Sean Michael

Stirrings in the Desert

Just about the worst thing that can happen to a person is being born with too many opinions. It’s a lot more real than most of the things your doctor tells you you have. Being over opinionated is not a diagnosable illness, and therefore represents no potential for deliberate victim creation or profits to follow. In fact, they’d prefer you to have no opinions at all, or at least the same ones as everyone else. That’s the right kind of disordered. Like I said, there are more disorders than there are people to have them. Your chromosomes get creative and pair up wrong, they switch dancing partners and usually nature is kindhearted enough to let the left-footed disaster spill out unnoticed, a jettisoned afterthought entombed in mucus. Most things are better left unsaid. But don’t feel alone. It’s already happened in the same stall about four thousand other times in the spectacularly clean mid-desert Pilot Flying J Travel Center’s ultra-convenience gas station you find yourself in; failed regeneration and cleanliness with an offensive citrus zing and enough air conditioning to convince the devil he should’ve invested in the HVAC industry. You’re in there to drive out demons, to drive the dusty red rims from your burning sclera, and it’s all the same because today the purchase of one jumbo iced honey bun at regular price permits you to leave the store with two, as long as nobody sees you put it in your pocket. If you’re going to get pilloried for something, it might as well be stealing. I’d rather someone spot me committing larceny than eating a jumbo iced honey bun. They’re not a snack made for people who are doing well. I eat them frequently.