“Get it? Get who I am? Guess? Who am I?”

Grace thought Zack was an ass.

“God, shut your damn mouth or else I’ll slap you,” she said with a sneer.

“I just made a joke,” said Zack.

“No, Zack. Jokes make me laugh. Fuck. You just make me mad.”

The rain hit the glass of their truck, and Zack stared hard at the drops that splashed and died. It was cold now, and the sun was low in the sky. Red leaves blew through the field of the park on Grace’s side.

“It’s hard to make you laugh, Grace. You don’t smile hon. At least not in the past month or so. Why not?” asked Zack.

“It’s not hard, Zack. It’s not hard, and if you think it’s hard, then you’re… well, you’re just a fag. Plain as day. That’s what I think. I think you’re dumb when you do that voice. And say those things. So there. What do you think I am?” she asked.

Zack winced.

“You’re just… well… mean…  a bitch, kind of…” He shrugged. “Why are you in such a bad mood? You… you just have a way to cut me down a notch with each small thing. I do one small thing, and you cut me down. I try; I try to make you laugh. To make you smile. I try to take gray days, like this shit, these sad days when it rains in the fall and we don’t have a clue what to do and I try to make them fun. I thought it would be nice to look at the park… but you make them… I don’t know.”

Zack turned the knob to turn on the fan and make it blow, and then he leaned down and took a smoke out of the pack of Pall Malls he left on the car floor.

“I thought I did a good Bush voice,” he said with a frown. “You know, he laughs like that. Kind of dumb like that. My fault.”

“No, it’s my fault. You have a point,” she said, as she looked out at the cars that zoomed by them. “The bull stops here. I should have said no.”

She paused as Zack turned to face her.

“This won’t work, Zack. We need to break up… I can’t kid you, and that’s the truth. That’s the real truth. Here’s the ring.”

“You can try, but let me pick out the right tool for you,” said my dad.

When I was a kid, I watched my dad toil in his small shop for hours. Once in a while, he would let me stay up late and help him nail boards or cut a piece of wire, or glue my mom’s things so they were like new again. Then we’d go home and I’d dream of tools.

“Here’s how you turn it,” he said, as he showed me which way made the screws tight.

“I know how to turn it,” I said with a sneer, “left for loose and right for tight.”

“Smart kid,” he said with a laugh.

It was like a dark crypt when the lights were off in the rooms down the hall from the shop and I was scared of them. The shop was hot that June night. There was dust all over the room, and it made a cone shape when it blew up and caught the light that shined from the bench lamp.

“Do you hate the dark?” I asked my dad.

“No, I don’t hate the dark. But it’s sure hard to see things in it. That’s why a lot of folks don’t like it. You just have to be safe, that’s all,” he said as he bent down to work on a board.

“God damn board,” he said as he tried to force the screw the wrong way. “This one’s stuck. Christ, come on!”

“You’ve got it wrong!” I said with a howl.

He looked up and smiled at me.

“Look at that, so I do. It was the weird view, I guess.”

“I’ll do it! Let me try!”

“That’s fine,” he said with a sigh. He wiped his face with an old brown rag. “We have to go after that one, though.”

“Oh, come on!” I whined.

“You heard what I said. Last one. Let’s not make your mom mad.”

I turned the screw the right way, and was in bed in no time.

It’s been ten years now. I had fun with my dad on those nights, and I look back on them all the time.

But how could I know? I was just a kid. How could I know it was him, of all folks? How could I know he was the one who made the bomb?

When I got to work I walked into my gray cubicle, smiling and greeting everyone along the way. I surveyed my gray desk and I checked the news. Then I got up, went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

“Every time! It happens every shit damn crap shit time I buy a lottery ticket! Every single time I’m actually, honestly, sincerely surprised when I don’t win.”

As I stared at myself in the mirror, I tried to figure out how I failed. I collected my thoughts, went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, sat back down at my gray desk in my gray cubicle and stared at the dim, discolored screen of my laptop.

“It’s my only way to the top,” I thought to myself. “And they’re wrong. Playing the lottery isn’t another way for poor, desperate people like me to waste money. It’s the only chance I have.”

I took a slug of my coffee and checked my email. My palms were already clammy from the beginnings of a caffeine buzz on an empty stomach. My focus was already misplaced from the disappointment of yet another defeat. I quickly went back to the news to read the story about a man from bumbleshit-sticks-nowhere USA winning hundreds of millions of dollars. I scrolled to a past story of a lawyer from too-expensive-for-me-to-ever-live America winning a few dozen millions dollars.

Why does it always work out that way? Someone is going to win. So why can’t it be me? Why is it never me? I can’t believe how many times another already-rich person or a toothless country bumpkin wins the lotto. The bumpkins are just going to piss it away on Bud Light and trucks. And the rich? Do that many rich people play the lottery? When is it ever enough? What happened to the middle class?

I slugged the rest of my coffee. It was piping hot and burned my stomach as it swished around, so I unwrapped four antacids that would be my breakfast.

I would do good things with that money, baby Jesus, so you should give me some. I would donate at least a little of it to charity and kids and hunger and things. I would start companies and keep hardworking Americans gainfully employed. I would find a cure for panda sadness. I would buy a boat. I know what mom says, and I agree. I truly believe that money can’t buy happiness. But damn it, money can buy me the time to better look for happiness.

Just then I watched a large chunk of smoke gray dust float down from the light fixture above. It dropped perfectly into my emptied cup and soaked up the remaining drops of coffee.

This is going to be a long life. I need that money.

Hello! This is my comic. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I’ve had plans to do this weekly comicslashblogslashother for almost two years now, and now I’ve sort of gotten around to it. I figured that this is the time to do it before I lose all desire. Before I decide to ride out the summer eating hot dogs and twinkies, and wash them with double vodka tonics – two slices of lime.

It turns out the summer in Milwaukee is taking (yet again) its sweet ass time to come around, so it’s making me all productive and junk.

A lot of times comics are funny! This comic probably won’t be funny. FYI. So if you come back and you read and couple and it’s not your cup of tea, you can turn it off. I’ll be hurt at first, but I’ll get over it. Eventually.

It’s a big interwebs out there.