Under the Influencer.

            No one in this town can handle their shit. The homeless fuck-heads of Main Street surround me, wallowing in misery or shouting at each other or to no one at all. I can tell this one hobo with a bright orange, billy-goat beard smoked too much flakka. He’s roaring and flexing like he’s transforming into a dragon. I legit feel embarrassed for him as I snort another line of coke off the center console.

            I half-interestedly watch as an old man in a tattered Rays cap squirts piss all over the passenger’s side of a soccer mom’s olive colored SUV. I’ve been waiting twenty minutes already but know not to be less than thirty five minutes late for my lunch date with Phoebe. I’m sitting in my jeep, slowly sipping on a mason jar full of agave sweetened health mush. I wipe away a thick, purple mustache and snort another line. Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball rumbles loudly from the numbness of my throat.

            No one will look at me. I burp as aggressively as I can, but there’s still no response. I honk the horn. Nothing. No response whatsoever. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

            My eyes get moist as I fantasize about how I could’ve traded sexual favors or murdered Ke$ha for Dr. Luke to give me the rights to Wrecking Ball before it became a hit. I could’ve been a way bigger celebrity than her, especially without all that Hannah Montana/Billy Ray Cyrus baggage bullshit holding me back. Most people would think I wrote the song, because really it doesn’t matter who writes or plays on or produces a song, all anyone cares is who sings it. My audience would align their most powerful, personal, emotional experiences with me, solidifying our imaginary bond in their minds and hearts. They’d think I was just like them, which I actually find pretty fucking insulting if I think about it too much.

            If life was fair, I’d be at the like, can’t step foot in public phase of my fame right now. Like in a Hard Day’s Night or Train to Busan. Strangers should be ripping off pieces of my clothing, or cutting off locks of my hair to pass down to their great grandchildren. Existence can be so fucked up.

            BTW, I’m not like, unpalatably anorexic like Miley Cyrus either, for the record. I’m technically bulimic skinny but with, like, really high quality caps on my teeth, so it looks like I only eat kale and work out all the time. I’m so much hotter than her. I really am. Legit.

            Everyone should be loving the shit out of me right now. Everyone but counter culture dipshits who would be in the Kandle-closet anyway, and they’d, like, finally come out and admit they always thought I was fucking awesome on their death beds or after they had kids (same difference). I had all the potential in the world. Still do, it’s just like, tick tock, you know?

            I find a couple old receipts in my cup holder and uses them to clog the blood gushing out of my nostrils.

            An elderly woman with scrotum skin gasps for breath as she alternates between an oxygen mask and a cigarette. She struggles to cross the cobblestone crosswalk with her walker, scraping it along the ground.

            ‘How sad it must be to get super old,’ I think to myself, scratching at the splotchy, red rash spreading along my calf. I’d intended to die at twenty seven, like Amy Winehouse or Janis Joplin. I’m now a month away from my, like, fifth 29^th birthday, still toiling away in relative obscurity. There was just a seventeen year old influencer who was decapitated by a stalker who tried but failed to kill himself afterward, and her gamertag trended for like, fourteen hours. I am still very lime green jello about the whole sitch. To be adored like that? To be at the center of someone’s, or a bunch of someones’ whole lives? What is that like? For strangers to give a shit? To live constantly in their thoughts, prayers and masturbatory, violent fantasies?

            I suppose I’ve been fortunate in my life, all things considered. I’ve always gotten everything material I could want. I had like, four power wheels growing up. At the beginning of the school year I repeated, I bought out every fucking Lisa Frank folder in town, just so those third grade cunts above me couldn’t get any. They hated me. For how I was born. For who I was born.

            They can all kiss my boney ass. I hand-jobbed every single one of their boyfriends in middle school. I ended up having to switch schools over it. I rule.

