By Paolo Poquiz
Dummy was a yellow bolster pillow I met when I was born, and he was my best friend. He was my confidant on long nights–always listening to me about the girls whose hands I held/faces I’ve thrown pinecones at, and he always agreed with everything I said, so much so that there was a notable crease in him where he nodded his head. We were inseparable. Then, when I was six, we had a falling out. I felt I was outgrowing him, and when I accidentally left him behind on the bus, he decided to never return. He hitchhiked around the world for a bit, a difficult task for someone without thumbs, and he looked happy enough in his Facebook photos, sitting under the stars in Tibet doing molly or whatever. But I know my friend, and I could see from his complexion that he was bored with life. He had that look he got sometimes when we were close, where he would look at me while I watched Zoboomafoo and say, “There’s gotta be more, Pao. Something out there’s gotta fill the empty pit inside a little.”
Maybe he found that something when his kids came around: one from Seattle, one from Vietnam, and two from Prague. Dummy was very vocal about how he didn’t bag his shit up. Scarred by his own parental neglect (his mother was always in and out of jail for healthcare fraud), Dummy refused to be a deadbeat, giving up his vagrant lifestyle and getting a kushy job writing scripts for hospital-themed pornography. Sadly, late last year, he was run over by an ambulance. He died in the hospital surrounded by the two kids and one co-parent he managed to get to like him.
I pray for Dummy’s mortal soul, that he spends eternity somewhere warm and lovely, but Dummy’s a fucking pillow, and I don’t think pillows get the luxury of merciful divinity. Ever the absurdist bastard, I would like to think Dummy is at least laughing triumphantly in the face of whatever paradise the rest of us are promised as he drifts off into nothingness.
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