The Seven Habits

she’s stuffin’ this shit in her cheeks like a chipmunk stockin’ up for winter. I mean, that musta been a bottomless fuckin’ bag of whatever ‘cause that girl just kept shovelin’ it in. She wasn’t no porker, either. Hell, you know. You’ve seen her… well yeah, most of her, I guess. But you get my drift, right?

So, like I said, she’s wolfin’ down her little snacks for close to two hours when this shirt and tie guy comes along and starts chatting her up. She’s nodding, shaking her head, wiping the sweat off her face with her hand. Then she takes a look at her watch and stuffs her red apron under the counter while Shirt And Tie takes her place at the register.

She walks outta the Dollar Bonanza and I give her about a minute or so and then just kinda stand up casually and start followin’ this broad, right? I tail her to the escalators on the other side of the mall and we ride all the way up to the third floor and I keep thinkin’ about all these people around her. People who have no fuckin’ clue. I mean, this chick could potentially be infested with thirty-one different flavors of crinkum. And you’ve got dudes giving her the once over, dykes undressing her with their eyes. Hell, they probably thought that sweat made her sex….

Crinkum? You know, man… disease. Like an STD and shit. Picked that up back around the turn of the century. No, not the fuckin’ disease, man… the term. I swear, sometimes I think you two get a kick outta pokin’ me with your little verbal sticks. Do you wanna hear this shit or not? ‘Cause I can just shut the fuck up right now and not say another word.

That’s what I thought.

So anyways, here I am following Ms. Clarice fuckin’ Hudson across the food court and, since it was lunch time, they’ve got this guy in a tux sittin’ over at the baby grand. He’s ticklin’ those ivories and the music kinda drifts through the lull of the crowd, weaves in and out of the static sound the falls makes as it flows over the edge of its trough. Real mellow, classical shit. Gives the whole scene this art film quality, ya know? Like I can’t believe I’m actually doin’ this and there’s probably a director hiding with his camera crew in the back of Steak on a Stick, just waitin’ to yell cut.

So the chick walks up to the counter at Burger World and I’m acting like I’m checkin’ out some of the menus from those other paragons of fine dining, but I’m actually still watchin’, ya know? Still trying to figure this shit out.

So this sweaty little shop girl orders two super-size value meals, man. And I’m not talkin’ about those flat, meat pancakes they try to pass off as burgers either. Fuck no. Triple stack with cheese, lettuce, tomato, the optional bacon. Bitch gets it all. Now keep in mind that she’s been eating for nearly half her shift already. Me, I’d be about ready to split wide open by then. But not this lady, no. She eats every last bite and even fuckin’ licks that gooey cheese off the wrappers, if you can believe that. Hell, I half expected her to shove those down her gullet too.

When she goes back to work, she rings herself up a purchase and guess what? More fuckin’ food, man. Ha! This time I know what it was—she got one of those little bags of cotton candy and three boxes of banana moon pies. And by the time she left for the day, there wasn’t anything left but wrappers, cardboard, and this little dab of marshmallow cream on the corner of her mouth.

But did that keep her from stoppin’ by the theater on her way out and gettin’ one of those huge tubs of popcorn? Damn right, it didn’t. I could see the butter glistening on that shit from twenty feet away.

Haven’t you been listening to a fuckin’ word I’ve been sayin’, man? Do I hafta spell it all out for you in big block letters and bright yellow crayon? Good Lord…

Okay, then. Let’s just recap a little here so you retards will be brought back up to speed, okay?

First sign: profuse sweating. And why is that? Anyone? Anyone?

That’s right, man. Give yourself a fuckin’ gold star. They sweat because they’re going through these changes, and the sweat is produced by the heat from the energy required to rewrite someone’s genetic code. But energy can’t be created or destroyed, man. It can only change form, right? So she’s burnin’ up all this energy realigning chromosomes and shit… and it’s gotta be replaced, ya know? Otherwise her entire system will just break down. What good is a pathogen without a host, man?

See, that’s the second sign right there. This ravenous fuckin’ appetite without so much as adding on a pound. Hell, if it didn’t mean the end of everything we know, you could make a killing off that shit in the diet market.

