Fuckin' Fiction

The next day Marion wasn’t at work. He searched for her on the schedule but she must have been listed under her last name or something. The next day she wasn’t there either. He wondered if it was a dream. Marion was there the next day. As he was walking by her in the kitchen he waved and mumbled “hi”. Marion didn’t acknowledge him. This continued for the evening shift. He began to feel not only rejected, but just like a shit head, violating someone else’s privacy, someone else’s life. He served his shift, make less than meager tips, most likely because of his morose attitude…oh who the fuck was he kidding he always felt like serving her was like working at a shit hole, maybe just tonight it shined through more. At the end of his shift he went into a closet, it had racks of coke syrup boxes on shelves like the one’s Marion had been setting on the night that he met her, except these went to the ceiling, other than these racks and the ice machine, and himself, nothing else fit in this closet. He locked the door. He through his mandatory vest against ice machine then punched on of the syrup boxes hard…to hard, syrup spurted all over his shirt, he was stick and gross and full of hate for himself. He sat there with syrup squirting, then finally just dripping all over him. After he felt sorry for himself long enough he left the closet, calmly grabbed a new syrup box to replace the broken one. A cook asked “What the hell happened!!”, “It just exploded on me, I don’t know”. He replaced the syrup box, and through the old one away. He walked out the back employee exit covered in syrup caring his relatively clean vest. And Marion was standing there smoking a cigarette. He stopped stunned. “What you think just because you let me sleep at your place once, I owe you something” she paused, took a drag and continued “Cause that’s not the way it is”, “No I just, that’s..”, he sighed and started to walk away. “What the hell are you covered in?”, He stopped, “Oh it’s syrup, the syrup exploded.”. “That’s rough”, “Yeah, you know shit happens”.”Hey look, my roomies are at again, you mind if I stay at your place again….I’ll help you get the syrup out of that shirt, I know those tuxedo shirts we have to wear are expensive”. “Actually, I’d like that very much”. They took his car to his apartment. The car ride was awkwardly silent. Like awful awkwardly silent. When they got there he asked if she wanted something to change into, and she said she wanted a baggie t-shirt. So when he came back he had changed into an old black tee with a few holes in it. And through here a large T-shirt with a Bukowski print he had gotten from etsy. She pulled her tuxedo shirt off, and embarrassed he quickly turned around. She helped him through his sticky tuxedo shirt and black pants into the dryer. And they set down. He put some yo la tengo on the record player. And something happened. They started to talk. They talked about similar bands they liked. They talked about goals and the future. They talked about their parents….they both got upset. He shared about how his mom was delusional from drinking to much and taking pills prescribed from multiple doctors she had tricked. She talked about her abusive father. He started to tear up…..Then it happened. She told him about how, she didn’t feel like a woman at all, that she felt like she should be a boy, man. They both cried.

That night, they made love. Everything changed. Everything was different. Everything was odd. Everything was uncomfortable, but everything was better. And he loved Marion.