            In my not quite old age, I’ve come to the realization that life is kind of balanced. Karma does exist. I’m still learning profound lessons every day. Like, if I had gotten famous when I was younger, I would have had to do like, several really sincere YouTube apology videos because I would’ve been caught using the N-word like, a lot, cause I used to use it like, all the time, like I had Tourette’s or something. Now that I’m a fully grown, mature woman, I’ve learned to only use that word around people I can trust like, 100%, because anyone else could be secretly recording me because like, they, subconsciously, don’t want me to be famous because like, crabs, when they’re boiling in a pot like, they, if they’re female - they pull each other back into the pot if any of them tries to escape, and the pot is like, a metaphor for shitty, boring ass Sarasota and the crabs are all of my friends who are like, 6’s across the board, but I’m a motherfucking 10 and I’m not a crab, I’m a beautiful fucking lobster and so nobody wants me to leave and that’s why I still haven’t escaped this stupid fucking town yet. I could scream. And btw, when I pass through shit holes like Port Charlotte or Bradenton, I’m technically an 11. Namaste.

            Palm trees sway in the gentle breeze. I rub the final specks of leftover coke residue all over my gums. Each step of my glittering flip-flops obnoxiously slaps the blistering asphalt as I stroll over to Drunken Poet Café. I’m so fucking hot. And they know it. They all know it. Even if they’re pretending not to look.

 

************************************

 

            An old, shaggy man strums his dilapidated guitar on the sidewalk. Shattered, crimson glass circles around him like the rings of Saturn. Remnants of several cheap wine bottles. A potent, toxic stench hovers around his aura. He has, like, the skin and posture of a vulture, and he’s moaning Bob Dylan or Tom Petty (I can never tell the fucking difference). Wet shit dribbles out onto the sidewalk from the cuffs of his pant legs.

            “This is art,” I exclaim, shoving my face into the forefront of the Instagram post, “and you need to support your local artists! Do you have change for a twenty?”

            I turn my phone’s camera back to him as he mumbles something incoherent. Animated cat ears and whiskers twitch atop his sour, sagging face. With great effort I keep my disgust at bay, dropping the twenty into his beat up guitar case and shouting, “Sarasota arts, whooo! Represent!”

            He ignores me as his wart covered fingers fumble about the neck of his filthy instrument. I have to act like a role model now that I’ve reached 301,728 followers cumulatively across my various social media platforms. Even if most of them are paid for or robots and the rest are horny old men who try and trick me into committing suicide.

            Filming ceases as I step inside the restaurant and immediately tells the first waitress I see, “There’s a homeless guy begging for money out there.”

            The tiny Asian woman wiggles her bowl cut indifferently, “Okay?”

            I assert myself like the strong, codependent woman I was raised to be, “I’m gonna’ need you to do your job and get him the fuck out of here.”

            “But he outside.”

            “Let me clarify this to you,” I hold the back of my wrist to my forehead and smile like a clipped toenail, “do you recognize me? Do you know who I am?”

            She digs deep into her apathy at first sight of my furrowed brow, “No.”

            I smugly tilt my head, “Kandle McElroy?”

            The waitress shrugs.

            “I’m like,” I realize there’s probably a language barrier and pick my words very carefully, “I’m legit, like, totes famous? Kind of?”

            “Are you,” The waitress suspiciously scans my impeccably tanned body. I’m wearing an ironically baggy, Rastafarian Bart Simpson T-shirt and shredded denim Daisy Dukes. My long, blonde hair is intricately manufactured to look fashionably messy. Over all, I look fucking dope, so it’s pretty fucking bullshit when she asks me, “You on tha’ Chew?”

            The Chew is an inoffensive, local alternative to The View, where women in their sixties cook white people food and talk about Mario Lopez’s buns. In terms of Golden Girls, the hosts all think they’re Blanche, but they’re all hopelessly Rose.

            “Ew, gross, no, what? No,” my ego takes a temporary bruising before I realize this wench probably still owns a flip phone, “nobody knows who the bitches on the Chew are.”

            “That’s why I thought maybe you were one of them,” she tells me unenthusiastically.

            “I’m a singer,” I model the latest Iphone for the waitress, “on Instagram and Pinterest and I’m on Twitter but that place is like, a cesspool so I don’t really use it even though I’ve got like, seventy thousand followers on it or something. I don’t go on Facebook cause that’s for old people, but I have one. Oh, and I’m a model. Singer slash model mostly. I could be an actor too, I just haven’t been discovered yet. Are you on Insta?”

            The waitress cautiously decides to lie to me, “No.”

            The shit soaked minstrel I tipped outside saunters in through the front door. He streaks his freshly digested breakfast along the floor behind him.

            “Gonna’ wipe my ass,” he murmurs to no one in particular.

