Plato Shrimp

You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



6/30/2023 8:00 pm  #261


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

3 

I never come when called for dinner. Not going down to that table where everyone is putting food in their mouths. Where they can watch me put it in mine. Where you’ve got to talk or else listen to everyone chew.  

I don’t like any place where everyone is holding knives and forks. 

Where we are so close to each other. 

I remember them dragging me to it one Christmas. Uncles holding me by the wrists. 

“Come, come, sit with family”, they kept saying. “It’s Christmas! It's tradition!” 

I remember being held in a chair and spitting all the turkey they pushed into my mouth onto the table.  

I loved Christmas, just not in my mouth.  

Wanted them to stop watching.  

All of them, chewing. 

 

For awhile, the words I wouldn’t say made some sense. Didn’t say fuck shit or ass for five years. Not after I saw what happened to the retarded boy who got tagged out at first. Who got angry at how good he hit the ball but how bad his legs were at moving him there fast enough. 

His face contorted in anger. '

“Fuck”, he stomped. “Shit on the bag” 

He kicked the dirt and it rose up around him as the teacher approached. 

These were not words you said. We all knew this, but not sure he did.  

Not that it mattered.  

He got disappeared anyways.  

Never showed up in gym class again. And all we could do was continue to get tagged out at first, but now with the outmost politeness. 

Fuck shit ass. 

They were mostly easy words to not say. So small and easy to brush aside. Didn't stand a chance against all the big ones I used to knock them back with. And they continued being easy not to say, even as everyone else got older and started to think maybe I should start. Maybe it was time. Maybe I was old enough for them now. No one was listening to try and get me in trouble anymore. 

But no. I wouldn’t do it. 

Not even when I ruined a good dirty joke by removing them. Or even as the tough kids I hung out with began spitting on the ground and looking at me from the corner of their eyes as I exclaimed ‘shoot’ whenever I got mad. I wouldn’t do it, no matter how often the kids at recess tried to trick me into saying them. 

For five years, didn’t say them. At least not until I did. Until I finally needed to be angry at something. Angry at my body. Angry at all the food I just put in it. Feeling my guts moving around in there, surrounding those poor sandwiches like wolves. Needing to go somewhere and scream at everything that was inside me behaving so terribly. 

In my bedroom, screaming them all into a pillow. All the words I shouldn’t say, one after another. Filled the pillow with a foul dampness I could squeeze from it days later if I wanted. Words I would soon be flinging at anyone who I felt deserved them. Who was everyone.  The whole world with its eyes now darted out from these sharpened words I could now kill it with. 

Fuck shit ass. 

I was saying them.  

But now there needed to be three new words to live in fear of anyone ever hearing me say. Words that might get everyone imagining me eating somewhere in a dark room. Worried about crumbs.  

Three good words to horrify me. Keep me indoors. Keeping my mouth closed, just in case. 

Eat. Food. Hungry.  

Much harder words to never say. 

 

7/03/2023 11:44 am  #262


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom



My grandmother tells me to eat my soup and I start a fight. Remind her it's a liquid and to choose her words better. Point at the can in the sink, in case she already forgot. The one she just put there. The one she filled from the tap. That she used to make this thing she's offering to me. Mostly water.

With soup, you don’t do what she just said I should do. This is clear. Nothing to chew. It doesn't count. No need for that word. Stop it.

But she keeps telling me to come and eat some. Eat my soup. To stop being silly. To stop arguing about everything. 

“No one says come drink your soup.” Makes a face like this is the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. “You say come and eat it. Come and eat your soup” 

I keep explaining but it just makes her say that word more and more. Makes her explain how its food, so of course you eat it. Makes her start bragging how it tastes good and how I must be hungry smelling it all through the house.

She makes good soup, she says. 

The most eatable soup in the world. 

“Eat eat” 

I slap my hands over my face. Grab my ears. Refuse to keep listening to this and run from the room.  

Wait in the hallway.  

Wait for her to do what I know she's going to do.

Watching from around the corner as she slowly takes the last slice of cake from the fridge. The slice I wanted but hadn’t yet been able to sneak away.  

Watch her finish every last bit of, it. Wait for the perfect moment to jump into the room and catch her. Catch her while her plate’s still dirty with icing.  Her eyes still full of cake delight. Crumbs still stuck to her lips. As if any more evidence was even needed. 

Red handed. 

I point my finger at her and she points hers back at me. Start another fight. Tell her how she always steals the last slice of cake and her yelling back she hasn’t eaten cake in years. 

“I don’t even remember what it tastes like!” 

