He ain't chowbang. Skinny little motherfucker talked up his game enough at Greevy's, was all about his prehensive tongue or whatever after I did my thing with the cherry stem, and I guess he had a cute enough face even though it looked like a good gust of wind could knock him over. So I let him pay for the first beer and then the second after that and when he put that song on the juke I let him have a dance and didn't complain none when he pawed my ass. And I told him then I wasn't going back to his place, but I let him walk me to my car and let him take my hand when we was halfway there and then let him put his tongue in my ear and his hand up my shirt and then changed my mind and said yeah, okay. And so we walked to his truck down the block and I saw it wasn't really a truck, just one of those little Jap things that can't hold much more than a good station wagon, but I didn't say nothing about that. And he unlocked his door and got in first and then leaned over the seat to pop my lock and I didn't say nothing about that, neither. And he drove home with one hand on my leg rubbing up and down and I knew he was hoping I'd do some rubbing too but I don't play easy like that. And I saw his house ain't much, just another rowhouse with stained carpets but a nice TV in the living room and so we sat on the couch and he started in and had my bra off before you could say boo, squeezing on the girls like they was Play Doh or something. And I'm just waiting, scratching back behind his head, and then his hand's all down my skirt and he's rubbing there like he's trying to start a fire or something and then he's sitting up and undoing his belt and I see what he's packing which ain't much to write home about. But I know what he promised, so I'm still waiting. And then he goes down there and gives me maybe a minute of some sorry-ass licking like he’s got an ice cream cone he's scared of toppling, and when he's finished he comes up with his eyes all happy like he's discovered gold and bam, in it goes. Fuck, but I never learn.

At least his bed's comfortable. He's got one of those pillow-tops, big thick mattress you almost need a stepstool to climb into, and you could probably slide all the way across the room on his slippery sheets. We're lying on top of them because the room is hot on account of his AC is broken. He snores, too, and the overhead fan rattles, and if all that wasn't enough his sweaty arm is draped across my belly like he's scared I'll leave if he don't hold me down. Like I could go anywhere, anyhow. Damn car's still at Greevy's. And the green numbers on his clock radio say it's only one-thirty so the night ain't even half over yet. He'll probably want it in the morning, too. Him and his miniature pecker. I just gotta stop going to Greevy's.

Chowbang's Rhonda's thing. First time she said it was up at Maude's, when me and her and Muriel was having our hair done. We do that once every couple months, which is about as much as all three of us can get the same day off. Rhonda and me both work register up at the Wal-Mart, so it's easy for us, but Muriel is always on the floor and keeps different hours. Plus she's married, so sometimes it's hard for us to get together. She still hangs with me and Rhonda at Greevy's on some Fridays, though. She just has to wear sweaters out the house so her old man can't see her girls hanging out her shirt. But anyway, on that day we was all sitting in our chairs and waiting for our perms to take while Rhonda told us about her new man.

"Works up the quarry," she said, and Muriel and me looked at each other and winked. Rhonda and those quarry boys. Same old story.

"It ain't like that," Rhonda said. "Devin's different."

"Different how?" Muriel said.

"Yeah, different how?" I didn't want to be left out.

"He's just different. He chowbang."

Muriel and me looked at each other again, but she didn't know any better than I did.

"What's chowbang?" I said.

And then the attendant came by to check us so we got quiet. When she left, Rhonda leaned over so me and Muriel could hear better. "He goes downtown. Then he goes to town. Then he goes downtown again. Gets the job done right." Then she sat up and leaned back in her seat like she was some goddamn queen or something, all proud.

Me and Muriel, we just looked at each other. Then we bust out laughing. Chowbang. Oh, baby, chowbang.