            “Go use bathroom at Holy Food,” the waitress yells, “dis for paying customer only!”

            He whips out my twenty dollar bill and waves it in the air, “I will take this many dollars’ worth a hooch. After...”

            He stumbles loudly into the bathroom.

            The waitress grumbles, “Sit down somewhere,” to me as she closes the men’s room door for him on her way to collect a mop and bucket.

 

**********************************

 

            I check my feed to see if anyone’s reacted to my post about the hobo yet. There’s already sixteen likes and someone in the comments saying that they can’t believe they make a hundred thousand dollars a year working from home and you can too. The little, bowl-cutted waitress pushes the steaming, black slush around the floor with her mop.

            “What’s that smell,” Phoebe asks as she passes through the entrance, “is it curry?”

            “It hobo dookie,” the waitress explains, surrendering to reality and throwing a dozen paper towels over the mess.

            “That’s charming,” Phoebe says with smirk.

            “Isn’t this place so fucking quaint?” I motion to the inexplicable, inaccessible porch floating above the entrance. It’s filled with old country knick knacks, dusty books and wicker furniture, “It’s fucking adorable in here.”

            “You’re totally right, you’re always right,” my frenemy momentarily displays a faux sense of shame, “I’m sooo sorry I’m late!”

            “It’s okay,” I stand to faintly embrace my yoga panted accomplice, “the old people in this fucking town have no idea how to drive, am I right?

            “It was actually,” the light in Phoebe’s eyes flickers, dying out a bit, “my mom’s been really sick, you know, and-”

            “Hey, guess what? Good news, I don’t care,” I say, plopping back down in my seat, “who wants to talk about depressing shit, let’s have fun!”

            Phoebe sits down, dropping a cloth napkin on her lap as she asks, “Are you going to the Seemingly English show tonight?”

            I sneer, “Are they still a band?”

            Phoebe shrugs, “I guess.”

            “That’s pathetic.”

            “It’s for some missing girl,” she opens the menu. Light bounces off its laminated gloss, illuminating her acne scars, “I guess it’s to spread awareness or something?”

            That poor girl, I couldn’t think of like, a more embarrassing band to spread my awareness, “You think she’s dead?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “She’s probably being sex trafficked. You think they’ll fuck her to death like Jon Benét Ramses?”

            “I don’t… know who that is…”

            “She was like,” I’m so fucking happy I get to talk about this, she’s been like, my lifelong idol, “this smoking hot five year old pageant princess in the 90’s.”

            Phoebe decides it’s time to change the topic of conversation because she fucking sucks, “Do you already know what you’re gonna’ order?”

            “Um, yum,” I push out a reluctant giggle, “everything?”

            “Oh god,” she sighs, “I wish I had your metabolism.”

            “It’s a curse,” I gently jiggle the cellulite above her knee beneath the table, “I love your fat thighs. Men with mommy issues love women with big legs, and they like, make the most money because they have like, a subconscious need to get rich enough to where like, no one cares if they fuck their mom. I heard Elon Musk and Bill Gates totally fuck their moms.”

            “You’re like, so sweet,” Phoebe blushes, “I think that’s called an Oedipus complex.”

            “Actually Freud came up with that, not Oedipus you dumb bitch,” I laugh antagonistically, “did you know he did tons of coke?”

            “So did you find out if it was really him?” Phoebe interjects.

            “Freud?” I ask, bewildered.

            “DJ Khaled.”

            I pause to focus on the grimy, microscopic sperms still rioting in my belly from last night, “I’m pretty fucking sure.”

            She presses me, “Did he message you back?”

            “No, but that’s like, even more of a confirmation, I.M.O.”

            The hobo stumbles out of the bathroom. The waitress hands him two small, pink, genie bottles of sake and he departs. She approaches our table, “You two know what you like order?”

            I ignore her, “He did shout out ‘D.J. KHALED’ when he came which puts me at like, 65% certainty that it was him.”

            “I’ll have a Thai iced tea, and um, the curry puff and that’s all,” Phoebe responds demurely.

            “I will take the,” my head wobbles as my vision blurs. The shiny plastic over the menu has made everything unreadable, “give me the entire left side of the menu.”

            The waitress lowers the pen and small paper pad she’s been scribbling in, “I can’t tell if you serious oh joking.”

            “Do I look like I’m fucking joking,” I ask, squinting stoically before bursting into maniacal laughter.

            The waitress emits a long, audible sigh, “So you are joking?”

            “I am dead fucking serious,” I tell her coldly.

            Why are people so fucking stupid? Why does no one understand me? Why am I so ahead of my time?

            “It mostly soup,” the dumb twat tries talking her way out of a tip.

            I glare at her insolence. The bitch nods and warily enters the kitchen.

            “Oh my God do I look like her when I go like this,” I put my fingers on the corners of my eyelids and press upward, squinting.

            “O.M.G., Kandle, you really do,” Phoebe is so fucking impressed, “you should be an actress.”

            “Like,” I lament, “I’m not even joking.”

            “You could play like, Renee Zelwegger’s granddaughter in something,” she nods in agreement with herself.

            “F. Y. Iiiii,” I gasp as I remember, “did you know she shops at Holy Foods?”

            Of course Phoebe’s in the know cause she’s a little pansexual tramp, so she hears all kinds of shit, “Pretty Ricky told me she drinks like, turmeric juice there every day.”

            Pretty Ricky is like, a kind of cute boy who works at Holy Foods who puts too much gel in his hair and drinks too much because he hates himself. We completely disregard the arrival of our drinks.

            “Oh my God, she’s like, a total turmeric slut,” we cackle in unison at my hilarious pun for a brief moment and then I get right down to business, “so I figured we’d go to Siesta and you can take a couple pictures of me paddle boarding.”

            “There’s like, flesh eating bacteria in the water,” she warns me.

            “I said a couple pictures, Mom, my grandfather’s the mayor, I’m pretty sure I can do whatever the fuck I want in this shit hole town. B. T. Dubs,” I lift my leg onto the table and model the goopy lesions along my calf, “can you like, photoshop this thing off?”

            “Holy shit, Kandle,” Phoebe gags, “what is that?”

            “It’s like,” I dig my fingernails into the most inflamed portion, causing little bits of pus to bubble up from the scratches, “razor burn I think?”

            She covers her mouth and motions for me to put my leg down.

            “It smells like old, unwashed dishes,” she says. She isn’t wrong, but still, ugh, “Were you swimming in the Gulf?”

            “No,” I quickly dismiss my lunch date’s feigned concern, “I mean, I’ve been taking selfies in it but like, I didn’t even get my hair wet.”

 

*************************************

 

            Our shitty waitress arrives carrying several trays of food. She places a few of them atop a nearby table that screeches as she drags it over. We refuse to glance in the direction of or even blink in response to the woman shuffling soup all around us. She’s just not worthy.

            Phoebe hunches down and gets uncharacteristically serious, “I think you might, like, need to go to a hospital. For your leg.”

            The waitress finishes hiding Phoebe behind my labyrinth of appetizers, “Any ting else?”

            I grimace at my so-called-friend in disgust, “You know, you’re acting like a real cunt today.”

            The waitress throws her hands in the air, departing to the kitchen to once again hide from paying customers.

            Phoebe shrivels up, “I’m sorry.”

            “Whatever,” I swiftly change the subject, “do you have any coke? I haven’t done any in like, months.”

            “You have like,” she discreetly passes me a small, clear baggie, “such good will power.”

            “It’s like, a choice. I choose to be like… strong,” I discreetly stick my entire nose into the bag and vacuum away the entirety of its contents, “did you know strong is the new pretty? I saw that on a calendar and like, I believe it. Like, people really liked the first Wonder Woman movie and a lot of people pretended like they liked Captain Marvel.”

            “But they’re strong and pretty.”

            “Yeah, but Wonder Woman smokes and has a kid in real life, so like, gross, and I saw Captain Marvel’s tits in one of the Fappenings and like, she looks like she has weird rocks sewn into her chest,” I make my hands into claws and points them toward my cute, petite breasts for emphasis, “hella-decent rhinoplasty though.”

            “Well if you had your own personal stylists and stuff you’d be much better looking than both of them. You’re like-”

            “A glowing, golden goddess?” I cut her off and slither her my phone with its camera already opened through the maze of dishes, “You are sooo sweet!”

            “No, you are,” Phoebe snaps several photos of me holding individual roles of sushi over my eyes, “I’m just so lucky I get to bask in you!”

