50% of men don’t use soap to wash their hands after using a public restroom, and 15% don’t wash their hands at all. I didn’t use to either.
***
Back when that orange guy from TV was the president, Tina would buy smokes for us at Chino’s and we’d sit on the fallen headstones in Maplewood Cemetery giving ourselves COPD while I angled to get my dick wet. But some girl named Megan had a law named after her and Tina didn’t want to end up on the registry, so instead we made up stories about how the people died while my hard-on leaked batter into my shorts.
Tina, she said George Fantilli (d. 1962) threw his beagle off the Golden Gate, but the leash got caught around the fence so the pup just swung in the breeze 12 feet down, choking and wheezing, until George climbed over to save it and they both cannonballed into the water at 122 miles per hour.
I told her that Ronaldo Dominguez (d. 1994) snored so bad his wife Carmen jammed tampons up his nose and then he never woke up.
And Tina, she made up that Donna Kubrick (d. 2011) got busted banging her stepson in the Buick, just getting hollowed out from behind by some 24-year-old schlong, and the dad put a bullet in both their heads, then went online and Amazon’d a detail kit and some of those smelly trees that hang from your mirror.
Baby Willow (d. 2002), SIDS. That one was so simple, but it made her laugh so goddamn hard.
Once Tina let me put a hand up her shirt while she stubbed out her cig and made up a story about Ki Hong Liu (d. 2017), who used one of those giant whiteboard markers as a dildo and the cap came off inside, but she was too embarrassed to say anything and one day the parents found her dead.
***
Laying in the grass, our legs propped up on Howard and Margaret Valentine (d. 1999, Howard was peeling an apple with his pocketknife and the airbag went off, shoving the knife into his heart, so they crashed and Margaret got ejected into an oncoming school bus and all the kids ended up talking to counselors), I asked Tina about the lump on the inside of her left thigh. She tugged her skirt up almost to the hip, enough that I could see her panties peeking out past the hem, and said it was just a blob of fat but it was almost a golf ball and used to be a grape. She grabbed my hand and said to feel it, and I could have dropped a load right there as my pointer-finger pressed against the softness of the bulge under her skin. The palm of her hand hot against the back of mine. When I looked up at her, she was already looking at me. Then Tina said she had to go because her abuela was waiting up and would be worried if it got much darker. She was staying with her abuela until her mom got out, which was supposed to be in eight months.
***
I didn’t know sepsis, but it’s when you get an infection so bad your body goes ape-shit and starts attacking itself.
***
One time Tina rubbed me off through my pants and that night mom thanked me for doing my own laundry for once. But Tina never let me put it in, not even her mouth. I’d pedal home after another session of cemetery stories, underwear sticking to my leg, and close the bedroom door so I could fill another sock.
***
The Dodgers won the Series the night Tina said she was having Sponge Blob taken out. That’s what we named her lump, Sponge Blob. Surgery was the next afternoon and then she needed to lay low for a couple days so things didn’t get infected. I said we should bury Sponge Blob in the cemetery, or at least see if the gulls would eat it, and she called me a sick puppy. Then I told her that Stella Donskoy (d. 1941, or maybe 1947 – it was hard to tell because the sandstone was falling apart) was helping deliver a calf but the mother cow didn’t like where Stella had her hands, so she kicked her hoof right into poor Stella’s face and she choked to death on her own blood and teeth. That one was kind of dark, and Tina told me I really was a sick puppy, then punched me in the shoulder.
***
The next morning, and the morning after that, I went to the cemetery alone, but didn’t make up stories because it felt like cheating. I sat on the headstone of Murray Gennett, Sr. (d. 2019) and tossed acorns to the squirrels.
***
Staphylococcus Aureus can live on surfaces like towels or furniture or doorhandles for days. It normally doesn’t hurt you, but can cause bad infections if it gets into the blood through a nick or cut in your skin. The best way to prevent that is to wash your hands with soap and warm water. Sing the alphabet song at least once, or even twice, and you should be set. Things I wish I’d been taught.