You might think Muriel being married makes Rhonda more fun to hang with, but Muriel, she's a hoot. She laughs all the time, even when shit ain't funny. She laughed about chowbang for like two weeks. She'd come up to Rhonda at the register and ask her if she had any chowbang left for lunch, right in front of a customer, then bust up laughing so hard I could barely hold it in myself. Or she'd describe stuff with it. She’d say, "This pizza chowbang," or "That car's painted chowbang, ain’t it?" And then there was the other day in the break room with Indira, this girl from India who goes around with a red dot on her forehead and wears these silk wraps all the time. We was all sitting together at the table drinking our Cokes, me and Muriel and Indira, and Muriel was complaining about having to help Lenny in the stock room unload two pallets of golf bags even though she's not supposed to have to work in the stock room. And then Indira started talking in her funny accent about these golf courses they have in her country. She told us about how her country got took over by the English or whoever, and after they took over they made it so that only white people could play golf. They took all the best golf courses and made them too expensive for anybody else, but what they didn't know about was the monkeys. There's monkeys everywhere in India, see, and what they like to do is run onto the golf courses and grab any balls they can get their hands on. Then they run away and drop them somewhere else. The Indians, they knew to always carry extra balls when they played on account of the monkeys, but the white people didn't know. So they tried shooting the monkeys, they tried building fences, they tried chopping down trees, they tried everything. But monkeys kept stealing their balls. And already Muriel's busting up at this, the idea of a bunch of monkeys taking some white man's balls. "So what'd they do?" I asked.

"They changed the rules," Indira said. "They made it so if a monkey took a ball, you had to play from where he dropped it. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad. But they made it part of the game."

"Monkey golf," Muriel said, giggling again, and then I started giggling, too. And then Indira started in, even though I had the idea she hadn't planned on her story being funny. And then the door opened and Rhonda walked in with a bag of pretzels and Muriel looked up and said, "Bet them monkeys chowbang!" And then she bust out laughing and Rhonda got this tired look on her face because I think she was sick of the chowbang jokes by then, but what could she do? That's just Muriel.

This guy, though, he ain't chowbang. He's just bang, and not even much of that. And what the hell was his name anyway? Derek or something. Eric. Merrick. Hell if I can remember. There's a lot of light in the bedroom on account of the blinds are open and there's a full moon, and when I look close at his head I can see how he’s kinda bald up top. I didn't notice that before. He ain't got no hair on his skinny little chest at all and his stomach is just a pudgy white ball that puffs up every time he lets out another snore. And his pecker is this shriveled little knob poking up from his crotch like a doorbell. I can barely see it with all the hair he's got growing down there. Boy needs a trim something fierce. Scrawny-ass, small-pecker, big-bush schoolteacher. At least a big guy, like one of Rhonda's quarry guys, he lays down on you and you know there's someone up there. I ain't never been much for those quarry boys, though. Gimme a roofer or a plumber or, hell, even a phone man if you got to. But those quarry boys are dumb as a box of rocks. Get it? Box of rocks.

It just pisses me off. I'm stuck here, carless, bare-ass naked and trapped beside this non-chowbanging motherfucker when I could have been up at Muriel's with her and Rhonda. But I had to be miss high and mighty, making my point, sitting around my apartment and wondering if maybe Lenny's gonna call, but of course he didn't because the damn fool only calls when I'm not expecting him to. And who the hell wants to sit around by herself on a Friday night? That’s why I was up at Greevy's, and that's why I ended up leaving with this fool. It's their damn fault.

And damn Lenny, anyway. It ain't even like we’re dating or nothing. I mean, we've gone out a couple times, bowling and whatnot. He ain't bad—good looking, I guess, maybe a little on the skinny side but decent. But he ain't got no ambition. Don't even have his GED, and you got to be some kind of retard to not have that. But I know he's been sweet on me a while. He does all those things guys do when they want a piece of you—acting like he's just got to hang around the store an extra half hour 'til my shift ends, calling me and acting like he don't remember when his next shift is, telling me he was supposed to go out bowling with his buddy Frank but Frank had to pull a double shift and maybe I want to come along instead. But the man won't come out and say what he wants. And I'm sorry, but a man's got to be able to say what he wants. I mean, hell. Even this scrawny-ass schoolteacher could say what he wanted. So why the hell can't Lenny?

