People You Know
The rock band whom you are certain you’ve seen before and then, five songs into the second set, it hits you: they are also a softball team
That baby who won’t stop staring at you
The UPS guy who, though you saw it with your own two eyes, saw her climb in there with him and ride away, and that was four days ago, you still cannot believe dropped off your Amazon box and ran off with your wife all within like 90 seconds
Mom’s friend who licks her lips when she sees you and you can’t convince Mom that this is not funny
Cats!, and yes, you know cats aren’t a person but they are sooooocute and can you please count them as one because you are totally into cats
The skinny homeless man with the Adam’s apple who waits at the railroad crossing so he can bow elegantly at passing freight trains, and who for some reason is known as Fat Joe
Marty, the guy you have to like because he’s always at the bar and is super friendly but you hate him, everyone does, he’s insufferable, but you can’t not like Marty, it’s a prerequisite for drinking here, but you want to kill him, we all do
City bus driver who fronts a freak-folk band and works at the health food store and runs the weekly electronics swap meet and is your friend’s yoga instructor and your cousin Lou is dating her and she’s a town assemblywoman and JESUS LADY
The boy who just unicycled past you while juggling wooden pins and whom you won’t even admit to yourself you are hot for
The girl who had like eight comforters on her bed in college whom years later you run into in an airport, go home with, and have sex with, and damned if she doesn’t have like 15 comforters now
The blond girls everyone in your high school called “The Dunley Twins” who turned out not only to not be twins and not be named Dunley but also were not related and in fact were narcotics agents
The guy who works behind the supermarket fish counter who has always reminded you of the cheerful mailman from that one eighties kids’ show, and whom you realize, eavesdropping on his conversation with a co-worker, is in fact the same guy
Your wife of 14 years, who is sitting on the couch beside you and for some reason is suddenly looking really, really weird to you, like, freaky weird
Neighbor girl holding a stick and wearing a plastic Viking helmet who is standing at the end of your driveway shouting “Demons, awake and be gone!”
The man you’ve called “Uncle Saul” for 30 years, who died last week, and about whom, when you asked your dad why he wasn’t going to his brother’s funeral, said, “Brother? No, that guy was your grandpa’s neighbor, he asked to be called that”
The unhinged veterinarian who started calling weekly to make sure you were administering the antibiotic ointment to your cat’s eye, and then daily, and is now on the porch, peering in the window, shading his eyes from the sun
Lady on the bus who is reading the bible and laughing, laughing, laughing
Your imaginary friend Mr. Zipper whom you forgot about entirely by the time you were ten or eleven, but who has come back to life and is right this minute leaning over your bed at the rehab center
The guy you pity-fucked when he moved to town in the eleventh grade, who just bought the yarn store where you work and is pretending that he doesn’t remember you
Doug, oh, Jesus, Doug
