But never mind that. Let’s go back to my house here in Columbia City. How many nineteen-year-old high-school dropouts do you know who have their own houses? Plus a new car? Only a Honda, true, but the first three numbers on the odometer are still zeroes, and that’s the important part. It has a CD/tape-player, and I don’t slide in behind the wheel wondering if the goddam thing’ll start, like I always did with the Ford, which Skipper used to make fun of. The Ass-holemobile, he called it. Why are there so many Skippers in the world?
That’s what I really wonder about.
I do get some money, by the way. More than enough to meet my needs. Check this out. I watch As the World Turns every day while I’m eating my lunch, and on Thursdays, about halfway through the show, I hear the clack of the mail-slot. I don’t do anything then, I’m not supposed to. Like Mr. Sharpton said, “Them’s the rules, Dink.”
I just watch the rest of my show. The exciting stuff on the soaps always happens around the weekends—murders on Fridays, fucking on Mondays—but I watch right to the end every day, just the same.
I’m especially careful to stay in the living room until the end on Thursdays. On Thursdays I don’t even go out to the kitchen for another glass of milk. When World is over, I turn off the TV for awhile—
Oprah Winfrey comes on next, I hate her show, all that sitting-around-talking shit is for the Mas of the world—and go out to the front hall.
Lying on the floor under the mail-slot, there’s always a plain white envelope, sealed. Nothing written on the front. Inside there’ll be either fourteen five-dollar bills or seven ten-dollar bills. That’s my money for the week. Here’s what I do with it. I go to the movies 213
STEPHEN KING
twice, always in the afternoon, when it’s just $4.50. That’s $9. On Saturday I fill up my Honda with gas, and that’s usually about $7. I don’t drive much. I’m not invested in it, as Pug would say. So now we’re up to $16. I’ll eat out maybe four times at Mickey D’s, either at break-fast (Egg McMuffin, coffee, two hash browns) or at dinner (Quarter Pounder with Cheese, never mind that McSpecial shit, what dimbulb thought those sandwiches up). Once a week I put on chinos and a button-up shirt and see how the other half lives—have a fancy meal at a place like Adam’s Ribs or the Chuck Wagon. All of that goes me about $25 and now we’re up to $41. Then I might go by News Plus and buy a stroke book or two, nothing really kinky, just your usual like Variations or Penthouse. I have tried writing these mags down on DINKY’S DAYBOARD, but with no success. I can buy them myself, and they don’t disappear on cleaning day or anything, but they don’t show up, if you see what I’m getting at, like most other stuff does. I guess Mr. Sharpton’s cleaners don’t like to buy dirty stuff (pun). Also, I can’t get to any of the sex stuff on the Internet. I have tried, but it’s blocked out, somehow. Usually things like that are easy to deal with—you go under or around the roadblocks if you can’t hack straight through—
but this is different.
Not to belabor the point, but I can’t dial 900 numbers on the phone, either. The auto-dialer works, of course, and if I want to call somebody just at random, anywhere in the world, and shoot the shit with them for awhile, that’s okay. That works. But the 900 numbers don’t. You just get a busy. Probably just as well. In my experience, thinking about sex is like scratching poison ivy. You only spread it around. Besides, sex is no big deal, at least for me. It’s there, but it isn’t eventual. Still, considering what I’m doing, that little prudey streak is sort of weird. Almost funny . . . except I seem to have lost my sense of humor on the subject. A few others, as well.
Oh well, back to the budget.