. Dylan stood five feet away from her.

“I’m glad he’s not around,” Dylan said, and we both nodded.

“He won’t look at me anymore, all he does is play the game where you raise the virtual horse,” she said. Dylan didn’t defend himself—it wasn’t his place, nor mine, so neither of us said anything. It was dead quiet, except for the sound of all of our fingers tapping on our smart phones, playing the horse-slaughter game. My horse was ready for slaughter. It was sad to see him go, sadder still to do it myself. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that horse, the way he would neigh and whinny during loading screens, or how he would sometimes turn down the clumps of hay I put in his feeding bowl when he’d had too much to eat. But that was the game, no two ways around it.

[takethekidsinside]

I Wish I Could Do Middle School All Over Again with Everything I Know Now, and My 30-Year-Old Body

This piece was originally published in the Brown Jug in the spring of 2014

What I wouldn’t give. To redo those three awkward years, equipped with my adult self-confidence, able to brush humiliation off my shoulder, knowing I have all the time in the world to feel comfortable in my skin, and having my 30-year-old man-body.

Just imagine how different those three years would be! I wouldn’t be constantly fretting about being uncool, or wishing I could talk to girls and adults without feeling terrified. And, on top of it, I would have the retreating hairline and permanent paunch that are so much a part of my life now, eighteen years later.

Like, for instance, there was one particular incident where I found out that the girl I had a violent crush on, Barbara McKenzie, liked my friend Lenny. I was so heartbroken that I pathetically offered Lenny to escort him and stand next to him while he asked Barbara McKenzie out. It was the bitterest torture I’ll ever know, until Barbara broke up with Lenny, and started dating Clayton Riley.

The things I’d do to go back to that moment knowing what I know now, to let myself relax, to have some perspective on my heartbreak, and to have conversations with Lenny while touching the ceiling tiles with my whole palm! You broke my heart Barbara, I hope you know that!

I imagine myself going into sex ed, having gone through every single one of the physical changes the teacher is mentioning, and maybe rolling my eyes because all of this information is irrelevant to me. I imagine having a 10½ shoe size. I imagine fighting to fit into the tiny middle-schooler clothes my mom bought me. I would say to her, very matter-of-factly, “Mom! We’re going to need to buy new clothes. My body is too big for these shirts!”

On any given day in the halls of Saco Middle School, you would see what you would think was a 30-year-old man, walking down the halls wearing a backpack. Teachers wouldn’t say anything: They would have been notified, at the beginning of the year, that there was a student who had the body of a 30-year-old man. But sometimes, substitute teachers who didn’t know any better would say, “Sir, are you overseeing the classroom?” and I would respond that no, I wasn’t, that I had the body and knowledge of a 30-year-old man, but that in fact I was in middle school.

Would it be lonely? It might be. It’s very hard to be that different, in a place like middle school, no less. I don’t think any of the other kids would feel comfortable approaching me: Our realities—physical, psychological, emotional—would be too different.

But my God, what I wouldn’t give.

[takethekidsinside]

Word

I'm a man of my word. "Timeline." That's my word. Never miss a chance to say it. My friend's is "slippery." He's a man of his word too. "Slippery this," "slippery that," he says it all the time. My mom's is "crock." She got a raw deal with her word, and doesn't say it as often as she'd like. But me? I live and die by "timeline"—a tight timeline, according to a crystal ball reader. Gonna die promptly on my 71st birthday, no delays. Unless I take too long building a family in my 60's. That'll delay the whole thing. But otherwise, it shouldn't take a day longer. That's the timeline.

[takethekidsinside]

Re-Assembled

My last boyfriend was a robot, and that was hard to explain to my parents at the time. They could barely work a virtual touchscreen, and as progressive as they were, there was no way they’d understand right away how to interact with the T3-XFast 2000. 

