Stick it in my ass, bro”, Joey pleads as he wiggles his smooth, orange ass back and forth on the satin sheets, the stench of baby oil still clogging my nostrils. I take my time, obviously hesitant, the cold needle laced in between my fingers like a petrified cigarette.

“I don’t know about this,” I mumble, the idea of stabbing this asshole weighing heavily in his favor, while the notion of injecting an illegal substance into another man’s ass fueling my tentativeness.

“DON’T BE SUCH A !” he exclaims. I laugh, overwhelmed by the irony of my bleach-blonde boss with the fake tan, lying naked on his stomach, his exposed ass soaking in UV light from the tanning lamp installed in his room. I finally muster the courage to jab him in the ass cheek with the point of the tiny metal spear, driving synthetic testosterone into his glute. When the plunger is fully depressed, Joey rolls over without bothering to cover up his wiener, not that he could. His friends describe him as “a penis with a man attached to it”.

“Thanks, bra,” he says with outstretched arms, the bro hug happening before I can even give consent. His sweaty, oily shoulder rubs against my chin, and his overcooked skin stings my face like a hot towel in a steam room.

“Alright, dude. I’m gonna go read some Tucker Max and take a protein shit. Go make me some egg whites and a kale shake. Daddy’s going to the gym after his deuce.” The Za grabs his books and rips a fart, extending the release an impressive ten steps, like a popped balloon fleeing the room. “Protein kisses!” He yells as he takes a seat on his plated gold toilet. He doesn’t bother to shut the door. “DON’T FORGET TO RECORD MANSWERS!” he screams down the stairs as I head toward the kitchen. For the 20th time today, I consider suicide.

At the gym, The Za spends more time flexing in the mirror than he does working out. That’s because this isn’t workout time for Joey Zaza, but “Pussy Trolling”, as he calls it. The truth is: The Za has a better gym built behind his house. The ZA-mpound is two thousand square foot facility filled with weights, treadmills, tractor tires, an Olympic sized swimming pool, a sauna, and a cryogenic therapy chamber. The ZA-mpound is where he actually works out, usually after doing a few bumps of cocaine.

However, at his personal gym, he can’t smell the seats of machines that women have just spread sweat on. As soon as he walks in the door to this place, Joey inhales deeply through his nose, enjoying the fragrance of sweat, the stink of testosterone, and the pungent scent of vaginal secretions. He is a gorilla stepping into the jungle. I’ve never seen a man more at home.

A curvy Latina walks by, her head straight, but her eyes darting. The Za knows this game, as do I. I’ve watched this same routine day in, day out. Girls walk by him, watching him, trying not to seem desperate. Joey gives them a wink, or a nod, then follows them off to the bathroom. This girl is no different. Looking around the gym, I spot a few girls he refers to as “Last weekers”, as in: he’s fucked them before. The Latina girl smiles shyly as The Za chomps his gum (Like a fucking cow) and gives her a smirk and a wink. I roll my eyes in disgust.

“Yo Petey, I’m gonna go tongue-punch this girl’s fartbox,” he says in my ear without lowering the volume of his voice as he follows the girl towards the locker room. “I’m Sexy and I Know It” blares over the gym’s PA. I contemplate suicide (21st ideation today if you’re counting with me) as I stare at myself in the mirror.

My name is Peter Gillian Moore. I have a business degree from Penn State. I grew up in South Philly, the son of an electronics store owner. We didn’t have money, but we had love. I got good grades, but I never got girls. I received a scholarship from Penn State, but still went into debt over food and lodging. And now I work for this fucking asshole.

Am I selling my soul to the orange skinned devil? Probably.

Integrity isn’t paying my bills. Joey Zaza is.

Focusing on my own reflection, I try not to vomit as I study my oversized Under Armour t-shirt, the image of it bringing back the memory of wearing my older brother’s hand me downs, a skinny little kid draped in a parachute with a shitty Vanilla Ice logo. Not much has changed.

I could, of course, try to work out, but I’m lazy and disinterested in the battle against my own genetics. I’m skinny fat, the byproduct of Italian and Irish genetics combining to turn me into a pasty lump of flesh with no defined muscles and a beer belly. If I were fat, at least I’d belong to a group. Instead I’m somewhere in between, a sloth following around an Adonis, the statue of David next to a fucking motel room sailboat.

“Excuse me,” a soft voice whispers from behind me. I barely noticed her creeping up in the mirror, a beautiful blonde Russian girl I immediately recognize as a Last Weeker. “You’re Joey’s assistant, right?”

Begrudgingly, I pull out my wallet and fork over a few hundred dollars, reciting my lines like I have a hundred times before.

“This should cover the cost of the procedure. If you intend to deliver the baby, we require a paternity test and-“

She holds up a hand in protest, horrified by my indifference.

