A Parable of Goddamn It
Blake Butler

I can crap cornbread the man said and I believed him. We'd only just met and I was floating in public depression, nowhere I'd never been before. He took his pants down and squatted on the sidewalk and without hesitation I knelt and cupped my trembling hands and let him go right in them, the acidic blackbrown smell of it criscrossing lines inside my head, washing out the old into a cracking maze of new, things I soon would not remember. While he kept on groaning, I put what'd come already to my mouth, wet my lips and then on in, chewing by front teeth first then mouthroof to tongue. He kept going and going and I never fell behind: OUTPUT/INPUT. So that afternoon it was a soft lunch, one I could disguise enough to the brain within my brain to consider sweet, a nourishment, some kind sacrament that might get me through (you know that old trick: stumbling blind into false light) and meanwhile, the people with their sacks and cellphones made wide arcs around me, gullible me, the guy on both knees in plain daylight, alight and joyous, face all runned with some drunk bum's shit.