Keep yelling at eachother. 

She keeps saying that word. 

The fight might never end.

     Thread Starter
 

7/04/2023 12:22 pm  #263


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

WALK DUMB DOGGY – Or how about the backyard, idiot 

There’s something in our lawn out back our dog doesn’t like. I’ve seen him running across it on his hind legs, so only two of his four feet need touch it. Trying to jump over fences to escape the feel of our grass against his skin. Sometimes he starts to levitate, as if hoping to drop his poop and piss mid air down upon it. Thinking he won’t come back down. Willing himself to float back up to our backdoor once he’s finished with his business, his paws untouched. Thankfully ungrabbed by whatever monsters live down there. Something prickly maybe. Something that warns him to stop shitting and pissing on it. A kind of vengeance bristling in all those weeds. A high pitched threat of murder only dogs can hear. 

But dogs don’t fly and he still doesn’t know this. Mid-levitation, gravity always pulls him back down. Right into the center of what he hoped to not touch today. Surrounded by grass and looking around as if he doesn’t know how to escape. A sight that would make anyone sad. 

So now he hesitates. Stops cold as soon as we let him out. Won’t go down there anymore. Just stands on the porch looking over his shoulder at us, as we peer through the window at him. Pathetically rapping the glass with our knuckles, louder and louder. Hoping a sudden noise might scare him down the stairs. Out into the grass. But he doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t seem to understand what we want. 

He’s much too used to our knocking by now. A sound that means nothing to him. Just us constantly hitting the glass for no reason. Hopelessly hitting it, while he keeps staring back at us. Blinking. Refusing to even look towards the lawn in front of him. Waiting for us to throw up our hands in defeat and just give him another walk already. Even though we hardly have the time for this nonsense. 

“Why are you like this”, I ask him. My girlfriend asks him. Everyone who we pass on the street wants to ask him.  

They don’t always say it. But I can see the question in their eyes. And also the answer. 

We all think he’s dumb. 

I do. She does. Everyone. 

But sometimes, I’m not so sure. Start to doubt myself. When I look real close, I notice my dumb dogs eyes maybe aren’t so dumb. Always shining, like they are thinking things. Things that are maybe smart, but the rest of his body just hasn't bothered with yet. 

His body which rolls onto his back to show us his cock. 

“Look at it”, they demand, “Look at my cock” 

And so we look. We look at this dumb cock, that looks back at us. 

Do what this dumb dog tells us to do. 

His eyes shining. 

Blinking. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/04/2023 1:41 pm  #264


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

WEEKENDS 

Sometimes fog rolls in while you’re walking your dog. Get to talking about what we’ve done on our day off, unable to see further than a few houses. Tell her I wrote another chapter. Walking a little behind. 

“What’s this one about?” 

I hesitate.

“It’s about this fucking dog never shitting in our backyard” 

“Of course”, she says, stopping as the dog shits on our neighbours lawn. We hoped we could make it to the park. “So, you wrote something and got to listen to music all day. So a success....right?” 

I tell her I fucking hate music. 

“Have you at least been reading anything?” 

Not for months. Remind her what happened. Had been reading just fine, until the dog pissed on my book.  

“Maybe if it was the kind of book that looked good covered in piss, I would have continued....but it’s Dracula. That’s just weird” 

I’m a forlorn thing. With a whizz-yellow book. And a day with nothing to show for it. 

We walk in the direction of swings. Haven’t been on one for awhile. Don't know what possessed me. But she laughs at how happy I suddenly look. Not caring that the chain is squeaking, making a noise like it’s telling me I’m too old for this  

“Grow up”, it keeps saying. Every time I get a little higher. “Grow up”. 

But I don’t stop. Keep swinging. Waiting for the perfect moment to jump off. 

Me and my bad knees, soon to be flying through the fog. Maybe until I disappear.  

Or maybe landing right at my girl's feet. Have her carry me home once my legs crumple beneath me. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/04/2023 10:49 pm  #265


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

JUST ANOTHER KEYTAR PLAYING FUCKCUNT



I recognize you, even without the keytar. But I prefer to think of you holding one forever. The same one you toured Northern Ontario with. Playing New Years up there to no one. Just three drunks at a bar looking the other way as you scream out “Let’s paaarrtyyyyy”. Pop a champagne cork on stage before announcing your next song to no applause. 

Bring in 1994 with a cover of Black Dog. Played on your keytar, as the three drunks at the bar sink just a little bit lower. But never turn around. 

I still laugh thinking about that.  

You fuck. 

You cunt.  

