c. 2024 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(3-24)
I had been at my desk in the Icehouse home office since about nine o’clock. The morning was locked into a lazy, forward crawl. Because it was Saturday, I had a lingering sense of being released from the strict guardrails of weekday responsibilities. Though in truth, this stood as an illusion leftover from my previous life. I had become disabled and disconnected from career pursuits, over seven years earlier. So, every day on the calendar was literally like any other. Still, I gleaned accomplishment from having survived once again, to the finality of another seven-day marathon.
There was no need to join the outside world. My unkempt appearance and leisure routine fit the times. I no longer had a schedule to keep. Nothing about my existence mattered, anymore.
While pondering this mood of pleasant negation, my cell phone rang. I had left it on top of a computer printer which was located next to the iMac that occupied most of my desk. A forward lean in my office chair let me fumble for the device, while scrolling through stories on the Yahoo! news page. I smiled when the wireless display indicated a call from my friend Janis, who was staying at the Carington Park skilled nursing facility, in Ashtabula.
“Hello, Lady! Happy, happy, joy, joy! We made it through another week!”
My hippie friend snorted a bit before offering a reply. She was wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirt, and pajama leggings. Her wild, brown hair had not been brushed in days.
“You always sound so cheerful! Damn you, Rodbert! I hate people being cheerful!”
The comment left me gasping for a moment.
“Well okay, but we are both still here... isn’t that worth celebrating?”
She coughed mush from her pureed breakfast platter.
“I’M STILL HERE ALRIGHT! STILL IN THIS FREAKING ASYLUM WITH ALL THE CRAZY GRANNIES AND BENT-OVER GRANDPAS! EVERYBODY HAS AN OXYGEN TANK AND A BINGO CARD! I WANT OUT OF THIS DUMP!”
My head drooped with embarrassment. I should have chosen my words more carefully.
“Right, right, I know you’re tired of being in there. But until your insides have healed, and you can tolerate solid food, they won’t be likely to set you free.”
Janis squawked like an irritated hen.
“I WANT A CIGARETTE! THEY WON’T LET ME HAVE A SMOKE NO MATTER HOW HARD I BEG!”
My face turned red. She sounded like a child pleading for candy.
“Look Jay, your obsession with burning off coffin nails started all this heartbreak. Remember? That’s how you ended up on the floor in your kitchen. That’s what contributed to your most recent stroke...”
The ornery femme was unconvinced.
“You sound like one of the doctors I saw at the Cleveland Clinic. Fooey on you! Withdrawal pangs suck!”
I knew that trying to reason with her restless intellect was pointless. Her independence matched my own in intensity. Yet I struggled to find an effective strategy to cope.
“Keep yourself busy. An empty head will just let bad thoughts bounce around and multiply...”
She turned sarcastic, and started banging the landline receiver against a wall in their activity room.
“BUSY WITH WHAT? ALL THERE IS TO DO IN HERE IS WATCH TV AND VEG OUT! I’M BORED, RODBERT! BORED, BORED, BORED! WHAT DO YOU WITH YOUR FREE TIME? SIT THERE AND WATCH PORN ALL DAY?”
I laughed out loud. Her remark made me wheeze.
“Lots of my neighbors in the trailer park probably go that route. A couple of the women here even claim to have accounts on OnlyFans. But no, I keep writing every day. That’s my thing, pecking at the keyboard. I picked up the habit from my father...”
Janis howled like her famous counterpart from the 1960’s, in concert.
“Writing? You still waste time on that? C’mon, I know better, you’re like every other man without a wife or a girlfriend. You’re all pigs, dammit! Here, piggie, piggie!”
I had to catch my breath before attempting to defend myself.
“Not true! My neighbors say that I’m more like an old dog than a swine of any sort. Yesterday I wrote a blog post about getting a new coffeemaker through a retail website. The report stretched out to 1300 words, I thought it was a decent accomplishment for one sitting...”
She sputtered and spewed phlegm while flailing her arms.
“YOU WROTE ABOUT GETTING A COFFEE POT? REALLY? WHO WOULD READ BULLSHIT LIKE THAT, DUDE? I’D RATHER SIT THROUGH AN EPISODE OF ‘THE GOLDEN GIRLS’ WITH THESE CRABBY OLD HAGS!”
Her indifference made my stomach churn.
“It yielded a fun episode, I thought. The old brewer I was using came from Dollar General. It lasted a year but then started to burp and buzz and effuse what looked like hot molasses...”
My rowdy associate started to kick her pink, medical booties in the air.
“HOT MOLASSES! HAW HAW HAW! YOU’RE A DAMN FREAK, BUDDY! A FAT, HAIRY, HARDHEADED OLD GOOFBALL FREAK!”
I did not know how to respond.
“Is that a compliment? If so, then thank you!”
Janis gritted her teeth while continuing to jones for a menthol spike of tobacco.
“You wrote about a coffee machine. Gawww! What’s next Rodbert, maybe a poem about your refrigerator? Or a song about the microwave? Sheeeeit!”
I felt like a brick had landed in my belly.
“Look, inspiration comes wherever you find it. That’s the foundation of creativity. Listen to Lenny Bruce, or George Carlin or Jerry Seinfeld, they talked a lot about everyday things. That was funny for us regular folk to hear, you know? The comedy of everyday life, observational humor...”
She stood up suddenly, and put the handset close to her mouth. A ghostly whisper filled my ear.
“There you go, write some jokes about your stove, or the washing machine. Maybe the vacuum cleaner! Hey, that might just get you a Netflix special or something like it. Then I can sit here and watch, because they won’t let me go out the patio door, and light up a damn cigarette! I want a smoke!”
The icon for ‘call ended’ appeared on my cellular display. She had finally reached her limit.
There was enough coffee in my Bunn carafe for one last mug before I let the morning slip away into afternoon. It tasted uncommonly smooth after what I had tolerated in recent days. The Arabica brew offered a distraction from my friend’s contrarian caterwauling. And, something more. Something useful as I sat groggily at the computer.
Inspiration for a new wordsmithing project.
No comments:
Post a Comment