Previously:
**********
We can fix the stove, said the landlady.
OK Gre-
AT YOUR COST
How are you going to even say that
YOU told me that YOU broke it cleaning the-
That’s not what I said Maureen
Listen: to fix that stove I have to go in there, get the make and model number, call a repairman, wait for him, pay him for an estimate, wait for him to get the parts…
He didn’t care about the stove. He’d brought up the stove because she’d been in the apartment yelling at him about the mold and the closet sliding door mirror, which was cracked. It had been like that for two years since the last woman he cared about, who cared about him– two years– had got drunk and dived into it like a sparrow into a window. Maybe high on coke too. She’d stayed at his house to watch his cat while his father died back East. She’d invited a girl over to party with. Some Chinese YouTube ukulele player. He’d said OK because he wanted to sniff their Lesbian sex on his sheets after but they’d just got drunk and broken everything. The father died. The cat died. She left. The landlady wanted $300 for the mirror.
He thought if he asked her to fix the stove, which just broke on its own, it would be a wash. She’d back off. She was about 120 years old and demented. But she was like Mayweather. She could keep getting hit. Nothing connected. He would pay for the mirror and he would pay for the stove too and he would pay the $500 rent increase she imposed because it was true, there was nowhere for him to go. From the south Mexicans had consumed hundreds of miles and from the east New York people had swarmed in coating the block with boutiques. The Mexicali juice stand now sold fourteen dollar hot dogs and the sidewalks teemed with junior associates on Crossfit Indian runs. The rent went up and the taxes went up and the money sucking machine got closer to redline but didn’t ever seize up. Somewhere five Jews were building a space ark. They knew the secret date of the Yellowstone Caldera. It was the only explanation.
**********
The day after he lost to the old woman he went to the gun shop. It was across from the office, next to the Flame Broiler Teriyaki Bowl. Fortunately he didn’t have to park. Even the handicapped space was taken. There’d been a school shooting. We expect the president’s remarks any minute, said NPR. For just a ten dollar monthly pledge you’ll have your very own collectible NPR mug. I’m Cassidy Brown Schwartzman.
You took a number like a deli. His was 70. He waited by a beef jerky display. At the counter three harried clerks explained they couldn’t sell the floor model of the Bushmaster AR-15, which hung dead center on the back wall. The gunman used one just like it. What was available was an AR-15 with an upper modified to fire .22LR instead of .556 rounds. Which even he knew was pointless.
They should fucking know this was going to happen, said the guy in front of him. He had red hair and a face like they’d pulled him out of a river. There’s gonna be a run on AR’s when you get an action like this. They ought to think ahead and order more. Hey man I’m Dusty, he said.
Good to meet you.
Hope you weren’t here for the Bushmaster.
I think a handgun, he said.
What kind
Something big.
That’s the spirit.
Maybe a revolver.
Well get a .357 and you can practice shooting .38 out of it, said Dusty. Much cheaper.
Cost’s not a concern, he said.
Well good for you man. But if shit goes down you’re gonna want more than six rounds. I’d get a sixteen round capacity.
I don’t need that much of a clip, he said. I just want it not to be complicated.
Magazine, said Dusty. A woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker. It said “23”. He decided to buy a rope.
delicioustacos 
This is great. I feel like you’re one of the only really honest guys out there. Thanks for writing and publishing. Im really grateful that you do this. I look forward to your posts and feel like the same things are happening around me and I feel less alone reading your stuff. I think there are a lot of us out there, more than you think. Oddly enough this gives me hope. I think I will buy several copies of your books for holiday gifts. “Read “The Pussy”, grandma. “Don’t put hot chocolate on your Hot Naked Tits.” I like the ring of it. Thanks again DT!
It’s always edifying when total strangers call each other “really honest” on the internet
Yeah who can say if he is personally as i don’t know him, but the writing sure as hell is, which is what I was talking about. I don’t know John Green either, but guess which one writes candidly and honestly about work, modern life and women? Try finding anything else that comes close to this stuff was my point. Thanks DT!
Little known fact. The secret of the Jew is every Jew has a 1/2 carat diamond at the center of their amygdala. It’s forged under the pressure of paranoia. So when grandchild spots alzheimer grandma’s penny sack on the tray next to her hospital bed, and extends his yearning fingers, her jem activates. An arthritic waxy claw slaps down on the boy’s soft hand. The adults in the room flash delighted grins… she’s still got it!
Fuck you.
Fuck yeah
Thank you
Something happened 2 years ago. The dialogue between the sexes collapsed into noise. It seems that men turn so quickly to resentment and women so quickly to dismissal that finding the dialogue – that once was naturally found 5 years ago – is of such rarity that its retrieval is too costly to pursue. Bur what the fuck do I know.
Good point. Maybe its the generations. I don’t feel like 5 years ago was as different, but I could be wrong.i know that snapchat and tinder are a wrecking ball. Its made us much more disposable. You meet a girl and every person she has ever met in her life is on the phone with her all at once, all the time trying to fuck her. Kind of hard to weather storms that way.
I thought it was the generations too — but older women act the same as young women. Or worse, all things considered, as they’ve had the squandered their time not learning anything.
What do you know? Clearly nothing. I’m not saying that to be a prick. It’s a blessing.
But two years, five years, 10,000 years, it makes no difference, All is relative. Technology reveals. Advertising works. Why?
Grandmama who clutches her pearls over granddaughter’s crotch-revealing torn jeans? A product of her conditioning; if she were raised like her Go-Gurrrrrllll (TM) granddaughter she’d do just the same.
Use forces, don’t fight them. It’s all there is.
It is understood that women aren’t fundamentally different year to year. One can be aware of women’s hypergamous nature, and still notice that technology and social orders conspire to allow them to indulge their worst excesses to a degree unfathomable to previous eras.
You should expound on this ability to use these forces to condition instathots into the Greatest Generation.
This was a good one.
“He had red hair and a face like they’d pulled him out of a river.”
Excellent. And the ending made me grimly chuckle.
“She’d back off. She was about 120 years old and demented. But she was like Mayweather. She could keep getting hit. Nothing connected.”
Don’t look down on veteran landladies. You’re 100 years too early!
The poet of a degeneration.
Shut up, Commie.
I sometimes wonder if being a foreigner (i.e. non-Australian) should be classed as a form of autism.