Bus Drive Day!

Hop on. Get behind the line. Sit where the handicapped and elderly do. You’ll get up if one of em shows.

“Buried the shit,” tell Miles.

Miles lifts his hands off the wheel and applauds. Probably a violation.

“Fucker in the ground!” he shouts. “Good for you, Gladys.”

Tell Miles about the last minutes.

“Asked me to forgive!”

“Ha!”

“Asked me to forget!”

“Ha! Ha!”

“Asked me to visit his sister in Tucson and tell her he regretted the bad blood. I have to do that, apparently. It’s a stipulation of the will.”

Miles will say, “Tucson’s nice.”

Sit back in your seat in silence for a while. He’s gone. He was a bastard and his money’s yours. But he was your bastard, and he was who you had at arm’s length for eleven years. He was a bastard, but you only get so close to so many people while they’re here, and he’s gone now.

“How much, Gladys?”

You try to sound excited. You try to sound like a girl who just won the lotto. But you sound like someone who doesn’t know where to turn when you say, “Eleven million.”

Miles laughs for you. He laughs all the way to your stop.

“Won’t be seeing you on this bus again!” Miles shouts.

You smile as you take the first step down. You sob as you take the second. You leap back up and pull Miles into a hug.

“You might see me again,” you tell him.

He pats your back twice.

You get off the bus and make your way across an office plaza to see a lawyer where you’ll listen to the “gold digger” accusations of some of his nephews and their wives.

Happy Bus Drive Day!

Break A Promise To Your Stepson Day!

“Hey Jim,” he’ll say.

“I told you, Morris” tell him. “Call me Dad.”

Morris will remind you that you’re not his dad. And you shouldn’t want to be his dad because his dad is a fucking piece of shit drunk asshole who deserves to die.

“You said you’d kill him,” Morris will remind you. “I told you you could marry my mom if you killed my dad.”

“Yeah well, maybe I’m rethinking that deal,” tell Morris.

Morris will grip his wiffle ball bat like it’s a weapon.

“I gave you my blessing,” he’ll say. “You promised.”

Shrug. “Your dad’s bigger than me,” tell him.

Morris will wander off to regroup and figure out how to make his father pay, and once that’s done, make you understand that a broken promise to a stepchild yields grave, grave repercussions.

Happy Break A Promise To Your Stepson Day!

Perform Surgery On Yourself On The Subway Day!

You have a gross mole that you’re sick of. Your insurance only covers you for bus accidents (except when they fall on blackout days), and while you’d like to perform a bathtub surgery, it’s 2015, who has a bathtub?

The one place that’s already gross enough that no one will mind is the subway. Not only can you use those wide, curved benches to gather your blood, but if you do it at rush hour there are bound to be lots of people who will call for help if things go south for you. Your fellow passengers love learning (look at all those books!) and they’ll be excited to watch a real live surgery without having to go to med school or steal cable.

So get drunk this morning, grab a steak knife and hop on the subway! You’re gonna die down there.

Happy Perform Surgery On Yourself On The Subway Day!

Have Sex With Your Communications Professor Day!

You’ve been craving him all semester, but you’re worried it will hurt things for you in the long run.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” tell him during office hours. “But this is the kind of thing that comes back to haunt people. My career. My reputation.”

He’ll close the blinds.

“Don’t worry,” he’ll say.

He’ll unbutton his shirt.

“Nothing we do will have any effect on your life whatsoever,” he’ll say.

He’ll move some papers off the desktop and take your hand, guiding you to climb on top of his desk blotter.

“You’ll never look back on anything that transpires between the two of us as something to regret, or to remember with any sort of importance,” he’ll say.

You’re unbuttoning your blouse now, reassured.

“Because darling, I teach communications. As far as the world is concerned, I don’t matter in the slightest.”

You take him. You take him with great urgency. You take him like he could disappear into irrelevance at any second.

Happy Have Sex With Your Communications Professor Day!

Winter Cabin Day!

