Originally Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2014
"My mother had it, but she's fine now," one woman told me. This cheered me up until she said, "They took out a piece of her colon and that seemed to fix her up."
Another woman told me she had it and they gave her the same antibiotics I am on.
"They really fucked me up. I quit taking them. It was too much."
I am loopy as shit, but I don't know if it is the disease or the cure that is causing it. Still, being at work made me focus on something other than "Californication," and I began to feel a bit better. I cleaned up some old projects and got a handle on some things that need to be done. At the end of the day, I'd stayed longer than I'd planned.
On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store. It was too much. The floor began to sway, but luckily I was pushing a cart. I turned my head this way and that and the room kept spinning. By the time I reached the checkout, I was a dishrag. The woman in front of me, though, was just having a grand time. Apparently she had no friends, so she chatted up the checkout lady and the bag boy who were glad to chirp along in the retarded dialog. I put my head heavily on my hands which were resting on the cart handle. When I looked up, all the groceries had been rung and she had the receipt in her hand, but she wasn't done. Nope. She wanted to tell everyone what a glorious fucking time she was going to have this holiday. Three days off! The bag boy and the cashier had to tell their tales, too. Yes, this was a time of glory for the under employed working class.
"Mother of God!" I screamed. "Can you just shut the fuck up?"
But I didn't do it out loud. I was too tired and weak for any sort of confrontation. If my bowels had been functioning properly, I might simply have shit myself.
"How are you doing today?"
"Great," I said. "I'm just great."
"D'you want paper or plastic?"
When I got home, I put the plastic bags on the counter. I was too worn out to put them away. I went into the bedroom, took off my pants, and sank onto the bed.
I woke up hours later in the dark. It was a coma, I am certain. It was not just normal sleep. I only got up because the milk was still on the counter. Surely it wouldn't have gone bad in two and a half hours.
I let the cat into the house and gave her some food then put away the groceries. Of course, I had gotten the one thing I needed--eggs. I was going to cook me up some eggs and toast for dinner. I needed sustenance having had only two Ensures to rocket me through the day.
I put on my pants and drove to the 7-11. It was only a few blocks, but it seemed to take hours. On the way there were cops and tow trucks and cowgirls in the street. Inside the store, the bright lights shone down upon the seriously wayward. I couldn't find the eggs. Does the 7-11 sell eggs? Surely they sell eggs? I looked for the milk. They would have to be by the milk. And there they were, a single carton--one dozen. God, I wondered, how long have they been there? Don't look at the date. . . don't look at the date.
Eggs, toast, milk. It was glorious to eat. Maybe it would give me poop. Oh how I long to have one of my good, old fashioned poops.
The problem with taking the antibiotics is that I have to stay up to take one and get up to take the other. One is every twelve hours, and I started at three in the afternoon. The other is every eight hours, and one of the doses is at eleven. After binging on some more "Californication," I was sleepy. It was ten. O.K. I thought, I can't watch any more t.v. I'll climb into bed and read until it is time for a dose.
I looked through the stack of books on the nightstand. I haven't read since I got sick and knew I couldn't focus on anything for long. A selection of Bukowski poems sat there, untouched for how long? Jesus, things sit in the same place in my house for years. A little Bukowski might be just the thing.
Drinking, miscreants, horses, liquor. The pages had yellowed. Some of the poems had a good line or two. Most didn't. I came upon one of the late ones about being sick, looking toward death. Nope. Not for me. Not tonight. I put it down and lay there listening to the jazz station I had on. Fuck me, I felt old. Ravaged, really. If I get through this, I thought, I'm going to do whatever I want. Life is absurd and we never figure out how to live. We look to religions and ideologies and art, but I'm pretty sure none of it means anything except for the very living. It gives shape to the horror and uncertainty. And in the case of the latter two, it provides some fun. Especially the last one. It has me, anyway.
I'll buy a sports car. Maybe one just like Moody drives in "Californication." People will laugh. It is such a silly, obvious thing. "You don't need a sports car," they will say, and I will retort, "Apparently I don't need sections of my large intestines, either, but they are sure fun to have, right?" For what is there in life other than fun? The rest is just wrangling with yourself over what you did and didn't do, trying to find some middling moral ground from which to chastise and justify yourself, a place from which to plead and whine and ask for mercy. I thought of the retards in the grocery store and the miscreants in the 7-11 and was happy happy happy that I wasn't one of them. Some people have lived better and were luckier, but not many. Nope, I thought, I'm not one of them. I'm special.
It wasn't eleven yet, but it was close enough, I thought, and I got up to take my antibiotics. After my afternoon coma, though, I thought my mind had become a little too active. Too many thoughts are not so good for sleeping. I decided to take someone else's Xanax, too. Fuck it. Give me shelter.
When I woke in the night, it was almost four. Shit. I was supposed to take my pill at three. I went into the bathroom, opened the two bottles and shook out the pills, ran a glass of water and went back to bed.
I woke to daylight coming through the open transom windows. My body tingled all over. Did I feel something? A slight pain? Maybe, I hoped, I had to poop. I thought through the night before. FUCK! I wan't supposed to take BOTH pills at three, just one. Now what? Do I take the next one on time? My mind was groggy. I'd figure it out later.
When I checked my email, there were only ads and my spam block report. And there was the news from Ferguson. No charges would be filed. I read about the reactions. Shit man, I have enough on my plate. I should not form an opinion on this one. Who cares. People get killed all the time. I didn't hear the evidence. Don't be a media-fed expert. I watched a little footage of the outraged people in the street. I thought of the grocery store checkout and the crowd at the 7-11. Without doubt, these were not the people I wanted deciding things. But they would, one way or another. They would.
Fuck, man, whoever made the cartoon above should have put MLK in the middle. Fuck yea. The sixties had their Freedom Fighters and the kids today need their own. Icons of the modern world. Heroes, if you will.
Burn, baby, burn.
I'm getting the fucking sports car.
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