     Thread Starter
 

7/05/2023 12:24 am  #266


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom


 

7/05/2023 7:50 pm  #267


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

7/06/2023 11:13 am  #268


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

2 

I think maybe you shouldn’t have worried so much about how we folded that dish cloth. Taking photographs of it. Collecting evidence you can send to the authorities so they can agree we did it all wrong. The ones I imagine you hope you can arrange executions with. Rid yourself of those who don’t do clean up the way you do clean up. A bunch of shadowy no-friend cunts just like you. Probably waiting for moments like this, like you would too if they let you stand in the shadows with them (which they don’t). Delighting over being copied on the kind of photos you send to us in your fits of raging, baby-toothed tantrum. Photos of a dish cloth folded wrong, next to photos of a dish cloth folded right. All of us looking at eachother and rolling our eyes and immediately moving it to the trash. Immediately start to talk of how bad your breath stinks. What we think it smells most like. Like an ulcer eating a dead raccoon. 

You probably shouldn’t have worried about that dish cloth. 

Instead, maybe you should start bothering them with more important matters. Maybe you might think to ask these authorities, who you think know so much, how normal people walk. Maybe they are the only ones who can stop you from being one of those weirdo’s who do it without moving their arms. Just letting them dangle, like you’re frightened you might suddenly realize you have a body down there. That you’ve got something else attached to that festering brain of yours. Some long gangly thing no one wants to touch. 

It was just a dish cloth. 

In regard to worker productivity, you should know the way you walk is making it much too easy for everyone who works here to do impressions of you. We’ve been wasting so much time pretending to be Scott. All of us doing it at the same time. Strutting around the office with our arms just hanging there. Darting back and forth with our arms just hanging there. Bumbling in circles and looking like we might cry because we don’t know what to do with life.

Our arms just hanging there.  

And it’s all because of a dish cloth we aren’t getting anything done anymore. Can’t help ourselves from being Scott. A particularly fun thing to be, as long as we’re not actually you. All of us doing it together. Sometimes almost bumping into each other there are so many of us being you at the same time. A hysterical sight. A whole warehouse full of arm danglers. A nightmare of Scotts. The only nightmare you can really, truly laugh at. Sometimes laughing so hard, our arms start to shake and move with the tremors of our sudden happiness.  

Feels good, but the illusion suddenly broken.  

Can’t be Scott when that’s what we’re doing. Laughing louder and louder and louder. 

So please don’t think it’s the dish cloth we are having such a great time with back here. I can see your tiny head poking through the door, trying to collect more evidence. Unsure what could possibly be so funny. Not sure if that’s what laughter is supposed to sound like. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/06/2023 12:44 pm  #269


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

     Thread Starter
 

7/11/2023 4:23 pm  #270


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

3 

Remember that look I gave you? That really long one? I know you must have seen it because I wouldn’t stop giving it to you. Not even looking away when you noticed it. Boring its message directly into your skull. Carving it into your head like it was soft as an old apple. Something you could read burned directly into your flesh if you dared to forget it. 

How I was going to break you. 

That I knew exactly how to do it. 

So just say ‘no chit chat’ one more time, motherfucker. Keep thinking you’re going to start counting the words that come out of this mouth. How about you put that worry where it better belongs. Maybe all this strategy I’ve got coiled up silently inside of me. The years of breaking you into pieces I’ve got planned.

You shouldn't have let me get too quiet. Now you don’t stand a chance. 

Because don’t you know? 

You play a keytar. 

And I am The Beast.  

4 

They can hear you screaming all the way back in the warehouse. Can’t make out what you’re saying or why it’s happening. Know you’ve got me trapped in the room it’s coming from. Maybe I’m finally done for. Gone too far. 

He made me follow him in there. Where the boss was sitting behind her desk looking confused why I was now standing in front of her. Scott, so out of breath he had forgotten what I had done to make him go so crazy. Ears so red they looked like they might explode. So angry nothing but gibberish came out of him when he finally started to speak. 

“But Scott, why is he here? What did he do?” 

He didn't seem to know anymore, but I did. It was because I told the motherfucker to stop talking to me like that. And because I looked at him like I was going to smash his glasses right into his face.  

That’s why I was here.  

But I kept this to myself. He didn’t need my help. That’s why he brought me here after all. Because I was never any help to anyone. So just let him sputter. Waited for him to completely unravel since I knew it would happen fast.  

And it happened real fast. 

Soon screaming.  

Puffing out his chest and trying to fight me.  

Crumpling into a chair when he finally realized he was completely broken and maybe needed to sit down for a long long time. 

“I messed up, I messed up, I really messed up”, just muttering this to himself, with his head in his hands, over and over. 

I pointed at him.  

“That’s Scott”, I explained. “And I can’t work with that” 

What a fucking loser. 



Everyone wanted to know what it looked like. Everyone in the warehouse wanted details. So I told them all about his big red ears and the weird sounds he made. How I got to see him try and start a fist fight and how his shirt stayed tucked in even as he pushed his chest up against me. That somehow his face seemed even smaller the closer he brought it to mine. 

Everyone immediately giving sympathy for his bad breath.  

“Oh my god, it would have been so close”, they cry out. 

And I explain how they have no idea. Tell them how it was much worse than just being closer. As if he was expelling more than usual out of fear. Sweating his breath stench from his pores. Squirting it from his anal glands. Drenched in it. 

“He might have had a better day if he let me finish my lunch”, I say. “Or maybe just didn’t talk to me like that” 

None of us even notice as Scott slinks from the office. Gets into his car to drive away from here, immediately howling in pain along to the radio. “Despite all my raaaaAAAAAAGE....” Pounding his fists on the steering wheel the whole way to the restaurant where his wife has planned his birthday dinner.  

Because of course it’s his birthday. 

And how kind of him to do this for me, on what's supposed to be his day. 

I appreciate it. 

No, I didn’t get you anything. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/14/2023 3:04 pm  #271


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

6

I’ve learned so much about you, Scott. You should scream more often. The boss is telling me everything. Doing her best to make sure I feel sorry for you. That maybe this will make me nice come Monday when we return to work. 

“He doesn’t like himself. He doesn’t like his life. He doesn’t have any friends” 

She can see she’s got my attention.  

“He thinks his daughter is a slut. Thinks his son is going to grow up to be just like him, which he knows isn’t good.” She sighs. “This job is all he has” 

She’s hoping I won’t be too hard on you. Tells me you’re already going to be hard enough on yourself. That this will be punishment enough. A weekend of waking up covered in night sweats. If I only knew how hard you're taking this. 

“He knows he messed up. He feels bad” 

She thinks after today we should never speak of it again. 

But I’m not so sure.  

Remind her of the things you said. 

How you tried to fist fight me. 

That you're clearly a menace and bad at your job. 

That I don’t like you 

And so she keeps telling me things.  So many things. How your birthday was already going to be bad enough. Didn't want dinner with your wife in the first place. Because she’s bad in restaurants. Your wife who I didn’t think I’d ever met, but who she lets me know is that short, weird woman who I sometimes see here, stomping around in cargo shorts. Makes sure I know exactly which one. The one with the bad teeth who is always frowning. The one who you are now eating horse tartar with, by candlelight. 

“You’ve got to take it easy on him”

 I think of your spoiled appetite. Of your terrible life. But don’t say whether I forgive you or not. Just stay real quiet, waiting for her to tell me everything she’s got. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/15/2023 1:04 pm  #272


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

Epilogue

I’m annoyed you couldn’t go out into the parking lot if you thought you might die. Complaining about a pain in your chest, then sinking onto the couch at the end of the day. While I’m trying to go home. While it’s just me alone here with you, leaving me as the only one who might save you. 

I look at you crumpled on the cushions. Your eyes closed. Grimacing.

Walk past like I don’t see anything.

Make sure to keep the lights on for you when I leave.

Even all these years later I still talk about you, Scott. Brag to my friends about how they've never had worse. How they would have done exactly the same thing and how I’m not actually sure if I thought you might really die. If I was relieved when you didn’t. Don’t tell them any of that, but can talk for hours and hours about how awful you were. I remember everything.

“Poor Scott”, they always say when I finish.

It’s what they all call you. Even though I’ve thought up so many better names for them to use.

     Thread Starter
 

7/15/2023 1:45 pm  #273


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

XXX 

The first time I got drunk, I remember peeing into a toilet, weaving gently back and forth and thinking how I finally knew how this felt. Not knowing if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling as I kept peeing and peeing and peeing. Only feeling very happy that I now understood. 



Didn’t even taste it. Rye and ginger. About four of them. Didn’t even know that was what my uncle was bringing me until my third. When he asked “How are you feeling?” 



You could say it was weddings that made me dance. The first time at my mother's to Randy. Slow dancing all night long but my feet moving fast at the same time. Almost tap dancing in place while swaying closely back and forth with my cousin. All the grown ups watching, thinking I was the greatest dancer of all time. Calling me a little Fred Astaire and clapping. 

The second time, also a wedding. A teenager now and I remember my Aunt Brenda’s face as I danced up to where she stood in her wedding gown. Slurring congratulations into her ear. Making her laugh because I was swearing and not being myself at all. Letting everyone take photographs of me. 

Yes. Maybe it’s just weddings that makes everyone love me enough to get me dancing.  

     Thread Starter
 

7/17/2023 10:22 am  #274


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

*

Didn’t tell my friends what I had done at Brenda’s wedding. Only told them that I got a complimentary bottle of wine I was keeping in my closet. Hoping they’d ask me to drink it in front of them. 

No one wanted that.  

They volunteered Mohit to drink it instead. No one believing any of his stories that he sometimes drank when he was alone.  

“Give it to Mohit, Give it to Mohit” 

Garrett telling him he had to drink the whole thing by himself. I didn’t agree but didn’t bother suggesting he share. Didn’t want them to know I wanted some.  

Because I didn’t drink. 

Just sat in a playground, watching him with my bottle.  Everyone on a swing but me. Sitting in the gravel, waiting for my friend to get drunk. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/19/2023 4:49 pm  #275


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

* 

You’ve got to drink something when the all-time losers finally win. An unexpected sports victory in a house with no parents. You and all your friends pounding on your friends walls with their fists. Just got to do something. Gets you filling up a juice glass to the top with brandy. An invitation to take it all in one gulp. Because that’s how you see them do it in the movies. At least that’s what you think. 

But they never gulp as much as this.  

Enough to get the entire room of my friends drunk. All of them suddenly gone mad. Garrett humping a book and pulling off his belt and whipping Jason like a slave. Chasing him on all fours up the stairs. Leaving me alone with Underwear Iain on the couch with his cock out. Flipping it around and telling me to suck it. Opening his mouth and vomiting a whole, unchewed chicken breast up onto his naked chest. 

I wonder where these people came from? If I should still be here? Roll Iain's naked body onto its side and leave him on the carpet he collapsed onto.  

Start walking home by myself. Almost getting lost on these once familiar roads. Falling into some bushes. Thinking this is something I could get used to. Leaves in my hair. Grabbing at branches. Not sure where my feet are. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/19/2023 5:54 pm  #276


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

UNDERWEAR IAIN’S LAST STAND 

The summer before we all went away to college, we would sit out on the highschool bleachers every night. The bleachers we never sat on once when we were still at the school. Smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and Underwear Iain down below us, masturbating in the chalky dust. No one even bothering to peek down through the slats to laugh at him anymore. Not the kind of memory you want to be bringing with you to a new town. 

“I’m done with being me”, I made sure to tell everyone. 

Suddenly grunting and squirting underneath and Underwear Iain probably wishing he was someone else right about now too. 

Sometimes you can taste how badly things need to change, like pennies in your mouth. Like a cigarette you stole from your father, smoked right down to your fingers. 

     Thread Starter
 

7/19/2023 10:25 pm  #277


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

Uh...is Underwear Iain based on a true story?


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

7/19/2023 10:31 pm  #278


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

Rock wrote:

Uh...is Underwear Iain based on a true story?

Don't you wish it wasn't?

     Thread Starter
 

7/19/2023 10:41 pm  #279


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

There are so many Underwear Iain stories....and I'm telling them all!


 

     Thread Starter
 

7/21/2023 8:58 am  #280


Re: LOVE, crumbsroom

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND: UNDERWEAR IAIN

Origins 

He wasn’t always Underwear Iain. 

In kindergarten he was Run Home Iain. Never walking with anyone else on the way back for lunch. Always running ahead of us. Always in a green striped shirt, arms pumping and running like his mother might lock the door on him if he didn’t get there quick enough. 

He was also Too Many Maps Iain. Because he had too many maps. All of us getting toys for Christmas. And him getting road maps of Ontario, which he would unfold and study for hours at a time with a magnifying glass. 

And then, in highschool, The Expressionator. That face that would swing around and look everywhere, sneering and squinting, eyebrows exploding, whenever someone called his name.  Like he’d been caught in the middle of a dark fantasy. Almost panting. 

The Expressionator was perfect. Who he was always meant to be. Should have been known as that forever. 

But when he started pulling his pants down, and asking if we wanted him to keep going, doing it with greater and greater frequency, even though by now we’d told him he should maybe stop, he could hardly be The Expressionator any longer. 

That was so yesterday. 

It was time for yet another change. It is the way of life. Be born, die and be born again. 

Underwear Iain. 

Not always wearing underwear. 

     Thread Starter
 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum