Big Gulp

I've never forgotten you. I promise...

One hundred and three. Degrees. Hot is an understatement. Texas summers.
Some people like the heat. I do not. I prefer the cold. Bundled up. Layered.
In the summer, I feel... exposed. Vulnerable. Naked. Sweating. Stinking. Horrible. Like a pig walking down the street.
People smile as they pass one another. Smiling pigs. Meat sizzling in the sun. Bacon in a frying pan.
I'm a vegetarian. A lot of butchers are.

We've evolved past the point of eating meat, but people still do it. For taste.
I'm irritable. You know the heat makes you irritable? It's true. Most people know it, even if they don't know it. Most crimes are committed in the summer, on the night of a full moon, against family.
Facts sometimes reveal a lot more than we'd like them to.

A bum. A fucking bum is asking me for money? Can you believe that?! A fucking! A fucking BUM!

I love the little stores in this town. I always know where to go to get what I need. I like knowing that. It makes me feel like the whole town is my home. It's not, but it's nice to feel that way.
I guess it's kind of a second home. Except I don't really have a first home any more. I move too much. But I always come here at least for a few weeks. I. I actually don't know why.

You know what it is? It's the humidity. It's not the heat. It's that the shade doesn't do any good. Isn't that funny?! How can shade not do any good?!

There's a girl here. She reminds me of you. Her eyes. Something. If only she would smile. But she never smiles at me. She smiles at other people, sure! Other jackasses with chiseled chins and fucking polo shirts. Dime-a-dozen cheap fucks! But she never smiles at me. I hate her. HATE.
She gets off work around 11, when the coffee store closes. Shitty chain coffee. Fucking horrible coffee! Then she gets into her beat up red Jeep Cherokee. Fucking college car if I ever saw one. But she doesn't go to college. She goes straight home to her shitty little apartment with her cat and her television.
She could really make something out of herself, you know? But she doesn't. She just wastes her life. Her LIFE! She's wasting the most precious. Her LIFE, you know?! Just staring at that television every night. And during the day. Daytime television. The worst. The WORST kind of television. Fake judges. Fake talk shows where people have fake problems. Stupid reruns of silly pointless comedies from the seventies. Gilligan's Island. That kind of shit. Beverly Hillbillies. “Concrete pond.”

I'm sorry. I don't mean that you would have turned out like that. I can see how you would take that the wrong way. No, I'm sorry. You're much better than. You would have been much better than that. I'm sure of it.

I miss you.

I wonder how long she's lived here. No family. No boyfriend. Barely a job. BARELY. If you can call it that. I don't even see how she eats. Frozen microwave dinners! Can you believe it?! Like that's enough for someone to live on. Like that doesn't rot you from the inside out. But even then, how does she afford all of this? Even with the tiny apartment and the bad food, she can't be making enough to live by herself. I know she isn't. I read her pay stubs to be sure, and I'll be damned if I wasn't right. She's not making ends meet by about three hundred a month. Where does that come from?
She isn't fucking her landlord.
So where's it coming from?

Like you have all the answers. I bet that's what you'd say. If you were here right now.
I made banana bread this morning. I know how much you.

You know, sometimes, I wonder what you'd say. I mean, what you'd really say if you were here right now. Would you say what I think you would, or would it be different? Would you be different from how I picture you? I don't like to think about it, really.

You know the key to a good cut? Let the knife do the work. Don't force it. It's a trick I learned early on. By practicing. Just go back and forth with the knife and let the blade do its job. Saw it gently. Don't try to cut down with force. That's the easiest way to fuck it up. Just be gentle. Back and forth. Keep your knife sharp. When you get to the bone, use a saw. Don't fuck up your knife by slamming it on the bone like a hammer. Use a saw. Just as gently. Back and forth.

I like to think that I make the prettiest cuts of meat. The ones that are really red, you know? Beautiful to look at. Vibrant. Even though I don't eat them, I'm sure they taste better that way. You can just tell, you know?

It's because when you press down, you squeeze out all the blood. All the colour. The very thing that makes a cut look beautiful. You're ruining it when you do that.

Are you a vegetarian? Would you be, I mean?