Rent a winter cabin with the intention of drinking bourbon and shooting rifles and spending afternoons standing at the edge of a frozen creek wondering why the dead loom larger in your life than the living. Your intentions for the weekend will go out the window when an escaped convict breaks into your cabin to eat all your canned chili.

“Make a sound and I’ll kill ya,” he’ll say, chili at the corners of his mouth.

“Drink?” you’ll offer.

The two of you will spend a fun weekend drinking and laughing and talking about how dumb prison guards can be. When the convict finally decides it’s time for him to move on to Memphis and kill the son of a bitch shacked up with his ex-wife, you’ll be sad.

“YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND!” you’ll scream when he steps out on the porch.

The two of you will hug as US Marshal sharp-shooters who’ve had the cabin surrounded for the last six hours open fire.

Happy Winter Cabin Day!

Emma, Get Up From That Table And Run Day!

He’s the whole package, Emma. Weird smile, dimples that could store loose change, shoulders that look like your dead brother’s, and hella good hair.

Get up from that table and run.

He’s listening to you talk like every word out of your mouth is a revelation. He’s laughing at your jokes like the punchline is a self-evident truth that cracks everything wide open. You’re opening up to him about things you forgot you still cared about.

Get the fuck up from that table and run. Run like you just saw God on a horse.

You’re reaching across the table and already touching the back of your fingers to his. He’s not letting his eyes look anywhere but into yours. You’re leaning forward with every part of your body, like the only things keeping you from slipping out of your dress and into his embrace are that dining table and decency laws.

It’s almost too late. Get up, Emma. Get up and put your legs underneath you and get swallowed by the night before this feeling swallows you whole.

You’re kissing. It’s too late. Talk to you again in three and a half years.

Happy Emma, Get Up From That Table And Run Day!

Someone’s Been Having Sex With Wax Patrick Stewart Day!

Freddy, the museum director, is pacing the front of the staff room, clearly trying to contain his anger.

“These wax figures trust us,” Freddy says. “They trust us to care for them, just as the public figures who lent their likeness to these wax figures trust us to not use their likeness for anything but to give the public an afternoon of diverting, slightly eerie entertainment.”

Freddy has his hands behind his back, shaking his head woefully.

“Do you know what nearly every celebrity asks before giving their consent to add their wax replica to our museum? They ask, ‘How do I know you’re not just going to have sex with it?’”

Some of the staffers drop their heads in shame. It doesn’t feel good to know you’ve confirmed a celebrity’s worst fears. That a celebrity put his or her trust in you and you dropped the ball.

Someone raises his hand and asks how Freddy knows that Wax Patrick Stewart was fornicated with.

“I don’t want to get into it,” he says. “Suffice to say, there were stains. Stains we can use to get DNA. Now I don’t want to have to ask everyone to provide me with a DNA sample. We’re a family here and we’re supposed to trust each other. So instead, I’m just going to turn my back for 30 seconds. If you did it, simply walk up here, lay your museum-issued vest and cummerbund on the table here, and walk out the door. No further questions, no prosecution.“

Freddy turns his back. For thirty seconds, everyone on staff looks to each other, trying to see if the culprit will come forward. No one stands up. When Freddy turns back around, his disappointment is palpable.

You raise your hand with a question.

“Why would anyone have sex with the figures anyway?” you ask. “When you take off their clothes there aren’t even any holes.”

Before Freddy can ask how you know there aren’t any holes, you realize your mistake and take off running. You drop your vest and cummerbund in a dumpster, then you hide in a park for a few days to figure out what the hell  you’re supposed to do with your life now that your dream of being a wax museum guard has been shattered by one night of erotic bliss.

Happy Someone’s Been Having Sex With Wax Patrick Stewart Day!

Your Wife’s Been Murdering Teens Without You Day!

Ask her how long this has been going on.

“Since the summer,” she says. “You were at your mother’s. I hiked up the canyon and found a cabin full of teens. Spent three days picking them off one by one, different weapons, different lures, different screams. And it was all for me. And it was exhilarating.”

Tell her you and she always killed together. That’s the way it’s been and you don’t see why she needs to murder without you.

“You killed that hitchhiker when you were coming back from your high school reunion,” she says.

