ethics for success

Somewhere between life and death, I had imagined my ending to be... neater. Like a nap on a warm spring day that smelled like freshly mowed grass and tasted like fresh rain.

When I finally came to the end, I discovered that it was more like an exact photo of a rhinoceros attack: A big gray van splaying me out on the road like a hastily butchered chicken. An angry homeless man with a peppered beard behind the wheel of that mechanical rhino yelling at me. That girl I had met 10 hours ago prostrate in the air like a flightless bird trying to fly.

All these elements of my death had subsequently gathered together to form this oddly picture perfect scene.

And I only had one thing to ask myself, Why?

I guess you could say that I am “conceited” or “egotistical” or really any other variation of the word. I admit that I am a self righteous asshole who only works hard when it benefits the most important person in my life. Me. Hence the MY in my life.

The day I found myself being plastered into a brownstone was the same day that I realized I am neither conceited nor egotistical. I just lack empathy. Or maybe I’m just a pusillanimous prick who will do anything to protect myself. The description is still up for debate.

I came to this revelation soon after I donated my fluids to a sperm bank.

So far, it had been an average Tuesday.

I was sitting in a blue vinyl chair staring at a cheap printout of “The Scream” while I waited for one of the donation rooms to open up. As I stared at the ugly strokes of pastels and the O shaped mouth, I didn’t feel the despair everyone says the art supposedly evokes. I only saw someone looking astonished. Like a thematic apparition test, I started to formulate a story behind the picture.

The only thing I could come up with is that he had seen something gruesome. Maybe he had seen something terrifying like his naked grandfather bending over causing his sagging balls to swing against his wrinkled thigh and stick to it like a spider web made out of skin. My body shuddered.

Talk about a boner killer.

Before I could come up with a different explanation or make up another story about why the man looked so distressed, I was called back and given a sterile cup to ejaculate into. In the room with VCRs of porn and tittie magazines, I sufficiently filled the cup. Before leaving, I was handed a check and told to come back in two weeks.

I walked out of the fluorescent sperm bank to be blinded by natural sunlight. The nerve of the insipid sun. It’d have you think it was important or something. A woman was outside pleading with the poor bloke who exited before me.

She was tattered and dirty. So naturally when she noticed me with her wrinkled eyes, I turned and headed the opposite way.

She called after me. When I didn’t stop she grabbed me by the shoulder forcefully and made me look her anorexic-esque stature in the eyes. Being the 6’6 monster I am, I could hardly look her in her shit brown eyes. I had to bend my knees slightly so I wasn’t hulking over her.

Maybe before the obvious drug abuse and inevitable age, she was pretty. I could see how her dirty blond hair could have been a sandy color before the grease took hold. Her figure wouldn't have been bad if she hadn't been starved. Heck, I might even had lit her cigarette and asked her for a night cap back at my place. Let her love me all night before making her eggies in a blanket and never calling her back. But facts being facts, she just looked like a worn out hippie. I didn’t hold that against her, though.

I did hold what she asked me against her.

“Sir ,” she started off kindly enough, “may I please have some of your sperm?”

A pretty valid question considering what building we were standing out in front. Despite that, I couldn’t help my jaw from dropping or my eyes from growing wide.

“Look,” she started to explain, “I’ll be honest with you. I am in desperate need of the welfare and the sperm bank won’t sell to me. I’ll give you two hundred. No strings attached.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.” I said simply as I shrugged my shoulders with unsympathetic disgust.

I was appalled. That’s a life she wants to play with in order to get more crack money. A child. The definition of innocence. Not some pawn in the game of life.

“What about three hundred?”

“Sold.” I said as whipped the palm of my hand out of my pocked to face up towards her.

What’s some sperm, right? I mean, she probably won’t even get pregnant. It’s not like this could actually work.

She told me to meet her on the corner of of 67 and Broadway. Bring the goods in a Dixie cup and she’ll bring the money.

