FREEZER AND HAUNT
But the worst part of that whole thing was the walk-in freezer. Going in there. Rutting with her in there. Fucking senselessly the way the young do. Noticing little things all the time to distract myself from, what—what I was doing? And why would I do that? Shame? I don’t know, I think about it sometimes and I don’t know. I don’t know myself well enough to be able to locate what compelled me to feel shame, or maybe it wasn’t shame. Maybe it was some sensation not unlike the knowledge of your own mortality, you know, when that knowledge, that little factoid I am going to die dawns on you in the shower, while you’re doing dishes, while you’re driving. It’s more likely to occur while you’re not even being confronted by death—I’m more likely to think about death while I’m ensnared in the mundane than I am when I hear about the passing of a relative. Is that just me? It hits like a cargo train. So maybe that’s what I was thinking about in that freezer ten-odd years ago. Not even consciously. Maybe it was in the back of my head somewhere, that I was going to die one day, rattling around under the hood in the ol’ brainerino while I was fucking my boss in the walk-in freezer at McPhaiden’s. Or maybe it was some other totally different and horrible thing I needed to distract myself from. Who can say?