The summer after 10th grade I worked as a slap messenger. It was this novelty website I made in Computer Class where people would go online, fill out a form, send me $20 via PayPal or Venmo, and I’d go slap someone. The fields were something like name age height weight race gender description location so I could know who to find. A “special requests” box in case there was a catch phrase or something I was supposed to yell. I didn’t slap very hard and it was mostly a gag thing: guys paid me to slap them so they could slap me back and impress their girlfriends, parents sent me to slap their kids who’d stayed out too late, a teacher at our school retired and gave me a list of thirty-six past students to slap. That took most of July. A few people had the idea of paying me to slap myself, which I appreciated. That came out to $20 for, like, half a second of work.
The money was good. I slapped one or two people a day and came away with as much cash as my friends who lifeguarded at the community pool, baking in the sun and yelling and getting yelled at all day, while I just played Halo and waited for the ding that meant I had a slap request. I met a lot of new people by slapping them.
The next summer I added a $50 punch option. This got me in some trouble, because I never specified that I was only going to punch people in the arm, like a hey pal sort of thing. I wound up getting sued by someone who said I’d intentionally misled them, that they wanted to me absolutely fucking lay their boss out and I just gave Jerry a bit of a dead-arm. I had to cover my legal fees. I added a $100 “You Choose the Implement” option. Broomsticks dildos raw chicken breasts, legal pads live fish baseball bats, lemon meringue pies rolled up yoga mats the dictionary. It was fun to see how creative people could be.
I made a lot of money but nowhere near enough. The legal fees got bad. I didn’t take Computer Class senior year because I had to keep last period free for the court appearances. I felt like I disappointed Mr. Wilkinson by not taking Computer Class. The plaintiff offered to drop the case if I took the website down, but I really didn’t want to. It had sort of become my thing. I was the guy with the website. I was a guy. I hadn’t even applied to college because I figured I could do the website full time. I loved being a slap messenger; I liked getting to meet new people.
So I added a box on the website: “I Will Straight Up Kill Someone For Fifty Thousand Dollars.” My phone dinged. We went back and forth for a while, I said sure, I went out and got a gun at WalMart, and when my phone dinged again, there was your address and your picture. Apparently you cheated Greg on that guava juice startup? Look, man, I’m just repeating what I heard. No, it wasn’t Greg, pretend I didn’t say that. Fuck. Well that’s between you and Greg, or whoever you did or didn’t cheat out of their ownership stake in a guava juice company.
Anyways, yeah. That’s what I’m “doing here.” But I don’t actually want to kill you, or anyone else. For legal reasons. So I’d really appreciate it if you’d disappear. Anywhere, I guess. Yeah, I told him by tomorrow morning, so just start packing now. Oh, of course, not a word. Sure. Um, yeah, ok. Yeah, of course. A glass of juice would be great, thanks. You’re welcome?