98 Wounds by Justin Chin Read Free Book Online Page A

okay.
    4.
    My husband’s mother in a bid to improve herself has enrolled at the barely accredited College of Cosmetology and Cosmetic Surgery. They’re not the same thing, you know that right? I tell my husband.
    Well, duh, he says, obviously. Otherwise it’d be called the College of Cosmetology or Cosmetic Surgery.
    To show his support, he has offered to be her final graduating project. You’re not plain, I tell him. But he’s doing something to his face with a blackhead remover that is simultaneously fascinating and repulsive, and not listening to me. He’s ready for beauty.
    And now, he can hardly sit because of the silicone butt injections. The dark circles of his raccoon eyes belie the chemical peel, and peek from behind the bandages covering his face. Strangers, handsome men on the street, keep running up to him to give him their phone numbers or business cards, they give him obscene propositions scribbled on the backs of receipts and any old scrap of paper or napkin; they’re so sure that there’s a Clooneyesque hunk underneath all that bandage and surgical tape.
    I’m hoping that she fails. Or gets a C-. Or takes an incomplete. I’m not choosy.
    5.
    How did I go from being the most irresistible person in the world to becoming the most irritating person in the world? How long did that change, that metamorphosis, take to occur? Was there a pupating stage? And was I anyone else in the process? Most agreeable? Most nonchalant? Most oblivious? Most forgiving? Most wtf?
    Obviously I did not see the changes happening. So were they seamless transitions? Or were there definite beginning and ending points, starts and stops, as if we were driving a stick shift for the first time. Was it all plain for everyone to see? Or could only one person see this happening?
    Why won’t anyone tell me? The only person who knows all the answers is my husband, but he’s still not home. I’m calling his cellphone again. I’ve text-messaged him repeatedly and left countless voicemail messages but I still haven’t heard back one squeak from him.
    6.
    After dinner, while I was doing the dishes, my husband fished out $40 from my wallet and said he was going to the corner store to buy some cigarettes, a carton of milk, a bag of potato chips, Diet Coke, and some lottery scratchers. I like the Lightly Salted variety, I called out after him as he left the house.
    When he finally returned home ten days later, smoking his cigarette as he sauntered through the front door with a carton of rancid milk in his hand, I ask, what happened with the chips? He finished the chips on the way home, he said, he was sorry. And the scratchers? They didn’t have the kind he liked, and besides, he scratched them all and every one was a dud. And the Diet Coke? He forgot that.
    It’s not that he’s selfish or thoughtless, it’s that he sometimes just doesn’t think things through is all.
    7.
    My husband snores as if it’s the end of the world. We have a mid-sized studio apartment and I’m often cranky for lack of a good night’s sleep.
    Try sleeping on your back, friends suggest. Or sleeping with a tennis ball taped to your side. Or a golf ball. Try elevating your feet, or your hips. Try wearing thick socks on one foot. How about a nose clip? A hairclip on the right side? The left side? Try drinking some brandy before bed. Hot milk? Olive oil and apple slices? For me, they suggest, tug on his pillow. Elbow him sharply. Friends offer all sorts of advice but nothing works. Every night when we go to bed it’s as if a garbage truck is fighting with a hippopotamus right there in the room. Try a white-noise machine, someone suggests. But that just ended up with me trying to sleep on a beach while a garbage truck is fighting a hippopotamus as seagulls attack them both.
    So when he had a heart attack and had to be warded in the hospital, I was delighted. Finally! Finally I could get a good