This girl.
Karen.
I'm sorry. I should have said her name earlier when I introduced you to her. Karen isn't a vegetarian, but you know what? I think it's because she doesn't know she has options. She doesn't take the time to do her research. Her homework. Beans and rice are cheap. And they're good for you. But you have to eat both or it isn't a complete protein. The rice contains necessary amino acids. Building blocks that make proteins. That's why they're always paired together. Even if people don't know, their bodies know. Their bodies are smarter than they are.

Karen's a fucking idiot. A waste of a human being. She doesn't smile at the right people.

I'm getting tired of seeing waste. People all around me. Just walking pieces of garbage. Like a Big Gulp cup that's been flattened by a tire. It just sits there. Broken. Not a cup anymore. It can't hold anything or do anything but take up space. Pollute. It can fucking run its mouth though. Still. Lying there. Not doing anything. But every time you see it, it says the same fucking thing over and over again. “Big Gulp!”
Like you didn't fucking get it the first time.
And you just want to fucking. You just want to smash its face in. Until it can't say anything. Put it into a landfill with all the other garbage that walks down the street.

Where did all the intelligence go? There's more creativity than ever, but there's no intelligence behind it. There's no sense of purpose. It's just spew and spew and spew. And who cares? Spew doesn't change the world. Intelligence. Now that. That's something. We need more of it. We need to promote it.

I think psychiatrists do a lot of the. A lot of the fucking up. In that department. They don't promote intelligence. They promote garbage. But it's not their fault, you know? They're just trying to get people to not kill themselves. That's what we've been reduced to. People hate everything so much. They're surrounded by garbage. They ARE garbage. And they know it. They know they should just kill themselves. Make room for intelligence, which they don't have. So they go to a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist convinces them that even though they're garbage, it's ok. Everything is ok. And they don't have to be intelligent. They don't have to be more than garbage. They just have to not kill themselves and that's enough.
THAT'S enough?!
That's our status quo?!
Just get by from day to day. Don't aspire beyond your means. Don't reach for the stars because you know, deep down, that you won't get them. You'll get in the way of someone who's really smart. Who's really intelligent.

But you know what happens? This garbage. This Big Gulp ends up working day in and day out at a company they don't give two shits about. And because time is the great equalizer, they get promoted. For doing nothing. For not quitting! For not dying! For not killing themselves!
They get promoted. And their brain doesn't know what to do with it. Suddenly people are telling them that they aren't garbage. And because. Not in spite of, BECAUSE, deep down they know they're a fucking Big Gulp, they have to believe this new information. They have to compensate for that feeling. They've always wanted to be important and now they are! They're somebody! They have money and they make decisions!

But you know what? They're still a fuck-up. They're still worthless. And their decisions.
Here's how their decisions work.
Someone intelligent has an idea. A great idea. Something revolutionary. And they bring it to this Big Gulp. And the Big Gulp knows how great it is! That's the thing! They fucking KNOW. And they shoot it down. Because it's terrifying. It's a reminder of the truth. And not only that, but they have to put on a big show about what a terrible idea it is. They berate the intelligence. They come up with BAD reasons. Really bad, you know? And people around know how bad the reasons are! They also know how GOOD the idea is! Because they're garbage too. They're terrified too!
And. The intelligence dies. It happens every day.

And you get these people. These smiling pigs. These Big Gulps. Walking down the street and smiling at each other. They'd fucking doff their fucking hats at each other, but no one does that with baseball caps.

And Karen sits in her apartment and watches television. Because she was shot down. Someone told her her intelligence was stupid. Was wrong. And she has nothing now.

I want her to fight. I hate her because she won't. I hate that she's given up like some kind of coward. Like the guy in the war that just lays his rifle down and gets riddled with bullets because he's had it.
She's already dead, so it really won't matter when I.

Jesus, it's fucking hot outside. Waiting in the heat. For the perfect moment. It's hard to be patient in heat like this, but I will be. I have to be.

I miss you. So much. Do you know that? You wouldn't give up. You wouldn't lie down. You'd fight. Like me. You'd try to fix things. You'd get rid of the garbage.
Wouldn't you?