The first time I had him over for dinner. Oh boy…  I get embarrassed just thinking about it. He’s sitting next to my mom, and she looks at me and goes, “Do I pull this lever?” Jesus. His motherboard starts whirring like crazy, and I have to take my mom to the kitchen and explain as calmly as possible not to touch any of his alternator parts. She gets defensive, it turns into a fight, and I’m just like “Listen mom. Just don’t do it. It’s fine. Nobody is judging you, just don’t in the future, OK?” 

That night, when we’re about to go to bed, he starts whirring again. I’m trying to calm him, but his chain gets jammed. I don’t know what it was, it just kept making this snapping noise... I have to reboot him so I can disassemble the transmission... I can’t find the oil canister– anyways. It just killed me. Killed me. I hated having to put him through it.

My dad, too. He’s a big democrat, an old-school union type of guy. I knew what I was getting myself into. “Listen, I love the T3, OK?” I said, “Do you think you can play it cool for the night? Avoid touchy subjects? Dad. No rants, OK?” To his credit, the whole first half he kept his mouth shut, steered clear of the minefields. But then we were playing UNO. The T3 got a card stuck in his gear box, and started heating up, so we had to douse him in ice-cold water for 10 hours. But we couldn’t find a basin that was big enough for his lower steel foundation, and when we’re holding him up, my mom starts to complain, I feel a tingle going down my arm, I think I’m straining my arms too much. God. That did it for him. “You know how many good union jobs are lost to those COFFEE MAKERS?” he started yelling when we were out of earshot, and the wi-fi was unplugged. “Dad, he’s my boyfriend, OK? I literally love him!”  I look back and there he is, just stewing in his icy bath, retinal display off, helpless like a little baby. 

My mom pulls me aside and on the verge of tears, “How do you two even...?” My jaw drops. Even what? “I mean, there’s exposed wires.” I’m about to go off, I can’t even believe what I’m hearing. My dad doesn’t get involved, just turns on the enveloping full-reality goggles, activates the intravenous dopa-drip and gets the hell out of there. She starts to bawl, just bawl, meanwhile, the T3 had finished his bath and he’s in the living room warming up his motor, and I’m going off, how dare you even, I don’t even know the last time I saw you and dad hugging, for your information I don’t ever get close to the exposed gearbox, I’m this close to packing our shit, I can’t even explain to you...

Anyways, all that stuff is long past. I understand where my parents were coming from, even if I don’t agree with it. The T3 and I didn’t work out, but it was an amicable break up. The maintenance got way too expensive, to the point that I’m going to the mechanic pretty much every week... anyways. I’m with a human now, and it’s been great. She’s in tech, and we live comfortably in the Valley. My dad became president of his union, and he couldn’t be happier. And my mom started coding. She’s making an app that essentially simulates you a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Like in that movie “Her,” with Joakim Phoenix. Pretty ironic huh? Anyways...

[takethekidsinside]

Pre-assembled

The wood bookcase, which came, disassembled, in a flat cardboard box, included a booklet with instructions on how to put it together. The cover of the booklet said “Putting the book-case together.” The back had a black-and-white photo of the bookcase, totally assembled. It only had one book on it, the instruction booklet.

The instructions included, every couple of pages, a little note that said “you should take a break now; have an iced tea!” so that if you were following the instructions carefully, there were about 5 built-in breaks. This was because the owner of the company, whose name was Jefferson Bezos, had been accused by several really important Facebook posts (i.e. the Wall Street Journal, The NY Times, etc.) of exploiting his workers. In the higher rungs of the company, marketing specialists, team managers and consultants were made to work long hours, slaving over computer-made slideshows until they broke down at their desks and cried. The company’s blue-collar workers were forced to sprint across warehouses and dip their arms into vats of melted steel to fish out lanyards with ID’s on them. 

So Jeff put in those little notes as a wink to the consumer-- if I make you put the book-case together, he seemed to say, aren’t you kind of a laborer? I didn’t like it one bit. If you’re gonna frick me, don’t also gloat about it, I seemed to say. But I knew better than that. I knew that it wasn’t Jefferson, but probably an internal copy editor who put those little notes in, and that she probably wept openly at her desk as soon as she’d done it.

