I'm Alive But I'm in Asheville
I’m alive but I’m in Asheville. A man at the bus stop asks me why I’m wearing an ankle monitor. He asks why there’s a piece of beef jerky wedged between it and my skin.
I worked at a water park when I was a teen. One time a venomous snake got into the lazy river. I coaxed the snake out of the water with a soft pretzel and everyone called me a genius. Two days ago a judge told me I couldn’t drink for ninety days so I stuck a piece of salty meat where the monitor collects my sweat and drank as much as I wanted. No one has called me a genius yet, but they really should.
“My mom died,” I tell the man. “And it’s not jerky, it’s a piece of two-day-old bacon.”
Every human has one thing they do better than everyone else. Some people find their singular talent but most never do. Sometimes the universe conspires against them or sometimes they’re too lazy to look. My talent is that I can kick things really, really hard. The reason I’m wearing this ankle monitor is because after my mom died, I drove up to a scenic overlook that I hate and I kicked all the cars so hard that their airbags went off. Some of the people in the cars were enjoying the bullshit view and some of them were in the middle of making out. Some of the people stumbled out of their cars mad and bloody-nosed and some of them stumbled out mad, bloody-nosed, and pantless.
”Does the meat work?” the man asks. “Can you drink without them knowing?”
Most humans are selfish clumps of afflictions and grievances. They are tiny candles instead of giant torches. Lemon extract is 170 proof so you’re always okay if the liquor store is closed but the grocery store is open. When that snake ate that soft pretzel, it had a pretzel shaped wad in the middle of its body and everyone pointed and laughed at it as it slithered away.
“I’ve been wasted since Friday and no one has said anything,” I tell him.
He smiles at me, lifts up his pant leg, and shows me his ankle monitor. He’s got the same model as me, black with the red band.
“Time to get some bacon,” he says.
He walks across the street to the grocery store, but unfortunately it’s closed. He keeps pulling on the door, trying to get it open. I walk over and tell him to step aside. I kick the door in and we run through the aisles grabbing whatever we want. An alarm is going off, but by the time the cops show up, we’re far away, sitting up on a hill, sipping on a beer. The moon is large and I’m drunk and talented. Everything below us is beautiful and full of promise.
John Jodzio’s work has been featured in a variety of places including This American Life, McSweeney’s, and New York Magazine. He’s the author of the short story collections, Knockout, Get In If You Want To Live, and If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.