Eating Cheer Laundry Detergent

When does the stress end? The stress I don’t want. The stress I don’t need. My own mind tries to kill me on a daily basis. It plots to give my body ailments. It is trying to talk my body into dying, begging it to quit, to just expire. I just want to die. I don’t want to wait for the inevitable diagnoses of ulcers and heart problems and cysts and sickness. Somebody, please, just kill me now. I grow careless in my present existence. I beg a group of people to kick my ass, but they’re confused by my request. “Come on! Kick my ass! I know that’s what you want. Just kick my ass!” They’re disconcerted by my desire for a beating. They look for asses to kick and create situations that will result in ass-kicking, but they’re unaccustomed to having the ass handed to them. “Kick my ass! Please!” They are bored with my offering, too easy. They leave. And I am left alone, still begging for someone to crush me. I watch as detergent commercials beat the dirt from the fibers and I get an idea: I am looking for something to purge my blackness, so I start eating detergent. The smell attracts me to it and draws me in. I have acquired a taste for several different brands now. I like the way it feels as I choke the grains down and they scrape their way down my throat. The stress keeps piling up though. I think my fish feels it too. I caught him trying to jump out of his bowl as he was picking up on all my negative energy. I stared at him as he made an attempt to leap out of his bowl and end his life, but I knocked him back in and told him that he was in it for the duration with me. (Excerpted and abridged from my next book, Piss Artist.)