But I took the breaks, and it made me feel shitty, like I couldn’t even stand up to a 4-page instruction booklet. It was as if it knew every time I needed to take a break, and although I tried to pump myself up to work through the whole thing, every time I saw the little note, a sigh of relief softly breathed through me. 

When I finished building the book-case, I decided I would spend the year amassing books to fill it with, because I had none. But, just so it wouldn’t feel totally empty, and as a wink to the instruction booklet, I put the instruction booklet on it. But it looked nothing like it did on the picture on the back. I had built it completely wrong, and it was only when I compared the picture to the actual thing that I noticed it. It looked fucking bad.

[takethekidsinside]

Initiation

When I was in the police force, my partner and I were tasked with infiltrating a biker gang. Not a job for a cop with a weak stomach, that’s for sure. But these gangs, man, they’re aware. They put you through tests to know you’re not a narc, that you’re there for real.

Me? They had me eat my partner.

“If you’re serious about this, you gotta eat him, right there.”

“Eat him alive?” I asked. “Any which way you choose bub,” they said, “you just gotta eat all of him, or at least most of him.”

I was paralyzed.

I didn’t much know what to do, but my partner knew the score. Almost instantly, he offered himself by spreading his arms out like a starfish. “Eat me you fuckin’ goon,” he said.

I reflected for a second. I figured that even if we weren’t cops, I could ask him if he was OK with my eating him. Our whole schtick was that we were buddies, that’s what we’d told the biker gang, and if a guy’s asked to eat his friend he’s probably gonna check in with the guy, cop or not.

“You sure you want me to eat you?” I said to my partner, hoping we could find a way to communicate without giving ourselves away.

“What are you, a cop, dude?” he said to me. “If you don’t eat me, it’s because you’re a cop.”

I understood what he was doing, upping the stakes, and it was a smart move. But it made things more complicated. If I didn’t didn’t eat him, I was a cop; but if I ate him, then I was most definitely not a cop...

... to be continued

[takethekidsinside]

[]

Who's underneath these sheets? Who is this little tiny bundle of sheets squirming around the bed with mommy and me? I am not messing around, who the fuck is it. Please don't hurt us.

[takethekidsinside]

War for Dogs

 It’s my teacher and me left in the classroom, and when she asks me if I’m done, I say “I’m still thinking!” And it’s true. I still don’t know how I want to be executed. “It’s easy: firing squad or hanging. You should be thankful we’re giving revolutionary scum like you the choice,” she says, “if I hadn’t been your teacher before this war, I would probably feed you to the dogs.”

The dogs, she says. Don’t make me laugh. There are no dogs in our society. That’s what this whole war is about: each side believes that the other side exterminated all the dogs in our world. The line is drawn arbitrarily right down the middle, between revolutionaries and reactionaries. But really, there is no difference, other than thinking that it was the other side that killed all the dogs.

It’s been a bloody war, and if there’s one thing I don’t understand, is why people still use dog idioms in everyday language. “It’s raining cats and dogs!” they’ll say, and, “This town has gone to the dogs!” “I’ll feed you to the dogs!” These are clichés that were employed sparingly in the past, for effect, with a kind of dopey irony. Now they’re used constantly and extremely earnestly, like a strange and cruel joke. “Don’t hound me!” Even children say these things, and most have never seen a dog. They don’t even know what dogs are.

Not that I do either, nobody does. There’s theories, sure, but really, who’s to say. Some people think a dog is like a gift. Others say it’s something more abstract, like pain, or structure. Scientists, philosophers, women and men of letters are all involved in a great intellectual debate, a tug-of-war for truth. Meanwhile we fight on. It’s not easy to believe in a cause, harder still to die for one. Which brings me back to the intro:

“What’s it gonna be, hanging or firing squad?” she says. I stay silent. “You were always indecisive, Rockefeller,” she tells me, “even when you were my student.” I glance up. Outside, reactionaries clamor for blood. My comrades are being executed, and the crowd foams at the mouth. It’s a sad day. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, Ms. Nixon,” I say to her. And it’s true, or at least it probably is. Who knows what a dog is.

