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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v113) (the December 2012 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Falling (a Down in the Dirt collection book)		get the 230 page Sept. - Dec. 2012 Down in the Dirt magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book After the Apocalypse (prose edition) (the 2012 prose collection book)		get this poem collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Show Me Some Teeth

Michael Gruber

    My name is Jack Euster, and I have never been this nervous in my entire life. I’m certain because I’ve never seen this face that appears in the mirror as I shut the medicine cabinet. This face has soft, dark patches beneath eyes in need of sleep. This face has creases that don’t disappear, even after I stretch it out. This face is pale and hollow from lack of appetite. This face has too many gray hairs in its unkempt scruff. This face is hyperventilating and terrified, even when nothing in particular is wrong.
    That’s my problem. I’m never happy, but never unhappy either. It’s an odd relationship, like with your favorite cousin that lived across the country and you only got to see him for two weeks every summer. You’re inseparable for that short time; every day is bliss because your annual best friend is back. Once you get older, though, you start to realize it’s fleeting. You can’t enjoy the fourteen days because you know that in fifteen it’ll all be over and you’ll go back to your usual, baby-sat dreariness. That’s me and happiness. I won’t let it come around at all because I know it’s going to leave. That’s why I just—
    “You ever read this?” an intrigued, curious voice shoots down the hallway and into the bathroom. “The Great Gatsby?” I shake the deep thought out my ears and shuffle into the living room. Kenny’s face is crinkled in focus, coughing in a dissolving cloud of thick, white smoke. His gaze is fixed on a tattered copy of Fitzgerald’s most famous work, post-it notes protruding all around its edges. He sets a tall, red, triumphant bong on the floor next to him while I stare. Kenny doesn’t pay rent, but he lives here. I don’t mind because I hated living alone and I love staring at him when he’s like this. I’m always in disbelief of the sincere curiosity, captivation, and joy Kenny gets from doing stuff he wants to do—also from ignoring everything else. I don’t think it’s fair. Sure, my grades are better, but his life is better.
    “Jack-ass, did you read this?” He addresses me as an old, Southern man would address his granddaughter’s Vietnamese fiancé.
    “Yeah man, I liked it.” It’s my favorite book. He’s reading my dog-eared, highlighted copy. I lent it to him sophomore year when he met this super hot English major. It didn’t get him anywhere, though. She was kind of a bitch and she dropped out to backpack in Europe or something cliché like that. Didn’t bother Kenny, though, I remember jealously as he takes another rip from The Red Baron.
    I grab my laptop and collapse into the chair next to Kenny’s, trying to focus on my fantasy baseball team or the news or Twitter or anything to occupy my mind. My eyes flip to the clock in the top corner what seems to be ten times before each minute passes. Twenty, silent clock changes occur before I open my Facebook, just to look over it one more time before I deactivate it. I read the “About Me” of a stranger on my own profile. I need to get this thought process down.
    My name is Jack Euster, and I have never been this tired. I’d pass out, but I’m too occupied now with looking at pictures of girls I liked in high school and holding down vomit. My stomach churns, but I can’t sleep it off tonight. I want to nod of slowly, peacefully, so I keep clicking the right arrow. I knew I was going to marry at least three of these girls. These girls who got pregnant or went to med school or gained weight or got that boob job she bitched about incessantly at sixteen-years-old. That last one, she broke my heart. I hope they burst. When I finally hit picture 327 of 327, my energy runs out. Asthenia sets in and my stomach is too exhausted to ache. I bring up my own profile pictures when Kenny snaps the silence.
    “This is so damn good,” he says without looking up from the book. I know he’s about to read aloud because I’ve heard that exclamation too many times, like right before he ruined the end of The Lord of the Rings for me in sixth grade. I was so angry, mostly because I felt I should have predicted it on my own and I hadn’t.
    “Listen,” he says, commanding my attention to the last, great American novel. I don’t think he appreciates this enough, but he does deliver a decent affluent, early twentieth-century New York accent.
    He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.
    The words permeate my skin, sinking in and mixing with the exhaustion that fills me before settling on top like water on oil. I turn my attention to the contortions of my mouth in these pictures, looking for one of those smiles. It’s not there, and I can’t call any of these formations a smile. I usually stretch my lips straight across as if to connect despair and acceptance on either side of my face. As I scroll through, I’m frustrated I couldn’t muster a better act for my Internet character, if for no other reason than to make fake-tits jealous of my feigned happiness. Her boyfriend’s a douche.
    On picture twenty-two of twenty-four, Jack Euster finally appears with a smile. His face is full and healthy. It’s rested, clean-shaven, and truly youthful. Kenny’s there, too, with his hands on Jack’s shoulders, smiling just as wide. They’re in their high school library, wearing dark suits and sharp, red ties. They just signed commitments to play lacrosse at Cornell. Their future is still the future in that library, not the disheartening present occurring in this one-bedroom apartment.
    My laptop dies and the face reflected in the screen’s blackness is the same one from the bathroom mirror. Sleep is now inevitable, so close that I forsake my bed for this worn, hand-me-down chair. Thanks, Grandma. I put my computer down and look over to Kenny. He looks up from the book with a face of pure, confused pleasure. He intends to share it.
    “Gatsby has everything, and he’s still not happy. Like, buy some shit. Meet someone at your own party. The dude has everything and he won’t enjoy it. He won’t let himself be happy. He could be, but he won’t.”
    I look at the big, stupid grin coming from this real-life Seth Rogen character gazing at me. I still don’t think he appreciates my favorite book like he should, but at least I know he’s enjoying it. Kenny enjoys everything. Kenny lets himself be happy. In his bewilderment at my fictional idol, Kenny gives me one of those smiles.
    My name is Jack Euster, and I have made a mistake. In one moment of emotional impulse, I reverse a decision I’d been deliberating for years.
    “Man, I need you to drive me to the hospital,” I struggle to say. “I just swallowed a bunch of anti-depressants and I don’t want to die.”

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