Formidably Difficult

    Someone shot a dog earlier, shot a dog.  I was in an odd mood. Whiskey dribbling down from a beard I hadn’t shaved in like, six weeks. I fumbled with a cigarette and burned myself, fumbled and burned myself again. I fumbled through her purse and found a bottle. The label was made out to someone who wasn’t her. I twisted the cap and poured three, four, five little yellow pills into my little yellow hand. I sat back into the futon. There were a lot of people here. I stumbled on the patio, some guy yelled at me, something in Arabic, something about an air conditioning unit being stolen. I laughed and gave him a fist bump, mumbled something about imports and the fridge and then tried to make a Holocaust joke that he wouldn’t get. He wasn’t Arabic. Sri Lankan. He had explained this to me earlier. He was banging it out with some veterinarian who worked at the all night pet emergency center, she might have stopped by earlier. Super hot, he said, she was super hot. I wondered briefly why he would describe his own girlfriend to me as super hot. Like, almost trying to tell me that she would be a fine prospect. "Hell, I’m a prospector!" I yelled at no one in particular an hour, three minutes later.



    Outside the sun was beginning to come up. The craters from the latest attack still hadn’t been fixed. I’m not sure who is going to fix them, phones have not been in operation for at least three days, four years. I slipped on some ice that had formed and hit my head hard. It was explained to me that I had been speaking slowly and with a slur and that I may have a concussion. I replied, "That’s just my face!" and tried to shove that Arabic dude who wasn’t Arabic and fell over again. I was not wearing many clothes except for a hoody that was much too small for me. Someone shot a dog earlier, shot a dog. I’m not sure why. I guess because the ash had finally subsided and everyone could breathe a little easier, literally, I guess that everyone had a little tension to release. So this guy had shot a dog. I can’t say where these people were getting these guns or what exactly they were planning on doing with them, but I was noticing more and more of them accumulating and this fact was a bit more than disconcerting. The dog had been walking around and this guy, I don’t know, J.R., R.J, Pete, something like that he had been hanging around although noone could say who he knew, but he had a gun and this seemed to ingratiate him with most of the dudes, and then he shot this dog. He laughed for a really long time after that, like at least an hour, I had gone inside, returned to have a smoke, gone inside, returned and he was still out there laughing, snot just falling from his face, bent over, hands on hips, voice so hoarse I couldn’t help but imagine it hurt. Someone had moved the dog when he started crying. He tried to tell me about his wife, kids, how they had come and taken them. Asking me if I was willing to help him, threatening me with the gun, then apologizing. I gave him five dollars and asked him to leave me alone. He ripped the bill in half which was stupid and he was obviously highly irrational so I went back inside.

   

    I settled up next to this dude who said he was D.J. Said he played downtown. Played garage which he pronounced "gare-age" or something. He said that his music was on now. I noticed that music was playing, hellaciously loud for that matter. I asked if he was familiar with Felix Da House Cat for no particular reason since I personally wasn’t. I did a shot with the dude. And he said something about hoping to see me once this all was over. I wondered what he meant by "this all". He asked me if I had a gun. I said no. I said I had a love gun. He asked what caliber it was . I stopped paying attention. I went back through her purse and got a box of tic tacs out. They tasted like body odor. I’d have to tell her. I wondered where she was. Sometime ago she had left to see if the lights were back on on the next block. I tried to kiss her but she was pissed off about something and shook my hand. In my hand she had left some piece of jewelry. I guess I might have given it to her, or maybe she had made it for me. It was rather abrupt for her to leave like that especially when everything was just beginning to hit a good groove. Now she had been gone for more than three days if my count was correct.

 

    It was getting loud on the patio. Guys high. Guys yelling. Guys firing guns in the air. Fireworks. I stood in the doorway and watched for awhile. The D.J. dude pushed me outside and slung an arm around me. Soon all the guys were around us arms around shoulders, bouncing, screaming. I found myself screaming, bouncing. There was a rumbling up the block and spotlights and most of the guys ran off towards it. I didn’t want to do that.



    I shut the patio door and noticed for the first time how cold it was inside. I grabbed a blanket off the floor and wrapped myself in it. It had sort of a brown crust on portions but I was cold and irritated. I saw a girl in the kitchen looking through the same two cabinets over and over again. "Veterinarian?" I asked her. She looked like she had been crying. She grabbed a knife out of the sink and pointed it at me. I turned and went into one of the bedrooms and shut the door. I walked into the closet and pulled a bunch of coats on top of me along with the blanket and fell asleep for a long time.