The Cookie Junkie

By Tenzin McGrupp ©2002

The small nosed loser with the brick red coat and the long brunette wig slowly took off his eye makeup, making sideways glances into the cracked mirror along side the rusty bathroom stall. The laughs, still conflicting, yet humorous, were rippling through the pond of his freshly washed facial hairs. The old blues tunes scratched their way out of the corner jukebox, as the three old drunks sat still, thinking of little aside from the sharp cuts on the inside of their throats, that burned and begged for more liquor, more salve. The little prancing school girl with the Girl Scout Cookies wandered into the open doorway of the demoralized saloon and emptied her over-sized sack, filled with chocolate covered mint cookies. Those are the fucking best. I ran over to my savior and fell down to my knees, sweat beginning to flood my forehead and brow, and kissed the ground.

You see, I used to beat up girl scouts to feed my two box a day mint cookie habit when I was shacked up in Bellingham with a dog grooming school drop out, an anorexic habitually gum chewing speed freak, with multi-colored hair and lots of poorly designed tattoos peppered over her thin body, each done in either haste or a foggy daze. I forgot her name, but she used to lure the girl scouts onto our porch and I would scare them with a priest's outfit. They would drop their stashes and go running. I would take all the good stuff for myself and pawn off the remainder of the cookies, especially those awful peanut butter ones, to Crackhead Bill, who would be seen standing in the cool misty Northwest rain selling box after box to anyone who would be walking into the 7/11 near the highway of polluted suburbanites.

Sometimes he would be standing in silence holding up individual cookies for sale. The prices fluctuated with the European financial markets, uniquely in sync with each rally and decline. Sometimes, they were twenty-five cents a cookie. Other days they were $1.50. It all depended on what the Germans were doing that day. Ah, the fucking Germans. They would love to hear that Crackhead Bill, the tall skinny, bewildered man wearing green running shorts, black socks, and white tennis shoes with no shoelaces, stands silently, holding stolen girl scout cookies, patiently selling them off until he has enough money for his next crack siesta. The hallow shrieks and innocent squeals of girl scouts keep me awake every night, sometimes giving me the occasional cold sweats and other times, I get the itching feeling on my skin when I crave for those heavenly chocolate mint cookies. I'm freaking out, man. Time for me to go fetch me some cookies.

Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.