Tuesday, January 17, 2017

A Blank Check

I’ll never forget it
She handed me a blank check

No fucking kidding
A blank check

I was like—

Are you kidding me with this?

Her son wasn’t even there
I don’t know where he was
But he wasn’t there

Just her and me
Sitting in her nice living room
On her nice couch
In her nice house
In her nice part of town

Handing me blank checks
Like I’m a whore
Or something

I told her—I said it

I was like—I’m not a fucking whore

And she flinched at me
Because I said ‘fucking’
Like she’s never heard that before

She’s done it though, hasn’t she?
Got three kids
I’m figuring she’s done it, you know what I mean?

I’m not a crude person
But I’m not dancing around
What I gotta say
When I’m sitting there pregnant
With her son’s kid
And she’s making assumptions
About what I’m gonna do

‘Well you SAID you were going to have it taken care of’
She says to me

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I SAID that to CHRIS.
I didn’t say ANYTHING to YOU.’

‘Chris told me,’ she said
Like I’m an idiot
And couldn’t figure that out
On my own

I told her I didn’t want any money
That’s not why I talked to Chris
And she goes
‘Well what DO you want?’

And she smiled at me
Like this was all some big misunderstanding
Like her son didn’t tell me
He put a condom on
When he didn’t
And yeah, maybe I should have noticed
But he also got me drunk
And told me his name was Dan
And he wasn’t from here
When we were at a bar
Six miles from his house

Then it turns out I’m pregnant
And I’m like, Fuck, I don’t know what happened to Dan
Dan just took off the next day
I woke up hung-over in my apartment
With not even a note

But then guess who pops up
In the People You May Know on Facebook?

Fucking Dan

Except his name isn’t Dan
And wouldn’t you know it?
He IS from here

So I go pay him a visit
At his house
And when he answers the door
Right away, he starts having, like, a panic attack
Because Dan, whose real name is Chris,
Is engaged to this other girl
And here I am
Screwing everything up

We talk a little bit
Very civilized
Nothing bad
And then he asks me
If I can come back in a few days

So I come back in a few days
And Chris or Dan or whoever
Is nowhere to be found
But there’s his mother
Sitting on her nice couch
With a checkbook in her hand

And she’s asking me—

‘What do I want?’

And I tell her—

‘I want him to go with me’

That’s it
That’s all I want

After that, he can take off
Just like he did the last time
But I want him there with me
When I get it done

And she tells me
That’s not going to happen
That he’s not going to go
And I said, ‘Well, in that case,
Maybe I won’t go’

Which was just me bluffing
Because I gotta go either way
I can’t have it

But I tell her I won’t go
If he doesn’t come with me
Even though compared to a blank check
It’s a pretty low ask
You know what I mean?

I say ‘Why can’t he go?
Is he scared of getting photographed or something?
Does he want to be President one day?
I’m not trying to get him in trouble
I just need him to go with me
I don’t have anybody else I can take’

And she doesn’t say anything for a second
And then she goes—

‘He’s not strong enough’

Just like that
No bullshit
She just says—

‘He’s not strong enough’

And I say—

‘Yeah?  Well, I’m not strong enough to go alone’

Fucking…

I said, ‘What am I supposed to do?

Take that blank check
And hire someone
To go with me?’

And she closes her eyes and says—

‘I’ll go with you’

No shit, that’s what she says

‘I’ll go with you’

And I almost fucking fell off the couch
Let me tell you

Because this lady—

I mean, she looks like Jackie Fucking Kennedy
I’m not kidding

But, uh, yeah—

She said she’d go with me
And I meant it when I said
I didn’t have anybody else
So…

I said ‘Okay’

And, uh, I don’t need to go into
The whole details of, uh
Us going there
But we did
She did go with me, and, uh—

She was very nice
The whole time
Very good about it

I never saw her son again
And after the procedure
I went home
And she checked in on me a few times
Just, like, over the phone

She did send me some money
And I did take it
Because I couldn’t work
For a few days
I had some trouble, afterwards
But that’s—

So yeah, I did take some money
But not a lot

And then I never heard from her again either
You know, once I was up on my feet and everything

So that’s…

You know, that’s my story

You know, I told this girl I started worked with last week that story
And she was like—

You should have just taken the check

And I was like—

‘I didn’t want the check’

And I meant it, you know?

I didn’t want it

That was the last thing in the world

I wanted

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