***
LaQuant Stephensen’s headstone (d. 2012) warmed my ass as I checked my phone again and again, then two arms wrapped around my chest. The smell of cigarette smoke mixed with grapefruit and bergamot. My heart thudded and blood rushed to my dong, and from behind Tina’s voice asked how LaQuant ate it. I said, based on the name, it was probably the usual shit like a drive-by or getting stabbed in a nightclub. It’s only been three days and you’ve lost your touch, she said, then spun me around and planted a kiss right on my mouth, her hands laced together on the back of my head. Her tongue reached out to find mine. Two ashtrays Frenching each other on the headstone of a dead gangbanger.
I lifted Tina’s dress and felt the sticky warmth of her thighs. She breathed heavy and our tongues twisted as she spread her legs further apart and my hand slid towards the place where her skin splits. She pushed her hips forward, then stopped and grabbed my hand just as a fingertip reached the smooth, swollen button between her legs. The lump that was supposed to be there, not a golf ball or a grape but maybe a pea. She yanked my hand out and her dress dropped back down like a steel gate. A drooling dick poked out past the leg of my shorts, and Tina said I better put that thing away or else she wouldn’t be able to walk within 500 feet of a school.
***
Three hours earlier, before I sat on LaQuant to wait for Tina, I dropped my bike on the sidewalk and darted into Chino’s with $17. The old bag who normally worked the counter wasn’t there, so I asked the Jabba-looking guy behind the glass for a pack of menthols and he said, “How old are you?”, then rang them up before I had a chance to lie. I tucked them into the pocket of my shorts, buzzing that I’d be able to surprise Tina with a gift, then asked if I could get the key to the bathroom because I really needed to take a leak.
I walked around back, the key dangling from a chunk of two-by-four, and shimmied the door open. Right away, the smell of an unflushed toilet and moldy air. Water dripped from the faucet and stained the sink the color of dried blood. The front cover of the towel dispenser hung open like a dislocated jaw. No paper left. Yellow tile, that maybe didn’t start out as yellow, was marked with scratches and graffiti, some of which I think was scrawled with a handful of shit. “Eat a dick” and “Derrick + Shawna 4-eva” and “fuck the faggits.” A sagging hand-written sign taped to the urinal announced “Out of order don’t use.” I considered hosing down the dumpster outside instead, but there was traffic and the pee-shivers started so it couldn’t wait. I unloaded into the toilet, my piss stream breaking apart the deuce someone left in the bowl and churning the water into a muddy stew. I gave it three shakes when I was done, flushed, and bolted outside. After handing the key to Jabba, I climbed on my bike and hustled to the cemetery, worried Tina would get there first.
***
I went mostly soft right after Tina’s comment about needing to put it away, because that meant I wasn’t filling her guts that day either. So I said to close her eyes because I had a present, then laid the menthols in her outstretched hands. She smiled and said thank you, then kissed me on the forehead, her lips lingering long enough to leave a wet mark.
Her left thigh was wrapped in gauze like the mummy, hiding where Sponge Blob had been cut out. I want to see the spot, I told her, so she sat on the edge of the headstone and pulled her dress up again – not as high as the first time – and started to peel the layers. Then she let me do it, so I knelt in front of her and unwound more layers until I could see the tender, puckered skin laced with the black eyelashes of eight stitches. I ran my finger across the incision, pulling back slightly when she flinched, then touched it again, this time with two fingers that rubbed against the roughness of the fibers. She let out a quiet moan and laid a hand on my back. I leaned in and pressed both lips against the slit, flitting my tongue across the stitches and sucking slightly. Her left hand pulled me closer while the right pinched a nipple through the thin cotton of her dress and “oh god..” escaped her lips. My hard-on returned and I licked the length of the wound, long strokes of my tongue that got deeper and more intense while I continued to explore the stiches with two fingers. Her breath got faster and both legs started to quiver. The weakened, saliva-soaked stiches allowed the skin to separate, revealing a tiny fault line of pink and red layers. My index finger probed the opening, sliding back and forth like someone mixing finger paint, as crimson dots formed in the fault and mixed with spit. “Oh…my…GOD, I’m coming,” Tina stuttered in a hoarse whisper as her hips bucked and back arched. I felt the wetness of her panties on my shoulder and tasted iron on my lips as she stifled her cries, then collapsed in a heap on the ground.
