Over the head comes a big and wide, meter-by-meter, black and rugged rubber burger, the insides are very hot, of course, especially in New York, a real hell, the fifth circle or the one containing those, who cheat on their wives or don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom. Our own Belaja Cerkov River, Ros, comes to mind, cool and clear, that slowly carries its waters through the wide fields of the drowsy Kiev-land, oh, what a river! Those coming from the banks of prominent rivers—like Volga, Mississippi or Yangtze, for example—just wait to blurt out, “What kind of a river is that?” a snaking narrow thing, lost amidst the fields and vegetable gardens. And I’ll tell them—so what, what do you know of the carps I caught there, and what about the catfish, not even mentioning the pikes…But let’s not get distracted as it brings only pain, but let’s get back to my business attire. Then, when THEY are not happy with me being just a freshly cooked burger, I am brought my bread armor—a bun in the front and a bun in the back. Oh, how I hate it, my cardboard cell! I am a fish on a hot stove or, as they say, put on one bun and banged with the other, and there I am; almost a Big Mac, only ketchup is missing. And those Scoundrels bring me a huge blood-red ribbon that curls like Ros through Kiev-land, along the burger—now I am a real Big Mac, oh, hell on earth, if you do exist, I recognize your countenance, you look like a big pot-bellied sandwich. Surely, I didn’t have to leave my own Ukraine, my beloved Belaya Cerkov. Where are you, my dear Belaya, where are your bells, the Pushkin monument in the railroad station that he reached in his troika, looked at that dreary spot, wrote the great “The night Ukrainian is silent”, cursed: “Damned hole, fartburg, cuntland”, and off he went. And that’s a great Russian poet, shouldn’t he be ashamed? He is a fucking nigger, your Pushkin, if he was here, in this burger envelope, would he then write your great and sacred Master and Margarita? He is a festering faggot, your Pushkin. No, no, I better get back to the Belaya, my dear little city, to the meat and milk technical school, where I was a straight A student, indeed, I know where, which meat parts are…And as for them, in McDonald’s, what do they know, they don’t care, they are poisoning us, innocent jewmen, niggers and faggots, they don’t give a damn about our ruined stomachs and girls, who left us because we are overweight. They think that we’ll eat everything, that the blacks will gobble up all, that the jewmen have expansible stomachs that you can ride in a tank through the faggots’ anus. And as for my stereotyping…I am, myself, Jewish, but I know for sure that I am no jewman; although, I like money, I am not ready to sell my own mama, but daddy, that’s another story, I’ll gladly sell daddy, he is a rare bitch, never home when I was growing up, always roaming around with some whores, the snake—his favorite curse, by the way. Instead of raising me, making me a human being with a capital letter, a block of a man, he, with his carelessness, made me become a big and cheap Big Mac. My dear daddy fucked every worthless thing that moved and I am absolutely different; tender, almost an effeminate faggot, I still haven’t fucked the Cell.
Now it’s time to tell you about the Cell, yes, all about the Cell. But what is there to tell, it’s as if describing Beethoven to a blind. She stands across the street by the cell phone store, dressed in a cellular phone costume: an oblong big black cell phone in the front, with painted white buttons and a face in place of the number 2, sticking out between numbers one and three, with a long rubber antenna over the head. And it is impossible to tell if her face looks white or dark. She might be from the Latin America. I always liked Latinos. We look at each other from across the street, all day long she gives out cell phone flyers, and she never has time to eat, that’s how we met, actually. The point is that Coke and I are permitted to come inside to eat as many sandwiches and to drink as much soda as we like. Possibly, that is the reason why I’ve already gained about a hundred pounds and, in the near future, may be able to stand on the street without my cardboard armor, and she is so thin, how can she come inside, when all that shit takes forever to get down. I secretly get a burger and a coke, run across the street and hold it out to her, but she doesn’t want to take it, I am poking her with it, but she refuses, but I am a purposeful sandwich, I insist and she takes it, babbling the words of gratitude in Spanish, I have to learn Spanish. Now, first thing in the morning, we wave at each other from across the street. Don’t tell anyone, but I love her more than anything in this world, I have my Russian-Spanish dictionary with me today, I’ll ask the Cell out to dinner, in the evening, when less people are on the street, I’ve waited for this moment for two months, my whole life I have waited for this moment.
Here I am, fully equipped, they give me a shove and chase me out into the street, where I have to stand and give out flyers saying that today all Big Macs like ME are half price. They are selling me, selling me for a half a penny, those bitches, American whores; I should kill them all and drown them in the Atlantic ocean, what did Mayakovsky say, “I would shut down America, clean it out well and then discover it again.” So, capitalists are walking by, white trash, tourists from all around, and other idiots. Shit, so I come out onto the Broadway, this mother-fucking street and give out flyers, come on, bitches, come in, we’ll stuff you with my own image, you’ll shit out bubbles, you’ll have a great stool, and the sun is a hot motherfucker, the crazy bitch, and the thoughts in my head are completely anti-American. And how good would be to shut the fuck down this whole American joint, how good…does It exist, the Divine Justice? And it is just 10AM, the afternoon should be unbearable, how can a poor Jewish Big Mac bear such inhuman conditions? If I was an artist, if I wouldn’t have two left hands and wasn’t a loser, I would paint a humongous concentration camp with McDonald’s signs on the watchtowers and incredible fatsos behind the barbed wire, with Cokes and Big Macs like me as guards. Oh, I haven’t yet said anything about the Coke.