[takethekidsinside]

User Unfriendly

Excerpts from a frightful dystopic science fiction novel about a not-so-distant future, by local budding author Willem Barnum. You may be shocked to find out that the world he describes is not much unlike our own…

Log 1:

After 12 years of interstellar travel, we have arrived on planet Earth. We seem to be in a sort of suburban area, a few miles from a large and impressive metropolis not unlike our own Trsknc. With the help of our Mimesiums, we have been able to physically blend in and study these creatures, who walk on two legs and communicate through auditory signs. We understand very little of their customs. For instance, when they are travelling from place to place, they are unable to stop looking at their small, hand-held screens. When do they ever have time for real human contact? Hell if I know!

...

            Our human informant, Chris, has helped us to greatly advance our understanding of human behavior during this stay on planet earth. However, he has not been able to answer one thing: how can a race of such technological sophistication be so concerned with the beeping of a little virtual touch-screen machine? He says they just do it on the subway, when they have a free minute, but, Hello! I’m sure not seeing any BUSY minutes! Ha ha ha. Whatever happened to reading a book on this planet?

…

            In studying human mating modes and habits, we have come to some baffling conclusions. They mate primarily through male-female union, though in recent years they’ve starting doing male-male, and female-female, and all sorts of other crazy combinations we can’t keep track of anymore. What’s next, they’re going to start marrying their little beeping machines? It sure seems like the logical next step to ME ha ha!  

Weirder still, is the ways they go about their mating ritual. Chris, for instance, God bless his heart, sometimes he talks to his little girl-friend all day, only through text messages. Ever heard of, um, I don’t know—this planet’s telephone? My Lord, Chris is such a smart boy, but sometimes he acts like a real ape!

…

Our mission has been put at risk. The humans began to feel threatened by our presence, and have asked us to either stop being so controlling, or move into a home. Though we don’t feel like it’s fair to levy those accusations at us, since clearly that boy needs a father in the house, it is a chilling ultimatum. For this reason, we have decided to conclude our study of this part of the planet, at least for the time being. In leaving, we hope that the human race, in particular Chris, will follow the example of our own race, the proud Tskgrks, who believe in the value of a day’s work, a man’s word, and limited government.

[takethekidsinside]

Little Jamie

The first time my uncle Louie took me into the bar, I was 6. I was following him along while he ran some errands, and there was someone in the bar he needed to see.

“Look who I brought here, Rhino. My nephew Jamie!” my uncle said to the barman, a heavyset, bald man cleaning the inside of a beer mug with a rag.

“Look at this kid! He looks like a tough guy,” Rhino said as he leaned in to me over the counter. “Hey, Petriccioni! Look at this kid,” he said to a tan-skinned man having a beer at the bar. “Wouldn’t you say he looks like the toughest, saltiest nut in all New York State?”

“Haha, my stars! He’s a regular muscleman, this kid is,” Petriccioni said, patting the top of my head. “A killer if I ever saw one. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Louie here was trying to intimidate us haha!”

“Haha, I’ll say,” said Rhino, and then slapped my uncle in the face, hard. “Listen, you mustache-faced fuck. If you think you can intimidate me and my customers by bringing this bloodthirsty footsoldier into my joint,” he pointed right at me with his index finger, “you got another thing coming.” Everyone in the bar did a double-take. The place was dead quiet. “Granted, the kid looks like a cold-blooded murderer; cool as ice when he needs to be, and brutal when he doesn’t, I won’t deny you that. But I have an army willing to die at my command, you hear me? AN ARMY!!!”

Petriccioni pulled out a handgun, and keeping his voice real quiet and level, said: “You clowns better move on out of here, before things get ugly. Don’t do anything stupid, lug face.”

