fredag 29 oktober 2010

How I usually get through the day

I read someone´s blog and when I closed it the last word I saw was ”stroke”, then I had to re-open it and read another one because otherwise I might have a stroke. The new last word was ”bagel”. I hope I get one.

The man I live with brought home a massage armchair. It´s gigantic and in fake leather and I hate it and I said ”Why´d you take that thing home, you promised me no more fuckin´leather!” and he said ”It was only 60 bucks!” and I´m like ”What?” and he´s like: ”It´s broken.” Me again: ”What?” Now it´s in my living room laughing its immobile ass off, and I have to find a way to kill it.

I pour my favorite detergent on a rag and I inhale deeply and that´s how I get through the day.

You know you´re heterosexual when even stupid ugly guy that you really despise makes you think about sex. You wonder what his cock looks like and if it would stretch you and if his ugliness would somehow be an advantage during sex like some sort of exotic addition to spice things up. And then you have to focus on work and you´re all like ”What´s wrong with me?”

Well, maybe you´re ovulating?

I can´t be bothered to wrap gifts so I take aluminium foil and sort of squeeze it around the presents and if it breaks I cover the hole with some more foil and tell myself it´s artsy. I go into the bathroom and take the towels down to wash them and the acoustics is profoundly changed. I stay in there for half an hour trying it out. But I can´t be bothered to wrap gifts and I put the towels somewhere and I´m pretty sure it wasn´t in the washer.

I put two eggs in a bowl to make an omelette and I log onto my computer and write something and when I come back it´s dark and the eggs have dried and have a kind of jellied surface and I find it fascinating but maybe not edible and this may be the reason why I´m thin.

I should not be left unattended. The dog knows this and the children and even the baby with his I´ve-seen-it-all look and his greedy little mouth. I let myself go when they´re all asleep and as I drift off into space I look back on Earth wishing I´d have been compatible with it. I kick myself out of orbit taking nothing with me, except for that sweet-smelling rag.

onsdag 20 oktober 2010

The Story of Someone´s Aunt

It´s Three Word Wednesday. The words: effect, immense, shimmer.

The Story of Someone´s Aunt

”I´ll kill you,” he said. One time, ten times, a hundred times. Over time it lost the desired effect; she no longer believed him.

She cleaned the house and then went to her lover. She worked and then went to her lover. She said she´d come to the cottage, but she didn´t, she booked a trip to Greece for her and their daughter. When she came home she made dinner and then went to her lover.

She assumed he stopped caring, at least he stopped commenting, he actually stopped talking altogether.

He got a new job and she was glad; maybe now he´d move on and she´d be able to divorce him without too much fuss. But one night he took out his rifle to clean it and the look in his eyes told her there´d be fuss.

Their daughter moved south, met a man and started a life of her own. And nothing changed. ”I´ll kill you,” he said. Sometimes she believed him, sometimes not.

In September she was diagnosed with cancer. Their daughter came home and cried, it seemed like an appropriate reaction.

Chemo makes one´s hair fall off. She preferred scarves to a wig.

In December, December 6 in fact, he went to a Christmas party. He came home drunk and hung himself in the downstairs closet.

When she came down the next morning, she wanted her shoes to go get the newspaper. But he had brought them with him, into the closet, so that she would have to come into the closet to get them. So that she would have to see him, all on her own. It struck her then, how much he must have hated her.

They buried him on December 22, they wanted it done before Christmas. Fresh snow had fallen and there was an almost virginal shimmer over the landscape as they followed the coffin out of the church. Their daughter cried. She wanted a large grave stone, due to guilt, maybe.

The lover was supportive through radiation and chemo, but he didn´t leave his wife.

Two years later their daughter had a daughter and they baptized the child in that same church. It was a joyous day and it finally pained her; their immense lack of sorrow.

That evening she called her lover and said: ”No. No more. Never again.”