So, Clarice fuckin’ Hudson has now ticked off two of the seven on this little checklist, and in my heart, I know. I fuckin’ know, man. Bitch is infective. But just havin’ that gut feeling isn’t justification enough. You gotta have empirical evidence. You gotta have facts.

I figure I gotta keep doggin’ her, right? Which isn’t hard. She drove this titty pink Volkswagen Bug with a sticker on the back that said It’s Not A Choice… It’s A Child. Which is kinda ironic, don’t ya think?

What d’ya mean, how so? Fuckin’ Ocean, man. It’s like the universe was sending me a message through that bit of bumper sticker philosophy. ‘Cause just thinkin’ about what I had in mind still made me nervous, dig? I wasn’t used to all this cloak and dagger shit. Hell, I encode envelopes for a living. I sit at this little desk for hours on end, looking at these pictures on my monitor where people have scrawled the address so bad the computer can’t read it. I type shit like PE and three states away this piece of mail gets sprayed with a barcode and goes on its merry fuckin’ way. Might just be a day in the life for guys like you… but for me it was foreign territory, right?

So it was like that sticker was reminding me that Ocean wasn’t an option, dig? That she was going to be born and the quality of her life could very well depend on how I handled this Clarice Hudson situation. And it was already too late for that chick, anyhow, there’s no cure for what she had, ya know?

See, this was what went through my head while I was sittin’ outside her apartment. I was half-listening to some right wing windbag on the radio, watchin’ her windows, checking the time every five fuckin’ minutes, tryin’ to figure out exactly how to do it.

Now see, man… when you call it pre-meditated it tells me that you’re still not understanding. You’re still confusing habeas corpus with doing the right thing, and a lot of time—as I believe I’ve mentioned before—those two concepts can run afoul of each other. I mean, give me credit, man. I didn’t go marchin’ up there to do the dirty deed just because she had two fuckin’ signs. Now that woulda been criminal, ya know?

So anways, it’s gotten dark and I’m thinkin’ maybe it’s time to piss on the fire and call in the dogs. Pack it up for the night and head on home, right? And just as I’m about to turn the key, what happens? Her front door opens, man.

She comes traipsin’ down the sidewalk in this low cut, white blouse that’s clingin’ to those tits of hers like a needy lover. Got this tiny skirt that barely covers the cheeks of her ass, black heels and matching bag, hair teased like a geek in a locker room. I mean, this bitch looks hot. Both figuratively and literally, ‘cause even from my car, I can see that sheen of sweat, man. That byproduct of contagion.

I follow her downtown and find myself in this little hole in the wall called Blue Moon. Not the Blue Moon, mind you… just Blue Moon. This is the type of joint that’s got Bob Seeger on heavy jukebox rotation, little Christmas lights all strung along the ceiling, and cans of Vienna Sausages for sale right alongside the overpriced Bics and antacids. Couple of pool tables in the back…

She’s down at the end of the bar by the video poker machines, kinda leanin’ over it like her bosom’s tryin’ to get a good look at all the bottles lined along the back mirror. The bartender’s this short, blonde chick with frizzy hair and she lines five shot glasses in front of Clarice fuckin’ Hudson and starts fillin’ ‘em up with something or other. Don’t ask me what, ‘cause I’m a beer man, myself.

Well, the leading lady in this here little drama throws those shots back like a sailor on leave. Bam, bam, bam. Hardly takes time to breathe between each one. She holds up three fingers and, after the bartender brought me a piss warm Bud, knocks back another trio.

You can bet your ass that by this time she’s caught the eye of every dude in this joint. The pool balls have stopped clackin’ around, there’s this chick throwin’ daggers at her boyfriend with her eyes, an old man who’s not too shy to sit there massagin’ his nutsack while he drinks her in.

This guy who looks like he’s probably in the place on a forged ID plops a few quarters into the juke but his eyes are all over Ms. Hudson when he’s selectin’ the songs. I figure he was probably goin’ for Lynrd Skynrd or some shit but got so distracted by this hard drinkin’ hottie that he somehow queued up Lady Gaga. Bad Romance, it was.

So the music really kicks in after that little Vedic sounding chant at the beginning and the bass is thumpin’ so loud that you can’t even hear the chirps and bleeps from the poker machines. Now our dear Clarice must’ve been a