I thought to myself while I filled the bottom of a small Styrofoam cup of my fluids, what if she did get pregnant?

There would be a tiny little me running around wonder who their daddy is. They would live a horrible life with a crack whore mother who only wanted them for the EBT benefits.

Then again, there were probably already a handful of tiny me-s running around wondering who their daddy is. I had slept with so many women that the odds were already against me. So what’s one more?

I walked down the littered streets trying to hold the cup as nonchalantly as normal. Like it wasn’t just dripping with thick, white paste before I wiped it off before boarding the subway.

There she was. She leaned against the brownstone building completely out of place. Her tattered lavender zip-up hoodie clung to the side of the building as she stood up straight to wave at me.

Across from us sat an Apple Store and a Pottery Barn. Odd place for a fluid swap.

Tell that to the happy couple across the intersection blissfully making out. Completely unaware of their surroundings or what was to come next.

“Walk with me.” she snapped her blue, chipped nails at me.

I followed her down the street and handed her the cup.

“Want a sip?” I raised an eyebrow at her, “Just be a good girl and swallow.”

She rolled her eyes at me and grabbed my hand. I could feel the wadded up money pass from her palm to mine. We walked down the crowded street with our hand held.

“So how do I know if you’re going to come after me for child support or not?” I asked.

“You won’t, that’s how.”

I looked at her skeptically.

“Look, I don’t know where you live, what your name is, anything. How can I come after you?”

She had a point.

Suddenly, there was a gray van behind us honking and a burly man who obviously lived inside the vehicle started to yell at us. He apparently had a problem with us holding hands. I guess some people besides me are turned off by PDA.

“Fuck you doing with this hipster freak, Josie?” he yelled at us as he tailed us.

“I’m doing something over here!” she yelled back.

“Jodie and I are making a baby, got a problem with that?” I shouted behind me.

“Josie.” she hissed as she slapped across the shoulder of my leather jacket.

I mumbled ouch as I smarted from her slap.

“Fuck if you are you rat-faced Brit!” he spat at me through the window, “That’s my lady!”

“Sorry,” I called out, “I can’t understand you through your yankee accent. Speak proper English, please. I know this is the land of the free to be improper, but Queen’s English if you can. Seriously, ‘fuck’ is going out of style. Try a new word.”

I gave sarcastic air quotes with my fingers as I said the word fuck.

“You shouldn’t have said that.” she said dismayed as she shook her head.

Apparently my jab was enough to send the poor guy over board. His face turned the shade of an overripe peach and his nose scrunched up like he smelled his own breath.

The wheels of his mini-mobile home turned towards the sidewalk. The horrified look on--damn what’s her name again?!--face was enough to send me running.

She pushed my back and ran behind me, “Go, go, go, go, go! I told you that you shouldn’t have said that!”

“You didn’t tell me you were dating him!”

“You never asked!”

We turned the corner down a narrow alley too small for his van to chase us down. I folded over my knees and panted in exhaustion.

Whats-her-name sat on the ground to catch her breath. She put her head between her needs and huffed deeply.

“So what do you really want with a baby?” I asked the crazy bitch between short breaths.

She waited a moment before answering.

“What I told you. And child support.” she huffed some more before finally admitting the truth, “ And I planned to trap Joe and have his help.”

She peeled her hands off her knees.

“Well, damn.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” she sighed, “I wasn’t the one donating sperm to make a buck. I actually work. At the iHop. It just isn’t enough. I need more. And I thought this baby would save my marriage.”

“Shite lady! You’re married?” I shook my head in disappointment.

She cupped her face in her hands and started to wail. I rolled my eyes. Some people are so sensitive. It made me uncomfortable when women cried. I sat down on the dirty pavement beside her and awkwardly patted her on the head. I wiped the grease off my hand and onto my trousers. I was about to say something when I was interrupted.

“Hey!” we heard ‘Joe’ yell at us from the mouth of the alley, “The hell you doing with him, Josie!”

