The First Bad Man

by Miranda July

Let’s say a person is down in the dumps, or maybe just lazy, and they stop doing the dishes. Soon the dishes are piled sky-high and it seems impossible to even clean a fork. So the person starts eating with dirty forks out of dirty dishes and this makes the person feel like a homeless person. So they stop bathing. Which makes it hard to leave the house. The person begins to throw trash anywhere and pee in cups because they’re closer to the bed. We’ve all been this person, so there is no place for judgment,

The body odor was on top of her pungent foot fungus, which hit two seconds after she passed by—it had sneaky delay.

I picked my dinner napkin off the floor and placed it carefully over the row of uneaten pink fish meats.