I was already up in the room chilling smoking Charisma’s cigarettes and ashing in a Mickey Mouse mug we found on a bookshelf up there, when Charisma threw out her last cigarette and complained: “We’re out of cigarettes now, team—where does the next pack come from?”
Rambuncto, Kepler, and Cujo all denied the ability to have brought cigarettes with them either on the circumstance of having been in jail or being non-regular smokers.
I volunteered to walk down to the 7-Eleven and get a few packs and everyone was instantly cool with this due to the combined factors of my paying for everything and me being willing to go to 7-Eleven by myself, walking, not taking the car, and everyone getting some time and space from me (annoying as I was and how foreign I seemed in this town, after only having left for less than a year). It was less than a year since I had been meeting Charisma at previously chosen clubs and calling her once it was dark outside to see if it was ok if I picked her up from inside the state streets, going through that same-ass play with Charisma, Charisma’s mom, and me: all standing in the kitchen with Charisma’s mom packing her daughter’s overnight bag, holding up her panties as much for my scrutiny as for Charisma’s.
I always approved. She could have suggested Charisma pack her ass in a paper bag and I would have approved. We were all basically approving of her daughter’s ass, in that kitchen.
“Do you like my daughter’s ass?”
“Oh yes, Momma Baker. I love the size and shape of it. Lift myself up on wings to look down there and see my dick disappeared inside it. I love her inner- and outer-lip configuration, love her cute little clit love to rub the head of my dick this way and that way down there. All up in there. We didn’t do much oral ‘cause, you know, it wasn’t that intimate a relationship. But we had fucking down—we knew that.
So I’m walking the ten short blocks from Charisma’s house to the 7-Eleven. I was offered the car but decided not to drive. I only passed a couple people on the way. A girl shrouded in a hoodie, a homeless guy who was prob’ly cousin to the homeless guy on my street in LA. I imagined him coming to rest on a couch further east of here, deeper in the heart of East Dayton—but I couldn’t imagine the trash men in Dayton leaving out a couch 🛋 on a corner in the sidewalk—whereas in LA I obviously could.
I wasn’t exactly walking—more like hop-skipping along the concrete—sliding my feet in the direction of the 7-Eleven, remembering times when my old friend Zochae and I put it to the pavement and came up here from the other direction, thirsty for beers—the first time I had ever drank tall boys from a 7-Eleven or a gas station ⛽️—Zochae was an old hat 🧢 at drinking tall boys and we had a falling out back then over a girl (or a couple of girls who themselves were fighting). We both stood by our girl, and that was the end of our friendship. It had shriveled and gone to shit and now Zochae and I had gone to shit and I knew that we would never again meet anymore at this convenience store, both in search of cigarettes 🚬 or beer 🍺, both ready to set down our weapons of loyalty and re-light our friendship. Nothing like that happened. I went a couple more blocks toward the center of the city and the whole sidewalk and street were bathed in the green light 🚥 of the 7-Eleven and I grabbed onto that door and swung it open and went inside the Friday-night convenience store.
There was one guy working. No customers. I go the counter like:
“Can I have three packs of cigarettes. Parliament Lights.”
“Three packs of Parliament Lights?”
“And three lighters. Black and red.”
“You want three lighters?”
“Yes. Three blues. And one pack of Kamel Reds.”
“Is that four packs of cigarettes or three?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m incredibly high right now.”
“Oh, ok,” the guy says. “I thought you looked high on..something.”
“Are you a police officer?”
“No,” he smiles.
“Are you a police chief?”
“No,” he says.
“Ok, I’m just checking. I’m not talking to you because you’re a guy. Like. I’m not into guys,” I say. “If you were a girl I’d be saying the same things. I mean. If you were a girl I’d be saying the same things! I wouldn’t be..flirting..with you..if you were a girl.”
“I gotcha,” the dude says. “It’s just a person to person conversation.”
“Right,” I say. “Exactly.”
“What are you high on?”
“Cocaine?” I say.
“Oh, cocaine,” dude says.
“Yes, I’m like Alice and you’re my entry point to wonderland.”
“I think I get that,” he says. “Like I’m the green caterpillar. I’m the oracle to this new land you are covering.”
I look this guy over. Work suit. Nicotine nails. He looks like he’s ready to take a smoke break.
“But I can’t,” he reads my mind. “I’m not allowed. It’s outside the contract.”
“Of your employment? Here?”
“Yes,” he says, and I can hear the vocal intonations from the Disney movie.
