The Man Who Couldn’t (Wouldn’t) Smile

By Jake Ross

I can’t smile. Well, I can, but I choose not to. It’s not that I have bad teeth or anything. I brush twice a day, and floss, actually! You see, I was born with a head too big for my mouth, or…a mouth too small for my head. The doctor didn’t know which it was the day I was born, and my mom didn’t care enough to find out while she was alive.  All she knew was that I was quiet and she liked it that way. She was the heir of a topical ointment cream fortune, so my cuts, if ever formed, were of little concern to her. She had a horrible sense of humor, so I had little to worry about.

I think I might’ve missed an important piece of information here, one you’ll need in order to understand where it is that I’m coming from. The thing is, if I laugh, or sing, or even talk a little too loud, the corners of my mouth cut open on account of being stretched too far. Just a smirk will leave an open sore on my mouth for days. Weeks, even. 

With my mother gone, having passed away due to complications from her funny bone surgery, it was now my responsibility to keep myself happy and healthy. Left an enormous inheritance, along with a big house on the coast of Maine, I have enough resources to keep myself going a while. The hardest part of this new life will be keeping myself unhappy, but I’ve got a plan!

Every day, at 4:47am, I wake up to that horrible standard iPhone alarm. To get a bad start on my day, I crack open an energy drink and check the world news on Reddit. World War III started! Incredible! At times I’ve found myself feeling happy about these horrible things, almost smiling at images of children with torn apart limbs. The world can be incredibly cruel, which is great for me. It helps to know there’ll forever be a constant stream of shit there for me to sink into.

Around 7am, I take two 1000mg weed gummies (purchased from my local smoke shop, dispensary stuff is too clean) and turn on the Big Bang Theory. While I’d never criticize someone for enjoying (most) art, I fucking hate this show. By the time the first episode is over (30 minutes. Would be 22, but the ads help enhance the experience), I consider killing myself, but the excitement becomes a cause for concern, so I get up and head to the bathroom.

I try my best to only shower once a week or so. Showers can feel incredible and it’s important that I keep a level head. Instead of music, I listen to 9/11 phone call recordings while I scrub my asshole. I gotta be careful not to get too close. I’ve come to find I don’t hate the sensation.

While I’ve learned some about my body in recent years, I try my best to keep any sex related subjects strict and structured. I will only watch porn featuring men with abnormally large penises. I wouldn’t want to feel good about myself. I also make sure it’s something rough, both in performance and production. I like to build up the guilt as much as possible. “Is this girl old enough for this?” “Are they fucked up?” Had my mouth been big enough for my head, or my head small enough for my mouth, I’d finally be able to watch normal, healthy pornography. I could even make it!

At this point it’s finally 8am. Time for breakfast! I try to go for something filling and sweet for the most important meal of the day. To keep the caffeine kick going, I DoorDash (to help hate myself) three large coffees and half a dozen donuts  to my house. I eat as many of the donuts (plain, not even glazed) as I can, throw them up, then eat the rest. I wash it down with coffee then throw up again. I don’t like coffee. It’s the perfect set up for a shit day, and I (almost) delight in it.

Speaking of light, I keep it pretty dark in the house, so I save on electricity. Not that I need any extra funds, but it helps with delivery fees. I keep the blinds shut and the lights off, and every wall of this house is painted either black or your favorite highlighter color.

At this point in the edible trip, I’m uncomfortably stoned. I head back to my room in the attic and start my writing. Every day, at 10am, I write in my journal everything I hate about myself. A lot of it involves my mini mouth, but much of it includes my penis size, my thinning hair, and the lack of meaningful relationships in my life. I read over the list twice to ensure I haven’t missed anything.

Lunch is fish; always fishy and never fried, and never fries to go with it, nor any sort of sauce to drown the fish in. If I’m feeling good that day, I’ll add some broccoli or Brussels sprouts to the plate to dampen the mood a bit. I make sure to crunch every crumb to completion so I’m sure to feel full. I can’t feel good if I don’t feel good, right? I fight the urge to brush my teeth, in hopes that I’ll taste it later on in the day and feel worse about myself.

The fish usually makes me shit a bit, and while you’d think I couldn’t possibly make myself feel bad about taking care of my bodily functions, I have my ways! For instance, I never shave my ass. I’m not sure that most people need to, but I should. I’m a hairy, hairy man, and that hair is everywhere but on the top of my head. With all the brush in the way, cleaning myself up is a bit more like wiping a scented marker. This, to my satisfaction, keeps me from smelling good, and therefore keeps me from feeling good. This, like the fish breathe, is to ensure longevity in my unhappiness. It’s all about building a solid, stable structure so you don’t have to think too much about it.

You’d think the variety of smells coming off of me would be a problem, but I really don’t mind. If this were a normal sized mouth, I would, but my mouth is small, and so is the room for error. If I smell good, or look good, or know how to interact with women, I might smile, and we can’t have that, or I can’t, at least. Smiling hurts, and I don’t want to hurt. Everything I do is for survival. Who knows when a cut becomes a sore, and when that sore becomes infected, and when that infection becomes cancer and I die? Whose to say, really? I have no one to ask. I used to go to therapy, but it was working a little too well. 

