A cough or illness will excavate the sliver of ice from a writer’s heart. The heart will push the ice through the author’s throat where it will latch onto the vocal chords. This will cause the writer to cough, cough, cough for weeks. The ice, exposed and free like a demon, will fill the apartment and the demon’s host will land into bed. The place gets dirty. Beer cans and scores of yellow bowls litter the counter tops. Newspapers and dirty envelopes get scattered onto the chairs. The litter box goes to shit and the cat never shuts up about it. In the meantime, even at two a.m., the rooms are filled with the cough, cough, cough of the ice: a sliver into your sleep.
The fastest way to get to sleep in this situation is to pat the cougher’s back, lightly. Don’t overdue it or you’ll seem useless. If the back is tapped lightly enough the coughs will probably subside at a faster rate. In extreme cases, go sleep elsewhere, although it’s probably better to bring a glass of water before “jumping ship.”
If you plan on sleeping on the couch, try making breakfast the next morning. Get up a half-hour early, put on the coffee, make some eggs and set the day on a good note. At this point, you can feel a little used. You can consider the fact that you have your own particular life to run and that there’s schedules that you have to keep. Feel indignant, but keep it below the surface. Maintain a straight face and put in the effort. Have fun with it. This is a form of healing we’re talking about.
Say “yes” when the writer looks up from a book and says, “We should buy martini glasses. Let’s go to the drug store.” You stare at the book, a feminist anthology of some form, and wonder if the writer has just read an erotic short starring a man named Vincent.
In the drug store, peruse the aisles and look at the appliances you sort of want but can’t really afford. When you finally find the martini glasses, things turn for the worse because there are two types of glasses: one glass has a straight stem, and the other glass has a squiggly stem. When asked which one you should buy, say, “It doesn’t matter, but…”
“What do you mean, ‘but.’”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The writer, with a neon-blue sliver piercing the chest, chooses the straight stem – the good stem. “These ones come with a box.”
Agree with this statement and offer to pay. If you use the martini glasses, you’ll probably find it easier to sleep through another cough-filled night. If you do wake up, proceed to tap the back, lightly.
Say “yes” when the writer, after a severe coughing fit, asks if it’s a good idea to go to the beer and wine on a weekday and watch bad movies on the couch. The coughing fits turn for the worse and the writer’s chest turns into an echo chamber that sounds like a saxophone that’s been put through a rinse cycle then played through a moose’s severed nose.
The house is the messy bedroom of teenager. Useless, “interesting” artifacts adorn the room from recent use: a parasol cover, fireworks, little foam pads, notebooks and magazines that talk politico. The lights are off and the TV glows television-blue on the couch. This is a good opportunity to sit with a folder and catch up on some work. Mid-way through the movie, another crises arises in the writer after a coughing fit. “What am I to do?” she asks, suddenly confused and outraged. “Should I register for summer courses or should I work in the SUB?”
Although it may confuse you to have this question suddenly thrown in your face, take it seriously and ask an obvious question. “What do you want to do?”
At this point, you learn about the dozen or so conflicts that interlace between a summer as a student or a summer as a working person. The writer’s fear of signing into another loan and the fear of spending the summer with the wrong people (the people from work, or the peers from school?). Pause the DVD player and say, “Both?”
Writers naturally find a lot of conflict in life, which really helps them write. The writer usually knows what choice to make, but needs to explain the resolution, the rising action of the possibilities before announcing the choice, the grand decision. The writer has decided to work a summer job at the “Empire Records” of book stores.
The cough keeps hanging in the writer’s throat. Horribly, it sometimes feels like what being a parent would feel like: nights of interrupted sleep only to attend to a noise no one likes to hear, including the writer, who says, “I feel so guilty,”
Shirk the comment and say there's nothing to feel guilty about.
Entirely Intentional and Not in the Wrong Place in Any Way!
It's a damn shame a bunch of people can't get together and watch men dressed up as women call bingo numbers, get drunk and win crappy prizes.
Half the proceeds went to charity. The other half was a prize for the last game. Usually, it was around thirty bucks. That's three pitchers of crappy beer and a crappy tip for the cute bartender.
Every six months the charity would change, sometimes it was Aids Vancouver Island, or the Victoria Pride Society. I remember watching the drag queens hand over a six thousand dollar cheque to the Women's Transition house once. Who would have thought that a couple men dressed as women could raise six thousand dollars in a bar? And that was only a six month period.
I never understood why, when explaining Drag Queen Bingo, people always asked if they had to be in drag to play.
Gina Smirnoff and Irma Le Douche were always my favorite hosts. The Contessa was fired for doing naughty things in the back hallway, but she was never any good anyway. Electra Socket was fun, but always too drunk to be really good. One time she lost the microphone, only to find it had fallen down her dress. Watching her try to pull the cord out of her bra was hilarious.
I loved going to bingo. So did some of my straight friends. Thomas (now in the army) called me up almost every week to drag me out.
hillarious stuff man. But guess what -- the prof won't let me hand in the assignment! It was due on Friday -- no go.
Think of your participation as an arrow pointing at my martyred assignment. BINGO is on the cross, and my other assignments suddenly feel cold and. . . oddly motivated. They've seen the cross! They don't want to be there.
Posted by: matt at March 29, 2004 8:48 AM