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On Sunday, I walked over to the little corner store on my
block and bought a box of donuts, a carton of cigarettes and some tea
bags. I got back to my apartment-a one-bedroom place with wooden
Rooring and boring white walls and one of those shitty.kitchens that
was really just an oven and a fridge stuffed into the front doorway
and cracks in the bathroom ceiling-and put on some hot water. To
my dismay, upon looking at my new box of English Breakfast, I found
that I had accidentally bought the decaffeinated variety. After a brief
eye-roll, I accepted my fate and put one of the tea bags into my mug.
My mug had a picture of a kitten wearing sunglasses on it and squiggly
red text that read "HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY, TO A REAL COOL
CAT." The mug was a cute but banal gift from my mother, who was
well-intentioned though perennially feebl~-minded-and to be fair, I
firmly told her I didn't want any gifts that year, so naturally I had to be
appropriately grateful for it despite the mug's blatant stupidity. At any
rate, it had quickly become familiar and therefore bizarrely comforting,
being one of only three mugs that I owned, and beyond that, the only
one that had been bought for me by someone else. Every now and then,
during our rare, irregular phone calls, I would get the urge to thank her
for it, even though it's long since lost its novelty.

Iopened up a pack of Basics and popped one of the cigarettes
in my mouth, lighting it with a nearby Zippo, which, incidentally, was
also a small gift from mom, who had long since grown to grudgingly
accept my filthy habit. I searched around in my cupboard for something
to eat, finding within: one can of store-brand chili, which was decent
enough; three cans of Vienna sausages, one of which had a dent in it-
this one I promptly threw away,having been terrified of botulism since
a high school biology lecture; a bag of egg noodles, which I couldn't do
much with seeing as how all I had to put on them was hot sauce; a box
of donuts which I had bought on an impulse fifteen minutes before;
four cans of pork and beans, which aren't much of a meal but sound
really good when they're being sold for sixty-seven cents each; a cobweb
in the corner, which I guess isn't much of a meal either. I opted for the
chili, knowing full well that my body would hate me for it later on. I
poured the slop into a bowl and shoved it into the microwave.

Looking in my fridge for a block of cheese I might be able to
shred, I thought about kosher dietary laws. I thought again about that

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