Preface
There was a night nearly eight years ago when I decided to push the limits of what my brain was capable of processing. I was curious if I could alter my self—explore the boundaries of human experience and reform my self in some kind of unpredictable but hopefully positive way—so I did what anyone living in Florida with a drawer full of LSD and a kitchen full of edibles would have done: a shit-ton of drugs all at once. Cups and cups of coffee, two very large and potent marijuana cookies, and an unquantifiable amount of LSD, all ingested over the course of a couple hours.
Well, I got what I asked for, and the whole story deserves a full article of its own—but to keep it short, there were moments where I was a god, completely connected to and understanding of everything within and without of my corporeal carapace, euphoric beyond euphoria. Then there were moments of utterly unbridled fear and rage, fear that I had gone too far and had broken my self for good—I could see objects in my bedroom (the lamp, the bed, etc.), but I could not remember the syllables that grounded them into reality and I had only a vague notion of what they were used for. I spiraled into an abyss—had literal visions of myself tumbling endlessly through blackness—that felt like falling for an eternity but what was probably only ten minutes at most before I was able to focus on the music I had playing in the background and drag myself out.
I’d felt dejected for a whole week after that bad trip, and in an attempt to get out of that mopey mood, I forced myself to write a short, comical story. That was the birth of “Two-Ton Tina,” and to this day it’s still one of my favorite works I’ve written. In fact, I like it so much that I’m considering expanding Nathan’s journey into present day so I can explore current cultural issues through his own special mix of innocence and curtness.
Nathan, the main character, is modeled after Henry Chinaski from Charles Bukowski’s novel Post Office. I was looking to create a hyperactive, oblivious, and rude-but-not-totally-unlovable spaz. I believe I succeeded, but you can decide that for yourself.
I had sent “Two-Ton Tina” to a handful of online magazines in an attempt to get it published, but it’s not exactly a politically correct yarn. At this time in 2014, I’d already been aware that the majority of literary gatekeepers were the kind of progressives that frowned on anything which may cause the sticks forever lodged in their behinds to further splinter off deeper into their bowels. I had read multiple articles and forum threads written by men claiming that for years their writings were ignored until they submitted them under female and often ethnic pseudonyms. Which is to say, it seemed to me, that writing had largely become no longer about the quality of the story but instead the superficial traits of the writer. This isn’t to say conservative gatekeepers are much better. They have their own stringent ideals that critiquing will often guarantee a submission ends up on the rejection pile. This puts me in a kind of purgatory—culturally homeless, and by causation politically homeless. And no, I’m not claiming that this culture-war mentality is the only reason I was unable to publish “Two-Ton Tina” or other stories. A lot of the fault also falls on me: submitting to the wrong places (though I surveyed the publication playground with some thoroughness), not submitting to enough places, giving up on stories too early, not going out of my way to chat up the right contacts, etc. And of course there’s also the possibility I simply suck. Still, I think it’s worth noting that the stories I like to tell tend to be controversial, though I am not aiming to be so. They are the kind of stories that perhaps have a classic feel, that belong in a bygone era before feelings and virtue signaling became more important than creativity and substance, before walking on eggshells became more important than marching proudly over top of them—more important than actual art, in other words. They are the kind of stories that Bret Easton Ellis, writer of American Psycho (one of my favorite novels), has claimed on multiple occasions are impossible to get picked up by a major publisher nowadays.
Here’s to hoping he’s wrong. Of course self-publishing is huge now, and there’s no stopping it, but in order to educate society on social issues and bring people together, it helps to have written works in plain sight on brick-and-mortar shelves or promoted on the front page of an online store. The next 1984—whoever writes it, whatever it’s about—won’t do the world any good if instead of being front-facing before customers it’s instead relegated to page hundred of an Amazon search.
All right, all right. I’ve rambled on enough. Enjoy the story.
And stay safe out there.
When Tina broke up with me, I booted her pet ferret into oncoming traffic. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I swear it. It was simply gut reaction. Sure, we’d only been dating three days, I was but fourteen at the time, and Tina wasn’t exactly the kind of woman who your peers in the cafeteria high-fived you for bagging—my classmates secretly dubbed her “Two-Ton Tina”—still, rejection had gotten the best of me.
