I was born. And as if that’s not bad enough: I was born with two taints.

Taint A and Taint B as they should henceforth be known have been the bane of my existence.

Not because it’s embarrassing — and boy is it — but because they’re right on top of each other and Taint B is really hard to clean because I have to lift the flap of Taint A and wheedle my way in there like some kind of cave spelunker, which is also ironically my profession.

Have you ever seen that movie The Descent?

I’m stuck.

Shallow breath and the walls are caving in on me like some cruel fucking joke and all that aside my taints just started itching and I can’t bend my arm backwards enough to give them a scratch.

If you can’t imagine it, let me put it this way:

Imagine being uncircumcised. And your foreskin is all droopy. And then imagine that that foreskin has its own foreskin that droops over the droop. Now imagine having to clean the tip of your penis. Having to pull back the foreskin’s foreskin to pull back the foreskin, hold both of those back, and scrub. That’s kind of what it’s like. Except it’s with two taints and not a penis.

The taints, that is, not being stuck in the cave. But I’m kidding… you already knew that. Some levity in the dark times.

That feeling is more like that heavy breathing kind of stomach-pit nausea that comes on in a rollercoaster but also when you’re about to slam your car into the back of someone else’s in

stop-and-go traffic, like oh lord is that how we die? and most of the time it’s just the body saying maybe and sending that signal even if it’s really not right now, except now it is right now. I am going to die. My flashlight battery is at the end of it’s rope and I can’t breathe and my fucking taints itch and I didn’t tell anyone I was going into this part of the cave and my partner recently told me “you’re going to die if you keep splitting off from the group without telling them where you’re going” and now he is right. I am going to die.

Anyways, Happy Birthday, Susanne… let this voicemail bring you tears of joy despite the darkness contained within. Sorry to unload the truth about my two taints on your birthday.

I just didn’t have anyone else’s number memorized.

Know that I died with an itch unscratched.

To listen to your message, press 1. To rerecord your message, press 2. To send your message, press 3.

Tex Gresham and KKUURRTT have a collaborative novel, Pop!, forthcoming from Rejection Letters. It is their third novel together. Tex is the author of Violent Candy, Sunflower and Heck, Texas. He can be found online at @texgresham. Kurt is the author of Good at Drugs and can be found online at @wwwkurtcom.