Fuck you, bouncer, and a big ten-gallon FUCK YOU to you too, John Wayne! I’ll kick that hat right off your flat head!
Oww!
Fucking curb. Fucking concrete. Fucking blood. Where do you think you’re going, dripping out of my nose like that? You get the fuck back in my brain RIGHT NOW.
Sniff. Cough, cough. Spit.
HA! “BUDDY’S PLACE.” Now you’re BLOODY PLACE. You take my DNA and you LIKE IT. You’ve taken everything else from me. You call yourself a “Home of Happiness.” How about a ROUNDHOUSE KICK?
Goddamn you, concrete. We meet again. And I see you’ve decided to take some of my forearm with you this time. FINE! KEEP IT! But you’re the one who’s going to have to answer to Stavros and his boys.
I’m their property now, and it’s all because PEYTON MANNING is a FUCKING CHOKER! Four more games, Peyton. Just four more games, and you would hold the record for the quarterback with the most consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass, and I would still be alive to praise you for it. BUT NO! You let the Buffalo Bills stampede you like Stavros’s henchmen are going to do to my SPINE.
Oh fuck. Oh shit. How did I end up like this? Three years ago I didn’t even WATCH football. My weekends were spent seeing movies, cooking dinner, fucking–sorry–making love to the woman I was probably going to spend the rest of my life with. Maybe even have kids with? Kids I would make damn sure never step foot in one of these concussion factories we romantically call “gridirons.”
I would give ANYTHING to get that back. Fuck, I tried to give EVERYTHING to get that back, but you wouldn’t have it, would you, Peyton? Nope, you Bible thumping, right-wing leaning, Papa John’s Eating, Nationwide slinging piece of Bronco shit! You had ONE JOB, Peyton Manning! That’s one more than I have.
Fucking football. Fucking gambling. Fucking Steve from accounting. Why’d you have to loop me into all this shit in the first place, Steve? All I asked you for was a little financial advice. I said, “Steve, I’m tired of these student loans. How can I pay them off faster?” And what did you tell me? “There’s always gambling.”
You made it look SO EASY, you fucking prick, but it was all just some sneaky accountant’s trick. You deserved that stapler to the head, and if I could hop in a time machine and go back to last year, I’d do it all over again!
No, no, no, NO! WHAT AM I SAYING? Unleashing the beast on Steve isn’t worth breaking the space-time continuum! Hell, Steve wasn’t even worth the .0002 cent staple I lodged in his fucking forehead.
Let’s be smart about this. If I were to somehow stumble across this magical time-traveling vessel before Stavros’s Town Car pulls up, the back window rolls down, and a gun barrel pokes out, where would I go?
The obvious answer would be to go back to the day before I approached Steve for financial advice, but now that I think about it, WHY did I approach Steve for financial advice? Oh. Yeah. That’s right. Because Becca was busting my balls about not being able to compete with her friends on Instagram!
“Why can’t we go to Greece?” “When are we gonna get a puppy?” “Where’s my Tiffany’s engagement ring?”
Gee, Becca, I don’t know, maybe that’s all in a parallel universe where we were born into well-to-do families that supported us with the financial and emotional stability it takes to make us feel like we deserve more than a fucking middle-management position at some heartless corporation!
Fuck Becca! She’s not worth my flux capacitor either. I’m revving my DeLorean to 88 and leaving that greedy hag in a cloud of plutonium exhaust. Then it’s off to high school, so I can study and join some clubs and build the kind of résumé that’ll get me out of my safety school and the perpetual student loan debt that came with it.
I’ll play tennis! All the smart, rich motherfuckers at my school played tennis. I bet Steve played fucking tennis, DIDN’T YOU, STEVE!?
Who am I kidding? My parents would never support my tennis ambitions. I’d spend more time mowing lawns and painting houses just to buy a racket than I would practicing. Then I’d be a laughing stock. Tales of my horrible tryout would travel through the halls at the speed of an AOL Instant Message. I’d go from being the loner that nobody knew to the loser that everybody screwed with. Fuck that shit. Back to the DeLorean!
What about Kindergarten? What if I spent more time reading and counting than I did eating fingerpaints and making fart noises with my armpits? Then I would’ve probably passed that test that determined which kids go on the honors track and which ones remained with the teachers who only got into teaching for the two months of summer vacation.
Yup, that’d probably do it. I don’t suspect many honors students lose their entire life savings to a loan shark on a football bet. A stock broker, maybe, but not a bookie.
Just look at me, sitting here, playing the Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda game. THAT’S the motherfucking problem. I wouldn’t even need a time machine if I could just get back all the time I’ve spent wallowing in my own self-pity. HA! There’s another one! Another “IF.” IF this. IF that.
Life isn’t a game of “What if”s. Life is only concerned with what IS. The truth IS, I’m a fuck up. Always have been. From my paint-eating, armpit-farting youth, to my kung-fu kicking, nose bleeding now, I FUCKED UP, and it IS time to pay the Grecian piper.
Speak of the devil. There IS Stavros’s Town Car. It IS slowing down right in front of me. The back window IS rolling down. There IS a gun. That IS all, folks.
Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
