This whole shit-show came to life because I preordered a twenty-dollar cinnamon bun. Say that anywhere else and you’d sound like an idiot. But this is New York, baby!!! You get bent over the barrel and then convinced you just ate free ice cream. Truly, the American Way. I ordered the fucking thing in a drunken stupor early Sunday morning as the sun rose. This was after a long night of tequila and dirty fucking, as I entrapped myself with a middle-aged Venezuelan whore, Marisol. The plan was to go to bed early Sunday night, but after a few swipes on Tinder, I found myself at the Whiskey Brooklyn being greeted by a drunk, wobbly, and lively Latina.

Marisol told me she had been sitting at the bar for a few hours. She works in advertising, doing what, I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t even listening. My eyes were fixed on the sexy blonde playing ski-ball across the bar. She had great legs. Shiny, thick, strong. They were wrapped high at the thigh by denim shorts that really busted out her ass. If I had any sense, I would’ve wished Marisol good luck and darted for the busty chick my age. But she was with a doofus. He was tall, lanky, and smiled like my uncle Albie after he got his first toupee. Like Joe Biden holding a soft-serve vanilla cone. Though, that doofus was the real winner.

“So, baby, what’re you drinkin’?” Marisol asked me. Baby. Five minutes in. I was supposed to go to sleep early.

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

“Papa, two tequila sodas.”

The bartender nodded.

“Thank you, papa,” she said to him.

I pulled my card from my wallet and she immediately objected, clutching my hand.

“No, baby. I’m buying you a drink.”

Looking back at me, she smiled real sheepishly like a young schoolgirl, even though she was fifty. She wore lots of jewelry and just as much, if not more, makeup. Clearly a drunk. Clearly alone and hunting young guys on the apps. She clocked me up and down as I stood leaning my arm on the stool next to her. She admired me, and I sadly reveled in it. She might have been lit up and desperately horny. I too was lonely and downtrodden. I sort of felt bad for her. But as I heard her yapping to some other drunkard next to us, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was just feeling bad for myself. She was alive. We’re all so strange. It really breaks my heart sometimes. Marisol wanted a young man’s cock. I wanted to give her rose petals. Oh, how full of shit I was.

The bartender brought us some drinks. Marisol gabbed on about how Brooklyn used to be. How it had heart. Even before she moved there from the Lower East Side. Between Brooklyn rants, she told me I was strong, that I was sexy. She teased me for being shy, as I kept nodding and replying ‘mmhmm thanks’ when she complimented me. She was totally devoid of emotional intelligence. Zero sense that I was fighting a battle. She didn’t care. She was a drunk lady who wanted to get fucked. Simple, yet so drunk, that after a sip of her tequila-soda, she called it quits. I ended up quickly finishing her glass before she yanked me out of there twenty minutes later.

Her apartment was sad. Centrally located in Williamsburg, but run-down and unkept. Everything was either old or just downright cheap. 99-cent store plates and cups. Temu appliances. Torn wallpaper hanging off the dining room wall. She was divorced. Her only child, Gina, had passed from leukemia, and her husband, Eddie, essentially ‘killed himself’.

“Gina threw him into a spiral, you know?” slurred Marisol, as she sloppily took off her bra while walking into her closet.

“He wouldn’t look at me anymore. Then he started hanging with these guys from work. They were bad news, papa. Dope heads. They’d bounce from job to job, pouring concrete.”

I laid there on her bed and felt this grotesque, dark orb of shame whirling up in my gut. I wanted to get the fuck out of there. But after getting back to her place, we got really hot. I lifted her up on the counter and started working her, but she stopped me, insisting she get undressed first. The busty blonde would’ve just fucked me there in the doorway or on the counter. Now, I was sitting there on the edge of Marisol’s bed with a steel brick in my lap while she went on about her dead daughter and her addict ex-husband. I kept pulsing as she undressed, even though I was in my head trying to flip the switch off. I thought of war. Death. Horrible things that would get my head out of the gutter and strangle the horniness into submission. It was almost midnight. I was supposed to go to bed early.

“One day, I came home from work and he was nodding off on the couch. I didn’t even think twice. I said, no way, papa. I’m outta hea.”

“Marisol,” I said.

She shut right up. I couldn’t see her, but soon she stumbled out of the closet in nothing but red panties. Her tits bounced as she hit the brakes in front of me.