The Coke is a Nigerian by the name of Rockmor or Zackmor, or Fuckmor; I could never remember the names. I think that he is much older than me, he is somewhere in his thirties, that is. Oh, Zackmor-Fuckmor, he became a Coke because of his natural darkness. As he is a humongous cardboard cup with black liquid and a straw; his two legs stick out from the round cardboard bottom, the cup widens at the top and a black laughing head with dazzling white teeth comes out of the slit. The horror! I guess it’s even scarier than me, a Russian-Ukrainian Jew posing as a burger. So that Rockmor is a very nice guy, I mean he is a complete potz. Do you know the first question that he asked me when we met? He asked me if I had as sister. He didn’t ask about Dostoevsky, or the motherfucker Tolstoy from Yasnaya Polyana, or, at least, about the internationally known Indian potz Rabindranath Tagore, abhor, Cahors…No, he wants my sister, motherfucker, shit; I’ll kill that Nigerian bastard. Two thousand years since Christ’s crucifixion, ten years since Monica gave Clinton a blowjob, and he wants my sister…Shit, where is civilization, where is culture, when that fucker of a black mother wants to fuck my snow-white sister, whom I don’t have. And if I had one, the fuck you would see her, you black ass monkey, I would fuck her myself—that’s how desperate I am, I haven’t had sex for five thousand years, and you are asking me about my sister, my dear Fuckmor, I love you like a brother, for half a year we stand together on this foul scorching pavement, I also want to be black, then, at least, it would be reasonable that my life is so shitty.
There are Enemies just half a block away from us, a bit up the Broadway, yes, real enemies. They want to take away our right to work and our unemployment, our apartment with a view of the humming Atlantic, our masturbation in our own bathroom and our extensive time on the toilet. Ask, just ask, who are they? They are complete potzes, that’s who. There, across the street as if on a different planet stands Burger King and in front of it, our enemies, Junior Burger and Sprite the Green. They are our enemies, if not for them, people walking down Broadway would come into our place. And they intercept our catch. Oh, how I hate them, you can tell from the flyers that we give out, how many people we got in, we have a bonus system, I am saving money to buy a car, to go for a drive with the Cell, and those anti-Semites, Burger King racists, filter them from the top, in other words, feed them their stupid sandwiches, and also shout vulgarities at the Cell. They are festering faggots, the whole lot of them, I am sure that this Junior fucks Sprite in the anus so hard, lifting the cardboard cup bottom, so that steam pops out of Sprite’s straw. Coke and me, 100% heterosexual, hate them fiercely; I would kill their whole lot, Burger King’s henchmen. It’s the Cold War out here and today, Coke and I have a bold plan to set them straight.
At 6PM, when folks leave Manhattan tired of making their millions, Coke and I walk around the two blocks, although walking in our cardboard equipment is pretty hard, and gain the rear of the anti-Semites and racists. There they are. We attack them from behind, I hit my rubber fist right on the Junior Burger’s head, Coke grabs the end of Sprite’s straw and wraps it around the cup’s cover, around his neck, that is. The enemy is stunned, the passersby turn around, Coke and I run off proudly and calmly stop in front of our place. Burger King warriors stand in bewilderment in torn and rumpled armor, and threaten us with their fists and fingers. Those potzes, I think that they are screaming in Russian and another language completely unknown to me. Hah, no point in shaking buns after the fight. The Cell watched everything from the other side and she smiles at me, life is beautiful. In half an hour, I run across the street and feed her myself, a Big Mac, that is, just made and still hot. She kisses me on the cheek, I am in heaven, in broken Spanish I ask her out and she agrees to meet me this weekend, life seems splendid and wonderful, and I want to believe that God hasn’t grudged me a bit of happiness.
Next day early in the morning, Coke and I stand and give out the flyers, Coke comes inside to go to the bathroom. Suddenly, I am hit over the head with some metallic object; the Burger King scumbags got me. This is the end, I think to myself. One grabs my bun and the other raises a hand with a stick fuck…Suddenly, a big long black body plunges past me like a hawk, jumps on Sprite and together they fly out into the road. Sprite’s brains are all over the sidewalk and the Cell is also lying still, smiling with hardened eyes, blood is spurting everywhere, people are running from all over, and my dead love is motionless, and I am sobbing violently, holding her head on my burger knee and trying to remember how to say in Spanish, “Dear Cell, don’t go!”
