Two doors down, people were having a party in their yard. It sounded like it was going pretty well. Maybe too well.
As I stood in my kitchen, I heard something loud hit my house. CLUNK. I had to investigate. As a father. As a man.
I stopped individually wrapping the miniature strawberry cupcakes we had baked earlier and grabbed the nearest weapon--a plastic auger type anchor for a beach umbrella-- banged open the screen door. and stepped outside. Clad in boxer briefs and nothing else, my flaccid penis pushing weakly against the revealing cotton blend, my body the shape of a small circus bear (furry, retired, and well-fed), I advanced on the night. The night recoiled.
I got 3 steps and realized that the sound had been the accompanying clank that comes when our automatic sprinkler turns off. So I saw nothing. I found nothing. And that thought, the rhythm of the phrase, “found nothing,” made me think of that song from A Chorus Line when Morales sings about her acting teacher who she hated and upon hearing of his death sang she “felt nothing.”
3 verses later, I’m inside, My family, safe. I completed wrapping the little pink cakes and retired to my living room for a beer, the company of my wife, and a viewing of the Maze Runner on HBO.
