an excerpt from "fairly compendious stories told by pretty abominable men"

there was this cripple, this fucker on crutches, and he was holding up traffic, hobbling along super slow in the middle of the street, really fucking tying things up, crossing the street like a goddamn shit-faced turtle, and I was walking by on my way to the grocery store to secure some coffee before the damn place closed up shop for the night, just trying to get along, you know, walking at a brisk fucking pace, minding my own shit, and all these cars were backed up fairly close to the intersection at the top of the hill, and I’m like what the fuck, what the hell is going on here, why is this dude, this one single guy, inconveniencing all of these other people, what gives, I mean what gives him the right to just waddle on out there and back things up like that, and he’s all fucked up too, I mean like really fucked up, like he should be in a hospital or a mental ward or something, I don’t know, strapped to a gurney, looks fucking homeless or something, not a snappy dresser, you know, hair all knotted and wild, and his clothes are all ripped up and he probably stinks, but I’m walking by and looking at all of this, and the people in their cars are being pretty cool about it, they’re not like screaming at him or honking or anything, in fact they’re all being pretty damn patient, and the traffic signal is going from green to yellow to red and the walk signals are ticking down and the cars are just kind of lining up there like boxcars of some stopped train, so I walk on by and am kind of taking things in, you know, and I’m looking at this scruffy gimpy dude who is causing all the congestion, which is now turning into some real fucking gridlock with cars blocking the intersection and caught in half-turns and idling while the people inside stick their heads out the window to try to catch a glimpse of what the fuck is going on out there, and then out of nowhere this gnarly stink bomb on crutches starts hurling, and I don’t mean just your run of the mill vomiting episodes either, no, this is a real fucking catastrophe, like a Niagara Falls of puke, just loads of this slimy You-Can’t-Do-That-On-Television shit shooting out of his mouth, and it’s like coming without a lot of effort on this guy’s part, he’s just leaning on his crutches there in the middle of the street, not even close to being in any kind of a crosswalk, kind of bent over a little, but not much, and his mouth is kind of open, but lazy, you know, not like too wide, not like he’s at the dentist or something, you know, when they ask you to open wider so they can like get to the teeth way in the back there, not like that, just kind of like he’s staring at something slack jawed, like he should be drooling, like maybe he’s sort of out of it, like he’s just huffed gas or computer cleaner or something, not with it, anyway, I’ve seen people projectile vomit before, shit, I a saw a cracked-out woman projectile shit on the alley wall behind Safeway, fuck, it was like a machine gun fire of diarrhea, it was bad, bad fucking news, and it made this like insane splatter painting on the wall, well, it was better than most of the graffiti on there at least, and so this fucked up dude on the crutches is just leaning there and all of this vomit is just pouring out of him, I can hear it splashing all over the street, and there is a lot of it, it is all just pouring out in these like fucking waves, and he’s not even making those sounds that people make when they puke, you know, like they’re in the 5^th set at Wimbledon, all of that fucking heaving and painfully disgusting over-the-top burp/scream stuff, no, this guy is quiet as a fucking church mouse, but I can hear all of this runny liquid streaming all over the fucking street and I can imagine it running down towards me because he was at the top of a hill and I’d kind of walked past him a little by then, but I didn’t want to look back, you know, like fucking Satchel Paige used to say, or was it Bob Dylan, anyway, I kept on walking, and I couldn’t fucking believe how much puke was streaming from this guy, it was like a fucking volcano had just went off or something, or maybe like somebody’d opened up a fire hydrant, and so I started thinking about maybe being a do-gooder for once, you know, a real fucking Good Samaritan, do something to help the crutch-bound bastard out, but, well, I mean, what the hell could I do about it, should I go back and try to help the poor fuck, or would somebody get out of their car back there and move him out of the way, but that’d be fucking sick, I mean there was puke everywhere, you know, and who knows what kind of fucking diseases were all over this guy, and I might get puke on me, you know, and what the hell could I do really, call an ambulance I guess, but the situation really didn’t seem to warrant that, the guy probably wasn’t having a life or death emergency, even though he was in some pretty bad shape, but the whole thing that bothered me was that this one dude was like getting in the way of a whole bunch of other people’s lives, and that seemed selfish, bullshit, thinking that your own life was somehow so much more important than all of these other people’s lives, and there was a part of me, sure, that wanted to extend a fucking olive branch out to the guy or something, to make peace with this surly son-of-a-bitch vomiting in the street, and I wanted to do the right thing you know, I wanted to help this guy, I mean, he was not doing well walking on those crutches, and he probably could use a hand, but the thought of it made me sick, and I really couldn’t imagine anything that I could do to help this spewing fuck-nut on crutches, but I also wanted to get him to mosey on away out of the way of all the cars so all those fucking people could get on with their lives, so I looked back, just turned a little bit, you know, like just craned my neck some, just to quickly scope out the scene there, and I saw the dude teetering, he must’ve been dizzy, and there is this sick-ass vomit all over the place and it is dripping off of his chin in this like thick green vine, just dangling there all mucusy and swinging back and forth like a pendulum, and the guy’s starting to sway, to tilt, and it seems he might go over, he’s unsteady on those crutches, and a car is inching up to him but can’t go around him because he is in the middle of the street and there are cars coming the other way that are also stopped and can’t get around, you see there are just these two lanes of traffic, and nobody is honking, and it’s fucking surreal as all get out, and I see the dude start to topple, start to take that fucking inevitable face-plant dive into the concrete, and the crutches are wobbling, and one goes down, it rattles and crashes down on the street, and he’s leaning on the other, using it for support, and it starts to twirl a little under his armpit, an he’s like putting all of his fucking weight on it, and I’m thinking like shit, here we go, this is it, this dude’s going down, but there’s nothing I can do about it, what am I going to do, go running over and try to catch this like fucking puke-smeared raggedy handicapable dude before he goes headfirst into the pavement, no fucking chance, that is not going to happen, that much I knew, so I look at the cars and the people in there are just kind of in awe of things, and they’re not really saying much, or doing anything, just idling there waiting for something to happen, and the guy leaning on his one crutch with that giant drip of spittle-like vomit hanging from his chin, well, I look at him wavering there and he has this crazed smile on his face, like he’s going through some kind of bliss, like he’s peaking on heroin or something, you know, real far away, and dopey, but happy as hell, just a nothing who doesn’t even know that there is such a thing as a something, I don’t know, some weird shit, but I kind of lost interest for some reason, or maybe it was just because the whole thing was starting to make me feel like I was going to vomit, and so I turned away and kept on walking down the street, I mean, what the fuck could I do, I needed to get to the grocery store before it closed, I was out of coffee, and if I don’t have my coffee in the morning, well, you don’t even want to fucking know what the hell that would be like, I don’t either, shit, so I walked on away and got to the store just before it closed and I was damn glad, a pretty fucking happy camper if I do say so myself.