Guy at work tells me you can work a razor blade into your gums in two or three days. Like with your tongue you saw it side to side behind your lower lip to make a pouch for it, just beneath your bottom teeth, and you can hide it there from metal detectors. He tells me that part like it’s common knowledge. Like everybody knows teeth confuse metal detectors or scramble their signals or something.

I got pretty good at cutting dudes, Simon says.

He mimes the action. Hand up to mouth, pouty lip, grasp the blade, and slash.

Gotta practice putting it back in, though, he says. If you don’t you got a mess of problems when they friends come, or the super, he says. One cut and vwoop you hide it. That’s all you gotta give a motherfucker. One cut.

Don’t get greedy, I say.

One cut, he says.

I don’t believe him. I bet he heard from a guy you could walk through a metal detector with a blade in your teeth, but he never tried. I bet he got his blade behind his gums but he couldn’t carry on a conversation with it in there and his mouth was bloody the whole time.

What’s wrong with your mouth, Simon?

I hink ine dhune it rhong.

Or I bet he cut just one guy and lost the blade under a loosely bolted down table leg. And he searched for it on the floor while he was getting his ass and stomach kicked in.

Thankfully, though, he’s starting to talk less and less about the razor blade thing. Instead, these days he’s telling me what he knows about exercise science. With his distended, beer-worn belly he’s telling me how to get chiseled abs. Three or four sit-ups at a time, ten times throughout the day. You don’t need to do it all at once, he says, as long as you hit that number, thirty, forty, fifty, whatever you choose, getting that number’s all that matters. That’s what he tells me. That’s his thing.

Numbers is how you get sober, too. Stacking days. Doesn’t matter if you spend the whole of ten months in bed taking Tylenol PM, as long as you don’t touch booze. I’m apt to believe this. Just like I’m apt to believe Simon about the sit-ups. Sometimes a great big health emergency comes along to make the most desperate of measures true. The greater the emergency, the greater the truth.

Hit those numbers.

Not a wet

Eventually, you get tired of stacking days, and the toxic thing you’re doing to fix your emergency gets old, and you move on to some slightly less toxic version of sobriety.

I’m one of those white knucklers who’s moved on to sugar. That’s the root of why I was on the floor picking up every Mike and Ike from a Mega Mix bag the day of the second big work announcement.

Can I get everyone in the back to move forward? a manager said.

I was blowing off each Mike and Ike as fast as I could and putting them in my mouth. The warehouse floor is remarkably clean, or at least dust-free.

Hey, there’s a special announcement after standup. We’re asking that everyone who’s able please move forward so you can hear, a closer manager said.

Thank you, another said, followed by, whoa, looks like we have a spill! Technically, we’re not supposed to have food on the floor, not even during lunch.

I couldn’t tell if she was making a joke.

She pressed her radio, which beeped.

Janitorial, copy? she said.

Go ahead, the radio said.

Hey, I’m here by pole F8 and we’ve got a spill. Can you come by with a broom, please. It’s not a wet, she said.

On my way, the radio said.

There we go, can you please stand up for the special standup announcement?

I don’t need help. I can get it, I said, and put five or six clean Ikes in my mouth. The strawberries are the best texture, their insides softer and airier than any other. As for flavor, though, I combine a strawberry and lime, stacked, on the right side of my mouth, whose taste buds are tailormade to savor such a mix.

Let’s stand up now, the manager was still saying to me. Her voice was starting to sound like a surgeon’s voice as the anesthetic kicks in and I knew I had to stand. But I knew, too, that she couldn’t touch me. Not that she couldn’t make my life very difficult were I not to follow her instruction.

I put four more Ikes in my mouth and stood up. I had never seen this manager before. I didn’t know what she was capable of.

Janitorial arrived faster than expected. There were two, one with a broom, the other a dust pan. They were going to sweep up my Mike and Ikes like they were garbage.

As some of you may know, the manager at the front of the standup meeting said, our friend and teammate Reggie passed away this weekend. I want to read a prepared statement from his family.

A Mike kicked out by a stiff broom bristle made it all the way to my shoe. My instinct was, naturally, to pick it up, but I had to check myself in front of the manager. So I covered the Mike with my toe.

