Storm

                It was a dark and stormy night, actually a dark and stormy and relentless day, like God was pissing on me. I actually wake up and feel piss dripping on my face.

                “No,” I moan. “No. No. I hate everyone.”

                It turns out it wasn’t piss, but this little leak coming from a muddy brown hairline crack in my ceiling. The day went like flash flood warnings round the clock. Boss Kyle calls. “You don’t need to come in today, Richard. I’m not.”

                “Okay,” I say, mouth feeling dry. “Like, is that it?” Hours pass. I lie in bed and occasionally get up to take a piss or dump the bucket I’ve put underneath the leak or piss in the bucket with the leak when I feel too exhausted to go to the bathroom or to drink Nyquil or maybe it’s orange juice. I can’t remember. Even when the rain stops around noon, I still don’t have to come in to work, because Kyle calls again, says, “I’m still not coming into work. The traffic is just going to be horrendous, let’s face it, and I don’t want to sit in a jam just so I can get there and not get much done, y’know?”

                “Exactly,” says I, and I finally decide to get up, brush my hair, put on a shirt and pants and shoes, and head downstairs to check my mailbox, which is in a room off the side of the lobby. On my way I spot that totally emo guy, think his name’s Adam, gay for sure, and some redhead chick maybe called Serbia who I can’t decide is attractive or not, and who I think lives with like her seven-year-old boyfriend. Sex slave, whatever. I don’t care. I am the best looking person in this building.

                A huge parrot-type vermin bird swoops past my shoulder, and I duck down quick as it positions itself on a crappy ficus surrounded by mildewy cardboard boxes.

                “What the hell is that?” I demand to the guy at the main desk, who is staring dumbly out the two front doors. There is no answer.

                “Excuse me,” I bang my fist on the little hotel bell sitting before him. “Hello, birds give me total hives. Can you get rid of that nasty-ass bird, please, for the love of God?”

                The guy regards me quickly before turning back to the window, swallowing. I am aghast. I am the best looking person in this building.

                “Look,” I sneer, leaning close. “I don’t know what your problem is. Are you deaf? Mexican? Can you just tell me what a fucking bird is doing here, before, like, my total allergic reaction gets worse?”

                He points a fat, disgusting finger towards the window, and I look. “Oh boo hoo hoo, someone broke into the CVS. Answer my goddamn question.”

                Finally, his eyes stray towards me, still void of any and all emotion, and he speaks, but like just barely. “People moving. The birds got loose. They’ll move ‘em away.”

                “When?” I demand, running clawed fingers up and down my arm to exhibit hives for this retarded lowlife.

                He shrugs and turns back to the window. “Wonder what’s going on.”

                “Probably a lot,” I snarl, heading into the mail room, “if you live uptown.” I think about Jen and wonder if we’re broken up now. I guess maybe? I’ll call her to confirm, because I was thinking we could get lunch at the new expensive tapas restaurant on Boxwood. I think about Henry, the snob who I suppose is still my best friend, and about that joke of a person Felippe, and about Harris, who had a perennial scowl that looked totally ultra-hip on him, and super cool Oliver Peoples glasses that never made him look nerdy, and who threw whatever was in his hand when he got angry—porcelain mugs, paper clips, business cards, wads of cash, prescription bottles, files, filing cabinets. I always, in a way, looked up to Harris, who was unfazed by anything, who was just undoubtedly. I don’t know undoubtedly what he was, but whatever it was, it was undoubtedly certain. And now he’s certainly got Jen, along with Marie and their two children. I’m really glad I don’t have a wife and/or kids, but I miss Jen. I miss the way she was bitchy but it was still hot, before I lost my job, and I miss the way she made me feel special, like I was the hottest thing on the planet. I miss the sex. I miss making drinks for her with her totally amazing wet bar setup. I miss the smell of her apartment.

                I remember this one time Jen and I were at Luisa’s, which Jen thought was hip because the chef was a lesbian, and we were sharing some really expensive wine, I can’t even remember what now, and she looked so hot in this scarlet red D&G number, and I was wearing an asphalt gray pinstriped double-breasted suit but with a velvet vest underneath that matched her dress, and she leaned in close and looked at me in her Jen way and said, “Rich, you make me feel complete.”

                And like I winked and said, “I know, babe,” even though I didn’t know.

                Jen said, “Rich, you could be the only person left in the world—besides me—and I would just be happy about it.”

                I collect my two bills and my Prada catalogue and head out of the little mail room, inhaling totally deep to try and prevent this onslaught of stupid, gay tears and shaky breaths and shoving everything out of my way that I know is coming. The bird cocks its head at me. I spit violently on it and then run upstairs before it can attack. I actually kind of wonder who broke into the CVS, and why.

