Springgun Issue 8

was bigger, and also fatter. But my mom probably did love me more.

You got in trouble for calling the Samoas Samoans, and I thought this was a stupid thing for you to get in trouble for. You should have gotten in trouble for drawing inaccurate genitalia on the collection envelopes at church, or for stealing Aaron Santos’ POGs and putting them in your underwear. The Samoan thing was an accident. So few things you did were ever an accident.

After selling cookies outside of Albertsons one afternoon, we built a fort with my brother you’d eventually want to fuck, and a friend of his. We ate peanut butter Tagalongs off of plates with forks and knives, and we all fell asleep before nine pm in a sugar coma. Sometime in the night, I felt you pulling my hair out of my face. You wrapped your brittle arms around my pudgy middle and hugged. You still smelled like peanut butter.

“One…two…three!”

You plunged underwater, black hair twirling in the jets of the Jacuzzi.

You slipped off your bottoms underwater and struggled with the top. When you emerged, white face and breathless, you said, “There. Your turn.”

Being naked in the hot tub would never feel this exciting again.

“I want a baby pig,” you said.

“You don’t want a baby pig.”

You were flipping through a calendar you had just bought at 75% off at the record store called Precious Piggies. You had painted your toenails black.

You moved in with me because you couldn’t make rent at the 4-20 house, whose address was 420 on Storey Avenue, with an extra little thing added to the “r” to make it read “Stoney Ave.”

“You don’t want a pig,” I repeated, thinking about my carpet.

“I don’t want a pig. I want a baby pig.” You rolled your eyes. “Do you think having a sex dream about Marilyn Manson means you have low self-esteem? It was like, a really good dream though.”

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