The Dishes

“Last week, there was a trans woman at Pride whose tits were covered in fur,” a friend tells me, flicking ash into a plastic 5-gallon bucket.

I scowl, imagining big hairy boobs. “Don’t start a fire,” I say.

“Shush it,” he scolds. “And you and I both know there’s someone out there who can’t wait to bury their face in those big bush-titties,” he says. “That’s what counts.”

I light a cigarette. Wonder if I should prioritize the pleasure of a stranger’s kink over my reaction to a pair of furry tats. “Yeah, well. Everyone wants to do ayahuasca, but no one wants to do the dishes.”

He stares at me for a good, long time. “Sometimes I imagine my friends as babies,” he says. “Then I imagine what it’s like to hold them.” He crushes his cigarette against the bottom of his flip flop.

I think about the baby-version of him, his legs soft and fat.

“That dude we bumped into earlier? From high school? He said he was living the dream, but all I heard is that he can’t get hard anymore,” I say.

He laughs. “If you never assume importance, you never lose it. That’s Lao Tzu.”

“And if you assume?” I ask, annoyed.

“Stop doing the dishes,” he says, tossing his still-smoking cigarette into the plastic bucket.