“Let’s just put aside the cigarette issue here,” I say. “Let’s talk about selfies, you know, and how the eventuality of selfies came about when the photographer ceased to believe that the subject before their camera was more interesting than the subject behind their camera..when introspection became more interesting that extrospection—ya dig?”
“Have you been in here before?”
“Yeah, I used to come in from..that direction.”
“Oh, you’re Matthew from Zochae and Matthew! I’ve met you before,” the attendant says.
“From school?” I say.
“Yeah, Colonel White,” he says. “I’m Brigham Jones. Used to be a short little guy back in the tenth grade.”
“No fucking way!” I say. “When’s the last time you saw Zochae?”
“Zochae is dead,” Brigham says. “Of cancer. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that.”
“You’re not. He and I had split up before he died. His wife hated me by then. Z and I ended on bad terms. I got a call from our common friend out in LA and they were like, Why didn’t you go to Zochae’s funeral. I’m surprised we didn’t see you at Zochae’s funeral. I was like, I’m sorry, but Z and I didn’t exactly end on good terms. If I show up at his funeral his wife will take offense and..I just didn’t come back for it. Stomach cancer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck me.”
“He’s buried in Woodland Cemetery. In the new people section..”
“Yeah, I know the part you’re talking of.”
“Yeah, dude. I’m really sorry to bring that up.”
“It’s no problem. It sucks. But..I mean. I wish I had some coke on me. We could do a line.”
The guy spins around, looking and pointing at the myriad security cameras all over the ceiling.
“It’s prob’ly better you don’t.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“You wanna get some beers and porno mags?”
“I flip through a Hustler.”
“Oh, I see,” he says.
“What?”
“Some like Hustler. Some like..” (other things). He points out a gay teen mag, angel 😇 butts and everything.
“Oh!” I laugh. “Now it’s I who sees. Well, I guess I’ll just get—”
“Three packs of Parliament Lights, one pack of Kamel Reds, four lighters—”
“Yeah, that’s it. You know me. Have you ever been outside of Ohio?—To California or anything?”
He shakes his head.
“It’s a really crappy thing,” I say. “Zochae and I not finishing on good terms. His wife hates me now. His kid’ll prob’ly end up thinking I’m the enemy. But that’s the best that I could do..to honor my truth, and now that I’m back here I feel like I’m visiting old demons. Like no one here approves of me for not making things right. After we grew apart. I never even saw him before he died. I knew he had cancer. But I assumed it was lung cancer or mouth or something. Not stomach cancer. Do cigarettes cause stomach cancer?—Do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess that’s a slap in the face—Zochae’s family keeping details from me about how he died.”
“I wouldn’t put a lot of weight into what people think around here,” the 7-Eleven attendant says. “Small town. People don’t have a lot of freedom. To be themselves. I prob’ly know where you got that cocaine. East Dayton. Dump. Mothers feeding they babies in the grassy space between..houses..apartments. All white supremacists..yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the place. Confederate flags everywhere.”
“Well did you know that in the very house you prob’ly bought that coke there’s a fairy/angel boy who takes it up the ass from me? That ever cross your mind?”
“No,” I smile. “Mainly my mind was set on how not to get killed.”
“What about when you’re in school? In Hollywood?”
“How do you know I live in Hollywood?”
“This is a small town,” he says.
“What’s on my mind? When I’m in school? Over there? Mainly I think of dialogue and lightning. How lighting and lenses are the most important things in photography. And I think about the ordering of scenes—how simply taking something that’s A B C and turning it into C A B really turns things in their heads! That’s mostly what I’m into. Film geek stuff.”
“Then that’s who you are,” he says. You never mentioned cocaine. So you’re not that much of a druggie person. When you go back to Cali I bet you’re going to be lighting and scene ordering—in your mind. How many scripts have you written?”
“Three.”
“See? That’s what you are. Forget about Charisma and Tuesday and all those East Dayton girls—all the ones who bent your attention back in the day. High school’s over. All that East Dayton pussy. Forget about that. You know where I’m going someday? California.”
I laugh. “Why?”
“Because. I’m an actor. Always wanted to grace the silver screen.”
“Always since when?”
“Since I saw A Star Is Born. I lover her tragic nature.” He flashes his eyes at me. I can see glitter remnants on the eyelids.
“Not the one with Lady Gaga,” I say.
“Fuck no, honey. The one with Judy Garland.”
I rap my knuckles on the 7-Eleven counter. “Good man,” I say—and I smile and pay for my cigarettes.