Tell her that’s different. You were out of state and you didn’t go chasing him down. Tell her if a meat piece falls into her lap like that she’s welcome to slice it up like it deserves to be sliced, but to go chasing the meat on her own, that’s a betrayal.

“Killing with you is wonderful,” she says. “But so is killing on my own. I feel like I’ve lost my individuality, like I’ve stopped killing for myself and I only kill for us.”

Ask her if that’s so bad.

“I just don’t see why I can’t have both,” she says. “My kills. And our kills. I think we should keep our murdering open.”

Tell her you don’t want to kill without her.

“You don’t have to,” she says. “But you have to let me have something to myself. I want to remember what it’s like to kill just for me again.”

Don’t tell her the truth. Don’t tell her you’re worried that if she goes it alone often enough, she’ll never want to murder a teen with you again. Just tell her you’ll try to be understanding of her journey back to herself, and hope for the best. If you’re going to lose her, you already have.

Happy Your Wife’s Been Murdering Teens Without You Day!

Your Magic Potions Don’t Do Shit Anymore Day!

Everyone’s been drinking energy drinks for too long. The stuff in those drinks is way weirder than newt eyes and possum tails.

“That was supposed to turn you into a half-bull, half-fish,” you say, your head in your hands after another failure.

“Don’t feel bad,” the kids you kidnapped tell you as they polish off the pitcher of your newest, “strongest” potion. “Homeopathic remedies worked on us for a little while but at this point we need the real stuff. We need science.”

“What now,” you say. “Being a witch is all I know. These potions were my bread and butter.”

And that’s how you’ll embark on a career as the most exciting new mixologist in Brooklyn’s exploding artisan cocktail scene.

Happy Your Magic Potions Don’t Do Shit Anymore Day!

Preferred Customer Rewards Day!

“Him,” the counterperson says, pointing to you. “I want him.”

You point to yourself to make sure you’re the one to whom he’s referring.

“Go away,” the counterperson says to the guy standing before him with his credit card out. “You’re not in the program. Get!”

The guy standing before him with his credit card out asks what the big idea is and where does this counterperson get off. Two men in masks take him by his armpits and drag him through a doorway.

“You!” the counterperson shouts, pointing to you. “Get your butt up here. You’re the reason I showed up to work today!”

You go to the counter and tell him you’d like to return the space heater you’re holding in your arms. You present your preferred customer card which gives you no-hassle returns.

“You don’t like it?” he asks. “Do you see the guy who sold it to you?”

You look around and locate the employee you bought the space heater from helping another customer near electronics.

“Hang on.”

Your counterperson approaches the other employee and sucker punches him across the nose. The employee who sold you the space heater goes down and the counterperson starts kicking him in the kidneys. Other employees gather around him and stomp on his chest and face.

“If he ever gives you any trouble again,” the counterperson pants upon returning to you, “You say the word. I’ll handle it.”

The counterperson hands you a trophy. It reads, “Best Customer.”

“You did it,” the counterperson says.

Tell him thanks. Once your return is processed, the counterperson will begin a slow clap. Make your way to the door as other sales personnel join in the slow clap until it reaches a crescendo and the entire sales staff is clapping for you, even the manager outside by the ambulance where the beaten-down employee is being loaded in. The manager claps for you and gives you a “Nice one!” Then she leans down and drags her palm over the beaten-down employee’s face to gently close his eyelids.

Happy Preferred Customer Rewards Day!

Degift Day!

The gift is sitting on your dining room table again. It’s still wrapped, just as you wrapped it. You check the windows, the door. There’s no sign of anyone having entered in the night.

“Happy Late Christmas,” you say to her when you see her at the bar after work. “I could’ve sworn I already gave this to you, but I guess it slipped my mind.”

You watch her unwrap it to reveal the Christopher Nolan boxset you bought for her, the one she unwrapped two nights before Christmas at the potluck, then again two nights after Christmas, then again the night after that, and again the night after that. You swear it. You fucking swear you saw this happen over and over again.

“Oh wow!” she says, exactly as you remember it. “Nolan! You know I love Nolan!”

