OCTOBER 16

TITLE: "Jack Shit"
NOTES: My first completed story for Intro to Fiction,
to be workshopped on the 22nd. It was either very brave or very
stupid to put a first-person narrative (especially one like this)
out there for the first run, since everyone wants to make a good
impression and will probably showcase their syntax with a third-
person POV and pretty sentences. Damn.

-----

So, this one time, I got approached on the street. No shit; some old guy with an impressive paunch and those Jeffrey Dahmer glasses—you know, the tortishell cokebottles—told me he’d pay me twenty bucks if I let him touch my dick. It was probably the weirdest thing I’ve been asked to date, but I just shrugged, walked with him into that alley behind the Chinese buffet, and whipped it out. From his face, you’d think he’d never seen a circumcised dong before, because he sort of sucked in his breath as he touched me. Real lightly, too, like anything more than a whisper would break it off. Didn’t get me hard or anything, since he was so creepy and I was pretty sure that, at any minute, this little tour was going to get interrupted by some unlucky Asian busboy taking out the trash. The perv seemed to get a real kick out of it, though, because he smiled at me when his calluses made me shiver. Like I was some sort of fucking statue in a museum somewhere. A statue wearing five-pocket jeans into which he could shove wrinkled cash.

And it’s not like I needed twenty bucks, either. I mean, my job’s not great or anything, but cleaning puke off the floors of roller coaster cars is definitely a step or two above getting felt up by some dude who may or may not have had leprosy. Didn’t think about it then, but it’s probably a miracle that I don’t have boils on my cock now, or something like that. Not that it matters, since I still can hardly bear to look at it, much less touch it. Which has really thrown a wrench into my schedule, you know? There’s this block of time every day that I just can’t fill anymore.

In any event, I get my twenty bucks, and watch this nutcase walk away, looking a lot happier than he had two minutes before. I thought it was because of me at the time, which was kind of an ego boost—but it didn’t help the fact that I had this dirty twenty in my back pocket; I could almost feel Jackson’s mug burning into my ass. Almost like he knew how he’d gotten there and was real indignant about it. Which is pretty hypocritical, because Jackson pulled some tricky shit and got himself impeached, right? Still, having a president being disapproving every time you sit down (and even moreso when you fart) is no cake in the park or whatever. Plus, I felt a little like a hooker. I don’t know how those whores can live with themselves at the end of the day, really—though maybe it’s different for straight chicks or something, I don’t know. Point is, I wanted to get rid of that money pretty much the moment I got it, so I high-tailed it out of there and over to the convenient store on the next block with every intention of picking up a slurpee and maybe some normal, chick-on-dude porn rags.

Buying dirty magazines had never really bothered me before—they’re selling them for a reason, right? And it’s not like I’m the single sicko perpetuating the industry with my on-again, off-again patronage. But this time, because my crotch was still all tingly and weird like your foot after you’ve sat cross-legged for too long, I felt like a total perv pointing behind the counter and saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll take Jumbo Jugs, Titty Sprinkles, and a Big Gulp.’ You could tell the child laborer there was really getting his jollies by touching the two-dimensional hooters, because he gave me one of those you’re-my-new-hero grins while ringing everything up. He tells me it’ll be seventeen forty-five, so I reach around to my ass like I’m going to scratch my crack, grab the Jackson, and hand it to him as if it’s covered in ants.

It was almost that simple. But this pizza-faced Dudley Do-Right can’t just let me get out of there with even one shred of dignity left, because he looks at the money, then looks back at me and says, “I don’t think we can accept this.”

“What do you mean you can’t accept it?” I asked, all pissed off and flustered. “It’s money, isn’t it?” A line was starting to form behind me, all these soccer moms picking up popsicles for their bazillions of whiny kids, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there. Just to drink my forty-four ounces of cola and jerk off to fake tits until it was time to take a massive piss.

But the kid just shuffles around behind the counter, gnawing at his thumbnail, and says, “I think it’s against store policy to accept bills with penises drawn on them.” Then he blushes like hell is freezing over and he needs to keep warm, but didn’t balk or anything when I snatched the twenty out of his hand and looked at it for the first time—sure enough, there’s a giant cock etched on there, pointing right at Jackson’s tight-lipped mouth. And I mean balls and everything, real realistic-like, with shading and shit. If it hadn’t been an enormous dick, I’d probably have it framed and hanging over the couch right now, that’s how nice it was. The whole thing was pretty damn majestic—except for the fact that it was a penis, and my cash wasn’t legal tender because of it. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life, what with all those suburbanites standing behind me gawking and sniggering like a bunch of paparazzi geese. And all of a sudden, I was seeing spots and tasting bile; all because there were balls on my money.

