What They Want,
Monday,
Or The Three Strangers You Nodded To On the Street
By Linda Sands


What Shelly Wants.

She wants to be the girl who slices his roast beef. She wants to be the one who teaches him the difference between Lacey Swiss and Buckeye . Shelly wants to spread mayo on his rye and add a side of chips. She wants to serve him in bed on a wicker tray.

But most of all, right now on this rainy Tuesday in May, she wants him to notice her behind the deli counter at Walmart even if she is wearing a white shower cap over her new haircut, even if she forgot to put on eyeliner and only now pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to add some natural color like they showed on last week’s Top Model.

She wants to slice his lunchmeat as thin as paper, then ring him up with a knuckle and seal his bag with her teeth.



What Max Wants.

He wants to go home and never think about her again. He wants someone to come in the night and smack him over the head with something round and hard so that the part of him that remembers how she smells like a meadow will forget. He wishes the movie about the place that can erase hurtful memories was true because he would be the first one in line on Monday morning with a pocketful of cash. He wants to believe in small dark places where no one can find you and he thinks maybe he can get there without a ticket, with just this bottle of pills that he stole from the pharmacy when the girl in the labcoat was talking to her boyfriend and the pharmacist had to chase her daughter down the crowded aisle.

He wants the time to pass so that the hands on the clock will be in perfect alignment and then he will know that wanting to be dead is enough, there will be nothing else to want. No answers, no smiles, no happy gestures, no yearnings no false starts, no feelings of inadequacy – the words alone make him want to forget he can hear, he can read, he can breathe.

More than wanting to forget, he wants to be forgotten.


What Sam Wants.

He wants to forget he’s a she. He wants to buy flannel shirts and baggy jeans and pay with man hands.

He wants the men to nod as they pass or not notice him at all. He wants the girl at the register to offer to help him choose dress socks. He wants someone to measure his inseam. He wants to stand in the store and hold the door for beautiful women. He wants to buy a hat he can tip, a handkerchief he can lend, a rubber cock he can slip inside his underwear and adjust.

He wants to feel the things men feel. Passion as rage. Honor as duty. Sex as power. Love as whatever love is supposed to feel like when you fill a doorway.

He wants to give more than he gets and he wants to get as good as he gives. He wants to feel your eyes on his ass when he walks out the door then turn and catch you staring.


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( part of a larger body of work, 21 sections of flash- told in triplets)
I drank with Daniel Grandbois in a big hotel in Manhattan one night after I stalked Amy Hempel. Danny Pants sent me music, Hempel got a restraining order. My writing is everywhere, even on some walls in Switzerland. I have an agent, and I didn't even have to sleep with him.