This Is a Book - Demetri Martin [56]
And suddenly everything made sense. I knew what I had to do. I needed to quit my job. But before I could do that I needed to get a job to quit. Ideally, one that would suddenly make everything make sense when I quit it.
“Dad,” we pleaded, “can we keep him?”
He smiled and said, “Keep him? Hell, we’re going to eat him.”
I was talking to this guy at a party and he said, “ ‘Can’t’ is not part of my vocabulary.”
I said, “Wow. You’re not going to believe this, but something impossible just happened.”
“What’s that?”
“You just exceeded your vocabulary, at the beginning of that sentence you said there.”
Then someone got punched. I think it might have been me.
I used to have this poster on my bedroom wall that said, “I am me. I can do anything.” Sometimes I would look at it and think, “Poster, you are in for a rude awakening.”
I hadn’t been home since the summer the synchronized swimming team drowned. It was tragic, but beautiful. Apparently, one of them got a cramp.
Someone was in the house. I was terrified. I stood still. I knew in these situations that the best thing to do was to get out of there. You’re not supposed to try and fight. But at the same time, I really wanted to take the stereo. Plus, judging from the pictures of the home owner I saw on his desk, he seemed pretty small.
We started to see less and less of each other. And that’s when I knew it was quicksand.
It was just after I turned twenty that my parents told me I was not adopted.
We used to take some of the smaller animals the taxidermist had stuffed and put them back into the woods. This would lead the other animals in the woods to think those animals had “attitudes.” You’d see a forest squirrel go up to one of the stuffed ones and try to be friendly. The stuffed one would just stare off into space. Then to see the look on the other squirrel’s face… it was great. Years later, the taxidermist ed. We found out he was buried. I always thought that was a wasted opportunity.
Winter became Spring and Spring became Summer. Then Summer became Fall and Fall turned to Autumn. By the time Autumn turned to Winter I realized that there had been a synonym in the seasons.
He shoved me. I shoved him back. The bar became silent.
“You got a problem?” he said, almost bursting out of his T-shirt.
“Do you want to step outside?” I replied.
“Let’s go!” he said. He had a murderous look in his eye and a murderous earring in his ear, too.
A minute later we were outside. My veins were coursing with adrenaline. The crowd spilled out behind us, like some sort of jelly that likes to watch fights.
He held up his fists. “All right, you little—”
“Do you want to step more outside?” I asked. I pointed to the awning just above us. “We’re not fully outside yet… because of the awning.”
He looked up at the awning. “Um… Okay.”
We moved over a little more, out from under the awning.
“Come on. Bring it on, little man,” he said as he took a step towards me.
“Do you want to step over there?” I said.
He paused, and said, “We’re outside now. What’s the problem?”
“Oh, what are you, scared?” I replied.
“No. I’m not scared. Let’s go over there.”
We walked over there. The crowd followed.
“Now get ready to die,” he said, stretching his enormous torso like a gorilla.
“No, I meant do you want to step over there?” I explained. I pointed. He looked.
“Just a little farther,” I continued, still sounding pretty threatening. I knew this tactic wouldn’t work for much longer, but by now we were pretty