Pink Soap

We were sitting at a restaurant downtown and my friend Bert had his newest squeeze with him. She was a skinny little thing with bug-eyes and a black ponytail. She barely said a word. She just sat there picking at her pork with a fork. Bert and I tried to talk around her wall of silence. It was like pissing into a river and waiting for it to turn yellow. Finally, I got tired of the whole act. I started prodding the girl (Jane) out of her shell.

“What’s your deal?” I asked.

“My deal?”

“Yeah, whaddaya do?”

“I chill, I guess.”

“You chill?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything else?”

“I draw.”

“Oh? Whaddaya draw?”

“Stuff.”

“Uh huh. That all ya do?”

“Well, I smoke too.”

My eyes lit up like two light bulbs.

“You smoke do you?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well …”

Having grown up in a boring little turd-hole, I’ve been around stoners all my life. They’re usually as silent as the bits of nature they’re named after … that is of course till you kick in their brain wrinkles with crazy imagery. Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at this. I decided to try my hand with Jane.

“Tell me something,” I said. “What if ol’ Bert here, got up to go to the bathroom and left his face frozen in mid-air above his chair?”

“Huh?!”

“Then what if the thing started laughing silently about something off in the corner and Bert came back with his big, red, mug of muscles, lit up a smoke and was like ‘What?’”

Jane pitched forward and wrenched her jaws. The laughter came blowing past her teeth like projectile vomit.

“Do another one!” she cried.

“Ok … what if all the sudden time slowed and our limbs and eyeballs started popping upwards from their sockets, carrying our guts and skeletons with them till we were nothing but hollow-eyed sacks of skin, deflating against our chairs?!”

“HAHAHAHAHA! ANOTHER!”

“Or say a silverback gorilla walked into the restaurant, casual as can be, and in your father’s voice, started asking you the details of your latest period?”

“OH MY FUCKING GOD! HAHAHA!!! ONE MORE!”

“Or what if Bert went to the sink and found this pink soap and he washed his hands and face with it and then dried himself off with a towel in front of the mirror and when he pulled the towel away he saw he now had the hands and face of Susan Boyle?”

This one drove the nail through the kneecap. Jane was now screaming with tears. The whole joint just stared at her. She coughed and cackled and gagged. Bert looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. I raised my beer and smiled.

“Works every time,” I said.

....

Note: I reserve the right to occasionally alter the character names, descriptions, and/or event details in my posts for the purposes of identity protection and “fluidity of story.” If this puts a kink in your panties, read someone else’s blog, homey.