No one had ever spoken to Tina before me. She wasn’t in any normal classes, and during lunch she sat far away from the other kids. She kept an entire table to herself. I’m not even kidding. None of us knew where she came from prior to lunch or where she went after. We even joked that since we only saw her when she was stuffing her face, that she was just a figment of our imunchinations.
That’s funny.
She always brought three bags to the cafeteria with her: two brown paper bags and a pink nylon zip-up lunchbox with generic dinosaurs on the front or something. They weren’t like real, scientific dinosaurs; it was some humanoid-reptilian combination shit, and they were playing basketball. As if that could ever happen. There were holes in the nylon DNBA lunchbox; that’s where she kept Philippe, the ferret. She fed it whatever she’d packed in the paper bags that day, meals that more always than never consisted of snacks high in carbs, sodium, and fat. She was very careful to not get caught with Philippe. None of us ever told on her, either. We thought they were kind of cute.
My first personal moment with Tina was while serving an after-school detention for murmuring the phrase “a mongoloid on roller skates” in front of the gym teacher. It was only a joke. I would never mean to hurt anybody. I got detention anyway. Tina stared at me from across that square confinement for the entire forty-five minutes. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to seduce me or determine how long I’d have to broil at 400 degrees to achieve perfect tenderness. I decided that for someone nicknamed Two-Ton Tina, the distinction between those two looks was likely subtle.
It was in the hallway after detention that Tina cornered me.
“You watch lottery show?” she asked with an accent that caught me by surprise; she was Russian.
“Look, babe,” I replied, “I can barely count to ten. Numerical values drawn at random really aren’t my thing.”
“You wish me as girlfriend?”
“Not with a lamp of endless wishes,” I said.
“We go sit on couch. We couple now.”
She gripped my forearm and dragged me out of school like a claw in a crane machine that’s captured one of those stupid animal pillows.
Back at Tina’s I was ordered to sit on the love seat in the living room. Tina rummaged through the TV stand and fished between many stacks of VHS cassettes marked with a range of dates. After some deliberation she chose one and slid it into the VCR. She bolted her big Russian ass from the room and returned fifteen seconds later cradling a mountain of junk food.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“Lottery show,” she said.
The cassettes were old recordings of Big 4 drawings she had saved. Over a decade of them, apparently. The one she put on was from 1984. My excited not-so-little blubber-puff focused on the screen with one hand on the remote and the other on a bag of Oreos. The lottery lady shot the first number through a tube atop a large transparent case: eight.
Tina exhaled some kind of lengthy squeal as she turned to gaze at me. To this day I have not witnessed more hysterical eyes. Really. “Eight!” came out of her, somehow attached to the end of that deflated squeal. She paused the video and began to count out and separate three piles of snacks, each containing eight items, a hearty combination of Oreos, Andy Capp’s Hot Fries, Fritos, and fruit snacks. She pushed one pile to me, another to Philippe, and kept one for herself.
“Eat.”
“I’d love to, honey bunny, but I promised myself I’d never mix the textures of cookie cream and corn crisp in the same bite.
“Hurry! You must hurry up! Eat!” Tina exclaimed, her mouth jam-packed, dark cookie dust embedded in the fissures of her lips.
“All right, all right my precious foreign carb-vacuum. You don’t have to tell me thrice.”
I ate.
I ate for two straight hours. I ate as my date saw fit, as she relentlessly paused the tape every thirty seconds or so to divvy up food, cackling like an overgrown Cabbage Patch Kid on a sugar rush. I ate. In terror and a bit of wonder, I ate, unable to concentrate on anything but the numbers, the food, the orange grains of salt adhered to the remote, transferred from my darling’s greasy fingers. And that mouth—oh her mouth—bordered with leftover flavor and erupting with madness: a storm of jubilance, anticipation, and the occasional loss of temper at yours truly for not having the stomach to keep pace. I ate. Until Tina tipped over on the couch—knocked out into some kind of calorie-induced coma—I ate.
And when it was safe, I ran.
I horked when I got home. The inside of the toilet was a black-and-orange swirl littered with the occasional chunk of artificially flavored fruit chew. And I horked again.
I didn’t go to school the next day, no way, and feigning illness wasn’t necessary, either; I was really sick. Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more scared of my Tina than I was of suffering in public from an upset stomach.
