You get ‘em served on a plate in Olean, Missouri. Tastes like chicken though they don’t go down as easy. “Sack lunch,” they call it on the flyer of the annual testicle festival. You’re attending for the first time—they got food, drink, merchandise, free parking, a corn hole contest, a beard show-off contest, but, most enticingly, a ball eating contest. They don’t call them that, of course. Cowboy caviar. Rocky Mountain oysters. Tendergroins. You retired your boxing gloves just last week for your mental health, but you could make it in Olean, you tell yourself. You hear your name on the speakers. You puke before the clock starts. You find yourself signing up at testicle festivals all around the South and Midwest. You lose and you lose and you lose and you lose and you lose but you’ve never felt hungrier, until you’re sick with it, ‘til you’re in a hospital bed with vitamins in your arms, until you’re released but you’re back eating nothing but frozen goat balls bought off the dark web. You stop showing up to work. You run out of money in three months, spent it all on balls and boxing club memberships you forgot to cancel. You forgot anything but protein. You’re the Thanos of manhood. It’s been an exact year when you park for free in Olean again. The Olean prom king, last year’s champ, is back, shaking the mayor’s hand. His queen is in the front row, gasping at you how everyone at the festival today has gasped at you, with trembling eyes, her hands clasped as she looks to the sky, maybe mouthing a prayer to the gods of her hometown, singing, “Olean! Olean! Olean! O-leeeaaannn! I’m begging ya—” but you spit greasy saliva at her before she’s done. As if this had anything to do with her or her man or Olean fucking Missouri. This is about you. You never won a fight in your entire life.
Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Little Engines, The Sonora Review and elsewhere. His micro-chapbook, This Place Is Covered Head to Toe In Shit, is out Summer 2024 with Ghost City Press. His partner is a vegetarian, which pretty much makes him a vegetarian, so his imagination naturally wanders.
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