Dentyne Ice

by Patrick McGraw

I did not know that I was out of cigarettes until I reached into my pocket to get one and there were no more left. It was lucky that I hadn't driven out of the town yet because every store here sells cigarettes. You could probably even pull into the retirement home at the end of Eider and buy a pack from one of the old people there if you wanted to. I guess that means that you're never actually out of cigarettes.

A bumper sticker on the back of my Ford truck says "Too Blessed To Be Stressed." Many people drive around with bumper stickers that say this even though they are actually stressed and not blessed. Or maybe they are blessed but are also stressed. For me this bumper sticker is absolutely true and I would not have put it on my car if it were not. Anybody who saw my face as they drove past me would be able to see this.

The awning outside of the store was held together by bricks of painted wood. Inside the whole thing seemed to shift from side to side. The woman at the counter had earbuds in but they didn't seem to affect her presence. She smelled like wet cardboard.

"Pack of Newports please."
"Would you like the regular size pack or the baby pack?"
"Baby Pack? Are they making cigarettes for babies now?"
"No sir, it's just for size. So the baby pack is like a smaller pack."
"Huh...it's kind of like those shoes I guess. Like those little baby sized shoes. I always wondered who bought those."
"I guess it's kind of like that. The cigarettes themselves aren't actually small, it's just the amount you get. I think it's like ten instead of twenty or something like that."
"I'll just have the regular pack."

I could hear the music coming out of her earbuds. It sounded identical to the music that was playing over the speakers in the store. Why wouldn't she just put the music she liked to listen to over the speaker system?

"Thank you, miss."

I couldn't stop thinking about those baby shoes now. Baby running shoes. Also those little baby Timberland boots. Those were always pretty funny to me.

I go into stores about three times a day. Usually nothing noteworthy happens. But recently every time I've entered a store, something divine has come out of it. Last week I went into a store to buy a pack of gum and they did not have the peppermint flavor of gum that I usually like, so I started searching through each pack of gum that they had. Most of them were tropical-flavored or made for children. Of course the majority of people who bought gum that tasted like mangos or pineapples were technically adults, but only because of their age. For all other intents and purposes the people who purchased those types of gum were still children.

After looking over every pack, the only one that seemed suitable to me was Dentyne Ice Midnight Mint. The package was a deep purple color with a kind of women's corset design laid on top of it. The design made it seem as if this was the type of chewing gum a prostitute would purchase. The only indication of flavor was the purple color and the word midnight. I did not know what this meant initially, but I felt that it had to taste better than the other tropical flavors. After buying it, I ripped the package open and ate two pieces. It tasted like anise or a sharp licorice. It turns out that Dentyne Ice Midnight Mint is the most delicious chewing gum in the world. It is important for me to know that it is the best. It is important to only interact with objects that are the best to me. That is the closest to God. Other people settle for things that they do not love or think are the best and they suffer because of it.

I would like to go see a movie but there are no new movies in the movie theaters that I like. I keep going to movie theaters, buying a ticket, watching the first ten minutes of a movie and walking out because I do not like what I see. I want to watch a movie about the desert. I want to see a movie that shows me exactly what is happening in front of me. I want to watch a movie about how shitty my life is. But every time I go to watch a movie it's always about Transformers or some other shit that I don't understand.

Is it possible to outrun a crisis? Half of my town has now has been swallowed whole by the ocean. God said the earth is holy and the water is sin and I believe that. I once said that to a preacher and he called me a liar, but I'm my own preacher, which is another thing the bible teaches you if you're willing to listen. Today truth has been splayed out and fucked like a whore. It doesn't mean anything anymore. So you have to find it in yourself and in your surroundings.

I had a wife once and she was perfect. That is not hyperbole. Everybody she met told her that she was perfect. People stopped us in the street to tell me how perfect she was and how amazing it was that we were together. She had spotless alabaster skin, white teeth and jet-black hair that had no straight-ends or clumps or shit like that. My ex-wife wouldn't fuck me because she was so perfect that she said if I fucked her it would ruin it. She was like a doll.

The day that I left my wife we were sitting at the kitchen table. I called it the kitchen table but actually it was the only table in the entire apartment. She was sitting across from me eating a bowl of Chex. Or rather she was picking at a soggy bowl of Chex with her spoon. I was talking to her about how important religion is to me and she had her elbow on the table and was propping up her face with a fist. I had learned from a body language expert that this was a sign that the person who you are talking to is bored. I can't stand bored people. Only boring people get bored, so I left.

Even if I hadn't left, she would have left soon after that. She never believed in me or understood the work that I do. My most recent job was cleaning up a strip club after it had closed in the early morning. I had had other jobs before that but I could never find one that matched my disposition. I was always one step behind the real world when it came to where I stood. I knew that I was destined for greatness. But I only had my GED and never went to college and I had rage problems so people never seemed to see the greatness in me. Last summer I washed dishes for two months at a Greek Restaurant on Main Street. The sign outside of the restaurant said that it was the best Greek restaurant in the South. I ate the food there everyday for my free lunch and it started making me fat so I quit the job. Then I just lived off my credit cards for a long time. I would pay for everything on my computer with my credit cards. It was like magic money until the cards stopped.

