Fiction: 1994 Skate Heaven, PA

By Cake Sanchez

There’s a third Nicholas brother on the crosswalk. I’m sketching ear tufts while the taxi driver complains, honking and slurring and protesting that his left nut could dance better than this bum. He’s doing tricks atop his shopping cart now, conjuring bananas out of thin air. The stoplight shines on him like Broadway or a police helicopter’s beacon, depending on which way you turn your head. Nobody’s moving him except for the angel on his shoulder, and nobody wants to move him either except for my driver (reaching for the glove compartment) because everyone knows this is the last real showman left.

I think about my father turning to the opening page of Tropic of Cancer. He points to the words and tells me this is life. He points to the insulation hanging out of the wall and says that’s real life. He points to the book again and tells me not to get the two confused. 

 

You’re a raccoon by the time I get to the hotel. The stench in the room is overwhelming, although you promised you’d clean your suit before we met. Assorted empty Monster cans litter a pathway to the bed like corner store luminarias. Does this make me your Christ? Christ, I hope not. Christ. We used to argue about that, him, the whole shebang. I think about my mother, who never liked Christ as a messiah but as a tekton. The moral of the bible is to trust dumpster divers, that’s what she told me. I open a window before we lay down together.

 

Tomorrow morning we’re on the convention floor, attending Bowser Puma’s panel about FVN production. I jot down some notes about player/reader juxtaposition and glance at your phone; you’re watching skate footage from a church gym in Latrobe. It has less than 500 views, I don’t understand how you’re even aware of this. Some guy fails to clear a trashcan when you nudge me, saying you can’t take Puma seriously with the glasses on his head. I don’t see the problem; everyone has the right to clear vision. Jesus, you say, I’m talking about the ones on his sona. You call him cartoonish and I remind you to take a look around, but you scoff and say it’s different than that.

 

You inform me–for the fifth time in as many months–that David Chou broke his own nose to get the right shade of red and I say so what? Dylan didn’t punch holes in his esophagus so he could hit the right notes and anyway what’s that got to do with Furries? You say Dylan was a fucking carny who dreamt about hopping trains but couldn’t even look a man in the eye and I just mutter whatever to that. A security guard tells us we have to leave the panel.

 

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the people who don’t make an effort with their suits. Not that you’d understand, given I paid for yours, but it just grates on me. We’re ridiculed enough as it is, deviant sickos, chemical bombers, etc. A half-assed costume isn’t helping. A young girl floats past us in the lobby with some Spirit Halloween fox ears and a My Chemical Romance tee. How much do you think that cost her, I ask you. Enough to make her happy, you say. She glomps another girl down the hall and I get a little nauseous.

 

We stop for burgers on our way back to the room. I used to go to school with the guy making our order. You don’t know this, and I don’t feel inclined to tell you, but his name’s Terry. There was this lesser nature to him, like if I was a paycheck he was pittance and shit he might not’ve even been that. He was more like spare change in a human statue’s donation cup. Terry The Single Quarter. Terry The Fourth of a Man. He had this sick, cute smile only drowning dogs carry. Terry took the welfare lunch every time, he’d share his beans with me. He was always doodling, never not doodling, one time I let him doodle on my face and–anyway he was an unfortunate kid. He hands us our order with a little twirl in his wrist, north stars in his eyes. My burger tastes like jury nullification; it goes down squealing. You get some ketchup on your paws but neither of us mind. You already smell terrible.

 

 

 

 

 

Cake Sanchez is a spry Dutch rabbit flowing across the sandia knolls. He's in his debut year of writing, and he recently busted his shoulder taking a German Suplex.