Salt Dick

Once upon a time there was a boy born with a ginormous mouth. Why did I say it that way? The boy’s mouth wasn’t bigger than any other mouth in the land, but that didn’t stop everyone from telling him to “shut it!” 

“Zip it!” “Clam it!” “Cram a sock in it, Salt Dick.” These words were as familiar to the boy as his own fingers. He didn’t want to shut his mouth though. The boy believed his lungs were filled with words as brilliant as butterflies, and if he only let them soar out he would be loved. 

He believed a lot of things, that Salt Dick. 

The other thing about that sad little boy, other than his big fucking mouth, was that everything felt cold to him. His step mother refused to turn the heat up in the basement where he slept. When he tried to read his poetry to the girls at school they gave him the icy shoulder. Sometimes people called him “Lizard,” as if he wasn’t even human, but some cold-blooded, crawling thing—although normally they just called him “Salt Dick.” 

That’s right, I forgot to tell you why he was called Salt Dick. It was because this little boy, through absolutely no fault of his own, was born with dry, scaly skin that flaked all over everything. The doctors gave him moisturizing creams, but the creams were cold and sticky. One girl spread a rumor she’d gone down on him at a party and that his boner looked like a pillar of salt and was just as hard to swallow. That’s how everyone got started calling him Salt Dick.

Would it make you happy to hear that I was that little boy, that Salt Dick? That these words you are reading prove that the boy refused to shut up, and now his words are published in important magazines and people shower him with respect and money?

Well, no one gives me any respect or money, and the heater is broken in my apartment, which I sleep in cold and alone.

Anyway, I hated Salt Dick along with everyone else. He sat beside me on the bus and got skin flakes all over my notebooks. He may have been a sad little boy, but mostly he was a mean one. He said and did nasty things all day long. One time he threw my sister’s cat in a dumpster, and he got suspended twice for urinating in the school radiators. 

He was a dick, that Salt Dick.

Was he a misunderstood boy who was only mean because his drunkard father beat him with golf clubs? Did he eventually get saved by friendship or true love and live happily ever after? 

I don’t know. 

I haven’t thought about Salt Dick in years, not since I heard he died riding a dirt bike drunk in the mountains. 

As for me, I’m not a mean person, not like Salt Dick, but I too believe I have beautiful thoughts inside of me that only need to be let out. I have a need to touch all the people around me. I don’t care how cold it gets in my apartment, I’m burning with feelings. Except for Salt Dick, I love everyone and everything, including all the creatures of the sky and beasts of the earth, even worms.