Anyone who knew Reggie was lucky to have his light in their life, the manager read. Reggie was always ready with a joke, a hug, a prayer, to help a friend or his family in time of need. Those of us who were fortunate enough to be there for him knew he needed jokes, and hugs, and prayers, just as much as he freely gave them.

I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t you consider where your shoes had been? You walk in bathrooms, for Christ’s sake. Stand in front of urinals that God knows only catch nine-tenths of what’s aimed at them. Didn’t you think of the germs?

I’d considered well.

We will not be offering the details of his death at this time, the manager continued, but they will be on offer at the memorial service to his closest friends and family. Those of you who were there with jokes, and hugs, and prayers. We ask that you please respect our family’s privacy in this time of mourning a beloved shining star’s passing.

See, I have this theory. Yes, you have germs on your shoes for about twenty minutes after stepping on pee. But after you’ve walked about a thousand steps you will have rendered the germs inactive. You might as well dance on your pillow after that.

The janitorial team finished up and I thanked them, taking every ounce of goodwill in me to lie through my teeth.

I scanned the ground for any missed candy.

Couldn’t find any.

As a site, the manager continued, we just want to let you know there are grief counselors available to anyone who is going through a tough time right now. Just let us know if you’re interested. We have QR codes you can scan that’ll hook you up with one.

I might step off for a grief counselor this afternoon, motherfucker, Simon said. He had sidled up next to me.

Did you know him? I said.

I know what he looked like, he said. Why you standing like that, you gotta pee pee?

Ha ha, I said.

No really, you look stupid, what are you doing? he said. In prison, you about to get your ass beat or owned.

Why are you getting me prison-ready? I said.

Ha! he said.

It was implied that he wasn’t wasting his time on someone like me.

All right, everybody, on the count of three, the manager said, let’s do three claps and a big Reggie!

He set his mic down so he could clap.

One! Two! Three! he said.

A smattering of associates in the crowd clapped three times and raised their voices a little extra to say Reggie! Then everyone dispersed and the pre-Q3 murmuring began. The manager beside me went away, too, calling someone on the radio as she did.

You know that motherfucker killed himself, Simon said.

They’re making it obvious, I said.

Second one this year, he said.

Technically, the other one was last year, I said.

Motherfucker’s talking fiscal here! he said.

I parted my shoes to uncover my Mike and Ike. It was a strawberry one. I noticed it was somewhat compressed and its shell a little broken, but not so bad its flavor couldn’t be salvaged and its texture enjoyed.

Consider the mastication started, that’s all.

I picked it up and put it in my mouth.

Mmm!

What the fuck’d you just do? Simon said.

Never mind, I said.

You just ate off the floor! You lick your girl’s pussy with that mouth? he said. It was a turn of phrase he enjoyed.

I don’t, I said. And I wasn’t lying. That’s the non-sweets part of sobriety. You have to learn how to fuck again.

Class

There should be a fucking class, I thought. I was lying on an erection is why I thought this. I had no idea what to do with the erection is why I thought this. Newly sober, you’re grateful you’re not waking up on peed sheets. I was too grateful. Dry sheets were my new low bar for gratitude.

I went to the bathroom and stared in the mirror at my tented undies. It looked there was an alien spine growing in them, about to burst forth from them. Some asexual reproduction. I sat down on the bathtub ledge. I had to let it subside before I peed.

Exile

On Wednesdays, I built walls with Simon or Exile. Building walls was walls of boxes. You drove a conveyor into a trailer and a machine fed you boxes that you stacked into tight walls. I was told the money saved filling a trailer floor to ceiling versus a couple pallets was pretty astronomical.

Simon liked to build walls with me because I let him smoke weed in the trailers. It didn’t bother me. I was only tempted to drink. Weed didn’t phase me. He was kind enough to keep smoke to a minimum, too, smoking a vape pen instead of a pipe and blowing his vapor into holes he’d cut in boxes. He was also kind enough not to have a vape with flavor.

Exile liked to build walls with me because I didn’t talk, which gave her more minutes to talk. I didn’t mind, unlike I did with most people, because she never checked in with me to see if I was listening, nor was she uninteresting. She was a podcast with arms and legs. Today she was talking about her sister, who was trying to get pregnant at nineteen.

I guess it’s because I can’t remember loving anything at nineteen, much less people, she said.

