The grocery store is like an asylum. Well, at least I get paid a little bit to be here. Others are trapped in their morbid shopping routines. Still, it’s hard to listen to such inane conversations from people with such a sense of class superiority. They treat the workers like dogs. Some will point to what they want on the menu board, as if we need a visual with their words. Others will take care to enunciate for us, drawing each syllable out one by one. And if you ask them to repeat something because they are talking too softly or because the noise of the chicken rotisserie or the fryer behind you is too loud, they will shout their order back to you. We’re all dogs to them. We take orders and then fetch. Fetch, fetch, fetch. That’s my job.
I finish slicing the smoked ham for the cop and his wife. I lay it on the scale. I smile at them but my attitude is stoic. All the while, I’m locked into my imagination. There’s a four pound loaf of ham still sitting on the slicer and I imagine picking it up and throwing it at the cop. In my mind, it hits with such force that it removes his head from his body. Other customers in line scream. A child faints. I pull off my shirt and throw it on the ground. Then my pants. Now, completely naked, I run around the deli counter and kick the cop’s head into the cereal isle. I follow it, making gorilla noises, yanking my cock and pulling boxes of cereal off the shelf. I bounce up and down and then stumble and then do a pirouette.
All of this might happen one day. Except of course the cop’s head coming off. In reality, I would probably just throw the piece of meat somewhere near his head and walk out of the place. I’ve walked out of jobs before. Ain’t no big thing. I sometimes just reach the point where I’m ready to move on to the next humiliation.
So I don’t do it right now. Instead, I put the lunchmeat in a plastic bag, put a price sticker on it and smile. Then I blink. I blink and the memories come back to me. I’m remembering a night with Kaye. We are lying in bed, naked, having just fucked. I have something to ask her.
“When I die,” I say, “will you eat my ashes?”
“No,” she says. “Of course not.”
“You could put them in a pudding or something.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m just not doing that.”
“You don’t have to eat me all at once. You can do it over time.”
“Stop it. You’re being gross.”
“So you won’t do it?”
“No. And I wish you’d quit talking about it.”
And yet Anne says she will do it and I believe her. Already, my information is coded into her mind. Even if my writing doesn’t survive, my patterns will, as long as she stays alive. And she will be alive much longer than me. And she will eat of me when I die, completing the ritual. Time will have finally beaten me when she dies. It will have the last laugh. But Time always wins. Or does it? There is, of course, the infinite to consider.
I blink again. I’m back at the deli counter.
“What else for you?” I say.
“Nothing else today, hon,” the wife says.
“OK, thanks. Have a great day.”
“You too, hon.”
The pair waddles away.
I see a long line of customers. But there are three of us here behind the deli counter and I decide to wash my hands. I don’t really need to, but I’d like to take a few seconds for myself. I take my gloves off and walk over to the sink. I turn the water on. It is extremely hot. I run the water over my hands and fall into the warmth. I think to myself that I seem to have become Billy Pilgrim. No, I am definitely Billy Pilgrim. I’ve started to discover the key to Time. I might know how to defeat it. I’m starting to grow psychic. I am going beyond simple memory. I am actually traveling to my past. I feel, see, hear exactly as I did in the moments when the memories first happened. In bed with Kaye or Anne. In Philadelphia or Baltimore. I am right there and in the present too. I know you probably won’t believe me. Or maybe you will. Maybe you are mad too. There are so few of us left these days. And if you’re not mad, you should try it, if only temporarily. Become mad for me. I want to eat of you.
I wonder what the Mad Poet would have to say about all of this.