by Tatiana Kent
DOIN' IT TO DEATH
Our burgers leaking blood onto our plates, I told you, “I don’t think I could ever live somewhere that wasn’t beautiful.” Your face was as if I’d told you I wouldn’t be able to finish my food without diamond encrusted cutlery. The rain had let up and there were fat men smoking and laughing outside of the cigar lounge across the street. You had taught me how to play chess an hour earlier and you’d let me win, thank God, as it seemed that every move I made I’d be screwed. I tried to describe living in Alaska to you. The taxi service couldn’t take you out of town. The nearest Walmart was forty minutes away. Who’s running the store? you said. Ghosts? I laughed, recalling phantoms with jellyfish tattoos stomping through the aisles in Xtratuf boots buying fifteen dollar rotisserie chickens. Yeah, I said, you got it, city boy. When we got home we watched the Sopranos. I was the perfect temperature. I wondered what it looked like up in Alaska now that it was summer again. I tried to imagine somebody’s arms around me at sixty degrees latitude and couldn’t do it.
KEEP YOUR WRIST LOOSE
I was walking Spots through the park one day when I saw Cool Guy Books. Cool Guy Books is there every Saturday in his backwards baseball cap that says BOOKS and sells Kama Sutra manuals and self published guides on processing your past lives. Cool Guy Books was balancing the smallest cat I had ever seen atop one ragged fingernail. The cat was orange, looked mildly stoned. Some girls were taking pictures of it. “How are you doing that?” I asked. Cool Guy Books said, “Sister, when I was 14 I did a little too much PCP at a Bad Brains concert, and since then, the world’s been all jacked up.” I decided this just couldn’t be true. I went home and tried to balance Spots on my finger, but I’ve been a chronic nail biter since the fifth grade and Spots started to growl at me whenever I went to brush his teeth. One day Spots didn’t come back from catching rats. I thought I saw him from across the street balancing on Cool Guy Books’ finger one Saturday, but when I went to confront him he only had the cat purring on one monstrously long toenail. He handed me a book titled Take It Easy, Broseph!: How to Realign Your Chakras When Life Feels Crazy Cruddy.
RED ROCKET
I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to be Marie’s bridesmaid when I got an invitation to her shower asking for gifts of “lingier” to “spice up her weeding night.” I chose to contribute a single vanilla scented candle – then suffered through three hours of Marie opening scratchy polyester teddies and sex dice while her mother served us Chicken Salad Chick. The eleven-year-old flower girl buried her face in her hands. “I can’t stand these people,” I told Luke over FaceTime. “They’re animals.” “You know what this means, dude,” Luke said. “You have to fuck Duke Dog.” Duke Dog was the couple’s alma mater’s mascot. We all had to chip in forty-two dollars to have him show up at the rehearsal dinner pregame. After eight vodka sprites, I took him to the bathroom and slipped my hand through the hole in his costume. His penis, like his fursuit, appeared to be covered in a crusty gray fuzz. It was totally erect at four inches. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna back out now like the rest of them,” Duke Dog whined. The ermine trim of his cape was trailing on the floor and soaking up toilet water. The end of his penis tasted like iron. He let me wear his big crown on the dance floor later. When I went back home that Sunday and showered I noticed that my pubic hair had begun to gray, and four new nipples had appeared on my abdomen.
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Tatiana Kent is a writer in West Philadelphia. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Salt Hill Journal, Blood+Honey, and The Bookends Review. You can find her on Instagram @greenbannisters.