My Bed:
My bed … is
a piece of shit.
Lemme
rephrase that.
My bed … is
a four-legged slab of donkey excrement haunting the corner of my room like the
week-old corps of a murderous clown. Its sheets are holey and stained. Its
blankets are ragged and thin. Its pillows are lumpy and old. Its mattress is
flat and saggy. The cheap wooden frame that houses its diseased organs is shaky
at the top and ribbed at the bottom. The ribs aren’t nailed down so they often
slip from their positions, allowing my boney ass to punch through the gaps
while trying to get comfy. This phenomenon has made for fun times when I’ve had
female company. I won’t go into any details. Let’s just say that on more than
one occasion, my liaison and I have gone crashing through the under-planks “mid-hump,”
and ended up in some extremely unflattering positions.
With this
bad-boy as my cradle, I rise up and greet the week. Every day of it is
different. I’ll give you a taste of each.
Monday:
Most people
despise Monday like a bitchy mother-in-law. I for one don’t mind it. There are
many reasons for this. The biggest is my chances of having a hangover are slim.
I almost never drink on Sundays. And when I do, it’s just a few beers. This
means I’m able to embrace the next day with less-than-achy limbs – a reality
that makes all the difference.
I have three
classes on Monday - two of which are with pretty ladies. The lessons are light
and friendly. Most times, I laugh right through ‘em over coffee and fresh
fruit.
My workday
ends at 14:00 (yes, I’ll be using European time). I take the tram home and make
myself lunch. When my belly’s full, I get on the computer. I don’t have a
girlfriend so I like to look at flowers on the internet. I usually start with
daisies then move onto roses. Sometimes I throw in tulips or the odd dandelion.
When that’s finished and I’m nice n’ relaxed, I take a nap. At around 18:00, I
rise and make dinner. Afterwards, it’s straight to the writing desk. I shell
out a chapter or two, toss in a movie and fall fast asleep in the arms of my
shit-wagon.
Tuesday:
If Monday is
a slender goddess kissing me on the lips, Tuesday is a pair of goat testicles
slapping me in the mouth. I wake up at 7:30 – which may not sound very early to
some of you but keep in mind I spend most nights writing until 3:00 am. I shit,
shower and shave. Then I race to catch the metro line to the other side of
Prague where I have my first class. When it ends, I’m off to see the Don. My next
lessons last till well into the evening and they’re scattered around the city
like the body parts of a mafia snitch. Come home time, I’m dragging my heels. I
enter my seedy building, unlock both doors and board the elevator.
I’d like to
take this time out to tell you about my elevator. I call it that, but really
it’s not. It’s more like a screaming wooden head being dragged up and down a
mineshaft by its metal hair. As it has no door, I can see the floors as they
pass. Many tenants have made use of these bare concrete halves to hone their
drawing and writing skills. This means I get a moving comic book of dicks,
balls, and pussies, replete with clever dialogue such as “Pisssssss!” and “Asssssss!”
It’s a real treat at the end of a long day.
When I get
inside I’m too tired to make food or look at flowers. I simply shed my
backpack, strip down to my skivvies and crash. At around 20:30, I wake up.
Since my time is short, I usually zap a cardboard pizza, scarf it down and hit
the keys. This carries me into the wee hours. I’m a shadow by dawn.
Wednesday:
What a
vacant lot! What a goddamned travesty! Wednesday is nothing. Wednesday is less
than nothing. It’s a bee fart in a hive of shit. It’s a zero lost in a digital
sea. I don’t love Wednesday. I don’t hate Wednesday. I don’t give two
shit-flingin’ fucks about Wednesday! As
far as I’m concerned, Wednesday can crawl into the sewer with its ugly wife,
Tuesday. Christ, it can eat my day-old cantaloupe rinds! FUCK YOU TO INFINITY,
WEDNESDAY! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Thursday:
The only
thing worth mentioning on Thursday happens at a park near the banks of the Vltava. It’s a crappy little park, ringed
with blue benches and some grass in the middle. I pick a seat there and open my
bag. Inside it is a sandwich. It’s a miserable little sandwich, made with old
ham and cheese, dry onions and tomatoes. I grab it and take a bite. As I chew,
its brown mustard collects at the corners of my mouth. I swallow it down and the
thoughts pop up. I think of where I’ve been and what I’ve done - the hundreds
of roads I’ve kissed with my footprints, the thousands of tears I’ve spilt over
my lips. At about this point, I cross my eyes. Staring back at me like an ugly
asshole is that fucking sandwich. I often feel like throwing it against a tree
and screaming:
“Is this is
it?! Is this where all those roads in
all those countries have taken me?!”