“I’m not pregnant.”

I shrug and snatch back the stack of bills. Her eyes dart to the left and right, the absurdity of the situation hitting her like a brick to the back of the head. What the fuck did this dumb broad think was going to happen?

“Oh God, I’m starting to sound just like him,” I whisper.

“What?” she asks, her tone harsh.

“How can I help you then, uh..” I lean forward slowly, arching my eyebrows, begging for a name.

“Lidiya.”

“Lidiya. Right. How can I help you?”

She shakes her head, tears welling up in her eyes. A part of me, the old me, feels bad for her. A few years ago, Peter Moore was a college student and a leader in the PSU community. Male Feminism was all the rage, and I carried the flag for women’s rights like the I was. Maybe I thought it would get me laid, or maybe I truly believed it was the right thing to do. As you can imagine, I watched as these so called feminists all fucked each other, or the same assholes we were supposedly crusading against. Little Ole Petey was still jerking off to his imagination, too self righteous to even look at porn. Fucking pathetic. Joey has drawn me back to the other side of the battle, with his one-liners, steroids, and womanizing. He’s shown me the truth: There is no battle, period. The men have won and the women like it, whether or not they admit it. We are animals driven by the desire for power, pulled towards strength like metal to a magnet. Looking at Lidiya tear up the same way a hundred other girls have before her sickens me. What do these women expect? They fucked a guy in the bathroom of a gym the minute they met him! These princesses all expect Disney endings despite the 100 porn scenes they act out looking for Mr. Right. Idiots.

“I just wanted to see if Joey was going to call me but I guess he’s not here,” she trails off.

“Oh, he’s here.” I laugh. She doesn’t seem to follow. I huff and point at the bathroom. The same bathroom he followed her into, with the same sink he bent her over, with the same mirror he watched himself fuck her in, with the same paper towels she used to wipe the cum off of her ass. The realization hits her, and her eyes quickly dry up.

“You tell him that I said he can go fuck himself and that I hope he gets herpes!” She yells towards the bathroom.

“Sure,” I say through a smirk. “What was your name again?”

“Lidiya!” she screams, slapping me in the face before storming off. My glasses clatter to the ground for what seems like the millionth time. I pick them up and dust them off, more annoyed by the ritual than I am the act, like a secretary trying to fix a defective printer yet again.

“Is she gone?” he whispers from behind a weight bench. He crawls out from underneath, leaving a slick of sweat and oil on the black mat like a slug. He stays crouched down next to me, watching as she leaves the gym. “I hope she doesn’t fuck with my whip!”

I stare at a dumbbell and imagine the satisfaction of dropping it on his head. (2nd homicidal ideation) Then I could hang myself from the pull up bar, choking to death and defecating on the tar-black floor as the world cuts to black. No more debt. No more depression. No more Za. Is that my 22nd or 23rd suicidal thought? Who’s counting?

“Alright, she’s gone,” he sighs in relief as he stands up.

“Let’s go to the clinic. I think I have the clap again.”
He rubs his fingers under my nose and laughs. I don’t bother wiping it off. The last time I did that, he pinned me down and put his dick on my face. I force a smile, and then head for the door. He wraps a massive arm around me and rubs my hair.

“What’s the matter, Petey? You got sand in your vag?”

“No, sir.”

“Cheer the fuck up, then. The Za has a great idea!”

We exit the gym, and sure enough, Joey’s car has been keyed.

“How do they always know it’s mine?!” He screams as he lets go of me and examines the damage, his bright blue and yellow FerrZAri parked sideways in a handicapped spot.

“I have no idea,” I lie through gritted teeth as I stare at the New Jersey issued “ZAZA” plate on the front of the car.

“Petey, how do you feel about wrestling?” He unlocks the car and we get in simultaneously. Today is the rare day in which Joey actually drives. I’d say a prayer if I believed in God.

“I don’t know much about it, Joey. I know you made a lot of money in the business, but I was never a fan.”
Joey pulls out of the parking lot without signaling or looking, hitting 100 mph within a few seconds. I hear a horn behind us, but don’t bother looking. For a moment, I am The Narrator in a plane, hoping for a mid-air collision.

Unfortunately, Joey Zaza is too fucking lucky to die like that.

“It ain’t about the money, bro. I loved that shit.”
I’m unsure of how to engage him in this conversation. Joey is often open with me, far more open than I’d like him to be, but not about his feelings. He finishes most of his sentences with “and shit” or “these fuckin’ guys”. As in, “I feel bad about the war and shit”, or “Israel and Palestine again, these fuckin’ guys!” The depth and content of his thoughts are about as deep as a belly button. This conversation is already different. The Za is delving into his feelings, something he’s not apt to do. It’s jarring, and outside the normal bounds of my duties.

