Things To Do When You Miss Your Girl - The Wizard

The first girl I ever kissed was ugly as fuck.

  I mean she was a dog. She was a little older than me and she had a decent enough body I guess. She wasn't like a pig or anything. I remember she had weird hair but it was the late eighties so there's a pretty good chance everyone had weird hair. But I'm afraid I have to admit she was ugly. Like Eric Stoltz in Mask ugly. Still, she was a few years older than me and had boobs and she wasn't fat and she wanted to kiss me so I kissed her. This was back in the good old days like I said when you could cruise around your suburban neighborhood and just hang out. Back when the suburbs were relatively safe. Back before it was just a ghetto with better paint on the houses. The suburbs weren't filled with government fed fatherless wanna be gangsters and illegals who try to act tough every time some white dude rides by on his bike and then complains to his single mom that the school is being racist against him for making him take the same test the white kids have to take. Back when kids were just being kids not gangsters or Instagram whores or teen idols or whatever else they're all doing now instead of being kids. Hell I was thirteen when I kissed that ugly ass girl. Nowadays there's kids already pregnant at that age.
  We've become a Steve Wilkos show.
  This was the kind of shit I was musing on while I was cruising down the road in Delaware Ohio hoping I'd just run into the girl of my dreams since no matter what I do she makes an excuse to keep herself from being happy.
  That's when I saw the wizard and I was like 'Woah.'
  So I pulled over as quick as I could, parked and ran over to him. I was like 'What's up?' and he goes 'This.' He held his hand out. There was something in it so I held my hand out flat below his. He set the little green pill into the palm of my hand. I was like 'What is this?' just the way you used to say it when something happened that you couldn't believe and he goes 'Take it.' I just looked at him for a few minutes then I looked around to make sure he wasn't just a cop dressed like a wizard the way cops used to dress up like old hippies at Grateful Dead shows just so they could bust young wanna be hippies in the parking lot.
  Like that time in South Carolina when that undercover cop took a few hits off a hookah in the back of this VW van the wanna be hippies had rebuilt with their parents' money. When he told them he was a cop he couldn't even arrest them. He was too stoned. He just kind of fell out of the van when one of the girls pushed him. Then the driver that would fuck her for exactly two and half minutes later that night peeled off and out of the parking lot. None of them got the irony of the situation. Those of us with heads full of acid saw it in blinding swirling color that shows us all who we really are.
  There wasn't anyone else around so I shrugged. It isn't very often you run into a wizard these days and even less often that they give you something.
  Besides I don't have a whole lot to look forward to now that you're gone.
  I took the pill and it went down easy.
  For a few minutes nothing happened. Cars went by. Some chick with her hair colored purple on one side and pink on the other smiled at me or maybe the wizard. I couldn't figure out how she had gotten the color to be perfectly halved like that. Then she was past me and she had a flat ass so I quit watching her. I looked up at the wizard and he too was frowning at her flat ass.
  Then he looked over at me.
  He narrowed his eyes.
  A skeletal hand set itself on my shoulder as he smiled.

