Free The Dead Janitors Club by Jeff Klima

let them know I wasn't trying to screw them, but not enough so that they would stop calling me.
        I was confident, though. I'd broken my cherry, popped my bubble, shot my load—whichever sexual euphemism best applied to cleaning up "Grandma Shotgun," as I'd taken to calling her.
        Another month slipped by, and I was still boasting about her to my frat cronies without a shred of new story material on the horizon. Dirk called me every other day to reassure me that he was working on scaring up new clients, but he was so tonally awkward about the lack of business that I didn't have the cojones to ask about his "surefire business connections" within the world of law enforcement.
        He asked if I wouldn't mind calling a few of the law enforcement agencies in the area during our downtime to see if I could scare up some business on my own. Despite having cleaned up the splatter of Grandma Shotgun together, in my mind we still weren't fully in business together. As far as I was concerned, I was still more or less auditioning for the part of his partner.
        "Sure," I said, trying to sound confident. "Send the list of contact numbers over on email."
        I've mentioned that I'm shy, but let me convey to you the scope of my shyness. I hate talking to people. I can't make small talk; I can't chitchat. It's hard for me to even have in-depth conversations with neighbors. Job interviews have always been a nightmare. Typically, I just write off my chance of getting the job if there's more than a cursory interview involved.
        I only got the job at the porn shop because after they interviewed me (an interview that, typically, went poorly), they hired some other asshole. And when the mother of that guy, who was in his thirties, found out where he worked, she came down to the store and loudly chewed him out. They fired him on the spot. The owners needed someone else quickly, and I was the first applicant to call them back.
        I try not to go into stores alone; I don't eat in restaurants alone. I tend to avoid doing things that require me to talk to people I don't know. I'm like J. D. Salinger but without the talent. So imagine my excitement about trying to solicit business from policemen.
         The police and I have had a rather sturm-und-drang relationship over the years. Authority, particularly when used with the word "No," has amped up my dislike for social interaction. The police, who always seem to secrete a sense of false authority, make me the angriest. Obviously they have a very real authority, no matter what I say about their secretions.
        One cop in particular contributed to my sentiment for those boys in blue with their guns and rules. "Officer Butler" first came into my life when he stopped me for "driving erratically." I was eighteen and had my driving permit. (I never wanted to drive, but my parents were sick of chauffeuring me to work.) I was driving with a girl who was over twenty-one.
        I wasn't driving erratically, but it was a Saturday night and I figured that Officer Butler created a reason to pull me over to see if I'd been drinking. (See also the famous police excuse that "The light over your license plate is out…" If they say that, ask if you can get out and check.)
        I hadn't been drinking, but when Officer Butler found out I only had a learner's permit rather than a license, you could see the authority blast through him. Butler was the type of police officer who wore his riot gear all the time, even though that stuff was optional. For him, finding me with just a learner's permit was like Christmas in July or a Kentucky redneck cornering a "faggot."
        A little sneering smile crossed his face as he said something about how I wasn't supposed to be driving with a learner's permit. I pointed out that I was over eighteen, my passenger was over twenty-one, and I was well within the scope of the law. Officer Butler didn't like that, but he evidently