                

Oh God

The day started with gagging and dry heaving and sobbing and punching walls and collapsing and a protein shake and wailing and throbbing knuckles and screaming in the shower.
Hey, and it’s not even seven-thirty.

I hate myself I hate my life so much but I look in the mirror on the wall over my dresser and God, I look good. Water forms beads on my tanned pectoral muscles, veins slightly outline the curve of my biceps, my stomach is flat and rock solid underneath a wrapped towel. The sweat glistening on my sharp, angular features even looks great, though I’m not trying to sweat, it’s just not my fault that it’s 100-whatever-degrees and the A/C is near useless. I deserve so much more than this, literally, so much more. I am going to try and make it in modeling, I really am, even though Henry claims it’s a 100% gay industry. At this point I don’t think I care. I can’t live in this Godforsaken toilet much longer before I hang myself with one of my last Hugo Boss ties I didn’t have to sell off on Craiglist. Craigslist, for fuck’s sakes. I’m blow-drying my hair upside-down when I decide to call Jen, Jen, one of the last remaining remnants of my old, REAL life. She’s one Hugo Boss tie that never wants to hang around my neck.

“Christ, Richard. What the hell,” she says, sounding majorly pissed off. “Are you standing in a vacuum or something?”

I turn off the blow dryer. “Hair, babydoll. Hey, hey. Tell me what you’re wearing right now.”

“A red thong bikini,” Jen deadpans. “Richard, I am at work.”

“Guess what I’m wearing? Guess.”

“Gee. I have no idea. JCPenney’s dress pants?”

“A condom,” I deadpan for gold, blowing past her insult. “And it’s gonna stay on here just waiting for you to get off for lunch.”

“And you have the time to lie around wearing nothing but Trojans, since you are jobless. I have to go.”

“I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for dinner. Nine at Papillon’s?”

“God, you can’t even pronounce it right.” Jen’s frustrated voice is hilarious but her words are not. “I don’t know, Richard. Are you gonna be able to afford it?”

“Babe,” I chuckle. “Ouch. Harsh.”

“Don’t say ouch, Richard. Nobody gets hurt and goes ‘ouch.’”

“Why don’t you call me Rich anymore?”

“Um, I dunno, ‘cause you’re not?”

I don’t understand. “What?”

“I have to go. You called me at work, I have to go.”

“What? What?”

“Good-bye, Richard.”

“Wait, so like, I’m still picking you up, right?”

A pause. “Wear something nice.”

“You know it.”

“I am going to go do my job, because that is what contributing members of society do.”

“Okay. I love you.”

She hangs up. I turn the button back from OFF to HIGH. I don’t know why I said that last part. Jen is a cold-hearted, incorrigible bitch. I haven’t even told her where I live––can’t let her know I live by a junkyard and a gross Korean-owned laundromat and a sex toy shop and some Mexi-chink jackass named Bing Ping who sells noodles out of a trash can. She knows I was let go, though, obviously. Everybody knows. I thought she would’ve liked my condom bit, though, since I always complained about having to wear one when she still liked me.

I get dressed, wiping more perspiration from my face and hairline, and want to spit on my subway card. Before I head out the door I can’t can’t take it and bury my head in my sheets. I scream “how did I let this happen to me,” wipe my face, tuck a whitening strip onto my teeth and leave.

I actually do have a job, if you can even call it that. But in all actuality I’d rather tuck my sweater into my pants than admit I’m someone’s assistant.

My sweater is tucked into my pants. Gag me, jeez.

Henry calls at work when I’m sitting there doing nothing. “S.O.S., Richard. This ship is sinking.”

“Gag me, dude,” I reply, twirling a pen. “That is a total, major bummer.”

“Where are you?” his voice narrows its eyes.

“Nowhere important. Where are you?”

“I’m being totally serious, man. People are freaking out, all over. Rodney had a nervous breakdown or something in the conference room. Lionel is mourning the professional death of C.J. It’s making me nervous.”

“Rodney had a nervous breakdown?”

“Get your ass uptown. This can’t be happening.”

“I’ve got, like, stuff to do. Major stuff. It’s totally major."
“What could you possibly have going on, Richard man? Jesus, Harris just threw a coaster. Harris just threw a marble coaster!”

“That’s too bad. For the coaster. To be perfectly frank, Henry, there’s about nothing that I can do.”

“You’re happy, aren’t you?”

“I feel like death. I am not taking pleasure from the tanking of the company, if that’s what you mean, if that’s the sort of schadenfreude you were referring to.”

“Would you stop it with the big words? This is not, like, a spelling bee. Jesus. It won’t be long fore somebody throws themselves out a window. I am really, really not digging this, oh man. I think I might pass out.”

“Stick your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Henry, did it ever occur to Perry that maybe firing five people was a total, like, aberration? I mean, the conditions of Walcott’s eighth floor sound like a cataclysmic snafu.”

