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I’ve taken my teeth — these fully yellowed cavitied teeth — clean through this meat while you complain about your responsibilities.
I’m listening to you — NOT SHUTTING THE FUCK UP — talk about how your forty hour work from home job is so tough that you are considering seppuku, that the Teams noises are upsetting your Lhasa Apso to the point where you might “kennel” it in the basement until you’re done for the day.
Meanwhile, here I am, higher than giraffe tits on crypto and block chains, soaking it in. I can afford all of this as I rip through this Wagyu cheesesteak like a Chain Chomp from Mario. You fork-finger-fiddle your Sysco bucatini, unsure if you will handjob me, kiss me dryly or text me again. I will take whatever I can get at this point.
You ask me how everything is, sweetly, a lilt at the edge of your tongue that I want to keep.
I wanted to harangue you a bit, lead you around, but I wanted to come clean instead of coming inside you. I said, let’s talk about commerce.
What are you, Patrick Bateman? It was a fair shot, I’ll give her that. Damn clever, damn clever.
I said, do you know the story about the golden penis.
You set your sidecar down and your tennis bracelet makes an ungodly sound against the cheap glass. No, Montgomery, tell me.
Ok. The golden penis is how I measure all of this. See, I have a golden penis. It’s rock hard contains fervor and is chock the fuck full of carrots.
Karats.
No. Carrots. The root vegetable. Daucus carota subsp. sativus. It has benefits to you and me and especially you.
Pray tell.
I mark these off my fingers like I’m listing the 12 Angry Men. Weight loss. Eye health. Immune system. Vision. Skin nourishment. I point a steak-greased finger at your chest. Your skin looks amazing, by the way.
I moisturize, she says, and briefly flushes. Then she regains. The point, I’m sure, is coming.
The golden penis, I slur as I finish my gin, is that I only give it out to a lucky few. This isn’t the Salvation Army. This is like, what’s the thing where the raccoon comes out of the ground and he sees if the sun is out and then he does lottery tickets on the side.
Jesus. You mean the groundhog?
Yeah but he does like the scratch offs. Anyway, comes once a year. But then I stop for dramatic pause. And so do I.
And I’m the one time.
You’re the one time.
Do you have golden sperm to go with this gold penis?
Yes. And an AMEX.
Heh. Both of them should be cut in half, if you want my opinion.
She gave this a deep laugh and downed her sidecar like she won the battle. But we had time for a war yet and I decided that I wasn’t going to let it slide.
Well, maybe it’s for the best. I’ve had some bad luck on the way over here.
What happened?
I saw a mom version of you. You had like a perm and a scrunchy on your wrist and I knew you were a mom because you were wearing a hoodie that says Williamsburg, Virginia on it. That was the giveaway.
Why.
All moms wear a fucking Williamsburg Virginia hoodie. Because that’s their only vacation of the year, of goddamn ever.
Know what I saw? About you?
Go ahead.
I didn’t see a dad version of you. Because you won’t fuck me anymore. You say you want to and then you find something else to do. Your golden penis shit doesn’t work on me. It’s like you get so hungry and then you choose to starve. And we used to be so good at it and now I don’t know why you…
And she stopped with a heavy as hell sigh. The game was over. No more roleplay. I reached for her hand and she brushed it away. But she didn’t cry. She laughed. And then I did too.
I do enjoy this, she said. It’s fun. It’s fun to be different people.
I smiled. It is fun. Because it was.
We looked at each other for a moment. Even in the dark, I saw every feature, and she stirred shit up in me.
Might as well go back to normal, she said.
Alright. What do you want to do when we go home?
We can do whatever. I don’t care. We got time to figure it out. She smiled. Maybe you’ll do some of those things to me. Maybe you won’t.
You never know. I set my plate off to the side. You just never know.
She ordered another sidecar and then went to the bathroom. I looked at my crypto app while she was away and saw that I lost a lot of money, hundreds, that quick.