I left the coke and the porn for the audience and made it outside just in time to hurl into that bowl of sand they leave out for the smokers’ butts. There was this little puff of light-brown dirt that made me sneeze and added snot to the barf. Because anything else would have been fair, and this just wasn’t my day; I made sure of that the moment I had those fingers around me, right?

It wasn’t until I was three blocks away, spitting a chunk of that morning’s sausage into a planter, that I realized I still had the Jackson blowjob. Crumpled in my fist, all limp from my sweat. It occurred to me then that if I didn’t get rid of this shame-cash, that’s how my junk would be for the rest of my life (or the day at least): crumpled and limp in my hand. And since I didn’t want to end up like one of those priests with the aching ballsacs who get desperate enough to fondle little boys, I created my own modest vendetta against this ball-bill I’d been saddled with. The thing had caused me enough trouble for a lifetime, and I’d only had it for ten minutes.

For a good part of the afternoon I schlepped around town, attempting to foist off Jack on a whole buttload of fine retailers. The places got more and more low-class as I got more and more desperate, and I began trying more and more clever little tricks to hide the dick until I was too far away for them to shove it back in my pocket. Folding it in half, handing it to them face down, rolling it up like a cocaine addict—nothing. Even that vegetable at the smoke shop—you know, the place where they sell the hemp clothing and ‘decorative’ bongs—stomped on my genius: stoner Sherlock actually managed to disengage the wad I’d made of the bills before I’d even gotten past the bead fringe over the door. I swore at him and he gave me a peace sign, putting my Jerry Garcia commemorative plate back on the shelf next to the dragon figurines. That place had been as close as I’d been able to get to a sure shot, but since it didn’t pan out, I was left with only one option: the porn shop. I mean, logically, if anyplace would accept dick-money, that would be it, right?

What a shithole that place is. No lie, the dildos were dusty—not that I was browsing them for purchase or anything. I did look at some ten-year-old hardcore flicks for a few minutes just so the fetish chick at the register with the veiny tits wouldn’t think I was an impulsive psycho or something. Being more of an internet connoisseur, myself, seeing all those video boxes lined up like a hard-bodied army was something of a mindfuck. I didn’t know which one to choose, but didn’t want to spend so long deciding that Fakeboobs would swoop in to help me make an educated decision; so I just grabbed something with dirty babysitters on it. I could feel Jack pulsing at my hip, which I took to mean that this was going to be the end of the road for my part in his adventure. It was a new frontier from this point on, from my hand to hers. The world was his oyster.

“What, are you some sort of sicko?” One minute, I’m passing Jack over like the Olympic torch, and the next, we’re staring at each other, nose-to-nose. Just like the Big Gulp, my consumerism was chopped off at the knees because my miniature president had a preference for massive penises. If she hadn’t called me a joker and shown me the door with her middle finger, I would’ve used my house key to pop those saline balloons on her chest. Bitch.

It was colder on the street than when I’d gone in, just like when you go to the movies in the afternoon and get out after dark. I was disoriented and dizzy; the Jackson was searing his face into my hand like a branding iron; I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. This stupid twenty-dollar bill was single-handedly dismantling my life, and I knew if I didn’t get rid of it soon, I was going to go insane. Or, even worse, become impotent or something. I guess that doesn’t really justify anything, but when you’ve got a demon-dong you just can’t shake, there’s no precedent for civility. There was no way that thing was going to follow me home—especially now that the moths were beginning to collect around the streetlights. If I didn’t get rid of it then, there was no chance until the next morning. And that just wasn’t an option.

Still, he probably thought I was crazy when I approached him. And I don’t blame him, really, since I looked at his crotch before I looked at his face. But he was a nice-looking kid, all alone outside the video game store—which most likely meant his junk didn’t often see anything but his own hand. So I nudged him on the shoulder, then asked, “Hey, you wanna make twenty bucks?”