The room is spinning. This moment is an echo. You search her eyes for some hint that she knows it, that she’s responsible for it. You grip the edge of the table to keep from grabbing her by the collar of her blouse and demanding that she tell you what she’s up to, why she’s doing this to you.

“If you don’t like it you can just regift it if you want,” you offer, your voice sounding louder than you intended.

“Oh I never regift,” she says.

You mutter an excuse me before leaping from the booth to run to the bathroom to vomit.

Tonight you won’t sleep. You’ll sit at the dining room table, the lights on, your eyes never moving from the spot on the table where it’s appeared over and over again. You need to stop the reset. You need the gift to remain in her possession. She has to have a key to your apartment, and perhaps a camera to figure out when you’re in the shower or on the toilet, occupied long enough for her to sneak in and give the gift back to you. You’ve taken up smoking again, you’re drinking coffee, anything to keep you awake and present at that dining room table. She’s going to keep her gift tonight.

The waiting is the hardest. You know that no matter how vigilant you are, that wrapped gift is going to be on your table by morning. No explanation, no merciful clue as to what’s happening to you. The only thing between now and then is the waiting.

Happy Degift Day!

Doris Is Back Day!

Doris is back.

“You give up on Stan?”

Doris says Stan never got his mail order pants business off the ground. He ended up being nothing but a Colorado party boy. She thought he was her ticket to the big time, but she discovered how much she missed her small time life with you.

“So I’m just s’posed to take you back in? After running off on me with another man like that, no word for over a year? I’m just supposed to open the  door and make you a cup of coffee?”

Doris says yeah.

“Come on in then,” you say.

Happy Doris Is Back Day!

For Love Day!

“She’s worried about me,” you tell your coach. “I have to quit the team.”

Your coach tells you that in all the years he’s coached high school football, he’s never seen a quarterback like you.

“But I’ve also never seen another girl like Marie,” he adds.

Marie was your coach’s high school girlfriend. She also wanted him to quit the team, but he loved the game too much.

“I thought if she really loved me she’d let me do what I’m good at,” the coach says. “So I gave her up for the game. Now I realize that life is finite, and if you get your arms around love, you hug it to your chest and run it to the endzone.”

“The endzone is death right?” you ask. “Like, hang onto love until the end.”

“Bingo,” your coach says. “This game sucks and is stupid. Your love for that girl is rare and to be treasured. If you don’t quit this team, I’ll reveal some grading scandals involving players coasting by without learning how to read just so the entire team will be dissolved at this school to make sure you don’t have a team to play on.”

Since you’re one of the players who doesn’t know how to read, the embarrassment of that being all over the papers is just another reason to quit the team and be with your girlfriend.

“Thanks, Coach,” you say.

“SHUT UP AND LOVE!!!” your football coach screams in your face.

Happy For Love Day!

Explain To Your Mail Carrier What Love Is Day!

Today you’re going to bump into your mail carrier just as she finishes loading up the boxes in the lobby of your building.

“Hey there,” she says. “Long as I have you for a sec, what’s love?”

“Hang on,” you say.

You open your mailbox and pull out this week’s letters marked return to sender. Six new ones.

“This is love,” you say, letting her hold the unopened letters, each one containing several dozen instances of the words “please” and “forgive.”

“All this time,” the mail carrier says, “I’ve been lugging love around in my sack and I didn’t even know it.”

“Wanna get drunk?” you ask.

You and your mail carrier get drunk and take turns opening people’s mail and reading the letters out loud in high-pitched girly voices. Looks like you have a new friend.

Happy Explain To Your Mail Carrier What Love Is Day!

Rich And Mean Day!

“Why aren’t your clothes fantastic?” the rich people ask. They’ve invited you to stop waiting on them and sit down for a while. Your manager told you to do whatever they say.

“I can’t afford to look fantastic,” you explain. “I can only afford to look cute.”

They ask what you expect to do with your life if the best you can hope for is cute.

“I just want to be happy,” you say.

They stare at you, unsure how you expect that to happen if you have to settle for cute.

