little hammers

short fiction

April with the umbrella in the cafe

A kite-faced twenty-something etches white ferns into my latte. She's the type of GenZ'er whose asshole puckers the second she's ten feet from a wall outlet.

I stand marooned among frumpy islands of caffeine-starved physiogs, using my too-big golf umbrella as a cane, feet crossed Magoo-like, unironically humming Singin' in the Rain double-time. 

They sway with the muzak as their downcast peepers suckle blue light from the rectangular teats clutched in their mitts. Sometimes, they'll smile at nothing in particular.

It's the first true day of spring, so everyone and their mother is "here."

I scan the crowd, free arm akimbo, thirsting to meet a gaze and impart one of those WASPy what a wonderful day! nods, but all I get are bald spots and craniums and nippleoid squatchees where the eyes used to be.

I fixate on an older school-teacher-like woman with spindly duskdark hair as she swipes at her phone. I imagine her writing some equation on a blackboard while the kiddos in the back snicker because she always comes to class smelling like cat piss.

She senses my gaze and flashes quick opaline eyes, repudiant with furious unbelief. Before my salutational smile finishes forming, her gaze reverts to her phone. That's the problem with us non-cogs: we're forever swaggering headfirst into annoyed grimaces, and what the hell you lookin' at? A hint of a fragment of a misplaced glance aimed towards their meatspace is enough to make a doom-scroller mad clean through.

The barista coos my name with the cadence of practiced friendliness. She nods a thank you, her asymptote gaze hanging me out to dry as she shepherds the warm cup into my hand.

I doth my invisible porkpie and posh-saunter with my umbrella-cane towards an open booth near the window. I sit with a too-loud (verging on orgasmic) ahhhhhhhh and place the umbrella on the table to form a "T" with the upper horizontal stretched into absurdity.

The cafe is ripe with idle chit-chat and the stench of overapplied sunscreen. I sip and stare out the window, the glass tinting the world an odd seafoam: innumerable tourist dads parade past, nascent Nixonian jowls jiggling as they usher sullen gaggles of tweens by the scruff; obese blobs make a racket scootering across the pustular cobblestone, playing the days of yore like a redneck washboard—a hot, pre-cry tingle shoots through my nostrils.

I give myself a dry face slap and take another sip. I sense eyes flashing at me. The white fern has become a gross smudge, dirty snow far from Eden.

I resume my humming, starting atempo and ramping up to double-time. The pre-cry rummages in my schnoz again, blossoming in sharp tickles through my sinuses. I give myself another slap; my face becomes lobster red.

The humming turns to singing as I grab the umbrella, holding it upright, clinging to it. I close my eyes, feeling the eyes of the Other drinking and drinking, shriveling me like a juice box. I'm falling in that pre-sleep way, approaching 3,000. I take a breath. A tear slithers down my cheek as I trigger the umbrella. It shoots open with a fricative wooooosh; the bird-bone rods scrape against the wall and uncularly flick adjacent skulls, eliciting whispered what the fuck?s; hands raise reflexively to inspect occiputs for booboos.

I meditate, bathing in cloth shadow, becoming a river for the parched panopticon. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity...the sun's in my heart and I'm ready for love...do, do-do-do...

I hear the doom-scrollers giggle and whisper—feel them prick my face with little camera flashes—footsteps that can only be described as ‘managerial’ toll for me.

do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do...

January with the pajamas at a stranger’s funeral

Any man’s death diminishes me 

because I am involved in mankind.

November with the gloves in the alley

Five years ago, I stumbled upon a little black pile in the alley behind Limoncello's. What I took to be two mice huddling for warmth turned out to be a pair of gloves—satin gloves of pure eigengrau with plumes of fuzzy wrist feathers swaying in the alley's breeze.

Clearly, they weren't thrown in a hurry but instead arranged, lovingly, one over the other—a partner reaching over their better half for a glass on the nightstand.