We both yelled, “FUCK!” before we jumped up and dashed down towards the exit on the other end. I only realized the irony of our exclamation after we turned down road.

He caught up to us quickly for an obese, drug addled man. He weaved his dirty fingers together around the woman’s neck and yanked her back.

He viciously started beating her senseless. He screamed profanities at her as he accused her of cheating. I got to to end of the alleyway and hid behind the wall without looking back.

I caught my breath again and noticed the wad of money I had shoved into my pocket. Breathlessly, I counted the twenties. I stopped short. I heard the girl shrieking for help down the alley.

I moaned helplessly as I realized what I had to do. I had to do what was right.

I quickly counted the money again before shoving it back in my pocket and running towards the grappling couple. I felt my face twist in rage.

I pulled the man off of her, grabbed him by is long, peppered beard, and knocked him out with the wall. I put my hands on my hips surprised that I was able to do that.

The girl was in the fetal position still crying. Other than a few bruises, she looked like she was going to be ok.

I helped her up and let her compose herself. She muttered what sounded like the words thank and you.

“Yeah, no problem.” I said sheepishly.

She nodded slightly.

I propped her up onto the wall and let her compose herself. Once she had, I knew what needed to be said.

“Listen, ma’am,” I started calmly, “I know you’re having a rough day. But you promised me three hundred and there’s only two in here.”

She looked at me bewildered.

“I mean if was only fifty bucks, I’d call it a day. But a promise is a promise. And I risked my life for you. So it’s only fair. It’s a matter of ethics, you know?”

She had the nerve to slap me.

“Bloody fucking hell, lady!” I screamed in disbelief.

I did what she asked, saved her life, and then she had the nerve to slap me for asking for what was mine? Entitled Americans.

A grunt came from the man as he stirred away.

Damn, that little lady was fast. She was gone before I even turned around.

I did my best to keep up with her but I was a few feet behind her as I rounded the next street.

Somewhere between him waking up and us fleeing down the street, the homeless man managed to get to his van instead of chasing us on his feet.

I felt the existential weight of the van on my back even though it was ten feet behind me. So naturally, as any scared man would do, I ran faster and caught up to the woman.

I clutched her by shoulders with both hands and swiftly turned her around to face that gray rhinoceros.

She squealed and tried to get away from me, but I held onto her as tightly as I held my eyes shut.

I felt the van slam into her. It didn’t stop. It went through both of us like room temperature butter. I opened my eyes and saw the scene lain out before me plain and simple.

This was my end.

The money from my pocket floating in the air like weightless leaves in the wind. I was soaring past the rectangular, green leaves with a few broken ribs when I saw that girl whose name I can’t be bothered to remember plastered to a wall.

Her purple hoodie a little more tattered than before. A lot more blood stained than when we met. Her shit brown eyes were rolling back into her head.

It was poetic in a twisted manner. Not many people died this way. It was unique in it’s own way. Now that I was here, I realized I’d rather go out in chaos than in my bed peacefully.

My story didn’t go any further. I thought at the ripe age of 32, I would be more accomplished. I thought I was going to be somebody.

Somebody everyone wanted to know.

But I turned out to just be some hipster freak. And surprisingly, I was ok with that label. Egotistical and pretentious. And that was ok with me because apparently I did lack empathy too.

I felt my head bash into the building I was being hurled into.

And then there was nothing. There was no damsel to save, ok there was. I just chose not to save her. There was no big redemption.

It was just over.

My life was over and the only reason why was because of myself.

The decisions I made for my life is what lead me to the end of my life. I realized in that moment how much time I wasted jerking off and sleeping in.

If I could do it again, I don’t know. The truth is that I can’t do it again. So why bother to be racked with guilt in my last moments?

So as I slammed into that beautiful brownstone, I smiled. And breathlessly, my soul--that I am not even sure I have--was wiped from this Earth.