We laid there watching the sun drop behind downtown, our fingers linked, and made up lies about Donna Colhagen (d. 2009) who died after getting bit by a rabies dog she was trying to blow. Or Jacob, Penny, and Renee Palmisano (d. 2001), who went to the big sleep after little Jacob slipped into a waterfall in Yosemite when chasing a squirrel, so big sis Penny tried to save him and also took a bath, and then Renee went in after her kids, but the dad said fuck that and helped fish their corpses out of the river two miles downstream after he finished lunch.
Then Tina said wait, because she had a present for me too. She dug through her backpack and pulled out a small box wrapped in paper that had cupcakes and streamers on a red background. I told her it wasn’t my birthday for 13 more days, but she said I needed to open it right then. I tore into the paper, then shook the box a few times. It sounded wet, like dropping a sauced meatball on the kitchen floor. A dark circle had formed on the bottom, the way grease leaks through a pizza box. OPEN IT, Tina said, so I yanked off the lid. A fatty, slimy ball about the size of a Titleist, decorated with gristle and bits of tissue, sat in an oily pudding streaked with something the color of gravy. There were splatters and snail-trails from the glob rolling around and smacking into the sides of the box, and it smelled like when I opened a plastic container in the back of the fridge then wished I didn’t.
Holy shit, I said, they let you keep him, and she smiled so big. Then she dipped into her bag again and removed another box, this one shaped like a pack of smokes. It was painted grey with tiny black letters on one side. You made a fucking headstone, I said, and she told me it was the only way to say goodbye to him, because fuck those gulls. We found a spot in the back corner away from where the people mow and dug a little pit with our heels, then I grabbed the lump – slippery like a raw clam – between two fingers and laid it gently into the ground. Tina used both hands to push dirt over the grave, then stuck the headstone in and propped it up with little stones so it didn’t tip. I asked if we should say a few words, so Tina made up that Sponge Blob (d. 2020) met an unfortunate end when his parents found him splattered lifeless on the bathroom floor, a trail of vomit escaping his lips. Unable to find a pulse, they sobbed and wept as they dug a hole in the backyard and buried their only son, but a few hours later Sponge Blob awoke panicked and gasping for breath two feet below the flowerbed and suffocated on mouthfuls of dirt and fertilizer. I told her that was pretty dark, and she said looks who’s talking.
***
The sky was the color of a new bruise when Tina said she really need to bolt, because abuela would probably call the cops if she wasn’t home soon. Pack slung over her shoulder, she grabbed me by the chin, kissed me hard, and jogged away. Wait, I yelled, just before she disappeared over the hill. She turned around. I love you, I yelled. She shook her head, the corner of her mouth tilting up, and yelled back that she loved me too, and that she would love me even more in 13 days.
***
With septic shock, I found out, your organs shut down due to inflammation and extremely low blood pressure. Kidneys, lungs, heart. Brain. They all stop working. And then you die.
Phew! This one was a bit of a tough read for me because I have OCD and you're announcing from the very beginning where this is all going. So, basically I was watching a fall, waiting for the guy to hit the ground. And what a fall... You have this knack for realistic body horrors that also makes me think, in a way, of David Cronenberg. The post-op sex made me think of Crash. Good close, with a brief statement that only implies the crucial information. And as always, I love the combination of irony, dark humor, lurid details, and melancholy. Great job!