The Future

Yesterday was a bad day.  Today seems worse.  I can barely sit to write this now.  I was in the studio from six to eight-thirty last night.  When I came out, my driver's side window had been broken.  My iPhone was gone.  I had been itching for awhile.  I went inside and pulled up my shirt and looked into the mirror and found that my body was covered in bright red welts.  I called the police.  About the car, not the welts.  They came and took pictures and acted like I was a criminal, but that is their job, I think.  They spoke of a tracking device on the phone, asked if I had activated it.  I've never done anything but use it.

"But it has a GPS built in, right? AT&T can locate it."

"They can, but they won't.  It would have to be a life or death situation."

I drove home around ten and took off my clothes and looked in the mirror.  I looked like I'd been bee-stung all over.  I took a hot shower which was the wrong thing to do I later read.  I looked up skin rash and welts on the internet.  Hives, it said.  I had hives.  So I got into my car with no window and drove to three drug stores.  All closed.  I needed benedryl, so I called my ex-girlfriend and she brought some over.  I took two and a whiskey chaser.  Might have been smarter not to.

I woke in the night with chills, but I couldn't move.  The morning sun did not wake me.  But something did.  I had to go to the bathroom.  My face felt swollen.  I was itching all over.  I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the big mirror.  I seemed to have a severe sunburn all over my body, including my face.  But the welts were significantly smaller.

Everything itched.  And I was freezing.

I walked to the kitchen to feed the cat and put on the coffee, but when I dumped some popcorn kernels left over from the night before down the drain and turned on the garbage disposal (I love to hear that sound), it didn't go.  Why?  It worked the night before.  What?  But turning it off and on and hitting it with my fist didn't fix it.  I bent down to look under the sink and knew right away that I was sick.  I ached all over.  My back is still bad, of course, as is my neck, so there were those pains, but I had a flu-like general achyness, too.  I reached up looking for a reset switch which I couldn't find.  My hands were trembling.

I struggled through the terrible motions of making coffee thinking I should go back to bed.  But I had scheduled a shoot for noon and I needed to get a new window for the car.  I went back to the bathroom to look again.  Forget it.  I couldn't shoot.  I'd scare the model to death.  I'd have to text her to cancel.

Shit!  I only had her number on the stolen phone.

Mechanically, I poured a cup of coffee and sat down to check my email.  The model had written to say she would have to cancel.  Wonderful!  At least there was that.  But there was much still to do and no will to do it.  Now, I thought, I need someone.  It will be like this more and more, I thought, this needing someone to help me.  I don't think coherently about practical matters on a regular basis.  I couldn't think about anything coherently at the moment.  It hurt to try.  "Someone," I kept thinking, "please tell me what to do."

My mind jumped ahead.  I had to be at two different factory plants on Monday.  I had scheduled a shoot for Monday night.  I had her number in an email, though, so there was that.  I would need to call my insurance company.  Shit!  Had I paid the bill?????  I definitely couldn't remember.  Holy shit!  If not, this is going to be very, very expensive.  What should I do for a phone, I wondered?  Buy a used one and stay on my plan with no contract?  Where and when?

And so I sit here now, confused, chilled, achy and trembling, the palms of my hands itching like mad.  The sky is clouding up.  I will have to do something about the open window in the car, but I am bad at such things on a good day.  I don't know what to do now.  It is Sunday.  What can be done on Sunday?

I will go back to bed now with the hope that everything will heal, that everything will be better.  When I wake up, everything will be fixed and I will feel good.  Or at least I will feel good and will be able to take care of the other things.

But this is a cautionary tale.  For me, not you.  I had better think more about the future in practical terms.  I had better make plans.