“Get over here,” I commanded.

She smirked and got on her knees, giggling and crawling to me on the edge of her bed. There was no more mention of death, of exes, or regrets or woes, only the opposite. We dodged death, deeply.

***

I got back to my place after 2 AM. I must’ve left the TV on. Antoine Doinel was talking to nobody as I walked in. My head was tarnished with shit. I felt disgusting and couldn’t sleep, so I scrolled through Instagram. I stumbled upon a page that made specialty cinnamon buns. Pre-Order Only. Pick Up On Time or GET FUCKED! Fat, tattooed lesbians who look like Matty Matheson. Forty-thousand dollars a month on rent. A twenty-dollar cinnamon bun. I was amused, deeply ashamed, and drunk. So I ordered one. The email confirmation was for Tuesday at 3pm. Thank God I don’t have a job, I thought. The fucking pricks.

***

That Tuesday, I got there early. On the walk over, I had a few kisses from Pennifer Lopez, so I stumbled to the pickup window, glazed and stoned. On the other side, a chubby hispanic guy nodded to me before sliding the glass.

“Gotchu in fifteen minutes, bro.”

“Sounds good. Thank you.”

I stood next to the window, pulling my phone from my pocket, I unlocked it, and cycled through a myriad of apps, doing nothing in particular other than sustaining my habit. Posts on Twitter said we’re going to invade Iran. A man on Instagram finished a hotdog-sculpture called the Glizzy Gladiator. I was mid-scroll when an Asian girl cut in line next to me.

“For cinnamon buns?” she quietly asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she nodded.

She had a case on her iPhone that had bunny ears, and her hair was cobalt blue. She wore neon orange clothes and definitely seemed autistic. Like a walking highlighter used for taking notes on the subway system. I kept pulling my phone out of my pocket and then shoving it away. I was beginning to think I was the autistic one. After a few others joined us in line, she looked up at me and our eyes met. She looked away.

“Have you tried one before?” she asked me.

“What?”

“A cinnamon bun.”

“Oh. No,” I said. I was too stoned.

“They’re really good. I’ve gotten one delivered every Tuesday since the second week of September.”

“Wow. That’s awesome.”

“Yeah! They use organic ingredients. No seed oils. The icing is soooooo good. It’s like food porn.” she smiled at me, emphasizing porn.

“I love food porn,” I told her.

“Ugh, who doesn’t.”

The chubby hispanic man popped out from the takeaway window, calling me over. I gave him my name, and he gave me my bun in a brown paper bag. I turned around to the highlighter chick and said goodbye.

“Enjoy the cinnabun!”

“Thanks,” I said.

***

Walking to the train, I had a strange feeling that I would see her again. Just an hour later, walking through Williamsburg, I did. She was carrying her brown bag crossing N 3rd at Bedford when she looked up and saw me. She wore big, pink headphones and smiled wide, pointing at me.

“You!” she shouted, getting closer to me. “You! Cinnabun guy!”

“Heyyyyy,” I said, inching toward McCarren Park.

“Oh my god, do you live around here?”

“I do.”

“That’s so funny!” her eyes twitched. “What’s your name?”

“Jake.”

“I’m Hannah!”

I kept inching away and it incited her to stroll next to me. The sun was shining down on us, and I felt like the Gods were playing with me again. I thought of Marisol and her big breasts. I thought of how insecure I am. That I keep feeling this shame or this pity for others, when they themselves seem happy and confident. I am projecting my wretchedness onto the world, and it keeps laughing at me. Throwing crazies, laughter, and what-have-you right back at me, saying, cut the shit, you damn phony.

“Are you Italian?” asked Hannah.

“Yeah. Are you?” I asked.

Hannah laughed, peering at me. She felt very familiar, but totally brand new. An insane young lady, and this was the eighth week in a row that she ordered a cinnamon bun from a gaggle of wild lesbians. She looked like a hall monitor escorting me to the principal’s office. I was convinced people were going blind as they passed us. They’d check the two of us out, then squint as the sun bounced off her neon orange get-up. The proletariat was exploding with life. McCarren Park was humming and as off the hinges as she seemed; we blended right in.

“No. I’m Korean!”

“What kind of Korean?” I asked.

She stared at me confused, as though that wasn’t a real question.

“What do you mean?”

“Like…North…South—”

“I’m South Korean.”

“Cool!”

“What’d you think? I’m from North Korea?”

“You never know,” I said. “Would be pretty cool.”

“Have you ever met a North Korean dissident?” she asked.

“No, you could’ve been the first.”

She laughed. By then, we were at the steps of my brownstone. She was still there at my side.

“Well, this is my stop.”

She looked up at my building, her eyes darted from one window to another. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to a text from Marisol. I don’t know why I gave her my number. She asked if I wanted to come over and “get a pump in”. I wanted to throw up. Hannah invited herself up to my apartment to eat our cinnamon buns. With reckless abandon, I nodded sure, sure, and let her up to my place.

She shut the door and put her bag down on the counter. I walked over to the fridge to grab us a beer, and upon turning around she was right there, shoving her tongue down my throat and grabbing my cock through my jeans like a leopard.

“Hannah,” I said.

But she didn’t stop. She yanked at my flaccid dick through the denim and sucked on my neck. I waddled toward the couch with her stuck to me, sinking her claws in.

“Hey dammit!” I shouted, pulling her off me. She moaned at the sound of my voice.

“Now one second, for chrissakes. What the hell are you doing?”

She reached out for me.

“I’m sorry,” said Hannah. Slowly inching her hand down toward my loins, and this time my body responded.

“I’m a sad excuse for a man,” I said aloud, not realizing it.

Gargling through her words, she clutched my forearm.

“You don’t talk like that,” she said, taking every last bit.

***      

A little while later, we were lying on my couch and eating the cinnamon buns. She wasn’t wrong. They were divine. They reminded me of New Jersey.

“Are you religious?” asked Hannah, wiping icing from her lip.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Are you religious? Do you believe in God?”

"I don’t know, why?”

“Because…I should know these things,” said Hannah, sticking her fork into another piece.

“Why should you know if I’m religious?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re the one,” she said.

I was certain there was a God, and now I was praying he would smite me.

 “Huh?” I didn’t know what to say.

“Yeah. The one? Like the love of my life, duh. Meet cute at a cinnamon bun place. Taking me back to your apartment and making love to me. It’s so on the nose.”

On the nose? She essentially had her way with me.

“Hey, I’m going to stop you right there. I didn’t take you back to my place to make love to you. You followed me home.”

She placed her fork down and moaned at the anger in my words, like an attempt to cast a hex on me.

“No, dammit. I’m serious. Take your cinnamon bun and get the fuck out of here,” I snapped.

That moan died quickly. She frowned, and the tears started welling in her eyes. DeMonte, the scum of the Earth. I didn’t fight it. I couldn’t. My nerves were shot. She stomped, and grabbed her bag aggressively, throwing her fork into my sink and waiting for me to object. To tell her, hey…it’s okay. I’m sorry! You’re right. This is perfect! But no. I refused. This wasn’t perfect. This was strange. Exciting? Sure. Different? To say the least. But, perfect? Nothing is.

“I hope you die a slow and painful death, Jake. You’re a piece of shit. And you’re right, you are a sad excuse for a man. Fuck you,” said Hannah before slamming the door shut, and storming down the stairs outside.

I hollered at the heavens. I rolled on my dust-covered floor. My face stained with icing, I laughed right at the setting sun. I laughed at the world and its sick fucking joke. HA HA HA! It was the first time I cackled in weeks. Jake DeMonte, the punchline of Mother Earth’s set-up. Marisol called me. I answered, now feeling jolly.

She asked if she could come over. I told her no, that I had a date with a cinnamon bun.

“What’s that’sapposed to mean? You fuckin’ a black girl now?” she asked me.

Maybe that’s next, I thought.

“I’m looking to land a job at the United Nations,” I told her.

“Mmmhm,” she said. “You on top papa. Don’t you ever forget that. You call me when you want me to take care of you. But just remember, you on top, papa.”

She hung up the phone. I felt a lump in my throat at hearing her words. I felt the acid brewing, the dam broken. I felt the tears bursting from my eyes. I threw my phone down, stood up on the coffeetable, and flung my fists in the air.

The underdog. The next heavyweight champ, standing on his coffee table with his title belt held to the sky. Through my tears, like a war cry I shouted, “I’m on top, baby. I’m on top!”