Me and Kafka

"You're just a big fucking creep, you know that?"

"Sure," I said.  "Sure I do."

"Just a big asshole."

What are you going to do, argue?  I guess you could, but what's the point.

But I'm O.K. sitting at home alone.  I like it.  There are movies and DVDs and TCM, television shows, books and magazines.  That's a lot.  Who has time for all of that?

But even alone, things go awry.  The other night started out innocently enough.  After the gym, I opened a good sorghum beer and began making a salad with lots of garlic.  After I had eaten that, I began to cook and opened a bottle of wine.  I like wine when I'm cooking.  The trouble is, I usually am not cooking alone, so there is the talking to slow you down.  It wasn't a complicated meal, just something for a person alone.  Soon enough, I was eating, and soon enough, the meal was over.  I like a whiskey after dinner.  It seems to settle things.  And so I cleaned up the kitchen and settled down on the couch to watch television.  I was switching back and forth between the baseball playoffs in San Francisco between the Giants and the Cardinals, and some UFC fights I hadn't yet seen.  But before long, though, before the end of anything, I was out.  This happens a lot at night when I'm alone and watching television.  It is awful to think of someone walking in or peering through the window to see me sprawled, head back, arms and legs akimbo, slack-jawed, a glass of scotch held loosely in my hand.  Usually I'd be wakened when the whiskey glass tipped and spilled its contents onto my shirted belly.  But not this night.  I must have finished the whiskey in the glass.

When I did wake up, I glanced at the clock.  It was after midnight.  And something was bothering me.  I shook my head and stuck a finger into my left ear.  Something was in there, something big.  Calmly, I pulled it out but right away got the hebejebes bad.  It was a big palmetto cockroach.  Holy shit, holy shit.  I held it by its legs and thumped it with the big finger on my other hand.  It exploded into pieces.

What can you do?  Still woozy, I accomplished my evening ablutions, took my vitamins and a glass of water, brushed my teeth and fell into bed.  In the morning, I remembered nothing.

I don't know why I'm telling you this.  Any of it.  I tried to tell some colleagues at work and the horror on their faces should have been warning enough.  I have imagined what they said to one another when they walked away.  It's a horrible story.  Not even amusing.  I feel like one of Kafka's characters.  It is awful, really.  Terrible.

Days later, I'm still thinking about it, though, my fingers probing into my ear canal again and again.  I'm not even sure it really happened.  How could such a thing?  I mean Jesus Christ, my house is clean.  I don't know.  I don't know.  Maybe friend was right after all.