            I’m so quirky! She can barely handle it. I spend the next twenty minutes writhing around dishes and pretending to eat food for the photo shoot before screaming out to our chink waitress, “All of this tastes like ass!”

            She comes out of hiding and approaches the table, clearly offended by the uneaten smorgasbord. Not a freckle of roe is out of place. She’s clenching her teeth when she asks “You no like?”

            “You’re going to have to take it all back,” I scoot my seat out, “I’m not paying for any of this.” I could, believe me, it’s just the principle of the matter.

            “You pay, you pay,” ol’ slanty eyes insists, “I call cops you no pay.”

            “Well I’m starting to feel real sick, and my uncle is a food-poisoning lawyer so,” I’m making a run for the door when my left flip-flop skids on a moist lump of hobo turd. I tumble for a bit before my face bluntly bounces off of the shit-smeared hardwood floor.

            Phoebe immediately rushes to me from her seat. She’s bent down, filming me, her best friend forever, squealing, “O.M.G. I caught that all on camera! This gifs gonna’ go viiiraaalll!”

            I spit my two front teeth out and smile genuinely for the first time in years at the thought of my impending fame. I vomit into the puddle of black hobo shit as my consciousness starts to shut down. There’s a loud, wet smack as my face slaps the ground. That’s about all I can remember of the incident in question.

 

***************************************

 

            I wake up in the hospital. The Chew is on the TV. Four beige bowling pins are teaching their viewers how to cook with mayonnaise. My modestly sized room is filled with balloons, flowers and various shrubberies shaped into mythological creatures. My mother is staring blankly at her phone until she notices I’ve awoken, at which point she reflexively puts on her concerned face and dabs my brow with a lightly-snotted handkerchief.

            Dad never shows up, but my little brother Trent, who I haven’t seen in like, two years, comes to visit. He sneaks me some vortex that I scoff at before snorting. We reminisce about old mutual acquaintances we still hate and make fun of the cheesy TV shows that raised us. Trent is living part time with our old drama teacher and still goes to that super-secret high society gangbang at the Ca d’Zan every year. I don’t know how he keeps getting invited. I don’t know how I keep not getting invited. As expected, at some point Trent asks for money and I tells him to fuck off and he does. My ever elusive grandfather, the Mayor, sends his broad-shouldered secretary with a bouquet of flowers and a non-personalized greeting card. I don’t really acknowledge her even though I appreciate the gesture.

            I eventually sue Drunken Poet out of business, sighting them as the source of my flesh eating virus. They amputate my leg, but I’m honestly not overly upset. I get a sweet prosthetic that’s “tatted-up” with orchids and dolphins.

            I use the lawsuit money to fund a four hour Soul Surfer type biopic that’s filmed by locals with no talent or imagination. Nobody’s actually had the attention span to sit through the whole thing yet, but it’s expected to sweep the local awards section of next year’s Sarasota Film Festival.

            The video of me passing out in a pile of human manure goes on to trend for months on various fetish sites. I gain an additional 800,000 followers in less than a month, though most of them are trolls. People begin to recognize me in the streets. My fans often loudly call out to me, “Hey, shit girl!”

            I see the secret, sideways glances out the corners of my eyes. I hear their whispers behind me as I cruise the various bodegas and spas around town. Those that don’t respect me fear me. You wanna’ know how many businesses I publically canceled for uniped discrimination? I’m infamous. Like Tomi Lahren or the Virgin Mary or Aileen Wuornos.

            Eventually, I receive a fancy red envelope sealed with a wax “R” emblem. The return address states that it is from the Philanthropists of the Ringling Society. I draw out the suspense, opening it as slowly as I can. The anticipation palpable. I’m honestly more nervous than excited, which is totally stupid, because I totally know what this is going to be. In the most beautiful handwriting I’ve ever seen, I receive my first ever invite to the next after hours high society gangbang at the historic Ca d’Zan mansion.

            It turns out that the wealthiest and most notable of my fans would be thrilled to not only do weird penetration stuff with my leg nub, but they’d also like me to recreate my famous skat incident in front of the whole party. Upon my RSVP, they will commence altering their diets accordingly in order to produce the highest quality consistency of fecal matter.

            I have never felt this close to fulfilled. I am seen.