Chinups

A View

Photo by Riley Revell on Unsplash

The lady picks the same spot on her leg, underneath her nylons.

Every day.

Every day she’s out there, anyway.

I watch.

Thought she played with her pussy once.

Maybe that’s why I keep watching.

The place isn’t a park, it’s just like a little strip of grass that the city couldn’t decide what to do with, so they threw two benches in it and a rowing machine and chin-up bar and called it a park.

The lady is old. She pulls her nylons up and taps her leg with one hand.

The other hand, I don’t know… one day it looked like she was…maybe she’s too old.

Sometimes a bird visits my windowsill.

I named him Arnold.

Yulee comes over to visit. He brings smokes, believes me about the old lady rubbing her pussy but not the bird.

“Yulee, be fucking quiet and maybe Arnold will sit on the windowsill.”

Yulee doesn’t know how to be quiet.

People don’t like him because he talks too much.

He called Sarah Dalecki a cunt close to the mic at a pep rally and got kicked off the swim team.

Sarah Dalecki herself tried to get Coach Alewine and Vuxson, the world’s meanest principal, to change their mind.

Swim team won states without Yulee.

He’s talking now, and the old lady just sat down at the bench nearest my window.

I’m trying to tell Yulee to shut up but he’s working his way to apologizing again.

He does this, even though I tell him not to.

I told him not to bring me smokes because I’m trying to quit and to bring me birdseed for Arnold. But Yulee believes in smokes and doesn’t believe in Arnold.

Yulee was gonna kill himself in his stepmom’s garage.

He had the gun in his mouth about five times.

Me and Allison Mourant begged him not to kill himself.

He finally pulled the gun out of his mouth and threw the thing toward the workbench. It hit the edge and it went off.

Yulee has apologized so many times in sixteen years I can tell you how many tears he’ll let roll down his face before he wipes it.

Not exactly, but close.

I want to shut the window so Yulee’s voice doesn’t scare the lady off but I want Arnold to drop by for a visit so Yulee can see him.

The lady pulls at her nylons in that same spot.

Her hand is beneath her purse on her lap.

I can put my hand on my own dick but my dick can’t feel my hand back because the bullet from Yulee’s stepmom’s gun tore through my lumbar vertebrae like I was afraid it was gonna tear through the back of Yulee’s throat.

I know he didn’t mean it.

I know he feels bad.

There’s a guy on the chin up bar. There’s never a guy on the chin up bar.

I have a bird that drops by and an old lady who might play with herself, now I have a guy in sweats and a tank top doing chin-ups.

The lady is for real rubbing her pussy, covered by a tweed skirt. I know she is.

I’m whispering “look, Yulee, look,” and pointing but Yulee is in mid apology, pointless apology.

I’m jealous of that old lady, and I’m jealous of Arnold the bird.

But I’m not jealous of the guy doing chin-ups, because I have done chin-ups in rehab and all humans are secretly jealous of birds.

I touch my own dick, right in front of Yulee, but I can’t feel my hand with my dick and it pisses me off.

Not at Yulee, because he didn’t mean to shoot me.

And I’m not jealous of him.

Yulee asks if I’m listening.

For the first time, I tell him “no.”

***

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