Straight No Chaser

Vicious

at the risk of oneupping grim rather callously, i think it's important to note that i got under an hour of sleep last night. this morning, really. i almost crashed the car several times on the way to work this morning, simply because i just kept zoning out. floating into the "no-zone" behind one eighteen-wheeler after another, bumping up against the gates on the way into the office parking lot. i don't think about my mortality often, or at least it's not one of many things i obsess about, but i did today. i do a lot of things wrong in the car. since the radio broke i've been carrying a discman around with me, plugging into it the second i pull out in the morning and shoving it under the passenger seat before parking in case someday some anal traffic cop doesn't believe my story that i was just transporting it somewhere. i take right turns without reducing speed, and lefts without first locating my target lane. on barelegged days i ride with an arm out the window and my non-driving foot propped up on the dashboard. i'm really not a dangerous driver, though, except when i'm sleepy. on days like today i'm a menace to highway society.

slightly further down on the endless list of reasons i'm not perfect: sometimes all this so-called maturity i'm so quick to take credit for flies right out the window when marcus pushes the right button. same thing with him. and not in a good way. he wanted to argue last night; not about anything in particular, he just didn't want another light, unencumbered conversation like the one we had on tuesday. i don't get it. i can see wanting to debate a veritable issue, looking for stimulation through disagreement...some of our best mutual insights have come from one of his "no, the sky is green!" outbursts. so i'll argue for the hell of arguing, but i don't need to be provoked to get us there. i hate that. i'm easygoing; i'll play along; anyway, if you do it wrong i'm the one who has to backpedal till we find the shatter point, and fix it myself. hence things taking six hours instead of two, and my getting even less sleep than the second sleepiest person on the site today.

so then i had a good morning but could barely keep my eyes open; have gotten several things done but have twice been called on my uncharacteristic crankiness. my sore throat is back with a vengeance, and i'm hungry, thinking about that pad thai i wanted and then didn't want. i have a head full of cod oil spills and itchy iguanas, evocative and unpleasant images, and if i had more energy i'd try to write something real. i'm going to hate this the second i post it, just like i hate 106.5 fm, which has played that awful coldplay single no fewer than seven times since i got here this morning, and "she will be loved" a whopping eleven. and yeah, i would switch the station if it were my radio. it's not, of course. guess whose it is. circumstances under which i'd have sex with him ever: none. and that includes the whole "this or death" scenario.

i actually did run out to take a nap in the car, at one point. that was one of my daydreams from the beginning of the summer, but in that fantasy, the experience was comfortable and refreshing and didn't end with me waking up soaking wet from eighty-five degree heat magnified by the shut windows. the actual thing belied the fantasy threefold.

i'd get a cappuccino if i had a dollar seventy-five. i dropped all my quarters in the toilet this morning.