“You don’t have to work, you know. You make so much from the trust,” I muster. If The Za goes back on the road, do I have to go with him? What if I lose my job? At the moment, I can’t figure out which scenario I’d prefer.

“It ain’t about the green, Pistol Pete. It’s about the pink.”

He swerves in and out of traffic as my balls retreat into my pelvis.

“In that business you get to travel all over the world and meet broads you’d never meet otherwise.”

“So your gig as a superhero didn’t get you all the international ass you expected it would?” Joey laughs as I insult him. Credit where it’s due, The Za never takes himself seriously, and isn’t above a rib.

“Fuck you, Pistol!” He laughs. I smirk, the idea of this fucking meathead pretending to be Batman in Los Angeles a few years ago being the most comical, absurd idea in existence. I remember watching it unfold on TV, a movie come to life in front of all of us. For two weeks, some guy in a Batman costume beat the shit out of crack heads and drug dealers in South Central. It took less than a month for the FBI to get involved and pin his ass to the wall. Somehow he only ended up with community service (Probably because of his daddy) and a few months of probation. It turned him into a rock star (He claims that he would regularly bump Chris Brown from VIP) for a few years, but the novelty wore off after he crashed his Lambo into a donut shop and got a DUI with Justin Bieber in his passenger seat while Yeezus was videotaping. The A List dropped him after that.

“I just don’t get it, Joey,” I say with a shrug.

“You’ve got everything a guy could want. Why do you need that shit?”

Zaza seems to think about it for a minute. I wait for his ears to smoke.

“It’s the fucking crowd, man. Your music hits, and you walk out there, and the crowd goes wild, and it’s-“ He laughs. “It’s fucking orgasmic, bro. It’s pure sex. If I could can that fucking feeling up and sell it, I’d make Bill Gates look like fucking Bill Burr.”

“Who?” I wonder. The Za has a habit of making obscure references.

”He’s a comedian, stupid. He’s not rich, dummy.”

“Alright…” I concede.

“I’d be a fucking trillionaire.”

“Okay.”

“It feels that good.”

“I GET IT!” I shout without thinking.

“Alright, Sandy!”

“Another vagina joke! Great!”

“Do you wanna come with me? I could give you a raise and shit.”

“Really?”

“In my pants!” The Za points to his shorts, a giant tent having been pitched. He has the uncanny ability of being able to pop a boner on command. He should be in a fucking comic. Or preferably, a coffin.

“If you give me a raise, I’ll go.” At the moment, Joey is paying me about 80 grand a year, a fortune in any state other than Jersey. However, besides living in this overtaxed, over expensive fucking swamp, I’m at least six figures in debt thanks to the Penn State masters program, a program I didn’t even fucking finish because I’ve never written my thesis. Making more would give me the ability to pay off my debts, and escape this fucking hell with a small nest egg before beginning a prestigious career on Wall Street.

“It’s a deal.” Joey spits into his hand and extends. I refuse.

“The fuck’s a matter? ” He asks.

“I’d rather not get HPV.” I state.

“L-O-L,” he spells out loud. “It’s not like you’ll be giving it to anyone you fucking virgin!”

He takes his eyes off the road and he smacks his saliva covered hand on my face, barely avoiding a bicyclist as he howls with laughter. I consider grabbing the wheel and swerving into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer. Joey notices me staring at it.

“Go ahead!” He laughs. I stare at the wheel for a moment, then at him. I suddenly remember reading a quote a few years ago while Googling quotes to set as my Facebook status: “Better the enemy you know than the one you don’t.” How profound. I slump back in my seat and stare at the road, praying for the means to one day buy Joey’s gym and turn it into a battered women’s shelter.

“Pussy!” He yells as he grabs the wheel and steps on the gas, our destination unknown, at least to me. I watch him next to me, a peculiar look in his face. I realize I haven’t seen it before, mostly because he has no reason to feel it: hope. I think about Lidiya and all the other girls he’s crushed in the past year I’ve worked for him. They had the same look in their face when they met him. There’s something about Joey that makes you believe he can change your life for the better, an infectious drive that makes you believe he’s going to somehow elevate you, all in spite of the fact that he is a dumb, arrogant douchebag, and he deserves to be spit on. He shouldn’t be on top of the mountain, it should be people like me. People like you. People who give a shit, who actually try.

But all of those who are sucked into his wake quickly realize that Joey always wins because the world isn’t fair. The dumb douchebag’s are still the best looking. The arrogance is usually a byproduct of success. We’re all animals, monkey’s who build cities, swinging from branches and bearing our teeth. This is Joey’s jungle, and he is the king. And yet, Joey is two people: He is Joey, but he is also The Za.

And if Joey is the king, then The Za is God.

And God hates us all.