I huddled in bed all day, getting to my feet maybe once every half-hour to peak out the window, watching for Tina. I just couldn’t convince myself that she didn’t know my address. I was terrified, and I was angry too. I didn’t like being kidnapped and force-fed by a crazy Russian relationship dictator with an affinity for randomly drawn numbers between zero and nine.
I wanted a breakup.
Walking to school the next morning, I contrived the perfect plan to break it off with my love. I would do it at lunch, of course. I’d write a letter. It’d say something like:
“Dear babe,
I’ll never forget the way your Frito beard flaked off your chin when you laughed. Thanks for the memories. XOXO
Your unwilling other,
Nathan.”
I’d give the letter to a friend, to pass on to an acquaintance, to slip to Tina, preferably while she wasn’t paying attention. It would be perfect, like I said.
As I strolled along, cocksure of the scheme I’d cooked up, that’s when I heard it:
“Where you go?”
I turned and there was Tina, standing behind me, appearing a tad upset. Philippe was on a leash.
“It’s not what you think, babe. I lost you in a sea of sandwich cookies. You gotta believe me. I had to get home, because of the parents and all. You know how it is, sweetheart.”
“We’re not forever. Don’t come over more.”
Maybe it wasn’t just the rejection that got to me: maybe I was still fuming a bit over the whole kidnapping and horking thing. I’m not sure. The one thing I do know is that in that moment of blind rage—that millisecond of unreason—I kicked Philippe. I punted that little shit out onto a busy street.
Then I ran. I spun and I took off and I didn’t look back. I heard wheels screeching. I thought I had heard something thump. I’m certain I heard my ex wail in terror, but I refused to look back. I sprinted to class.
Tina wasn’t at lunch that day. In fact, she didn’t show up to lunch any day after that. No one learned of what had happened to her. As far as I knew, I was the last of my classmates to see Two-Ton Tina.
Sixteen years passed before I saw her again.
I came across Tina at the local market. Sure, it had been a decade and a half, and I was thirty at that point, but I recognized the face. I could never forget that face.
I was back in town staying at my mom and pop’s. I’d hurried off to college at the age of eighteen, had moved across the country in search of the American Dream: treasure and pleasure. I did it without batting an eye; I hated my hometown. And while it was by no means the first time I’d returned to the place I’d grown up, it was certainly the last.
I stalked Tina about the market. She was bigger somehow—like twice as big: Two-Ton Tina Squared. I was careful not to be seen. I didn’t purchase anything at the store, only followed my long-lost ex as she did her shopping. Judging by the items she was stocking up on, it appeared her diet hadn’t changed.
She didn’t drive, and I was lucky for that; I was able to track her the entire way home. At first I didn’t know why the hell I was doing it. It surely wasn’t a longing for what could have been. I guess I just felt bad. I wanted to make up for what I had done all that time ago, kicking her favorite furball under a tire and whatnot. I added her address to the notepad on my phone and returned to my parents’.
I gave it a couple hours’ thought, how exactly I would compensate for possibly murdering my love’s only friend. The solution was simple, really: I’d replace her favorite pal with another, and of course I’d resupply her kitchen cabinets with enough junk food to last her through a full month’s worth of televised Big 4 drawings.
I purchased the ferret the next day. I tied a collar around its neck with an engraved nametag that read: “Something Resembling Philippe.” I had a custom apology card printed which I tucked inside Something Resembling Philippe’s collar. There was a poem on it. It read:
“Once upon a time
I booted your friend, babe.
It was not cool.
Then I turned and ran, babe.
I was a fool.
I was just so scared
Of a life without you,
Fritos, and Oreos, and gummies, babe.
I was so cruel.”
I attached Something Resembling Philippe to a leash, packed the snacks in a box cradled under my arm, and began my trek to Tina’s.
Twenty minutes later I was stepping onto Tina’s porch. I knocked on the door. There was no answer after a few seconds, so I knocked again.
“Come on, darling, open up. It’s me.”
Finally, Tina answered the door.
“It’s me, darling, I’m back. I brought you some shit as my way of repenting for past mistakes and whatnot. Do you accept?”
She just stood there staring like a damn buffoon.
“Who you? I don’t know stranger.”
“I’m no stranger, baby doll. You don’t remember? We were something, the two of us. We were rulers of the couch. We had sugar in our veins. You gotta remember, butter ball, you just gotta.”
