We get super high and buy way too much candy corn.
We get home. We sit on the couch. We find the stupidest horror movie we can find.
After shoveling nearly the entire bag of candy corn into his mouth, Darren says, “I don’t think I know what real corn tastes like. This just tastes like candy. It doesn’t even taste like corn. Does it?”
“It does not,” I say. “How have you never had corn?”
Darren thinks about this. “I think it’s because I’m too young.”
“You’re thirty-five.”
“I just don’t … think it was a thing. Like, I’m pretty sure people stopped eating corn before I was born.”
Several minutes go by before Darren says, “Now I want to know what corn tastes like.”
I get up and walk into the kitchen, open some cabinets. “I don’t have any corn.”
“Where do you even get it?” Darren says. “Is it like in fields and stuff? The wilderness?”
“You get it from the store.”
Darren is on his phone. The grocery-ordering app. He sighs.
“Why are there so many types? What’s the green stuff? Is corn green?”
“That’s fresh corn. It has a husk on it.”
“Like a shell? That’s too much work. I’m gonna order this canned stuff. It says it’s sweet.”
He has to order twenty cans to meet the minimum for delivery.
Later, the delivery driver shows up with a flat of canned corn. He’s dressed like a delivery driver. It’s pretty convincing.
“Cool costume,” I say.
He looks down at himself as if he’s forgotten what costume he chose to wear today.
“Uh, thanks?” He walks back to his car, stepping over the candy Darren and I threw at some kids earlier.
I heat a can of the corn on the stove because if Darren cooks it we will either die or something will blow up.
He takes a bite and says he doesn’t like it. He prefers candy corn. He spits the corn out into the bowl, ruining all of it.
“I’m gonna put the rest of the corn in the bathtub … It’s all I can think about.”
I help him open the cans so he doesn’t cut himself and we dump them all in the tub. It’s not really as much as you’d think, barely covering the bottom. Darren has me spray him with adhesive before he gets in the tub and flops around until he’s covered in corn.
“I like the way this feels,” he says.
We go back into the living room to finish watching the movie. Or maybe it’s a different movie altogether. I can’ tell.
Darren sits on the couch. “I think some of them popped.” He seems really happy. “It’s like bubble wrap … Really pulpy bubble wrap.”
I blackout sometime after midnight.
Darren’s gone when I finally come to.
Corn is all over the place.
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