As we walked out of the joint, I shot Rhino one last look. We’d accomplished exactly what we wanted. The whole bar was tight with fear.

...

A couple of days later, while I sat with my uncle on the benches of the local Laundromat, a black-haired woman of about 30, wearing red heels, approached us. “Hey Louie, it’s so good to see you!” The two hugged, and my uncle kissed her on the cheek. “And who is this dashing little man here?” she took a knee to look closely at me.

“That’s the little tot, my 6 year old nephew Jamie,” Louie said to her.

“My my, aren’t you the handsomest little guy I’ve ever seen!” she said, “he is cute little bugger, a regular lady-killer!”

All of a sudden, someone came out of the bathroom and yelled out, “Hey! Who the fuck are you talking to Denise?” A red-faced man in a white tank top, his arms covered in tattoos, strode over to us. “Is this a fuckin’ joke?” he said to my uncle. “You seriously gonna parade your fuckin’ vicious enforcer around town like that? And then have him hit on my girl?” The other few people in the Laundromat kept their heads down.

“Rhino’s ready to wage an all-out war,” he backed my uncle up against the machines. “I don’t care that this kid is ruthless with a gun and deft in melee combat, you better watch where you fuckin’ tread, Louie. You’re not gonna like what’s waiting for you in the tall grass.”

“Leave him alone Stanley!” said Denise. “You stay out of this Denise,” said Stanley between clenched teeth. “This don’t concern you.”

As Stanley walked out of the Laundromat, Denise kissed my neck and closed my palm around a slip of paper. “Let me know if you ever want to meet up, handsome guy.” Her number was in it.

“You better count on it,” I said, and sliced her in half with an eyeball laser.

...

The next day, I sat in my uncle’s kitchen while he made some mac and cheese we could eat before going to the movie theater. Just then, his girlfriend Linda walked through the door. “Hey Louie. Mmm… what smells good?” She looked at the stove and giggled. “Are you cooking Louie? When do you ever cook?” He smiled at her and gave her a kiss.

“The kid and I were just about to head out to the movies, so I made some quick mac and cheese so we wouldn’t get hungry,” he said while he wiped down the kitchen counter.

“Little Jamie is here? Oh my gosh I hadn’t seen him!” she said as she picked me up and made a big fart noise against my belly.

Then, my uncle Louie froze, the rag still moist on the marble counter, his back to us. He turned around, slow.

“What the fuck was that?”

“What was what?” she said.

“I think you know exactly what I mean.” He turned to me. “Jamie, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he said. “Leave Jamie out of this,” said Linda, “It was just a little raspberry on his belly. I was just bein’ friendly is all!”She was starting to get nervous.

“Friendly?” Louie said, “Friendly? I’ll tell you what friendly is. A handshake, is friendly. What I just saw there wasn’t friendly. IT WAS PORNOGRAPHY!” he was screaming now.

“You’re a scumbag Louie. You’re drunk,” said Linda, pushing back tears. “How you gonna act surprised when I go to other guys? Huh? When every single night you either come home drunk, or not at all? How?” Louie’s eyes were starting to get glassy too.

“Jamie is a prodigious love maker,” Denise was openly crying now, “combining precision, and immaculate rhythm to produce extraordinary sexual experiences.”

“Jamie,” said Louie. “I thought we were on the same team,” tears were streaking his cheeks. “And you’re gonna do me like this?”

“The shit you’re running with Rhino, Louie,” I said. “It’s got an expiration date.”

Then, I’m not sure why—maybe anger, maybe confusion, maybe a death wish—Louie pulled out a gun. There was a moment of confusion, Linda screamed, and a shot boomed through the apartment. Then another. Then another, and then a full clip, in quick, measured intervals. I shot him. I shot him with my handgun in the chest and in the head and one stray bullet hit the pot with mac and cheese so that was that for our dinner but oh well.

I looked down at the poor bastard. Linda put her hand on my shoulder.

This town is no joke, I thought. It’ll make you grow up, quick.