Spite the Face

After we split, my ex started a YouTube channel. Joke of All Trades, he called it. Every video was him doing household things. I guess you could call them manly things. He’d replace a toilet valve. He’d gut a fish. Invariably, each one would end in minor inconvenience. The toilet would spray him in the eye. I saw him pick a lock with a credit card and then fall through the door. These would be like thirty-second clips, sometimes maybe a minute. They clocked thousands of views and glowing comments. Women whose underwear was clearly visible in their little thumbnail pictures sent a lot of hearts, purple ones, and even if they were bots or actually hairy men, it does something to you to see that. Certain inadequacies arise. You start to worry, and lately, the videos are getting weirder and more extreme. A week or so ago, he opened a beer bottle with his teeth and popped a bicuspid. One of his fans paid for the replacement. Yesterday, I watched him dislocate and then relocate his own shoulder. He spoke about leverage, leaning against a doorframe in the apartment we used to share. The audible pops were disgusting and soothing, and when I called him after, he didn’t answer. It was nearly midnight. I stayed awake until four. My phone can’t stop dinging more new content, and the chime makes my throat constrict and my eyes water. An elevator shaft eats at my stomach. The places he might go next, I think. The freaks who will make him famous and free.