“We aren’t making ourselves clear,” says the man in the suit that billows around him with the breeze. “Everything is ours. Everything we want. Comparatively, you have nothing. This sickens us.”

You wait for more, for them to ask a question.

“It’s disgusting,” his sister, whose skin looks like an ocean at sunset, adds.

“It upsets me to be in your presence,” the billowy suited man says.

You ask them why they’re telling you all this. You’re handed a brochure.

“It’s an underground city that’s being built for you and others in your situation,” you’re told. “Every basic need will be provided for you, and nothing more. We’re using our own funds to pay for its construction so that you can finally leave the surface of the earth.”

You look through the brochure. The bedrooms are slightly bigger than the one you sleep in right now.

“No sunlight?” you ask.

They shrug. “Sunlight is free, currently. But rent isn’t. Would you rather have free sunlight or free rent?”

The youngest, thinnest, and most beautiful of them leans forward, her dress collar hanging open for you to see the entire stretch of her flawless body. She takes your hand and says, “We just want you all to go into a hole and stay there. And we dug a very nice hole for you.”

There’s a date on the brochure. Six months from today.

“That’s the deadline,” the man in the billowy suit says. “Up until then, it’s voluntary.”

You fold the brochure into your apron and you get up from the table to go back to work.

“You’re welcome,” the beautiful girl says as she pours wine into a napkin and scrubs at the hand that touched yours.

Happy Rich And Mean Day!

Fancy Artist Loft Party Day!

The artist is angry and he’s spitting champagne on his guests and they love it. His wife is enchanting people with conversation. The ceilings are 20 feet above the tops of the guests’ heads, looking down on their bald spots and dandruff-dusted parts with disgust. The paintings on the walls are the size of trucks and they don’t mean a thing. The artist assistants are starving but drunk, one is crying, the other just jumped out the window, the third is calling her dad. The gallery owner has a one-way plane ticket to Berlin in his jacket pocket and no one knows this party and the city it’s in is already dead, Berlin is where it’s at. The ceilings rise higher, 45 feet now, getting further away from the freshly-dyed roots. You’re excited about the open bar and you stuff some cheese in your pocket for the train ride later because you’re new here, shocked to have even been invited. The artist is down to his torn underwear and he just grabbed the ass of a 66-year-old billionaire heiress and lover of dogs. 55 feet now, the loft upstairs obliterated. One of the artist assistants has a knife, but the other is talking her out of it. A 75-foot ceiling. The artist sees you. He sees something in you. Himself? He’s cross-legged on the ground in his underwear, waving you over. 110 feet. The knife clatters to the ground and the artist’s wife is making love to the gallery owner on the artist’s bed. The assistant who gave up on the idea of the knife absently watches them fuck when she isn’t checking her phone. “I admire your work,” you tell the artist. 200 feet. “You’re the one,” the artist says. It’s time for him to tumble out of fashion. Time to take someone under his wing, resent their youth, corrupt them so they have it just as bad as he does when they get the 300-foot ceiling. 345 feet now. “You’re the one,” he says. You glow and you stammer and the ceiling crosses the 500-foot mark, crashing into the bottom of a local news station’s traffic helicopter. The assistant climbs into bed with them. The artist throws on a pair of sweatpants, grabs your hand and drags you onto the elevator, presses down. You both get out seconds before the ceiling shatters bringing the party to an end.

Happy Fancy Artist Loft Party Day!

Bunkbeds Day!

It’s your first visit to your daughter’s new house with her new husband and no dad could be happier than you. They take you from room to room. The living room, the kitchen, the spare room that they say with a giggle will one day be a nursery. Then they show you their bedroom.

“Thought the other room was going to be the nursery,” you say.

They both nod. That’s right.

“So what’s with the bunk beds?” you ask.

They look thrown. “You mean our sleep tower?” your son-in-law says.

You look at the bunk beds again.

“Sleep tower?” you repeat. “What the hell are you kids into?”

Your daughter laughs. “I get the top. Jarrett likes the bottom.”

“My knees,” your son-in-law explains.

