Revenge Fantasies

When I imagine a muse, this is often what I see.

I’m in line at the grocery store to buy a couple of avocados (I’ve healed my relationship with the demon fruit, in case I haven’t told you). A cashier opens up another register, and as I pivot toward said register, I see in my periphery this hobgoblin of a woman.

Her cart overflows with jugs of cheap wine and a mountain of food-ish products, all one form or another of high fructose corn syrup. She hadn’t been waiting, but that doesn’t factor into her decision-making. She rushes for the open register, and as she sideswipes my hip, she says, “Excuse you, buddy!” Then, with an energy that hints at her future battles with diabetes and/or liver disease, she begins deadlifting the spoils of her cart onto the little conveyor belt.

The expression on her face when she says, “Excuse you!” is the sort that makes one meditate on the overlooked virtues of violence. She doesn’t have lips or a mouth, she just has this gaping hole, and her tongue is more or less a catapult that lobs linguistic grenades of misery and gloom. She has a nose, but there’s no way she has a sense of smell. A person can’t be that much of a turd without passing out from a whiff of their own foul turd-ness. I can’t really see her eyes. She may only have one. In fact, there’s a better than even chance she is a flesh-and-blood cyclops. All this to say, Gandhi would have wound up and slugged this wildebeest right in her puss.

A fairly accurate representation of the grocery store hobgoblin. Just add a cheap jug o’ wine and a box of HoHos.

The cashier notes her wild display of rudeness, which is not nothing. In my experience, grocery store clerks operate at one or two tics above unconsciousness. “Ma’am,” the cashier says, “do you mind if I ring him up first? He just has the two avocados.”

The hobgoblin looks put upon, and she clarifies that she does mind. She minds very much. “I guess if that’s the kind of customer service you got in this store.”

“It’s fine,” I say. I subscribe to the notion that when someone is being an unapologetic pendejo, as my friends south of the border say, it’s best to give them a wide berth.

“Are you sure?”

“Yup. I’m in no rush, and I’m looking forward to standing here and luxuriating in some serious revenge fantasies.”

Okay, I don’t actually say that, but that is what I do. The benefit of my imagination is that I can fabricate vivid tales of spiteful savagery and orgasm-level revenge. Here are the fantasies I indulge in as the hobgoblin’s loot is rung up: