Pink - The garbage times ; White ibis

The Garbage Times ALSO BY SAM PINK The Self-Esteem Holocaust Comes HomePersonThe No Hellos DietHurt OthersFrowns Need Friends TooRontelWitch Piss The Garbage Times A NovellaSAM PINK Soft Skull New York This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, companies, organizations, and events portrayed are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Copyright 2018 by Sam Pink All rights reserved First Soft Skull edition: May 2018 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pink, Sam, author. | Pink, Sam. White ibis. Title: The garbage times ; White ibis : two novellas / Sam Pink.

Description: First Soft Skull edition. | New York : Soft Skull Press : Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2017046521| ISBN 9781593766818 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781593766863 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Surrealism (Literature) | Experimental fiction, American. Classification: LCC PS3616.I5687 A6 2018 | DDC 813/.6dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046521 Published by Soft Skull Press 1140 Broadway, Suite 704 New York, NY 10001 www.softskull.com Soft Skull titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West Phone: 866-400-5351 Printed in the United States of America 13579108642 For the rats Contents January It was a shitty winter.

Seventeen people had died from the cold in Chicago. Temperatures well below zero or lots of snow. One person died when a six-foot icicle broke off a building. Haha. Shit. I was freezing, on my way to work at a bar just west of downtown.

Id been hatefully addressing my coat the whole walk to the train. Like, Fuck you, coat. You are not good. I just ah fuck, I just hate you The coat was ridiculous. I got it at the secondhand store. Think it was a hunting coat.

Had duck pictures on the inside. It was the color of drug shit and half the buttons barely held. Useless. Useless! First time I wore it I put my hands in the pockets and felt something and took out two handfuls of leaf dust. And yes, I wanted to drop to my knees and hold the handfuls up and let them blow away as I screamed upward, Fuck you, coat, I hate you! Then scream, Just kidding/were all trying! The wind burned my face. My eyes teared.

I scraped ice off my mustache with my lower teeth, then scraped ice off the hair below my lip with my front teeth. Goodbye, tiny icicles. Goodbye and thats all. No more. No more! There were only two ways to keep warm. One was to give in and die, to sit your dumb ass down and let it happen.

The other was to drum with your teeth while making fists in your pockets and repeatedly yelling fuck you in your head. That helped. That definitely helped. It was renewing in some way, which of course immediately passed. I saw two construction workers on the sidewalk. They huddled over a blue tarp with the head of a dog coming out the front.

The dog shivered, wheezing and honking, like ung ung ung. One construction worker hugged the dog, rubbing up and down on its chest. Yeah when he saw me, he got scared and slipped and fell into this ditch and the ice broke and he went into the water. I figured I can rub him and maybe hell warm up faster. Oh fuck, he went in the water? Yeah. Fuck, what should we do, hes gonna die.

I dont know, guy. The dog stared at me as I passed. I wanted to teach him to drum with his teeth while screaming fuck you in his head. Because that was all he needed. But somehow it just didnt matter. No.

I scraped new icicles off my mustache with my bottom teeth. My eyes stuck shut for a few seconds. I made fists in my pockets and moaned. Took my hands out of my pockets and held my nose. One last gust of wind hit my face as I went down the stairs for the train. Haha, yeah, you win.

But fuck you too. The train was already there, doors about to close. I ran and jumped in the closest car and went to the back and leaned against the door to the next car so I could be furthest away from/see everyone. There was puke on one of the seats and the window behind itlike someone not only puked, but his/her head filled with puke, then exploded. Fuck yeah, thats how you do it. It was the garbage times.

When I got to the bar, the sun had set. Fuck you, bar. I went down the alley and entered through the basement. I kicked an empty case of rum across the room and ducked under a garbage bag stapled to the ceiling to collect drips. The basement was filthy. There was garbage all over.

Any job Id ever had involved garbage. I had been, and always would be, a garbageman. And yes, I took great pride in my garbage pedigree. It was my calling. My very meaning. Something dripped on my head.

I touched my head. Thick, dark-green gel on my handlike pureed spinach. Oh hello! I was just talking about you to someone! And how are you?! Nice. I wiped my hand on my pants. Garbage garbage, all my beautiful friends. First I did dumpsters.

The dumpsters were full of broken glass and liquid collected from chutes coming from upstairs. With that classic vinegar smell that cleared my face. Hoooo. Yeah. Some good shit. When I grabbed the handles on a dumpster I cut my hands on broken glass.

I held up my hands to check on them. They were the smallest pieces of broken glass Id ever seen. So small they could only be seen at certain angles. They were beautiful and I loved them and I smiled. I wheeled the dumpster to the back stairwell, up to the narrow concrete staircase. The staircase was covered in broken glass, with exposed nails along the handrails.

I had to wheel the dumpster up a rickety ramp on either side of the stairs. It was supposed to be something two people did but no one else did it so I just did it myself. Because it was the garbage times. Where best to just shut the fuck up and do what you had to do. Where best never to complain. And always be ready.

I lined up the dumpster wheels with each side of the ramp. I turned around and faced the stairs, grabbing the dumpster handles with each arm behind me. I took a careful step up the stair, locking my foot sideways under the wooden ramp. My left boot coming off the sole because of it. Garbage water soaking my feet every day. Heels calloused hard enough to chop wood, maybe.

I strained, leaning my face as close to the stairs as I could, lifting the dumpster up onto the ramp. First step the hardest because I had to both lift and balance the dumpster on the ramp and not slip backwards. Not even a little. Had to stay leaned forward or otherwise Id fall backwards. Farther and farther with each step. And the worst part of that would be cleaning it up if I didnt die.

To stand up and dust myself off and pick out the broken glass and sweep all the garbage back into the dumpster and try again. The worst part, being stupid enough to try again. I took another step, straining to stay forward. Had my face close to the stairs, biting down til my neck hurt. If I could get high enough I could grab onto the chain-link fence in the alley and turn around and pull the dumpster up. But until then I had to stay balanced.

Wedging my foot under the ramp and pulling. Step after step up the narrow stairs. Over the broken glass. Pulling the weight upward. To the top with the weight! In the garbage times. Yes.

Step after step. If one step, then one thousand. If one thousand, then one thousand more. Why not. I got to the top and grabbed the chain-link fence, lifting the entire dumpster over an abnormally large last step with one hand. Haha. Fuck you. Fuck you.

I stood up and rested with my hands on my hips, heart beating hard. I pushed the dumpster into other dumpsters. Watching it hit the others made me feel better. A rat ran down the alley. Goodbye, little guy. May we meet again in a more advanced hell where we take each others place.