Look at you. You’re so cool standing there like that guy in that toothpaste TV ad. Sucking air through your teeth. Staring into the glass and thinking, Why the fuck am I here? You’re thinking, This is how Elvis did it.
You gaze across the maddening hyperspace and still, she’s on the bar stool. She laughs like a schoolgirl with a honeybee up her panties. She laughs like some horny Madonna of the Rocks. Hey, she might actually be horny. And everybody knows it.
And in the back of your mind, you’re asking, Why the fuck am I here?
At the far end of the room,
Staring into my empty glass?
In your head, you say it’s the music. Kruder and Dorfmeister are so 1990s, that tiny boy in your head says, but who cares?
You’ll get laid tonight, the boy in your head says.
Tonight.
You gaze across the space. There are the lasers, the neons crisscrossing, like deathrays. The zombie-teenagers flapping their arms around, scarecrows in a nasty twister. Their eyes stare at nothing. Their faces all sweat and empty.
You gaze across the space and for a little moment, she looks in your direction. Your heart bursts.
You think: It’s time.
Yeah, it’s time.
It’s time to nickname your testicles.
How about, Little Boy and Fat Man?
Alright. Little Boy and Fat Man.
Go ahead. Glide over there and tell her exactly that. Serve her the best pick-up line a guy on this side of town could ever invent.
Tell her exactly what’s in your heart. Say, “Hello. I call my balls ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man.’”
Then show her the hole on your socks. And your tangerine boxers. Give her a whiff of your minty fresh breath. Because with all things being equal, you’re just a cut above the rest, aren’t you, cowboy?
Then look at your hand. Your testicles have turned into diamonds.
