A guy who

By Jon Doughboy

Pees in the shower and not his personal shower but one at a spa, a gym, a campground. But he’s embarrassed so he pees slyly, a controlled, concealed spray splashing into the tiled corner. And he feels connected in this moment. His pee on someone else’s wall, particles of it clinging to some stranger’s feet. Male loneliness countered with a oneness of piss.

Wears a kilt once a month to the office. Because he’s proud of his four percent Scottish ancestry. Because he doesn’t believe in so-called gender norms and he wants you to know it. Because he’s proud of his handsome knees. Because there are over eight billion people on this planet and he’s already tried tattoos and weird hairdos and exotic hobbies and learning dead languages and isn’t he unique? Don’t you agree?

Is muscular, beefy, but has a gut, and does these crazy deadlifts and snatches and cleans at the gym in his tight synthetic t-shirt which showcases his lats and biceps and traps. There’s a little fella in the corner right now who’s watching the big man bench, in awe as he chucks on three, four, six forty-five-pound plates and if this were the Iliad this beast would have a central part but it’s 2025 and he has to mix psyllium fiber into his protein shakes otherwise he can’t shit.

Shaves his legs so he can admire his glossy, toned caves as he rides his bike twenty-two miles to work every day, pumping up hills, past cars stuck in traffic, past the silver cycling club, a flotilla of old ladies on electric bikes sailing through the bike lane—ooh, look at that young man go! Those smooth and sexy solei pumping and pumping!

Is pushing rope in bed because his menopausal wife is in heat, hormones fluctuating, the markets are up, it’s a bubble, a recession, stocks are tanking, bears and bulls and he’s got next to nothing left but he’s a man and she’s his wife so he wills a half-erection into dutiful, matrimonial being and grips her hips, her hair, her shoulders, and keeps on pushing, a worm squirming across the sidewalk after heavy rains.

Spent a night in jail because his boyfriend, a slick hair stylist with two kids from a previous marriage, suddenly regretted making, lobbying for, an open relationship. Insults became hurled dishes became a headlock, an elbow, a fist, a neighbor calling 911, cops busting in, cops saying “mind your head” when they put him in the back seat of their patrol car, cops joking about how it’s hard to say who’s at fault in domestic abuse cases with two gay dudes because who’s the beaten wife here and who’s the abusive husband?

Shuffles into the cafeteria of the nursing home to eat corned-beef hash but his hand is shaking so the hash falls into his lap, onto the floor, and it’s not hash so much as a strange croquette of cheap food service hot dog meat and a mysterious starch and synthetic binding agent and there’s one Haitian nurse spoon-feeding tapioca pudding to Mrs. Shappert in the corner because Mrs. Shappert’s family feels guilty about dumping her here and still drops a tray of cookies off for the nurses, a box of donuts, a little bribe, sometimes slips them a twenty, a fifty, to make sure grandma is taken care of. He finds a chunk of meat substance, gums it. It tastes like salt, smells like bleach and urine.

Should be getting ready for work or exercising or making breakfast for his girlfriend or unloading the dishwasher or walking the dog but his guts and brain and balls are roiling with stories, they’re crawling in and through and over him like voracious lice so he scratches and scratches and scratches until he comes to love the sensation of it, the act of scratching its own reward, and there’s still time. It’s dark. Early. He writes a story, several tiny stories, about a guy who

Jon Doughboy is a guy who…@doughboywrites