We arrive late because I was watching a television show about shrimp.
We arrive and inside there are many people everywhere and they don’t do things I like. When it’s time to laugh they are serious and when something is serious they laugh like idiots. I am tired in the way I am tired when I am talking to people who talk about money.
“Ahmed, you’re here! And Meg, goodness, you look fabulous! That dress. That dress!”
My wife is Meg and Pat loves her so they invited us together though they wanted Meg. Many people want Meg and maybe men but I don’t care in the way a husband should. I am a husband to her like circus dogs or boys who wait in parks for men to pay them money for pleasant things. My wife screams. She is happy.
I walk away and through the living room where two women and two men talk at each other. They are on crushed velvet as green as plastic holiday trees. The walls have paintings in gold frames and the walls are melting on purpose. Everyone is moving their heads around so much and their eyes are going to leap from their heads and kiss. I cannot stand it, I move on. My stomach tells me I need to find a place.
In the kitchen I see gold brass everywhere. A track around an island of dead oak and granite seas with many floating ships of absolute beauty. Track lights from one end of the kitchen to the other that serve to create a moody lightmosphere. I go for the first plate, I reach for a toothpick. I run my tongue along the chorus in my mouth and moisten my lips.
Pretty little jumbo shrimp. They sit in a circles, biggest, bigger, and big. I eat them one at a time like women. So beautiful, little jumbo shrimp. So pretty. I eat them and I love them. I move across the table where other little ladies wait for me. Little corn, little bits of cube steak, little weenies. Meg appears from the living room, looking for me. I feel my head spin. I eat more shrimp and all the shrimp are gone when she is next to me.
She asks, “Do you concern yourself with the plights of others?”
I’m too busy eating my little ladies to answer and I shrug. She pats my forearm when she walks away. Her hand is wrinkles and blue.
Pat passes by with a wine bottle and goes into the living room where someone is guffawing like chunky potatoes. I move a corn in and I place it between my teeth. I move my jaw from side to side, roll the corn like a nubbly little log of joy, and strip it away layer by layer until the little corn lady is torn to bits and down my gullet, like chum and I am a shark, come baby. Chunky potatoes again, waddles and a lot of glub.
Someone says, “Jeez, Ahmed. Sit down.”
I don’t know him. I want to eat him and his face but spit him back out, into the toilet, into the shit. Little pictures hang on the walls just above beige tiles that run from the middle of the wall down to the floor like the golden path. I am meant to be here, with my ladies. I feel a groan and I know I should not stop.
Outside, on the deck, music is playing. It makes me want to vomit. Boom boom boom boom boom. They like earthquakes and they live in the wrong place. Go find your booms and leave me in silence here where the action is. I feel the booming in my head and stomach. It rattles me like cocktails in a blender. A constant woosh.
The cube steak is very nice. The marinade that Pat chose is exquisite. She knows how to dress them up and make them squee, little ladies in pretty red and brown dresses. A dash of rosemary somewhere in it, I can tell. It sits in a pool in the middle of my tongue and I allow it to drown before down, down it goes. I’ve stopped using toothpicks. Cube steak in my mouth, down my throat. Wet little chunky bits tra la la.
I sit down after all. He is gone but I see his face laughing at me from the toilet. I breathe heavy and something feels strange for a moment but it becomes better when I see more plates, more of them.
The bar stool lets me lean against the wall with the plate in my hand. Little carrots roll left and right as I try to steady it. Little carrots, what is the matter? You will come in here. And I laugh to myself when I look outside and see that no one is eating. They sit around the wood table stained in green and talk about inane things with glasses scattered across the battlefield between them. They laugh like the lobsters Pat boiled as they bathed to death. I look forward to their big juicy tails. They will be very nice. They make me feel good, like marmalade on pork loin. My stomach is screeching. I can see the refrigerator opening a portal into the universe where I lie in a pool of sauce and drink it like blood. The sky is ambrosia and when I stand naked and look up to the blueberry moon until it all explodes and comes down into my mouth. I place my hand on the granite to steady myself when my legs stop remembering what they do.
My hands, look. They are so colorful. My wife returns from the living room and looks at me and my hands.
“What are you doing? You are embarrassing me. Stop and go wash.”
“Alright, honey.”
I smile enough to make her walk away. I move to the sink. The water turns itself on and out it comes but I want to swallow all the water in the world so I put my face sideways enough to almost break my neck so I can fill my cheeks. The water wets me. I almost fall and the water leaves my face covered in glue. It rolls down to my shirt.
I lean against the cabinet and belch out the spirits of my ladies. When Pat passes by with the roast she stops and screams silence when she should be praying to me like a human god. I reach up and take it. My hands burn and so does my face as I tear it to shreds, such goodness. They try and hold me down, take my roast, but I stand and swing her around and we dance. She steps so lightly. When they disappear into the living room others come in from outside and stand across the island staring at me, their hands on metal stools and granite. I fall and we lie together, oh goodness. I feel my stomach complain and something new wants to come up and outside of me. I don’t want to let it and lie still for such a long time until I fall asleep.