Bible Campers
I was sitting in front of the gallery. The air was hot. A woman on a Segway sped by and I mentally called her a lazy bitch.
I could’ve crossed the parkway and jumped in the bay to cool off, but I try not to do that. The bay is gross. Jet-ski oil scum floats over water filled with invasive foreign creatures like Zebra Mussels and Alewives. These creatures come into Lake Michigan to breed and die. Rumor has it that the mussels will crawl up into a woman’s vagina and lay eggs. The Alewives are large sardines that also die then wash ashore. The sun dries them out and then dogs eat them. They stink.
People piss and crap in the bay too—The beaches were closed five times over the summer cause of high turd counts—They line their powerboats along the shore, crank up conflicting music, drink beer, and use the bay as their personal toilet. They are fat.
I sat in a ripped out canvas beach chair, my ass-bone numb on the pavement. The heat had me drugged. I saw a school bus turn into the street and start a slow roll towards me. I imagined it not stopping and me not moving. I imagined me being rolled over by it.
The bus pulls over and stops. Bodies pile out and start heading my way. They had to be on their way to the Midway for the rides and weird food.
I watched as they split into groups of two or three and keep moving towards me. The first batch stop in a semi-circle around me. They look young, and from my vantage point, weirdly tall. I’m reminded of this fifty-foot woman movie where all the teenagers got too tall for clothes and had to wear outfits made from movie theatre drapes. They lived in the movie theatre cause it was the only building in town with a ceiling high enough. Fun I bet, being a great big teenager. “Hi, how are you sir?” Says a girl with yellow teeth. It’s a mistake, calling me sir, but I let it slide. She’s just greasing me up by pretending to be interested in me anyway. She wants something.
“Are you hitting on me?” I say before she can get anything else out.
“Uh no” she says looking around for cues from her friends. The Segway lady zooms by again and I could swear flips me off. “Did you see that?” I ask.
“What?”
“Never mind, continue with your flirting,” I say dully, I was probably just imagining it.
“Do you know where we can get a soda?” One girl asks and gets eyeballed by the one with the teeth.
“I mean, have you been saved?” she says.
“Sure,” I say with a dismissive hand, and they move along
Another group approaches “Hello sir, we’re from a bible camp and we have to go around delivering the message, you know, about the lord, and we wanted to know if we could practice on you?”
“Well I wouldn’t mind but a bunch of you already hit on me, so no,” It’s too bad that they came late. I like that she said have to.
It appears that I’m looking at them but actually I’m looking above their heads at the banner trailing behind a small plane, TERROR FREE GAS AND CONVENIENCE, it reads. Convenience is something we all like, and I doubt anyone would argue about terror free anything. They’re advertising the obvious. Something you can’t sell.
“What do you mean, hit on you?” she doesn’t get it but the other two are smirking.
“They gave me their spiel,” I say.
She doesn’t know what this means either. I almost feel like I should let her run thru it, for practice, like she said, but I don’t.
The plane has passed. I’m staring directly into the sun, I look away and am blind.
“NEXT!” I shout.
