By Joshua Vigil
Gordo pushes a damp kitchen towel into my hands. Shaped like a cylinder, it’s vegan banana bread. He does this every week, ever since we first met. Gordo believes an alien invasion is impending. He says we should eat up. Am I fattening myself for the aliens, or for him? Gordo tosses another bunch of bananas into his shopping cart. Gordo thinks that love is a lie. I tell him friendships are just as deceitful. My pants stop fitting and so I buy new ones. Gordo is a little ghost. A bed sheet draped over his body, thin slits for eyes from which blood drips. I tell Gordo this is the only time I’ve ever enjoyed Halloween, then I have the dentist fix my five cavities—he does this every year now, since the gifts started coming. It’s always the same five cavities. Is he a bad dentist but a good businessman? Once I asked Gordo, Would you still be my friend if I was a capitalist pig? Gordo said he’d marry me right then and there. I was dreaming of squat brownstones in Brooklyn not far from the water. He was dreaming of pigs. I start wearing sweats and only sweats. When I’m not home, Gordo slides the bread through the mail slot. I scoop it, flattened, and eat it watching the news. The floorboards creak as I hobble past now. The downstairs neighbors say cracks have formed on their ceiling. I tell them mine is water-stained, and what’s the difference? Gordo says the aliens are coming any day. He pushes two loaves through my mail slot. Gordo snaps at me in the car, on the way to the movies, after the movies, in the parking lot, at the potluck. He’s getting evicted. Gordo snapped at me once in bed—this was before, when we were still together. He has anger problems and drops people easily. Will we be friends for the entirety of our lives? Three loaves fall to the floor. I unwrap them, pick at them, leave them for the flies. On the phone, Gordo is terse. He doesn’t know where he’ll live. I ask him if it even matters if the aliens are coming. He snaps—this isn’t a joke, this is my life. I am teaching for the first time this semester. A student kept Mick hostage last year. Another made sexual advances towards Lily. My students look at me with pity. It’s a look I’ve seen in Gordo. His loaves of banana bread pile up and pile up. He says the aliens arrive tomorrow. I should really consider eating more.
Joshua Vigil lives in the Pioneer Valley. His work has appeared in Hobart, HAD, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.