Flipping the Mattress

I can’t remember my dreams, but they’re there.  It’s still dark out and I can’t go back to sleep because my mattress won’t give.  Maybe I should flip the mattress. No, I’m not going to flip the goddamn mattress.  It’s effort enough to worry about it. I crumble a short and the last of my weed into a green porn shop pipe clogged with resin.  My guts whine on the exhale. I didn’t eat last night.  

I stand in the kitchen with the lights out and choke down a handful of spekulatius cookies shaped like windmills.  There’s nothing else to eat except coffee grounds and ketchup packets and scattered grains of rice. I shake a little parmesan cheese into a dirty bowl and lap up a spoonful.  It’s so salty my tongue swells and sticks to my teeth.  

A single sip of flat beer and all of a sudden I’m tremblingly horny and I have to shit.  I’m paralyzed by choice. I have to beat my cock or else my day is fucked. But my day doesn’t start until I take a shit.  I peer inside the toilet and consider the ring of slime. It’s really too bad. She would’ve kept the toilet clean. I get naked and plump down, phone in hand.  

I always worry I’ll push too hard and burst a vessel in my brain.  Fall face down on the filthy bath rug, shit crusted all over my skin, quadriplegic and powerless until my parents break down the door.  My colon crowns my asshole like an egg in a basket. There’s blood in the water. I peel the last ply and scoop scabby boogers out of my nose as I thumb through my phone for some mood music.  

I unfold a greasy Burger King napkin and bend over.  My fingers instantly tear through. My asshole itches and burns like chapped lips.  With any luck at all, a morsel of shit will crawl through my wound and jam up my heart.  I wash my hands with a hairy little clod of hotel soap in the flooded sink. All my knuckles glow red.  

I stretch a sleeve over my palm and wipe the foggy window.  Pinkish sunshine cracks through the bald trees and power lines.  I decide not to take a picture. I want to watch the sky open and try to appreciate the moment.  I usually sleep through twilight. It’s beautiful for a long minute, but plain boring in the next.  I lose my patience and smash a fruit fly chilling on the glass.  

They’re fucking in the garbage.  A swarm blooms every time I flip the lid.  I have to kill them by hand, there are so many.  And leave half-empty bottles of High Life on the counter.  They crawl inside and drown themselves like anyone else.  

I boot up my laptop and thumb through my phone.  Read my horoscope and check the forecast. Here’s hoping the astrologist is right, the weatherman wrong.  Check my email, Facebook, dating apps, no new notifications. I refresh every page and restart my phone, but nothing happens.  They’re probably at work, you know.  

I grudgingly scroll through the classifieds.  They read like obituaries. I never seem to have the requisite experience or education or certificate or attitude.  Fuck you, don’t hire me, I don’t need your money. I’ll sleep under a bush in the park and hunt squirrels with a boomerang.  Shit my pants and bumble around the shopping district talking to myself.  

Fat pussy bitch poop piss inside my asshole shitting out my penis poop!  Bitch fucker cock up my ass bitch dick piss in my shithole bitch dick on my dick, piss bitch!  Frugally do gully punks pinch my bitch loaf Scooby dooby gooey soupy poopy butt! Big butts, big sluts, sucky sucky fucky fucky ducky my doubly doodle strudel, fucking big cunt bitch!  

How embarrassing.  What a stupid loser.  What a colossal waste of human potential.   Totally beyond hope, he’s so far gone. I heard he likes to drive drunk and wreck homes.  I heard he smoked a hole in his head, quit his job and kicked a dog because he couldn’t get laid in high school.  I have no respect for people like that. Everyone is born with an equal chance in this life and he chose the gutter.  Blow his fucking brains out and gibbet that motherfucker.

C’mon, man, don’t think like that, it’s not like you’re evil.  You love dogs. You’ll get another job, a better job. You’ll get another girlfriend, too.  And it’s like she said, the world isn’t as full of hate as you think. You need to listen. It’s going to be okay.  Or maybe it’s not going to be okay, I don’t know. Yeah, I really don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.  I’m already dead. No, no I’m not, but you know.  

Holy shit, I need to get out of the house.  Alright, okay, cool, cool, very cool, let’s go.  Let’s go to Walmart. I think I’d like a SuperPretzel and a grape soda.  But that’s right, I didn’t brush my teeth, didn’t take a shower. And I’ve been drinking.  I’m such a fucking idiot. Someone call the firing squad, my life has become unmanageable.  

Shut up, shut the fuck up, you’re okay, okay.  You probably shouldn’t hit the pipe again. It’s cashed anyway.  Leave the beer for the flies. Let’s go check the mail. I don’t think I’ve checked the mail since I last picked up.  Look, it’s busting. Well wishes and love letters and big checks, I’m sure, but yeah, none of them for me. 

I can’t believe I’m still getting mail addressed to the previous tenant.  I never met Fred, but he tried to marry my cousin. He says he has a million dollars in a trust fund that will only pay out if he gets married.  But she wouldn’t marry him because he’s old as hell. I think that’s all I know about Fred.  

Here, I know, let’s open Fred’s mail.  Fuck him, he’s never coming back. Let’s see.  It’s a letter from the City of Long Beach. I guess Fred owes $2,402.90 for an ambulance ride.  

That’s fucking Fred, man, ambulance full of candy stripers, mouthful of missing teeth, a million dollars flying one by one out the back door, dumbass debt collectors shaking their fists in his rearview, the whole world gushing through his windshield.  

And there’s me, growing smaller and smaller and smaller yet, condemned to forward his mail forever.

It’s so cold outside, goddamn.  Spoiled snow banks loiter in the parking lot of the burned out funeral home across the alley.  There’s not a cloud in the sky, but the sun is washed up. The weatherman is probably right. It’s going to snow again.  I can’t fucking believe this shit.  

I grab all my blankets and lay down on the couch.  Good thing I didn’t make my bed. That shit’s a scam.  I’m good, it’s all good. I hug a pillow and whisper words of love as the familiar phantasm pads out of its black cloud on all fours.