The Failed Gas Station Pickup

by Claire Bateman

I was on the road.

I was seventeen

and I was sick. I stopped

at a gas station

to get medicine.

On my way out, baggie in hand,

a mullet man, complete

with poor hygiene

and missing teeth, probably

twice my age,

swaggered up to me

and said

“Sup?”

which seems innocuous enough

a question, even

in the parking lot

of a gas station,

but everything about the way he said it

told me all the less innocent things he wanted to say,

if only he had the guts

to speak his mind.

So I answered him with a straight face:

“I have diarrhea.”

Then I got in the car,

took a couple pills,

and drove away.