14. A Trip to Wal-Mart

This anecdote is dated November 15, 2001.

Five years ago, on this very day, Jamie asked me if I would drive him to Wal-Mart. Midterms were approaching, and I was trying to memorize slides for my art history exam. This was before I cared one shit about art, and I was having an awful time trying to distinguish Manet from Monet and Gilbert from George (ha ha, I'm joking, we didn't study Gilbert and George in Intro to Art History).



"Is it really important?" I asked, "I'm kind of busy."

"It's really, super, horribly, terribly, undeniably important," he said.

I was unconvinced. "Why, what do you need?"

"Bandaids," he said, "I accidentally stabbed myself with a butcher knife and I'm bleeding to death under my sweater."

Well, I couldn't really say no to that, so I scrambled to find my car keys and sped all the way to Wal-Mart. When we got there, Jamie went straight to the candy aisle, where he opened and ate three bags of those orange marshmallow-y Circus Peanuts.

"Uh, aren't you dying?" I asked.

"This will help the blood clot," he responded. Having gotten a B+ in high school biology and taken no science classes since then, I couldn't argue. I started to get a bit suspicious when he moved into the automotive aisle and began ceremoniously smelling all of the different air fresheners.

"Would hanging a pink pine tree in my car be too feminine? I really like the bubble gum smell, but I don't want to come off as fey," he asked to the high-school employee stocking the car wax.

"Jamie, you have a car?" I asked, shocked.

"Like, duh," he said. Before I could ask him why he had insisted on being driven to Wal-Mart, and furthermore, why he had no apparent interest in saving his own life, he skipped over into the home appliances aisle, where he spent 15 minutes examining snow cone makers.

It was November. No one eats snow cones in November. At this point, I was really mad. So, without saying another word, I left the store, got in my car, and drove back to campus.

The next day, I found out that Jamie had spent the night in the emergency room. Apparently, he'd collapsed in a pool of his own blood somewhere between the girl's hosiery section and a seasonal decor display. They found him clutching desperately to a pair of wool Mary Kate and Ashley Olson knee-highs and crying like a little girl.

And the next day, he died.

JUST KIDDING. Jamie doesn't have blood. He can't die. I made up the whole story. You know, in the way they just filmed the "imaginary story" of Diane Arbus.