Shiva Nataraja

I generally don’t like using coupons. They make me feel poor. I said feel. I like to feel like I can light cigars with burning Benjamins. I like to leave waitresses big tips, even when I’m giving her the last of my loot till Tuesday.

Some people tend toward preserving. Others are destroyers. Choirs are made up of a variety of voices.

When I use a coupon, I sense that I’m making an announcement to the cashier: “I am struggling to make ends meet”. I much prefer being the herald of a carefree “Keep the change”. Nonetheless, when Shakti (my wife) gave me a coupon for a free Slurpee, me & Jackson were throwing up high fives. Do I contradict myself? Do not make a God of coherence, dear reader. Coherence don’t fly round here.

The Snaggle Toothed 7/11 Sea Hag examined the coupon like I was trying to pass a counterfeit hundo.

SNAGGLE TOOTHED 7/11 SEA HAG (suspiciously): Where’d you get this, sir?
BLACK HOCKEY JESUS: I don’t know.
ST7/11SH: O you don’t know do you? [I am dead serious. That’s what she said. She goes to get her manager.]
BHJ (giggling): Jackson. This Snaggle Toothed 7/11 Sea Hag thinks I’ve wasted a day photoshopping a bogus coupon for a Slurpee.
JACKSON (irritated): Let’s do this.
BHJ: Hold the phone trigger finger.
SNAGGLE TOOTHED 7/11 SEA HAG’S CROSSEYED MANAGER: Sir. Did you say you don’t know where you got this?
BHJ: Yeah. My wife gave it to me. I’ve misplaced my master tally of where my wife gets her Slurpee coupons. Do you 2 CSIs honestly suspect that I manufactured a coupon for a Slurpee?
ST7/11SHCEM: Well sir—
BHJ (acting rich): Because I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay full price for both the Slurpees and buy the store.
ST7/11SHCEM: Sir?
BHJ: How much for the fucking store, lazy eye? I’m buying the store.

Jackson couldn’t restrain his outrage and knocked over a rack of candy. Snickers and licorice slid across the floor as the sound of clanging metal sang. Jackson tossed back his head in a laugh that signaled an expenditure of excess energy. My boy. Sabotage by The Beastie Boys started playing way louder than you’d ever expect. It was awesome. Right when Ad Rock howled his introductory “Ahhhhhhh,” me & Jackson went off like bombs. I grabbed the trash can and heaved it through the storefront window in a singing tinkling of shattering glass. “Kiss my ass!” I screamed (because “ass” rhymes with “glass” and moves my rambling prose along at a somewhat frenetic pace). Jackson was eating a hot dog out of each fist. I ripped open a big family sized bag of potato chips and tossed them into the air where they hung awhile in slow motion before the whole store was a storm of raining potato chips. And that’s when Jackson whipped out his flame thrower. He is so awesome like that. He just spontaneously has really kick ass weapons. He took his flame thrower and completely torched the Slurpee machine as if to say via correlated imagery: “We want our free Slurpee or no Slurpees for anyone ever again!” He was making a totally effed up face like John Rambo makes when he’s getting shit done for real. And even though you might imagine all this destruction in terms of chaos, it was underwritten by a kind of grace. Like a dance. Destruction is a dance. I generally don’t like using coupons.