I’d like to call attention to the fortunes in fortune cookies. Specifically, the sick fuck in China who slips his molesting prognostications into cookies that make their way to my Panda Express.
You can’t imagine the disappointment I feel. The digestive gratification of a three-item meal – kung pao pork, pepper pork, egg rolls, washed down with a Dr. Pepper. My eyes set on my cookie. I frantically wrestle it out of the plastic. I expect some direction, some sign by which I’ll navigate my life.
Perhaps I’ll learn that “A warm smile is testimony of a generous nature.” I’ll walk around smiling at strangers. I’ll give an approving nod to those who smile back and I’ll verbally lash those who don’t. Perhaps I’ll visit an elementary school. People watch on a playground bench.
Or, my fortune might read, “A secret admirer will soon send you a sign of affection.” I won’t leave my seat at Panda until dinnertime when I order again. I’ll bashfully peek out from whatever book I’m reading (probably something about the post-modern immigrant experience) to watch every man, woman and child who comes in, awaiting a sign of fondness.
“Person you love give you AIDS. Can you feel the molecule?”
Instead, and it’s happened twice now in a week, I receive something else. Lecherous. I don’t dare imagine the den from which this opium-addicted ignus fatuus dreams his sordid dreams and puts them to fortune cookie paper!
“A dong tickle you all over face,” I read on Sunday. I ran home and showered immediately. I scrubbed my face raw. My cheeks stung with tears and soap. Despite this fearless purification, I couldn’t escape the soil of that omnipresent dong.
And yesterday – this arbiter of molestation is merciless – my fortune cookie read, “Person you love give you AIDS. Can you feel the molecule?”
Now when I close my eyes I hear his filthy nails type his tapestries of ruin. Click. Click. Click. I awake drenched in sweat and urine. His evil giggles dance around my dark room. His snake-hiss whispers, “you have AIDS.”
I taste his fingers in my mouth. His spindly dick-hands kneading those infernally baked wafers. Sweet, vanilla crackers of guidance? No. They are Trojan horses! Biscuits of betrayal! Those crackers put cock stigma all over my face and fortell my contracting the virus meant for apes!
More disturbing is what if in his opium induced trance he actually glimpsed, continues to glimpse into my future. The very Panda Express I frequent. While I loath him, I long to ask him, is the dong attached to the person I’ll love?
I am terrified to learn that he touched himself envisioning the tickling. Do I taste his sour result in the batter?
