She and autonomous bae had been managers at this food distribution company together, before autonomous bae decided to switch it up. Become an EMT.

C still managed the company.

“Well yeah, people paying women 70% what they pay men for the same work,” she continued.

I’d just spent the last month unable to walk. The last six unable to work. Holed up, stalled out, body fucked. Watching lowkey red-pill videos on this exact thing.

“Well that doesn’t really make sense, does it. Wouldn’t that incentivize employers to hire women? If they could do that?”

Needless to say, we were no longer homies.

Looking at me like I’d just dropped a hard-R N-bomb.

Doing an exasperated rage-screech and looking away from me for autonomous bae, hand gesturing like Yo whose mans is this, somebody come get this—

Pushing me away, cutting me off.

“I’m not saying that’s true necessarily,” I said, going small. “Just saying that’s what I heard.

“What my anecdotal experience suggests.

“Like, dudes are fucking idiots, bro. There are less jobs, today, for fucking idiots. No?”

“Well why are you just spewing random stats that you heard?” she said.

“Well isn’t that what you’re doing?”

Outside, to cool off. Pacing-limping with my cane.

Autonomous bae following me out to calm/chastise me.

Or honestly just calm me.

Speaking in a conspiratorial undertone, going I know you got a point, we been over this, but you can’t say it why you gotta say it.

Ex-roomie bro pulling up at some point, speaking over me when I explained my side, speaking directly to the women present like I wasn’t there, like apologizing collectively for our gender, me getting in his face like Talk to me myself ya got something to say you bitch, you virtuesignalling fuck.

Then autonomous bae mad at me all night, even when she came back with and fucked me, going You’re so trash, you’re terrible, but either that fact (my trashness), or the power she felt saying it, or that she thought it but was fucking me anyway making her wetter.

4

BOSS MAN

Late Last Winter (2018)

When my big cuz E’s boss asked him, at midnight on a Sunday, whether he knew anyone able to be in DC by sunup for a weeklong job, he had to have been joking.

Been sorta thinking aloud. Vocalizing his wishful thoughts.

Y’know musing.

But big cuz E’s boss, he didn’t know about this guy.

He didn’t know I’d be just risen, drinking my first coffee of the waking cycle, when that call came in.

That I’d just had a convo with the ma, earlier that day, before I passed out, about how, if nothing gave within the next seventy-two, I’d be left with no choice but to start over.

To give up my spot in Philly, fly back to Cali, and move into her living room.