“Go home. I don’t welcome stranger here.”
“No, babe, you got me all wrong. You can’t just shun me back out onto the streets like that. It’s me, from detention. Surely you remember. I kicked your dumb little ferret—and here, I got you a new one, as repentance and such, to prove I’m all apologetic and that. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, I promise.”
I got to her with that. She remembered me all right; I could tell by the way she knocked me out with a single punch.
When I came to I was bound to a chair real tight-like with duct tape, and there was a strip over my mouth too. Tina was observing me real close. Something Resembling Philippe was nibbling on a couple Cheetos.
“Stupid high school stranger hurt Philippe. Stupid high school stranger send Philippe to heaven. Tina remember. Long time, Tina cry.”
I wanted to calm my adorable Cookie Monster down, but my sweet talk was all hampered due to the duct tape. I was limited to incoherent mumblings, and so I decided to start humming Yankee Doodle. I thought it might soothe the beast before me, what with all the lyrics about macaroni and pudding and such stuff. But it didn’t work. I even aggressively hummed the four macaroni syllables at the end of the first verse three times over. It didn’t matter. Tina had gone nutty!
“Why you back now?” Tina asked, un-pausing the television. She had on a DVR’d lottery recording from 2006. My baby was adapting to the times.
A plastic ball was drawn: seven. Tina paused the TV and counted out seven from the edible gifts I’d brought her. She pried the tape from my mouth just long enough for me to voice my anguish at the harsh pull of the adhesive before my cheeks were stuffed with corn chips and cookies and the tape was replaced.
I chewed fast. I had to chew fast: Tina was readying round two, and since she was champing combatively, fueled by ruthless retribution, I had no choice but to match her urgency.
Nine—the next number was nine. Tina peeled back the tape and put a handful of cheese and chocolate to my lips. I looked away and attempted to swallow what was already on my tongue.
“Stranger, eat. High school stranger make Tina sad. Now stranger eat with Tina.”
I shook my head violently, pleading: “No more, sugarplum. You gotta stop it with all the hate. Didn’t Mel Gibson teach you anything?”
It was no use. Tina held my head still with her giant paw and filled my mouth with double-stuffed wafers and cheese puffs. She folded the tape across my lips and went right to the next two numbers.
First an eight…and then another. Two eights—sixteen total. She was going to kill me with that set of eights, I just knew it. I was destined to drown in food at the hands of a plump and vengeful Russian who I’d done wrong, and though I’d meant no harm, part of me felt I deserved it. I’m serious.
Tina removed the silver strip and scooped a heap of feed in her hands. She eyed it like a greedy king handling a mound of gold. I figured her appetite had gotten the best of her and that she was about to dig in herself. But no—she brought it toward me.
I spit out what I could from the last helping and said the only thing that I thought might save my life.
“I love you, cupcake. I really love you, you gotta believe me. Release me. Release me and let’s go fill you full of babies, darling. We’ll start a family. We’ll bang out a little girl and boy and we’ll name them Ho Ho and Ding Dong. Yeah, Ho Ho and Ding Dong. And we’ll all sit around—you, me, pretty little Ho Ho and our smart and handsome Ding Dong—and we’ll learn how to love through the teachings of Mel Gibson, baby. We’ll watch The Passion every day, I swear. And anytime anyone does Jesus wrong we’ll eat an entire box of fucking caramel Bugles. Together, the way a family should. What do you say, cream puff? I have a great job. We’ll have the money, the kids, the future. We’ll have the American Dream. Treasure and pleasure, baby. Treasure and pleasure. What do you say? I love you, Tiny Tina, I really do.”
“…Tiny…Tina?”
“Yeah, sure. ‘Tiny Tina,’ whatever you want. Just let me out of this chair, babe. I love you. You know it.”
I’d done it. Something I said to her had gotten through. She cut me free from my seated prison, and before she had time to regret setting me loose I booted Something Resembling Philippe up into Tina’s face. The little animal freaked and began clawing and biting at Tina’s features. I didn’t care. I bolted from that damn house, ran to Mom and Pop’s, kissed them goodbye, then hopped on the first plane out of that horrid town.
From that day onward I committed myself to a lifelong dedication of spreading type 2 diabetes awareness.