When I found them, they were soaked through with rain and dumpster runoff. They felt heavy—heavy the way only a dead thing can be. I took them home and hand-washed them, letting them air dry by the radiator. I never wore them out. They don't really even fit me, but after a long day, I sit in front of the tube and pull them on as best I can, feeling my salts osmotically communicating with the original owner, imagining the satin to be their skin.

The Year of the Gloves, as I refer to it, turned out to be quite splendid: good health, kudos at work, financial luck, plentiful pussy, etc., etc.—a real banger of a year. So, every November, I thank and honor the gloves by taking them out for some cat and mouse.

On Friday nights, I return to Limoncello's alley and arrange them in the same huddled mass I found five years ago. I wait at the lip of the alley, crouching behind the dumpster, peaking out now and again to look at the black mound with the pride parents must feel as they watch their little tyke in the school play.

Eventually, some couple cutting through the alley stumbles across them. The lady beams and lets loose that kid-in-a-toy-store shriek as her beau bends to pick them up. She goes on and on about how lucky she is, stroking the gloves like guinea pigs. At this point, the guy always tries to milk the situation to maximize his leg-getting potential. He'll get real close, putting his arm around the lady, doing that creepy mechanical rubbing of the shoulder as if such action would generate enough friction to keep her warm before saying something so facepalmingly banal, e.g., "Must be your lucky night, babe! It's only fair if I get lucky too" always with a face twisted up like 😏.

After the initial adrenaline subsides, they'll twist like meerkats, waiting long enough to tell themselves they've satisfied the rules of Finder's Keepers. They'll be strolling out of the alley, drunk on luck, when I beeline right up to them, getting way too close to the lady and speaking in an unnecessary near-yell: "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear, but I'm a nervous wreck, I've lost my gloves, did you—did you say something about gloves?" I play the distressed damsel going on about how the lost gloves were a family heirloom that belonged to my wife, who passed recently in a horrific boating accident. They’re all I have of hers, and I'm nervous her family members (many of whom were never fond of me in the first place) may—no, almost certainly will want them back. Still, I don't want to give them back; I never will. You understand, don't you? They'll have to pry those gloves from my cold, dead hands; they still smell like her; I’m forgetting what her face looked like; oh please, good souls—please tell me you've seen them!

I stare the lady dead in the eye the whole time, watching the color fade from her face as she realizes her hands will soon be empty and cold and uninteresting.

Funnily enough, no one's ever refused to return them. I often think of what I'll do on the day the lucky one doesn't take the easy way out.

What prize would be worthy of them?

October with the snorkel in the pumpkin patch

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,

for the harder I work the more I live.

June with the ski mask asking to go home

On the first proper day of summer, I put on my ski mask and drive to the park. As I slather on lipstick Ledger-style, I stare at neck-crinked doomscrollers somnambulating among newly born Plantae. I remove my shirt and affix burlesque pasties over both nipples, shivering as glue meets areolae, taking a moment to finger the long, hair-like tassels before exiting the car.

I don't have a preferred type of interlocuteur. I tend to target kind-eyed loners or blue-light space cadets in clunky headphones. I storm up to my mark, nipple tassels pendulating in stride, intoning in a blasé-yet-urgent mumble: I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home—on and on, ad infinitum, peppering in the occasional variation in pacing and/or cadence and/or emphasis and/or volume.

I'm odd, yes, but unthreatening. I never get too close. I'm insistent yet respectful, a presence more than an imposition—a fleshy presence with puckered and moist eyes hued with that Mommy, I don't feel so good look that commandeers a kiddo's eyes right before they blow chunks. 

Initially, the marks jolt in surprise and give me the ol' once over, drinking me in, perhaps pinching the fat of their thigh to affirm this is now their life. They'll perform a quick scan of the park, confirming the presence of witnesses before returning their gaze, eyes stretched wide by phantom clamps. I want to go home, I want to— 

Some (e.g., the youth, the posh) simply walk away as if chased by a bee, but most (bless their hearts) engage me, their brow furrowing with genuine do-goodery as they ask: Where is 'home'? Are you here with anyone? Should I call someone? The older and/or extra-maternal ones may place a warm hand on my shoulder, rubbing and cooing, shhhh shhhhhh, you're okay, it's all okay.

