Uncontrolled Division

How much cancer should we postpone today, I ask myself, lying back on the paper that makes obscene crinkle-crinkles when I shift. How many days should we wait, I wonder. I don’t ask them. I don’t speak. I close my eyes and make fists. I stare at the ceiling and hear an occasional snip-snip as bits of my body are cut and laid out like malevolent paper dolls, like malignant origami.

Foam Explosion

I came home drunk last night and cooked something—a toasted bagel. I put the plate in the dishwasher, threw in some soap, turned it on and went to bed. The hours were all wrong. I was confused and passed out with the bagel on my pillow.

At nine I woke up and walked to the kitchen for water. And I got water—and foam. The entire floor was soaked in foam six inches tall. I stepped in the foam, got a glass of water, and sopped back to bed.

When I woke up at three—yes, three—I went back to the kitchen. The foam was gone and the floor was squeaky clean.

Was it all a dream? I decided to investigate.

The box of dishwasher detergent was empty. The antibacterial handsoap was, it would seem, my drunken way of cleaning the dishes. I must have used half the bottle, which lay in the sink looking guilty.

I turned the dishwasher on once more to rinse the dishes and foam poured out from the machine. “Shit!” I yelled, and unrolled long squares of papertowels on the floor, dancing on them and slipping around. Five minutes of internet investigation later, I returned to the crime scene with a bottle of vegetable oil and a prayer. I emptied a cup of Wesson into the machine and turned it on once more.

The foam stopped. The floor is squeaky clean.

The only downside, I think, is that I’m all out of oil. That and my dishes feel slightly greasy.

The Entertainment

I finished Infinite Jest tonight. It’s Halloween—how apropos. It only took my five months and two copies. I would be the P.G.O.A.T. for Halloween, but I don’t have a veil or a crackpipe. Plus, I’m trying to fold a toga out of a sheet. It won’t stay on. Boo!

Diet Delight

You want to lose ten pounds in two days? Day one: raw chicken. Day two: bleach.

One Big Blade

The air is the kind of cold that hurts your lungs to breathe it. It’s the kind of air that reminds me of college bong rips like one big blade cutting down my diaphragm, one big fist to my ribcage.

If it’s mental, it’s mental.

If I drink one more cup of tea my eyes, I swear, will sweat with it. Black tea, chamomile, honeyed tea, peppermint. I’ve been sick for almost a week and in total denial. I wake up, throw clothes on, and cough myself back under the covers like a tape in reverse. I try to work from home and end up falling asleep in odd positions. Let’s just say I have keyboard burn on my neck. Let’s just say that I’ve been in bed all week and I can’t write a single fucking word that sounds anything like I like to sound like. See—even that sounds bad. If it’s mental, it’s mental. But right now it’s bronchitis and I need to make more tea.

Mute button

Sorry, readers. Something traumatic has happened and I haven’t been able to write.

I lost my voice.

I don’t mean I lost my voice in the some melodramatic literary way. I mean I actually lost my speaking voice. My larynx is inflamed and the most I can muster is a screechy half-whisper.

So you’d think I’d be better off writing but—and here’s the weird thing—I’m not.

Maybe it because of the headache, the nonstop coughing, the chills. Or maybe it was the depression that set in when I realized I had to shut the fuck up and listen to other people.

Whatever it was, I don’t like it. So I haven’t been writing. I’ll be back, eventually, louder and saucier and all of that soon.

But for now… so it goes.

“Poo-tee-weet?”

Better and Faster

I can’t finish Infinite Jest and write anything substantial at the same time.

This is posing a heavy, haunting problem.

David Foster Wallace will just have to wait.

I write better and faster when I’m drunk, and when I told a few people that, they all agreed and said they, too, do whatever they do that’s creative better and faster when they’re drunk as well.

I really didn’t expect that.

But I don’t think David Foster Wallace had to drink. He needed pills and shocks to calm him down and numb up those firing synapses that shot his brain full of possibilities.

It’s not like alcohol reverses that. It numbs, too. I’m just not sure what.