“I hate you right now, Richard, just to let you know.” I can hear Henry exhale in a high pitched hoot. What a drama queen. I fan myself with a newspaper. “Jesus Jesus Jesus, you are happy, happy that we’re tanking, happy that we’re all gonna die in a heap. I can’t lose my job, Richard! Do you know what that would mean?”

“God, for the life of me, I can’t imagine. Enlighten me.”

“I would have to sell my apartment!! My apartment is, like, almost the penthouse.”

“But it’s not,” I say with an over-exaggerated Midwestern accent. I hope I sound like Henry’s mother. I laugh with my tongue between my teeth. “Hey, how hot is it in your office?”

“Not. It feels like crisp and stuff. Why?” he says. “Oh, you just don’t get it, Richard! You never got anything!”

“What didn’t I get, dude?” I say. “Besides mercy.”

“This is not the point. Okay, Felippe is crying. Can you––can you, can you talk to Felippe, please?” Faded in the background: “Felippe. Felippe. It’s Richard. Richard, man. Kuh-nah-puh-puh?”

“I am not going to talk to that ridiculous loser of an intern,” I say. “I’m just not. And can’t you say Knapp? I think he understands my last name is Knapp without you having to, like, poorly sound it out.” I am really, really upset when I realize that Felippe makes more than me now. For certain.

I hear shuddery breaths on the other line. “H-hullo?” A swallow. Goddammit. Felippe.

“You’re all gonna die in a heap,” I say with a huge Cheshire cat grin.

“Wh-wh-who is this?”

“Richard, you pompous, mundane idiot. Richard Kuh-nah-puh-puh, since apparently you are also illiterate or something. Why the hell didn’t Perry fire YOU?”

“I don’t wanna die, Kuh-nuh,” Felippe wails, since apparently I’m like totally Hawaiian now or something. What a joke. “I don’t wanna die, don’t wanna die,” he keeps crying.

“Me neither. Just kidding. Oh well. Put Henry back on the line.”

“I don’t wanna die.”

“Put Henry back on the line, you complete dork.”

“I don’t wanna die.”

“How old are you? Ninetween? Twentween? Put Henry back on the line, goddammit, now.”

“I really don’t wanna die.”

“Oh, go sit in a dark room,” I say and hang up.

And then it became eight-twenty three and the power had gone out and come back on. I hate this dump, Maplewood Crust or whatever. I hate the people here, and I swear to God, I am the only one who actually pays rent. I know for a fact that I am the only one of these tenants who has actually been something, or who can actually make something of myself, or who actually has aspirations further than this pisshole. All the more reason to take Jen out tonight. I take the subway uptown and wear Ray Bans even though it’s dark out and put my shirt kind of over my face when exiting so nobody knows it was I who just walked out of the subway station. But it’s blisteringly hot, so I can’t do that for long. I have just enough to pay for a cab to take us to and from the restaurant and for our meals if she doesn’t order too expensive a wine. I paid off all and any debts a while ago, when I was still a validated human being, so that’s not what I need to worry about. I need to worry about being able to afford some goddamned food and clothes and headshots and hair stuff.

I pick Jen up from her office and hail a cab out in front and ask him to wait there for two sex. Jen is a workaholic who runs on a steady stream of black Belgian coffee, Adderall, and too tight pantyhose. She’s some kind of executive, in charge or something, still answers to a guy named Bill, but is for the most part at the top of the food chain. She probably wouldn’t leave her office unless I picked her up. Even then––she might choose to stay.

Jen’s ass is juicy in a tight black dress with no visible pantylines––a keeper for sure. Her pantyhose isn’t running and she’s let her hair down a little. Changed in one of the bathrooms definitely. “You look, like, totally divine,” I kiss her on the cheek.

I can tell she’s making a face even when I can’t see her. “Kay. Let’s go.”

“You’re the only one still here,” I muse.

“I don’t care, Richard. Can we go? Please?”

I don’t know why, but I just give her this dumb, placid, bovine stare. I don’t move.

“Can we like totally go, please? I have to be here super early tomorrow morning. Christ, Richard, this is not even worth it.”

“It is totally worth it,” I say somewhat angrily, letting her lead us to the elevators. “Papillon’s, bitch.” Bitch is whispered under my breath while I mime squeezing her ass with my hands. She doesn’t know.

The cab driver is still waiting, thank God who mostly forgets about me, and Jen and I pile in in a fashion that seems really clumsy and ungraceful to me. “Papillon’s on Willow,” I tell him, then pull one of the last remaining Valiums from my pocket and dry swallow it.

“What the hell was that?” Jen goes.

“What was what? That was what? Papillon’s? How’s work going, babe?”

Jen looks out the window. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. I mean, this is all such a waste. It’s all such a total waste––God, now I’m even beginning to sound like you.” She looks wearily at me. “What am I supposed to say now? ‘Gag me’?”