I’ve come to realize that any interaction with the outside world is liable to make me smile, so I stay in this house, all day most days. The problem is, today is my mothers birthday, and I’m to visit her grave today. I was worried this could ruin my progress, but I’ve found a way to make sure the visit’s never enjoyable.

I start by getting dressed in clothes I pulled out of the hamper, preferably something with cum stains on it. I wear two pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, and a pair of shoes half a size too small. It’s cold today, so I make sure to keep my car’s AC on and play conservative talk show radio on the way to the grocery store. I wear sunglasses, inside and out, because I’m not used to the sun, and because I don’t want to feel things about the beautiful blue sky, or the forest green forest trees. 

In the grocery store, I pick up a cake. It’s the same cake I get every year for my mother, one that reads: “you’re dead.” I usually get a weird look from the bakery department, but that’s part of the tradition. I make sure to get a few groceries I need for myself, can’t make this all about her. I buy six frozen pizzas, partly to embarrass myself, but also to guarantee a short visit with mom.

At the cemetery, I start by placing the cake right on my mom’s grave, face down where I imagine her head would be. The cake in its case still, of course, my mother as well. At this point I pull out my stash, grind up some weed, then roll and light a joint. I should roll before I leave the house, but the pressure of trying to not get caught helps, so does being stoned. The edibles have worn off, my tolerance being so high, so I need to up my paranoia. I crack open another energy drink, chug a bit of it, then crack open two airplane bottles of whiskey: one to shoot, one to pour into the energy drink. Though this may seem like a good time, it’s too much for me. One shooter’s a good time, two shooters make a shoot out. 

Once the joints through, I try to remember everything I disliked about my mother, and any bad memories I have of her. Her coldness, her horrible cooking, the strange men coming in and out of the house all the time, her chasing them out of the house, screaming, in the nude. I was home-schooled and had three classes: Bible, dictionary, and atlas. When my mother died, I was finally able to take online classes, math and history and all of that. I really loved English, I think my mother did too. She always had stacks and stacks of books on her desk, books I felt she could never be reading in full. If I tried to interrupt her during her reading, she’d hum the national anthem until I left the room. I always hated that song. She knew that. I-

“What’re you doing?” asks the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. The only girl I’ve seen up close in a few years, granted, but she was the most beautiful, in life and the internet.

I accidentally inhale the joint and end up coughing up smoke as I respond, “Jesus Christ, you scared me. I was minding my own business, actually.” I try to begin all conversations with an air of aggression in case joy tries to sneak in, but I could already feel my lips quivering. Fuck.

“Is that…a cake? Why’s it upside down?” She kneels down beside it, caring enough to not stomp on my mother. She moves her hands towards the cake then pulls back, looking toward me. “May I?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” What am I doing? This potential embarrassment is a golden ticket to a life full of misery, a gift granted to me by the gods. “Actually, go ahead.” She flips it over and sees the message. I, against my better judgement, try to save face, “it was an inside joke we had.”

“Who was…who is she?” That was nice of her. She needs to stop being so nice.

“My mother, she fucking sucked though. Like, literally.. I think she was a whore. Not like a slut, an actual prostit-“

“I got it. Have a good night. You should get out of here, they close at dusk.” She’s leaving, fuck! That really did it, but that’s good, no? Or is it? What do I say?

“Okay. I have frozen pizzas in the car anyways.” Okay? O-fucking-kay?  Why’d you mention the pizzas? Wrong Tombstone, numb nuts! What’re you doing? “Hey, actually, I’m sorry. She wasn’t really a slut, or a prostitute, really. She did kinda sleep around though.”

“Okay. Maybe save the family stuff for the second date.” I smile.

“Ow, fuck!” I’ve kept myself from cutting my mouth for years, goddamit! What discipline I have! One cute girl talks to me and I fuck up years of consistent hard work.

“Oh no! Are you bleeding?” She gets really close to me. I’m getting hard already, Christ. She kisses the corner of my lip, then the other, then my lips. She starts to use her tongue, but I notice she keeps pulling out to lick my wounds. I pull back. She looks me in the eye. “It’s okay that you’re hard. It happens.”

“No, wait. What is this? Who are you? Do you kiss everyone like this? Are you drunk?”

“Do you love this shit, are you high right now, do you ever get nervous?” she sings. Young Money? I smile again.

“Motherfucker! Stop making me smile!” She kisses me again. I push her away. “Stop!” 

“No! This is the first snack I’ve had in ages, I’m not going to kill you, just want a little taste. And I’m no motherfucker. Ask her!” She points to my moms grave. 

“What? Who are you? Why are you here?”

“I live here! It’s a full moon tonight!” The woman throws her arm toward the sky, pointing her finger up at the bright ball of reflected light stuck there in space. “Your mother misses you.” 

I look down and she’s gone. For a second I think I hallucinated, all the drugs and liquor and all, but when I looked down my dick was still hard. I even felt it to be sure. I hear a click and am blinded by a light, even brighter than mother moon. “It’s the police, pervert! Hands where I can see them.”