I pull out a
pen and start writing. The anger flows nicely against the page. Before I know
it, I have a poem. It’s enough to get me through my sandwich.
Friday:
My eyes
open. I rub them and creak out of bed. I go in the bathroom and twist the
shower on. The water runs hot and steamy. I grab the nozzle and circle my body
with it. As I do, it wakes him up. He opens his eyes and crawls from his cave. As
he enters the bathroom, I leave it. I get dressed and walk out the door. While
I’m teaching, he does his business.
First, he bathes
his red skin. Then he takes a razor to his oval face. After that, it’s on to
his teeth. He plucks the meat from his gums and brushes the pink from his
fangs. This continues for a few. Now it’s time to see. He squares his shoulders
and lifts his chin. His lips pull back to bear his grin. It’s long and sharp
and clean and gleaming. It looks like a crystal chandelier. He lets it glint in
the mirror. Then he leaves the steam. He enters my room and selects an outfit –
a checkered shirt and jeans perhaps, two pointy shoes and cocked grey cap. At
about this time, I come home. I slip into bed and snooze. The hours roll by,
one, two, three. Homeboy’s perched on a box in the corner, smiling at me in the
dark. My alarm goes off and I get up. I stretch and yawn and scratch my junk.
Four steps forward and then it hits. We clap together and join our wits.
….
What happens
next is anybody’s guess. Sometimes I drink so much that my eyes turn yellow and
my only goal is to waltz through Prague with my dead grandmother’s ghost.
Sometimes I walk aimlessly in the cold for hours watching the snowfall erase my
tracks. Other times I sit on a bench under a streetlamp and write poems to the
frozen pile of leaves next to me. And sometimes, just sometimes, I get lucky. When
this happens, the moon lights up and the skin of the earth convulses. I am a skeleton,
screaming in a river of babies. Once the panic ends, my partner and I collapse
and curl together. Sleep takes us like a gentle beast.
Saturday:
My Saturday
morning takes three possible forms. I’ll go from the incredibly rare to the
embarrassingly common.
- I wake up next to a beautiful stranger with whom
I share a delightful breakfast and an interesting conversation.
- I wake up next to a hideous stranger with whom I
share a bottle of water and a curt goodbye.
- I wake up next to Death with an eye-splitting
hangover and the need to vomit.
Once I’ve
finished with these things, the rest of the day is mine. I usually spend it
watching movies on my computer or trying to decipher the nonsense I scrawled
into my pocket-journal the night before.
….
When evening
arrives, I have two options. I can either go out and brave the frosty jungle
again, or I can brew a pot of tea and write. Now that I’m a rickety
thirty-something, I often go with option B. It saves my nerves and liver, plus
it sharpens my pen.
Sunday:
If you’ve
read my first post (or my first book), you’ll know that my childhood friends
and I speak our own dialect of English, which we call R.O.A.S.T. (short for,
“Result of a Small Town”). Central to this dialect is a phrasal verb we
concocted using the name of our friend “Chuck,” who is notorious for his
ability to lounge with gusto. The verb is “to Chuck out,” and in Standard
English, it more or less means “to lay on your fat ass and let the stress
dribble from your joints like so much grease from a roasting turkey.” “Chucking
out” is a truly “baumish” (meaning, “awesome”) affair and as you might have
already guessed, I elect Sunday to do it the hardest.
There are
many ways in which one can “Chuck out.” One might lie in a supine position
doing crossword puzzles on their stomach. Another might sit on the throne for
hours reading the daily news. I however, prefer the “Sultan’s Choice” – a
hookah packed with mint tobacco on one side, an icy bottle of soda on the
other, a tower of fluffed pillows at my back, and a TV screen flickering just
above my toenails. Hmmmmmmmmm …
….
Welp, that
about does ‘er! Hope y’all enjoyed yeehaw’n though my week. Stay tuned for next
month when I discuss the finer points of my first “pig-slaughter” in The Czech
Republic.
Ciao.
Note: I reserve the right to occasionally alter the
character names, descriptions, and/or event details in my posts for the
purposes of identity protection and “fluidity of story.” If this puts a kink in
your panties, read someone else’s blog, homey.
Tulips or roses?
ReplyDeleteTulips, homey ;)
Delete