…found jani tapping her fingers. not because she wanted to, or was nervous. she simply thought it might make her look more interesting. toddi looked across the table with cheeks puffed (she always looked ridiculous when she smoked. the act made jani think of a child trying to hold their breath and then failing terribly) and dramatically released the smoke like miners fleeing a cave-in. “well, it’s easy for you to do. your boobs are all like similar and what not.” jani tried not to look at toddi’s oddly mis-shaped left breast. righty was proudly displayed and somewhat pushed up to accent the volume. she never accounted for the difference in size, and lefty was left to roam around the bra like a field mouse on the prairie. jani masked her laughter by pretending to pretentiously respond. “it has nothing to do with boob size. you’re just going to the wrong spots.” more miners fleeing. “like where? i go to the bar. mitchy bingum told me my legs look like giraffes trying to kiss.” the laughter was harder to mask. jani pretended to sneeze. “well, he’s a drunk idiot. that’s what you find at the bar.” “i go to the post office. i go to the gym. no one even looks at me.” toddi took a long drag from her cigarette. her eyebrows furrowed, trying to meet at her nostrils. “you need to go to the grocery store.” the cheeks made jani think of the skin on a frog’s neck. “i go all the time. the check out girl always says she can’t believe i’m not even fatter. men don’t want to talk to a gal with itch cream and a limp.” “no. they don’t. but you can trick them into talking to you while you’re standing …and you can buy itch cream online.” toddi mashed the cigarette with unnecessary force. “…how?” jani took her hand. “just wait in line with like a cucumber and some wine. someone will say something”…

“do you love me?”
“of course. you know that.”
“i know. i know i know that …i just wish there was a way to be sure.”
“you can’t just take my word for it?”
“i can. i believe you. but, like a guarantee would be nice.”
“a guarantee? …how about if we wore like matching rings or something?”
“that’s a good idea. can mine have some diamonds on it though?”
“…yeah. yeah i guess so. are you paying for the diamonds?”
“no. you should pay. you know, to prove you love me.”
“ok. well, if that will prove my love to you…”
“…”
“what?”
“well, it’s just …i wish we could like have our friends witness us putting on the rings.”
“so have all of our friends come out to watch us put them on?”
“yeah, and feed them.”
“who’s paying for that?”
“…”
“ok, so our friends come out, i feed them, we put on the rings, then you believe me?”
“i was thinking we could have like a priest or something there.”
“we’re not religious.”
“i know, but just to make it like super official. so god knows you’re not lying.”
“and then you’ll believe me? rings, friends, god and then we’re good?”
“…”
“what?”
“i was hoping to maybe get the state involved?”
“the state?”
“yeah, so if you divorce me, there’s a lot of paper work and semantics.”
“so that it’s less enticing to leave you?”
“right! right. see, that makes sense, right?”
“wouldn’t you rather just believe that i love you and use that money for a vacation?”
“i knew you didn’t love me.”

i saw a dude a while ago who was asian, and he was also dressed like you would dress if you were going as an asian for halloween and you happened to be ferociously racist. like railroad-era asian, with the cone hat and the weird shoes. he didn’t have the bathrobe/karate uniform type kimono you’d like to see …or the requisite buck teeth, but the rest of the costume was done exceptionally well. he wouldn’t have stuck out to me except that he was walking along talking into the atmospehere – which also isn’t that uncommon. he did have earbuds in his ear, but they were attached to an old 90’s style discman. he was holding it level (so the cd wouldn’t skip) and just talking away. my initial thought was, “oh, that’s sad. he’s challenged and he thinks as long as you have wires going into your ears, you can just chat away and no one will notice.” but he didn’t look disabled, so then i thought he was probably just learning english via CD and the best way to practice was to walk and talk. that made sense, but i wish i would have stopped, “hey, are you learning english?” “no, bitch. i’m so asian, i turned this old ass discman into a phone. that’s right. i’m talking to china right now for free! i’m asian as hell!” and then just roundhoused the bejesus out of me for thinking he was retarded.

the odds of running into a scrotum in public are fairly slim. the odds of seeing a child’s scrotum are even more minuscule. i’m aware that it says “child’s scrotum” on my website now, and i would gladly have shown a picture here if i would have had the good sense to document this monstrosity. airport bathrooms have these koala changing stations where you can lower this plastic table with seat-belts on it and get to work changing your kid …in public. i don’t know why they decided to get the koala involved, but if a koala spokesperson could see what’s happening on these tables they would have some concerns. maybe if i had been prepared it wouldn’t have been so disturbing. somehow i managed to walk into the bathroom, urinate, and zip up without noticing a naked infant strapped to a table in the corner as if ready for some sort of alien experiment. so as i turned, i was caught off guard by the whole scene, but mostly the adult-sized scrotum this child was carrying around. i turned, “whoa!!” then immediate turn away, and all i could think was that i wanted to turn back to see if i had really seen what i thought. it looked like his little penis was sitting on an elephant skin rug. this giant, flaccid sack just hanging around. maybe the only baby i’ve seen is the swimming guy on the nevermind cover, and he’s in water — but even still. is that normal? do babies sometimes have regular-sized scrotums just waiting for some balls to drop down into them? or was this kid just born with a senior citizen’s issue of genitalia?