Third and Last

There was a dollar and change in the bank and I was finishing the third and last beer in my fridge. I kept wondering how I could make five bucks in the time it takes to get to the store. Paypal had fucked me. Locked my account. I had been writing porn again and living off of it, barely, for the last few months, and having suddenly begun to shift a lot of funds through my paypal account, it was locked for suspicious activity and I was out of beer. I didn't even like beer, but it's harder to scrounge a twenty for wine than a five, so it had been beer. 

I kept wishing I was a girl so I could jerk off on a webcam and pull in a hundred bucks or whatever the fuck they make and be done with it. Shame was for the weak and I had little anyway.

The pawn shops around town had all closed. The record stores had all closed. There was never a comic store here. There was no where my dwindling gas tank could drag me to sell shit. 

"You could always get a job," someone had said the day before when I had brought it up.

"They going to pay me today?"

"Well, no, but..." 

"But nothing. Eventually it'll be sorted and I can go back to my system and everything will be fine."

"Your system isn't working."

It was fine. It worked mostly. I made enough to keep breathing. Keep eating. Keep going. If I worked harder, maybe if something picked up traction, I could do better. I was doing as well as I had on a payroll, and I took that as a win. Yeah, I had a hiccup and sometimes I've had hiccups working and maybe my paycheck had been lost, or it wasn't processed, or the state took most of it, or any number of things. So I had to suffer for a bit. That's fine. 

I thought, almost jokingly, that I could probably rob a bank. I had no moral issue with it. No one would get hurt and banks were insured to the fucking moon and back. Victimless. The worst outcome is that I'd pay my rent on time.

Well, I suppose that isn't true. The worst outcome is getting caught, but even then I'd get free room and board.

I wondered what the market for fat white guys jerking off on a webcam was. 

There wasn't much for food in the house. I hadn't planned on the locked account, so now I was scraping through what was left. Mostly just bologna sandwiches and for breakfast if I was really hungry I would make cheese omellettes. I would have preferred wine in any situation. There were two cans of spaghetti-o's in my cupboard that were expired by a year or so that I had just found and I thought I'd probably still eat them. I'd give it a few more days and we'd see.

Paypal said it would take seven to ten days, and if they meant calendar days it was up by a couple and if they meant work week days then I still had a day or two. I could go a day or two, so long as nothing came up.

My beer was gone and I had to piss and I thought about taking a walk but I didn't have three and a quarter for a pitcher at Bar / Food, so I decided I'd just sleep. Time travel closer to tomorrow and hopefully tomorrow would be the day. I could pay my car insurance and my phone bill and buy a box of wine and a pizza maybe. 

I saw little value in anything and I didn't think that was good or bad and I just wanted a fucking drink and to disappear and I thought there should be a program or grant for people like me. The New York State Drunk Nihilist Fund. Or I could just rob a fucking bank.