You walk out of the bedroom, shaken to your core, and you sit down to a long, polite, silent dinner.

After, your daughter follows you out to your car.

“Jesus, honey,” you say. “What the hell is that all about?”

She nods sadly. “I know how it looks, Daddy,” she says. “It’s just what he prefers.”

You shake your head. “What about what you prefer?”

Tears form in her eyes. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with his knees either, do you? He says when they’re better I can have the bottom, but he’s lying isn’t he? I want the bottom, Daddy! I was supposed to marry someone who’d treat me like a princess and let me have whichever bunk I wanted! But he’s just another liar out to get whatever he wants!”

She cries into your chest. You pat the back of her head, coming to grips with the knowledge that your daughter is a grown woman who digs bunk beds. You conclude that you were a not-very-good father, and you vow to visit your daughter’s home as infrequently as possible.

Happy Bunkbeds Day!

Sand In The Suitcase Day!

Your mom’s on her bedroom floor rubbing her body in sand. Sand that shook into her suitcase from the swimsuit she wore on the beach in Tulum, two winters ago when she was there for a work retreat and she went for a walk with Alfonse, the spa director of the eco-resort. Alfonse promised her he’d show her the exact perfect spot on the beach to see the moon over the cliff, and he came through. The spot was on her back, underneath Alfonse, her pleasure causing her to howl loud enough she feared she’d scare the moon away. That sand in her suitcase hugged hers and Alfonse’s bodies and she’s rubbing it all over her skin, feeling his touch once more. If the sand from that beach can be in the bedroom she shares with her husband, years later, Alfonse can be there as well. Space and time allow for so much more than we know. You mom is there again. She’s there on that beach having the most wonderful sex of her life again.

“She’s doing the sand thing again,” you tell your dad.

“Ah Christ, every damn trip,” your dad says before marching upstairs to yell at his wife.

“Dammit Doreen! You can’t bring him back! Let a fling be a fling so we can not miss our plane for once!”

Happy Sand In The Suitcase Day!

Open House Day!

Today at the open house, you think you’ve found the perfect place. Beautiful yard, great kitchen, and lots of storage space. You’re pretty sure you’re going to take it until you notice the photos on the tables are all photos of you, surrounded by a husband and two kids you’ve never met before.

“Is this some kind of prank?” you ask.

The realtor looks more closely at the photos.

“Oh, this happens sometimes,” she says.

“What does?” you ask.

The realtor explains that some houses skip ahead.

“The house knows what your life is going to be, who you’re going to marry, what kind of family you’re going to raise here,” she says. “It knows so well that it thinks you’ve already lived here.”

“Lived?” you ask.

“Well, it’s up for sale. So you’re selling it. One day.”

You ask the realtor if you’re going to get a good price. She says she doubts it. You seem to want to sell in a hurry. Things aren’t going so well with your husband.

“I’m not even dating anybody,” you say. “How is it the house thinks I’ve been living here with a husband and kids, and I’m already moving on to a new chapter in my life?”

The realtor says she can’t answer that, but you should get a move on before the house realizes you’re there before you’ve ever been there. Just then the house starts screaming.

Happy Open House Day!

End Your First Date About To Be Crushed To Death In A Trash Compactor Day!

Say to him over the loud grinding of the gears, “Even if we die right now, I really had a good time with you tonight.”

He’ll say, “Yeah. Though the wild turn of events over the course of the evening lead to us being stuck here, about to be turned into nothing but splotches of liquefied organs, this was the best date I ever had.”

You kiss for the first time. It’s such a powerful kiss, you both suddenly know that this isn’t how it can end. Something so right can’t reach such a premature and gross conclusion. This could be the love of both your lives. That kiss proved it. And that kiss gives you the strength to try and get out of this to see where this love takes you.

“We have to try!” you shout.

“I agree,” he says. “We can’t just—“

Some of the garbage gives way underneath him and he’s dragged under the compactor wall. You mourn the love of your life for a few endless seconds before the walls close in and take away the pain of your loss.

Happy End Your First Date About To Be Crushed To Death In A Trash Compactor Day!