200words.

Fast food places make it easy. A four stop shopping spree is often no problem.

First stop: Wendy’s. Biggie fries please. I line them atop my molars in groups of two or three and squeeze the grease through my teeth. Wake up with the king! If breakfast is over, that processed chicken sandwich I’ve loved since I was six will do the trick. All parts well lubricated, hydroplaning on mayonnaise. I hit McDonald’s for the mere thrill of adding a forth to the list. It’s mostly chemical. The brain wants to mainline factory flavor. Then there’s Taco Bell, at the end of the rainbow. No matter what I order it starts out as a chili cheese burrito, minus chili, plus… That way it’s guaranteed gooey.

So here I am, sodium coursing through my veins. It is, in a word, buzzy. It accelerates my heartbeat, and sets my leg to bouncing. It’s more physical than MSG specifically, which tends toward an all-over body buzz, but usually includes some kind of double vision and a fairly conceptual shift in cognition. Either way, I’m reminded of the anti-cancer stratagem of some guy at a party last summer.
Flood with water! Flood with water!

“Look behind you!” Raphael shouted.  I’m not sure if it’s because he was simply too tired to think properly, or because he was dumb enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book – or maybe it was because this story exists in a place outside of time and the book had not yet been written.  Whatever the case, the captain of the other ship lowered his guard and glanced over his shoulder.  Mercator lunged, felt the delicious pulpy resistance of flesh for that first instant, then penetrated more fully – crowing with orgiastic pleasure.

“Leave…them…alone!” gasped the captain (a decorated hero and a man invincible in a fair fight).  Mercator chuckled, standing over him.  He pulled his rapier from the man’s chest, hesitated a moment, and then reinserted it wildly in various soft, welcoming spots over the course of the next few seconds.

The fighting across the deck slowed to a halt as the outcome of the captains’ clash became apparent.  Their leader dead, the soldiers threw down their arms.  A few more were killed anyway.

Mercator stepped over the body of his still gurgling opponent and into the now-undefended private cabins.

“Come on out, girlies…” he cackled.

“What did the birdie say as he flew over K-Mart?”

“I don’t know, what?” Hillary answered, her nearly autonomic response slipped out before she could harangue me for spinning off another infantile riddle. Truth is, you might identify with my lack of interest in allowing complicated or witty yarns and brainteasers into my personal repertoire. I’m fairly certain there’s a couple rattling around inside my head, but I can’t be bothered to recall any of the good ones.

“Cheap! Cheap!” I squealed with a glee that will never fade no matter how many times I recite the same lame joke. It must be the reward. Stupid jokes can have a big payoff. My brain, when faced with new information generates particular expectations. I recognize similarities between passages, routes, sequences, and landscapes that I have previously experienced and the potential contained in the one standing before me. This is not to say that I do not seek out new experiences, but that’s the opposite category of perceptual awareness. I just wonder if the particular pleasure response associated with the satisfaction of expected outcomes comes from a part of me that clings to survival instincts.

“You’re a retard,” She replied. Probably.

This dream recurs: out on the freshly cut lawn, my twenty-something, befreckled father is leaning over a black garbage bag of clothes - he takes each tee shirt out to show you, the sweaty boy who is holding my hand. And then our teeth release into ginormous smiles. The shirts say things like ‘where’s the beef?’ and ‘who’s Herb?’ and ‘go for the gusto’ and ‘karate!’ They are cheap, poorly made, feel threadbare before we even attempt to pull them over our heads. We pull them over our heads.

I giggle and you giggle at the shirts, some with graphics of burgers, some ninjas, some iridescent question marks. As I grip your sticky palm, it is hard to tell whether I am a child or a grownup. The act of rummaging is ageless and provides no measure. My father is always sunkissed, the lawn clippings always stuck to our ankles, to the bulging bag.

I want to kiss you but I am a child in the scene. I want to do something physical like that, but I don’t know what year it is, and that stops me. I want to, but everything is plastic and too bright.