Exile wasn’t that interesting, but I assumed her parents were. Who, for instance, names their kid Exile? Why not Mark of Cain or Original Sin?

She’s trying to get out of the house, Exile said, but it’s not like the ‘rents are holding her hostage. She thinks a family of her own will force her hand or be just the motivation she needs. She doesn’t want a husband or a wife, though, just wants to leave. With a baby. And that’s the thing, just her and one baby isn’t a family in my book, it’s just a baby. She’d need another baby and one other person to live with. Ain’t gonna be me. And wait till she runs out of money. My parents’ house has lots of room, and they’re open to all in need.

Can my wife and I move in? I said.

Ha! she said. He speaks!

I have a question, I said.

I have so many, she said.

Who’s she trying to get pregnant with if she doesn’t want a partner? I said. Does the partner know that all she wants from them is sex? And that they’ll actually have progeny when all is said and done?

Progeny. Your old words, she said. My sister’s in an open throuple. She’s being forthright, there’s a word, but she’s muddying the pool, too. Before you ask, yes, there’ll be signs when the kid is out and growing, but she won’t try to know until the kid asks about his lineage. And even then, she’s gonna make it hard to find out. She’s breaking up with the throuple guys once she’s pregnant and cutting ties with everyone she’s fucked between then and now. Keeping their names in a book.

Which she’ll then burn? I said.

Exactly, she said.

I grabbed a box off the conveyor and set it into the wall we were building.

I guess I’d be a shitty sister if I didn’t ask, she said. Are you interested?

Silence except for the rattling conveyor. Until I finally said, oh, is she doing in vitro?

Ha! she said. She’s not in vitro money.

I don’t think my wife will let me, I said.

More silence but for the conveyor.

Are you trying for kids? she said, with a new tone.

Not at all, I said.

You’re traditionalists, she said. Takes all kinds, I guess.

People are more traditional than you think, I said.

Don’t lecture me, she said.

Sorry, I said.

I gotta pee, she said.

Before she left she pulled out her phone and brought up a picture. It was her family, I assumed. They were at a wedding.

She’s the bridesmaid, she said. In the short brown thing.

I won’t describe her. Except to say, imagine your taste in a sexual partner. She was exactly that.

I see the way you look at me, Exile said. Maybe you gotta get that outta your system.

I don’t look at you, I said.

It’s okay, she said. Everyone looks at somebody.

She took her phone and her water bottle and left and did not come back. Her replacement was an elderly woman who spoke no English. Not a word was uttered in that trailer the rest of the quarter.

Canned

Weeks later, Simon was canned for using a friendly epithet on a friend in front of white people, making five onlookers, including two managers, offended for some other people who weren’t there.

I was there. And it hadn’t occurred to me until then, when I was helpless to defend him, that he was probably my friend.

The two managers there for the epithet flanked him as he tried to walk off to his work station.

You’re fucking with me, I heard him say. You’re flat fucking me, bitch.

Nut

My wife was sure all my ailments could be solved with diet and exercise and she was right. I excused my exercise habits, however, by invoking the physical labor I did on a daily basis. I forgave my sugar and sodium intake, too, by invoking sobriety. At least I’m not drinking, I’d say, while looking into my future and never seeing a day my candy and junk food cravings end.

It’s worse for your brain than your body. Your brain is your body, I know. But it feels separate in a sugar fog or a petite sodium hallucination.

The fog was just that. When I ate too much sugar, I walked around dazed in a cloud on the ground. When I knocked my sodium levels off balance, I saw things in the cloud. It was these two in conjunction. High sugar, low sodium. It could be fixed with a Gatorade, a pretzel, and a nap. But all I could afford at work were pretzels.

What do I see in the fog?

Nothing spectacular. Mostly shiny snakes twisting together and swallowing each other and bursting through one another’s bellies and taking the shape of a crown of thorns. I don’t have a Jesus complex. I just grew up religious. There’s a lot of that imagery up here in this disconnected brain.

Three days after Simon’s sacking I was seeing lighthouses on the ground. In the fog. I was a kite in a sound vacuum, like in Fellini’s 8½. The staffing board said I was wall building this quarter and I worried I was going to topple like Humpty Dumpty.

