Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche

Going Bowling

"Let’s go bowling," said jack.

"I don’t want to," I said.

We were sitting in folding chairs in the kitchen of my small apartment.

"Come on, it's one-dollar beer night, and sometimes cute Mexican girls wearing high heels and short skirts come in, and we can watch them fall on their asses while they try to drunkenly bowl."

"The girls all have boyfriends, and besides, it's boring.”

"Not as boring as staring outside of your apartment window waiting for someone to trip on the curb and break their front tooth, or for a pigeon to shit on an old woman’s head. Why do you never want to bowl? Is it because you always bowl gutter balls?"

“I know I can’t bowl, but that’s not the reason I don’t want to."

"Then why?"

"A few years ago, I was in a treatment program. It was a nice treatment program. We went on a hike once a week, and we could ski, and we had television that we could watch till ten at night. I didn’t go skiing. I have no desire to go fast, I have always been a cautious man. My only other option was to go to the gym. I wanted to reach 200 pounds; 200 pounds was a key milestone, everything in my life would come together after I reached 200 pounds. I would be able to hold a job, and people would respect me, and girls walking past me on the sidewalk would ask for my number. two hundred pounds was much better than going skiing.

We were given an allowance of seventy dollars a week, and we were given it on this plastic card that didn’t work at liquor stores or bars, or pot shops, or for escort services, but you could buy cigarettes with them. I bought cigarettes with my card, and occasionally dry small Dominican cigars that they sold at the gas station. Everyone was running out of money a few days after the cards were filled up, but I never ran out of money because I only spent it on cigarettes.

There was a guy named Kay that was in treatment when I got there. He lived in England, and had fought in the Israeli army, and liked to talk about his girlfriend who was 7 years older than him and had large fake tits. I went to AA with him on Halloween. I didn’t know it was Halloween, I never kept track of the holidays.

Kay and I were the only ones going to AA, all the other guys stayed back to watch horror movies and think about how much they wanted to get high. The basement of the church where the meeting was held was decorated with pumpkins and ghosts, and there was non-alcoholic punch. ‘This is going to be a fun Halloween,’ said the man who was leading the meeting. I sat next to an older woman who wanted very much to be young. She had a low-cut dress and was wearing cat ears. The woman told me about how she used to be wild when she was younger, how she lost her virginity at 14, how she used to get drunk with much older men.

Kay talked to her a little bit as well. She talked with her face very close to Kay's. After the meeting was over, she gave both of us a hug and squeezed each of our hands. ‘I could have fucked her,’ Kay said while we were driving back to the lodge. ‘She really wanted to.’ I could tell that it had been a difficult struggle for Kay to not cheat on his fake breasted girlfriend.

Kay was addicted to heroin and crack. He had been sober for six months before relapsing and coming here for treatment.  One day we all went to a bowling alley. It was a good time, and I was losing very badly to my friend who had small eyes like a cockroach. Kay had ordered a chicken wrap. When he got his bowling-alley-chicken-wrap, it tasted like shit. He demanded a different item off the menu, maybe some fries, because the chicken wrap was shit and he wouldn’t eat it. The pimple-covered kid behind the counter said that it was too bad, so Kay yelled at him and threw his fountain drink over the counter. We were all kicked out and banned from coming back.

Kay was told off by a small man who worked at the treatment facility. He was younger than Kay and made minimum wage. It was strange to watch Kay get told off like a child throwing a tantrum, by this man whose larynx Kay could crush. A few days later Kay was kicked out, and the guy who ran the treatment facility told us that God worked in strange ways, and that he would be praying for Kay. A week later, Kay shot himself in the head. That’s why I don’t want to go bowling."

"Oh," said Jack.

We both stared out the window as the light fall rain descended on the Seattle pavement.

END

A Funeral

The building was constructed five hundred years ago and sat on top of bones. Some of the bones were those of mice, and dogs, and pigs who were stuck in mud and became a forgotten fossil. One was of a man. The man's bones were dug up once by another man looking for gold or little bits of jewelry. He did not find what he was looking for, but when he put the bones back, he put them all wrong, so that the man's feet were his hands, and the man's head was his stomach. He will stay that way for eternity, or until he turns to dust.

The building was painted red and started out selling the fur of dead animals. Most of the fur still had the heads attached, with the mouth wide open, looking menacing. They could do nothing anymore, only be worn as capes or overcoats.

Eventually the building was sold to a man who turned it into a hardware store. The man's son, who worked at the store, sat in the back getting high on paint thinner. When the man had a heart attack, because he was from Poland and ate too much red meat and stew, the son didn't notice because he was in the back getting high on paint thinner.

The ambulance arrived when it was too late. The son sold the store and moved somewhere very distant, hoping that the distance would act like a tape measure across America of separation from his memories.

Now the building is a funeral parlor, and today everyone is in black because it is a funeral. It is an open casket funeral. She does not believe that it is her father in the casket. He looks nothing like her father. He looks like a large porcelain doll covered with a kind of oil that shines in the light. There is a short line behind the casket, and everyone is walking up to the casket, to say something to the doll, or break out in tears if they feel so moved.

When it is her turn, she bends down low, and pretends to say something to her father. She doesn't say anything, because she knows it is a doll, and she has nothing to say to a doll, made of porcelain, and shaped like her father.

Her father left her and her mother and constructed this excuse so that he would never have to see them again. It is her fault that he left. She was never kind enough to him. She should have told him that she loved him and asked him how his day as an insurance salesman was. She should have gotten better grades at arithmetic in school. But her regrets don't matter for it is too late to change anything, they are a worthless currency buying nothing but anguish.

There are little triangular sandwiches on a large dish on top of a long table. They are filled with the kind of turkey that is dry and difficult to swallow and gets stuck inside your throat. There is also a bar.

People are walking up to her and her mother and trying to find the profound and meaningful things to say that are expected. The things are not profound or meaningful.

Her uncle walks up to her. Her uncle's breath is thick with alcohol. He is a tall man and inherently skinny. He has developed a gut which clashes with his inherent skinniness. He is wearing a too-large-suit which he bought the other day from a used clothing store for twenty-four dollars. His teeth have a way of frightening children. He says some words to her, He places his arm around her shoulders. He begins to message her back, working his way lower across her tiny frame.

She does not like what her uncle is doing, but she doesn't understand it. And her mind is elsewhere. She is thinking about the product of seven and eight. She is trying to remember what it is, trying to recall the tips and tricks used to come up with the answer. If she only knew the answer, her father would not be a doll in a coffin on display for all these people whose names she cannot remember. Next quarter, she will get an A in arithmetic.

The building is now painted a dark grey bordering on black. There are two families of pigeons who have made a home in the indent of the gutters running along the building, and it is backing up the water, forcing it to drip over the tin gutters and downspouts, indenting a line on the red dirt below.

On Saturdays

when you sit across from it, and the light strikes the roof in just such a way

that it looks like a temple housing the sacred finger bone of a saint

and you aren't thinking about your job at the paint factory

starting on Monday

which begins at six in the morning

or the lingering pain in your back that makes it difficult to sleep at night

or worrying about your wife leaving you

because you haven't had sex in four months

and you can't find the words to say to her

when you come home at night

it can look really

quite

beautiful

END