   I waited a few seconds for it to kick in just like you should.
  'So what the hell do you want?' he asked me.
  We started walking down the sidewalk as it tilted towards the street. All these people were walking you know just doing their day to day shit. Most of them were looking at their phones. They weren't expecting the sidewalk to tilt. The wizard got a good chuckle at all of them tumbling down the sidewalk into the street. Cars full of other people that don't really exist to me screeched to a halt. The folks from the sidewalk slammed into the parked cars all dyed hair and yoga pants and screams about how someone or another was going to pay for this. A few of the girls had managed to get upright enough to take a selfie that they would no doubt be posting on Instagram after we had passed them. Like anyone gave a fuck since they weren't showing their ass.
  'I'd like an ice cream maker,' I said.
  I could tell he didn't believe me.
  'I'm serious. I'd love an ice cream maker. You know like those kids whose parents force them onto cooking shows so they can act like they succeeded in life by pushing their kids into being successful adults without having the chance to be kids use. The one Gordon Ramsey tells them not to over churn.'
  'How about the infinite secret of the universe and all life in it?' he asked.
  He pulled something out of his robe. Again he put his hand out and again I opened mine beneath it. A small caramel hard candy dropped into the palm of my hand. He smiled as he popped one into his mouth.
  There was a girl hanging there holding onto a light pole. She was screaming at her boyfriend to help her. He was down in the street flat on his back up against the side of a beat up old Honda. The girl in the driver's seat of the Honda was screaming at him but he was smiling at her. I couldn't hear what he said but the driver started to calm down. By the time we reached his screaming girlfriend the guy was punching his number into the Honda driver's phone.
  'I don't really care about that,' I said.
  He nodded and as we walked by he slapped the girl's hand with his walking stick wizard staff thing. It had a dragon carved into the top. The dragon was holding onto a great big white ball that looked like a pearl but I knew it wasn't a pearl. Her tear streaked eyes went wide as she let go of the light pole and tumbled down towards the street. She would have slammed right into her now ex boyfriend but he had already climbed into the front seat of the beat up old Honda and strapped himself in. So he didn't move an inch when she slammed into the fender and then tumbled over it to fall even further. There were buildings on that side of the street so I was pretty sure she would stop falling eventually.
  Something exploded up in front of us. The smoke was going sideways off to our left. I was glad we wouldn't have to walk through it. I got tear gassed once down on campus back before Ohio State had decided that the main drag of campus should be a shopping mall instead of bars with rocking bands. Maybe they had spoken to the wizard and he had shown them the future. Had shown them that by now there wouldn't be any rocking bands anyway. Maybe they had tried to spare us all from the same old bullshit garbage bands that still manage to struggle through a few songs every weekend at the off campus bars where the guys show up to get laid and the girls show up to convince themselves a stiff dick equals true love. If only for the night. Then they could look forward to weeks of Instagram messaging arguments over the girls they followed and the men that sent them messages about how great their asses look online.
  But back in the good old days the strip was nothing but dive bars and pool halls. There was an all night coffee joint where you could chat up junkies at three in the morning. We were outside this little pool hall and there was a group of skinheads in front of us. They were real nigger hating Nazis complete with swastika tattoos and all that. They weren't just labelled as Nazis by crybaby liberals. These Nazis apparently didn't like the fact that a bunch of black guys had gotten into the pool hall in front of them so they started banging on the windows yelling racist shit. The black dudes lifted their shirts to show their pistols but that didn't impress the Nazis. Matter of fact one of the Nazis kicked at the window a few times and finally it broke. So they reached in and grabbed this black kid. They started to pull him out. Blood was flying and people were screaming. It was pretty funny. Until the cops that were patrolling the street in their little van decided that instead of putting themselves in the middle of a fight between irate Nazis and black gangsters they would just tear gas the whole lot. They didn't bother to aim very well so we got a good face full of teargas too.
  Stupid cops should have just let them fight to the death.
  'How about being famous?' he asked me.
  'Why would I want to be famous?'
  'Well you know,' he said, 'girls and fast cars and all that.'
  'Do people with really fast cars drive them really fast? Seems like every time I see a lambo the guy is going really slow so that people can see him in it. Or they park it at a Starbucks so that people can take pictures with it to post online. Like people will be impressed that they're standing beside someone else's car.'
  He nodded thoughtfully.
  'I'd like one of those heavy duty ice cream makers that you can put fruit in. So I can make real fruit ice cream.'
  'Do you eat a lot of real fruit ice cream?'
  'No. It'd be cool if I could make real fruit ice cream bars with it too. Yeah that's what I want.'
  Bodies were tumbling out of the building. They fell to our right. Some of them were still on fire. They slammed into the parked cars down on the street and some of them exploded on impact. It was like some screaming bitching hoard of idiot meteors raining down from a black sky. The end of the world cometh with bad hair and too much makeup. With man buns and capri pants. I almost stopped to take a video. But I'd left my phone in the car. Nobody I wanted to talk to was going to call anyway.
  I wondered for a second if the hundred odd followers I have on the Instagram account with nothing on it would leave a like.
  'How about a million dollars?' he asked.
  I moved the caramel to the other side of my mouth.
  The world tumbled sideways once more only this time it went in the other direction.
  The wizard chuckled.
  Then it was raining people right to left. Some of them were on fire. They were easy to avoid the way all people are always easy to avoid if you have the willingness to avoid them. If you stop pretending you need strangers to make you feel good about yourself. People think that being alone and avoiding humanity makes you lonely but that's bullshit.
  You're only ever lonely if you're missing someone in particular.
  'You don't want to be a millionaire?' he asked as he sidestepped the girl whose ex boyfriend was making out with the driver of the Honda while they waited for the madness of the world to stop.

  'I want an ice cream maker,' I said.
  The girl was screaming about how he had told her he loved her. About how he had promised her the world. He had promised her a nice car and a nice house and that she would never have to work. Thankfully her screams faded away so that we could hear each other talk in peace.
  'That makes real fruit ice cream yeah I know,' he said. 'And you don't even eat real fruit ice cream. Maybe you should think about this a little bit. If you were a millionaire you could buy whatever ice cream maker you want. If you were famous people would make you any ice cream you want.'
  'It's not for me,' I said.
  'Well then you could buy a real fruit ice cream maker and use the rest of the money for whatever you want.'
  'I wouldn't know what to do if I was a millionaire. I'd just waste the money on a bunch of stupid things I thought would make her smile. Like ice cream makers that can make real fruit ice cream. Then I'd end up broke and she'd end up with a bunch of stupid shit she would never use. Or a bunch of shit she really loves that she'd lose in the divorce with whoever she's going to marry.'
  He nodded thoughtfully.
  There was an explosion off to our right above us. One of the burning people must have run into a gas line or something. The sidewalk shook a little bit but it wasn't really any big deal. Besides the sky looked kind of cool all on fire and everything.
  'So I guess true love is out of the question,' the wizard said.
  I nodded. Then I swallowed the last of the caramel hard candy.
  The world tilted itself straight again.
  Car alarms were blaring over the screams of the people still burning as they ran back and forth like nobody had ever told them to stop drop and roll. We picked up the pace to get to the next block. Things didn't look nearly as fucked up over there.
  As we crossed the street the fire trucks finally started to show up.
  The sky turned purple above me and I thought I saw your face.
  After a few minutes I could barely hear the chaos I had left behind.