Dear diary,
So I am sitting alone in my single-room house with the radio off, just boozing myself to death. Suddenly I get a message on my mobile phone: it is two pictures from my swimming coach — one is an onion on a desktop, and one is an onion on a windowsill.
“I would love to eat both of those onions,” I think to myself. Then I wonder: “But why would my swimming coach send me these pictures tonight?” For I haven’t heard from her in ages — our subaqueous classroom stopped meeting for lessons when the pandemic began, and there is currently no end in sight to any modern tragedy.
Then I begin to grow cross, as I sip my drink. I say aloud, to myself: “Why can’t people just write, in plain language, what they want to say to others? Why send pictures? It’s so lazy and rude.”
So I press the button on my mobile device that puts it in camera mode, and I aim it at the wall near my foot; then I kick my cowboy boot into the wall, which makes a sizable hole. Now, with my boot still lodged in the wall, I snap a photo and send it back to my swimming coach without any textual explanation.
Then I set to work repairing the wall that I just kicked, but it’s too annoying (I hate doing work) so I quit: Instead of trying to plaster over the hole neatly with joint compound, as was my intention, I drop my putty knife and voice a curse word at heaven; then I untie the kerchief from my neck and crumple it into a silken wad. I reach over into the corner of the room, grab the can of gasoline, and tip it so that it liberally douses the kerchief — I try not to spill too much gas on the wooden floorboards — and then I stuff the wadded kerchief into the void.
“That’ll do,” I say aloud to myself, wiping the sweat from my brow with my flannel shirtsleeve.
§
On the morrow, I wake in fear. “I must’ve fallen asleep in this chair again,” I mutter to myself, while unscrewing the cap to my bottle of whisky. I take a sip and the fear disappears.
After finishing off another couple bottles and finding myself still healthy and young, I sadly remove my broad-brimmed hat from my head and walk out my classic French door with my hat in hand. I then set my hat on the bed that is next to the ice-cold pond in the back of my house, and I enter the water.
Having bathed for three quarters of an hour, I now emerge from the pond and dab off my shirt and jeans with a soft white towel that smells like lilacs. (I bathe fully clothed, because I fear the idea of my body.) I place my broad-brimmed hat back on my head while I am walking to my automobile. I then drive my golden coach to a party in Manhattan.
§
Tonight’s get-together is a veritable who’s who of contemporary authors. Also there are a few famous actors and musicians present. The first person I speak to is a beautiful woman. She tells me about the erotic vampire novel that she just got published; she says that it’s selling really well — it might soon make the Top Ten list on the Book Distributor website.
Then I meet a second author, who coincidentally is also a beautiful woman who also has written an erotic vampire novel. She relays that her book fell just shy of being a certified bestseller. We shake hands, and she tells me that I smell nice.
Before leaving this party, I purchase a copy of each of these two authors’ hardcovers, out of curiosity. I pay with well-worn greenbacks from a leather wallet that I keep in the back pocket of my blue jeans.
When I return to my one-room house, I toss the novels onto the tabletop, uncork another bottle, and begin to swill. Now I open the cover of the first book…
After about six hours, I reach the novel’s final sentence. “That wasn’t too bad,” I remark aloud (nobody is here with me in my house — I just like to hear the sound of my voice); “I’d buy this book, if I were allowed to participate honestly in the American marketplace.”
Then I begin the second book and finish it by sunrise. “This one is good, too,” I say; “I liked it a lot.”
Then I go back to sitting in silence. I think to myself that I’m glad I resisted the impulse to snap photos of these two books with my mobile phone-cam and send them to my swimming coach without comment. It’s better just to keep bearing with all these fads while hoping that someday a substantial change occurs that renders everything tolerable.
No comments:
Post a Comment