I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want—

There comes a point when even the best of them realize I'm impossible. They'll start looking around again in disbelief; my absurdity leads their gaze to the bushes from which they pray for a panoply of sound techs wielding funny giraffe-neck mics clad in caterpillaric windshields to emerge and eat their burden. A gum-chomping producer will saddle up, requesting their Hancock on the release form as a make-up team swarms me, removing my ski mask and dabbing at my brow with a damp paper towel. I'll saunter up to the mark, both of us chessin' now, knowing this was never real. We'll shake hands, trade Insta handles, and retreat to the ether.

When the producers don't emerge and the reality of the two of us, tête-à-tête, corpus ad corpus, sets in, I can see the exact moment their initial single-entendre concern sours into pure hatred. I want to go home, I want to go home, I—they'll wave their arms in that thanks for nothing asshole! way and storm away in a huff. 

As they leave, I become aware of the ring of bystanders aiming their phones at me, transmuting my blood into pixels, enslaving my likeness in the sticky Apple amber of their rectangles amongst thirsty duck faces, nudes, memes, cat pics, quotes, and Lord knows what else.

My captor runs off, their face flushed with that same sinful brightness of the fisherman coming ashore with the 'big one' rotting in his dingy. I'm a digital badge of honor to be worn at the next cocktail party, passed around a menagerie of greasy palmed partygoers who'll laugh and/or guffaw and/or snicker and/or chuckle and/or chortle, and then that will be that.

I want to scream, run them down, and interrogate them: “Are you capturing me because I'm a funny and/or unhinged anecdote, and by sharing said anecdote, all your little pals will think, 'Oh wow! Such interesting things happen to you in the adventurous life you lead!'? Are you capturing for status? or did my presence coax you into sensing some type of awkwardness? And this awkwardness somehow felt important? And you're sharing the source of said awkwardness because you lack the language to communicate? Or maybe you'll pass me around saying, 'Poor guy! What a shame! Someone should be helping these folks!' while the partygoers nod with unplugged anger, harboring secret gratitude for walls and distance and pepper spray. Why? You know they're all privy to this, so why bum them out? Why reify the existence of such miserable plight? Why would you sit and be sad and shift awkwardly in meatspace when you can kick the un-fun onus of good samarity under the rug and use me as a tractor beam for attention? Is being a body too much to ask? What are you using your face for?

“Listen—come here. This is my body; this is yours. I'm in your space; deal with it. Speak to it. Don't sidestep and/or default and/or curate and/or label—confront, co-occupy, converse. Stop floating around me; stare me down and remember our visceral charm. If you must tell the others, do the damn work. Don't fob the whole thing off as you had to be there! and pass the phone around for cheap laughs. Use your face. Tell them. Be specific. Were you afraid? Was your heart fluttering? Did your limbs tingle? Was there sweat on your palms?  Gather your tribe at the cocktail party and birth me from your wet mouth. I'll climb through your esophagus, stumbling headfirst, spiddle-clad and naked in your living room. I'll go around the room with my eensy hammer, jamming gooseberry seeds deep into the loam of each forehead so my dear brothers and sisters can wake the next day in the mud of euphoric corporeality, remembering they too have bodies, are bodies—weird farting meat sacks speaking stupid constructed sounds, occupying space not knowing what to do with their hands as they mill about in some schmo's backyard barbecue all in the ancient attempt to see and be with and intersect the asymptotic Other. Don't retreat into your constructed self simply because you can, because it's easy, because it's in vogue—stop ignoring your flesh, see me, speak with me—I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to—”

December with the AR-15 at the tennis club

Today, I had my first heart-to-heart.

---

---

If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy…