The last 15 minutes on the clock,--quantitatively speaking, for I assumed that the movement of the slimmer, longer hand slowly making its rounds around 13 black dashes and 2 blacker dashes stood for 15 minutes of time passing--were always the most nauseating. I took another breath, letting the blood accumulation in my head move to other parts of my body. I let my left hand open a drawer in my desk; looking down at the bottle of cheap whiskey I muttered, “ you have something I want but not at a price I’m willing to pay for.†On my desk there was one of those yellow-paged and multi-purposed notepads looking up at me. Scribbled on it in thick childlike print were the words:
I truly believe that some things cannot be helped. Being pathetic, for example, is a condition which cannot be helped. One simply cannot help tripping over ones own shoes, even if they are those solid black, Velcro strapped shoes sold at any germ stinking pharmacy. Oh, and sickness does have a smell. It is the smell of overweight, sweaty, balding men in oversized gray sweatpants; white brand-less sneakers; and gray cut off shirts. Ink smudge.I’ve been damned even before my parents decided to hook up behind some bar, somewhere. Because I truly believed that it was my genetic inheritance that damned me from a pre-cellular start. I do. And I was always trying to shake off my genes like a dirty mutt shaking off various dysfunctional families of fleas from its patchy coat.