I feel dizzy and have to squeeze the bridge of my nose to keep from falling over. “Gag you?”

“This is just a waste. My whole life. Everything I do. It’s all such a waste.”

“You’re not…it’s not a waste…you, like, recycle and stuff…”

“A waste.” Jen’s voice seems far away. All I did was literally swallow one Valium a few seconds ago. “Not worth it. I mean, let’s be honest. I am making you spend money you don’t have. You are homeless, Richard.” She looks at me, really looks at me, for the first time in a long time which when it comes to Jen means she scrutinizes me. “You look like you’ve been able to take a shower, though.”

“I’m not homeless,” I barely say. “I blow-dry my hair upside-down. I have a phone that I call you with. I have neighbors…” I swallow and my mouth is completely dry. “Neighbors who I hate…and, like, I want to smother them with pillows…”

Jen doesn’t hear me. “Take me to my place.”

I’m really confused now. “Are we gonna have sex?”

“Hey Richard?” she pats my thigh. Her voice sounds like a mom trying to tell me something while I’m playing Pac Man. What do kids play now? I know no kids. I only know adults, and I am just realizing this. Jen continues, talking really slow. It’s like a mom telling her teenage son who knows no adults ‘hey? your room is a pig sty and it smells like marijuana? so you’re grounded? okay?’ But it goes like:

“Hey Richard? Ever since you were fired”

“I lost my job,” I correct. I am going to cry but I can’t. Jen would call me a pussy or something.

“Oh, did it get misplaced in the back of your closet? You were fired, Richard? And Richard, ever since you were fired? I have been sleeping with Harris Fitz? Your ex-coworker?”

It doesn’t really resonate, just sits on the surface. “Harris? Harris with the wife and two children?”

“He doesn’t have a wife and two children,” Jen says like she knows more than me, not like the woman just realizing she’s the other woman and not the one she thought she was. Just like that, it’s all over.

I lean close. “He has a wife who looks just like Marie Osmond before she got fat and two children with reddish hair named Quincy and Marcy, and I am not making this up because I have met them all and shaken their hands. This is totally real, babe.”

“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go to Papillon’s. This is depressing me.”

I lean back and say “Not my f***ing problem,” actually censoring myself like a clean song’s version by only saying the f and the ing.

“You are sick.” She leans up to the cab driver. “I mean zero disrespect and I am so sorry, but change of plans––can you please head west of here? The Ivy Whitfield building, 381 Palm? Thank you so much, I am so sorry.”

She cuts her eyes at me.

“I feel, like, totally victimized right now,” I say, wishing I had a cigar. “Like, I am feeling some total hostility from you.”

“I wish you would kill yourself.”

I bang my elbow on the wall of the cab on purpose, hitting my funny bone which resonates with a laugh at me. I kick myself in the shin with the heel of my other foot. I slap myself across the face. I pound a fist on my head. I pinch at my forearm and twist the skin around until it’s bleeding. “Ouch,” I say to Jen, taunting her. “Ouch, ouch, ouch.”

“There is something literally wrong with you. I don’t know if you have Asperger’s or what, but if you weren’t homeless I’d say you should go to the doctor.”

“Ouch, I am bleeding. I’m totally bleeding.” I show her the wound. “Oh, gag me.”

“Get that out of my face, Richard. I will kill you, I am not kidding.”

“You forgot the semicolon, babe,” I say.

I really do not know what is wrong with me but I suppose this is what happens when you become homeless. Ouch. The driver drops Jen off at her house and she gives him money. I get out too, once she’s paid him. “Babe, totally take a look back on your life,” I say. “Because someday soon you will see me in the pages of Vanity Fair.”

“You look too regular to be a model,” Jen says, not looking at me as she climbs the stairs. “I mean OH MY GOD, Richard, YOU GOT FIRED. You got fired from being a stockbroker and you can’t even find another job. You think you can just become a male model? If you are just going to be some unemployed bum, go work at a fast food place, because that’s where you belong.”

Once she’s inside I throw up. Or not really, but I feel like I’m going to. “I do not belong at fast food I belong in an office I had a job it is not my fault there isn’t anything I could have done differently oh somebody come up and kill me” I whisper on my way to the subway. No one hears.

And back out of the subway, I stagger out of the underground station and walk around and really let it sink in how terrible my life is, looking at all the useless people and all the things. That guy with the disgusting rat’s nest of hair and a literal backwards baseball cap is throwing up a sign that says VIBE SO HARD in front of the sex toy shop.

“Kill yourself,” I spit, glaring at him, glowering.

“Hey man, my name is Patty,” he shrugs. “Don’t have to ask me twice.”

I make a face, though I can’t tell what it looks like, and walk away.

“Have a good night,” Patty says.

“Stab me in the cheek,” I yell.