My partner for the quarter was the elderly woman again. She was made of barbed wire I could see, now that I could see her clearly through the fog. There were a number of associates whose sinew had tightened and hardened into wire here. It was how no one died or pulled a muscle, except when they put a gun to their head.

The lighthouses were particularly bright inside the trailer and I could tell they were trying to spell something, that’s how many there were, and that’s how words sometimes came to me. This word was a long one, taking the shape of an ultimatum or a simulacrum. Time would tell. The lighthouses were still moving. Like tectonic plates, they moved slowly, but with significance.

As I approached the wall, my legs started to give out. Man, I was starved for something. My core muscles coiled and recoiled, too, in little tremors, and I started to sweat from the face, even from my cheeks and earlobes. I felt like I did when I had been drinking.

God, it was getting bad.

It was then I fell to the floor, hitting my head against the conveyor as I did. I might have blacked out, but if I did it was only for 0.5 seconds, because no one was over me and my partner didn’t flinch, didn’t look like it, anyway.

My head felt fine. In fact, better. The fog had dissipated some and I could hear the beeps and rumblings from inside the warehouse.

You okay? my partner said.

She spoke.

I’m fine, I said. I tripped.

She spoke no more and turned around and kept working.

When I put my hands on the floor to push myself up I felt what had thrown me to the ground. A nut, a huge nut, brand new and snowball size. It was the largest lighthouse, I recognized it immediately. It had been in charge of forming the word.

You know these things when you see these things.

I put it in my pocket and stood up.

The warehouse has zero tolerance for violence or theft. Theft seems to be the higher priority, in fact, as there are metal detectors you go through to exit the warehouse, but nothing coming in.

How was I going to get this nut home, that’s what was on my mind for the entire four quarters of the day since I’d rolled my ankle and hit my head. I kept feeling its smooth edges in my pocket, searching for hexagonal answers, but it was giving me nothing.

I was stressing over this, in fact. So much so I decided to make small talk with my ESL wall building partner.

Do you have kids? I said, picking up where I left off with Exile.

I wondered if I’d see her again. Maybe she’d only left for the day.

My wall building partner said yes, she had kids, but I couldn’t tell if she had kids or if she didn’t understand me.

I didn’t understand me.

Early detection

On my way to the front of the building I remembered Simon and his razorblade solution. Sure, I couldn’t work the nut into a fold in my mouth, but I could certainly put it in my mouth. As long as the detector didn’t go off I’d be fine. I’d pretend I was chewing something. I was good at chewing huge cookies and felt safe miming this as I walked past security.

Mmm, I might say.

I clutched the nut in my pocket like I was about to surprise bash somebody’s face in. The blood in my veins was racing. God, I felt alive.

Near the detectors, but out of sight of security, I put the nut in my mouth. It felt the size of a whole apple suddenly, and the weight of a dumbbell.

Six people to go before I passed through.

My jaw shivered.

A decade or so ago, when I worked on a construction crew, I was told never to put galvanized nails in your mouth. That you’d get instant cancer or blood poison or something. I did it anyway because it was so handy to have five or six nails out of my tool belt and ready to drive home.

I was thinking of this as I approached the detector. Something to take my mind off the possibility I’d lose the only job that would take my alcoholic ass if I were caught with this nut.

Three people to go.

Instead of daydreaming something banal I should have been coming up with a story.

One person.

Me.

I didn’t have a story.

I should have been sweating, but instead I was drooling. You can’t hold something, anything in your mouth without salivating eventually. I was about to gag on a cheekful of spit when I caught the security guard’s eye.

Go ahead, she said.

I han ko? I said.

Go, she said.

Somby, I said.

And I drooled a couple ropes onto my shirtfront.

Oh, szit! I said.

And I apologized again.

Go ahead, the guard said, as if she’d seen nothing extraordinary. I suppose she hadn’t.

I went.

As it happens, our warehouse metal detectors don’t actually detect anything except that there’s a person passing through. You could be in a tank and you’d still get a green light.

They reds go off, turns out, at random. After so many passes, a red comes up and an alarm decides to blare and someone has to step aside and receive the wand. Just held up a minute, thirty seconds, if that. But people who work in a warehouse, at the end of the day, are in a stupid hurry.

Such fucking bullshit! I heard someone say as I exited the building, still drooling.

It kind of was fucking bullshit.