I don't know why I keep him around. Just something about him, I guess. He never gets fresh or nothing, never even tries to hold my hand, and I guess maybe I'm just wondering how long that can go on. Rhonda thinks he might be queer, but I don't think so. He don't dress well enough to be queer. And I seen him looking at the Sports Illustrated with them swimsuit girls. Then Muriel said maybe he's a virgin and don't know what to do. "Maybe you just got to jump on and show him what's what," she said, and then busted out laughing, and because she just can't leave well enough alone she went on about how Rhonda ought to have her quarry boy give Lenny some pointers. And we was all eating lunch up at the McDonald's, and what I wanted to do was get up and stomp out to let them know I was pissed, but that would have been stupid because then they'd have scored points and I ain't about letting nobody score points off me. So I just sat there stirring my ketchup with a French fry while they laughed and then Muriel said something about her man being out of town at the end of the week and Rhonda said we oughtta have a girl's night at the apartment, and just like that they forgot about Lenny. And so I didn't say nothing else, but I decided then I'd show them what's what by not going to girl's night. But now they're there and I'm here and Lenny ain't nowhere at all.

And you know what's really fucked up? I'm here in this fool's bedroom when I just met him tonight, and in the four months I've known Lenny I ain't never even seen his place. He ain't never even tried to bring me home, and that's the first thing a man tries to do. I mean, hell. Maybe the man is a virgin. That would be the kind of luck I have, anyway.

But I won't feel sorry for myself. I hate suckers who do nothing but feel sorry for themselves. Like people at the Wal-Mart who just piss and moan about how hard the job is. And hardly nobody sticks around but a couple months before they up and leave for someplace else where they do the same shit for less pay. And meanwhile I'm making a dollar more than most, on account of I just stick around. But you try to explain that to them, you say, "Look, you got to stick to it and just do it if you wanna get anywhere," and they’re all like, "Get off with that. It sucks here." They don’t want to listen, they just want to complain.

And you know? It ain't like I don't got shit to complain about. Hell, I could complain about Lenny 'til I’m blue in the face. I mean, how fair is it that a frizzy-haired, gap-toothed slut like Rhonda can run out and find herself some chowbang man, and a big-boned girl like Muriel can get herself married to some guy who, sure, packs on the pounds himself but makes enough to buy her dresses and take her out every now and then, but a girl like me, a girl who looks good and takes care of herself, ends up stuck in bed with some scrawny, small-pecker schoolteacher? And all she's got beside that is a guy too scared to hold her hand? How fair is that? Sometimes it feels like I ain't where I’m supposed to be, like my whole damn life's been dumped in the weeds.

You know what it's like? It's like Indira’s monkeys. It's like some damn monkey picked up my life and dropped it where it ain't supposed to be, where I can't hardly even see it. And if that’s true, then maybe what I’ve been doing all this time is trying to chase away the monkeys when I should of just been playing the ball.

I should of just been playing the ball.

I'm done being here. I gotta pee, and I don't give a damn if Eric or whatever his name is hears me getting up. I'm gonna push off his sweaty arm and get up out this bed, grab my clothes off the floor and lock myself in the bathroom. I'm gonna get dressed, and when I come out he's gonna be awake and his little doorknob pecker'll be sticking up from the forest he’s got between his legs and he's gonna try to say something smart to get me down, but I'm gonna say no. I’m gonna say no and then he's gonna ask why and I'm gonna say, "'‘cause I'm playing my ball." And he won't know what I mean, but I don't give a fuck. I'll march downstairs and out the front door and into the night. And, yeah, it'll be after two o'clock, but I don't care. I'm playing my ball. It ain't but two or three miles back to Greevy's. I can walk that. I can walk that, but maybe there'll be a taxi I can flag. Either way, I'll get back to my car and drive home and I'll make it in for my eleven o'clock shift and Lenny'll be there and I'll just straight out ask the man. I'll ask him why he don't ever ask me to his place, and I'll ask him why he don't ever try to take my hand or kiss me or nothing else. And maybe he'll have an answer and maybe he won't. And maybe I'll just kiss him myself if he don't have the balls to do it on his own. It's my ball, and I'm gonna play it right where it landed. Just five more minutes. Five more minutes of this fool's snoring. Five more minutes to think about it, and then that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna play my ball, and it's chowbang, baby.