Then I got the job cleaning up the Pink Triangle. I applied for the job on Craigslist even though I had been to the club a couple of times myself. Jaime, the man who runs the club, met me outside in his tiny ass car that looked like it was a Smart car but wasn't. It was 4:30AM and on my first shift Jaime watched me the whole time. He showed me the closet where they keep all the cleaning stuff and showed me how I had to wipe down the hand railing that ran throughout the entire club and how to clean the mirrors properly. I had to step up onto the platform that the girls dance on and bring the mop bucket up there with me to wipe it down. When I was pulling the mop bucket up onto the platform it slipped and dirty water fell onto the whole stage and a lot of the floor. Jaime called me a retard but hired me anyway. Upstairs was a private room that was actually just a big empty room filled with old gray La-Z-Boy chairs and strip mirrors on the wall. I hated cleaning up there. The chairs looked like dead people that were made out of cloth.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Pink Triangle and Jaime was standing out front with a friend of his who looked like a grounded hot air balloon. Even by our own town's standards, which are generous, this man was big.

"I'm here to get paid Jaime."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm here to get paid."
"Are you trying to quit and you don't know how?"
"I would like to get paid and be on my way Jaime."

His big friend just stared ahead watching our exchange as if it was something that could be devoured.

"Why you don't want to work here no more? Women too pretty for you? You a faggot? You tired of cleaning up the cum of men who are more successful than you?"
"No sir."
"Well then what then?"
"You lavish too much praise on these women. It's not right."
"I praise what?"
"You lavish too much attention on these women."
"What the fuck does lavish mean?"
"You've never heard the phrase lavish attention before?"
"Well I guess fucking not."
"Pretty common phrase."
"I haven't heard it."

We let the wind talk for a moment.

"Have you ever stood on an empty crate of eggs sir?"
"An empty crate of eggs?"
"Yes sir."
"I can't say that I have."
"A whole grown man can stand on an empty crate of eggs and that crate won't break. It won't even bend or bow. Try it sometime. Then you'll see why these kinds of things are important."

Jaime pointed over to his ballooning friend.

"You think my friend here could do it?"
"No sir, naturally not. Your friend here has exceeded God's idea of proportions for him. I'm not saying it's necessarily a sin. But your friend here should not under any godly circumstances weigh that much although Jesus does love him anyway."

His friend didn't seem to mind this one way or the other. Comments like these must have been a constant in his life. Jaime turned around and went inside while I stood there with his plump friend. I did not break my eye contact with him the whole time, which I am quite proud of.

This is not the first time this has happened, that I've started to hear gods voice in my head. The colors of stop lights started coming in and out of the vision on the side of my eyes. I wanted to get my check, but I also wanted Jaime to come back out so I could keep talking to him. I needed to have somebody listen to me and it did not matter who.

After Jaime brought me my check I hit my elbow on the corner of my truck door and it hurt a lot. I was always doing shit like that to myself. Hitting my legs or elbows on loose corners. And it hurt me more than it hurt other people. Or rather I don't know how much it hurt other people but it really hurt me a lot.

Jaime did not have my interests in mind. He is not a real friend of mine. I'm just now starting to realize that I don't have any friends. I also can't see how anybody else in this world has any friends. I know a few people and they're all nice to me for different reasons, but none of them are friends of mine. I hate their smiles. Nothing in my teaching prepared me for not having friends. There is nothing in the bible that told me about not having friends. From now on I will not pretend to be nice to these people anymore. People can tell things about you even when you don't want them to. They know things about you. The cashier at the store knew things about me even when I didn't want her to. She knows that my body is changing and that there's nothing I can do about it.

When we were children we told each other stories about soldier's bodies in Iraq. American soldiers had eaten so much McDonalds and preservative-filled food that their bodies were not decomposing. I used to wonder if that meant bodies in America were also not decomposing after we put them in the ground. That thought disturbed me most of all. Part of the deal we make with the dead is that after they go up to heaven, their bodies disintegrate into the dirt here on earth. Imagine every American who died in the past fifty years not decomposing but just sitting in a box in the ground like a no-name Madame Tussaud's.

I reached to the back of my truck and pulled out a Target bag filled with hand sanitizer, paper towels, garbage bags, Lysol, bleach, and rubber gloves. There were two separate types of gloves, blue and black. I chose a pair of black ones, put them on, and went back to driving. When you wear gloves, it's almost like you're not human for a minute, like you're extra human, like you're wearing somebody else's skin for a while. I did not know why I was purchasing these items but I knew that it was all part of the plan for me to finally clean earth.