SlapDashittery
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Ingest incestuous ingress
Tallow waddle, cerebellum invasion likely
Roquefort transcontinental necktie
Torque liver for balustrade rejoinder
Antioxidantisms
Angelheart fiasco
Drab jambalaya; rebar honky
Incommunicado discothèque
Shopworn shipwreck below deck popcorn
Belligerent blitzkrieg in a Bastille blastcap
Inkwarmer snailheaven
Gimcracks, bobbleheads & hypoglycemia
Bereaved beaver, relieved lemur
Anterior growth-gumption
Ladle/zinc afterthought
Porn substitute: taco parade
Catskills laundry dynamic
Ably amble in Constantinople sandals
Queered square—in triplicate
Atavistic recidivism (tranquilized artifact)
Allowable metrics re: insulin usage, squandered
Esophageal stuntman powderkeg
Luxuriantly ogling yodeler-yodelay-ee-hoo
Of cowpies and effervescence
Set, hut
Tallow waddle, cerebellum invasion likely
Roquefort transcontinental necktie
Torque liver for balustrade rejoinder
Antioxidantisms
Angelheart fiasco
Drab jambalaya; rebar honky
Incommunicado discothèque
Shopworn shipwreck below deck popcorn
Belligerent blitzkrieg in a Bastille blastcap
Inkwarmer snailheaven
Gimcracks, bobbleheads & hypoglycemia
Bereaved beaver, relieved lemur
Anterior growth-gumption
Ladle/zinc afterthought
Porn substitute: taco parade
Catskills laundry dynamic
Ably amble in Constantinople sandals
Queered square—in triplicate
Atavistic recidivism (tranquilized artifact)
Allowable metrics re: insulin usage, squandered
Esophageal stuntman powderkeg
Luxuriantly ogling yodeler-yodelay-ee-hoo
Of cowpies and effervescence
Set, hut
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
"Oh," I said, holding the kid in the crook of my arm. "Your mama is going to be so proud of you."
I gently, gleefully swayed her back and forth, beaming at this new, utterly surprising development: my baby’s first word.
"Compartmentalize," I repeated softly. "That’s a good one."
She cocked her head to the side, brought her balled-up little fists to her face and sat them on her cheeks. She yawned and stretched, uncoiling like a miniature panther.
"Pretty amazing," I said. "I’m almost sure that most kids’ first words are monosyllabic." I stared at her. "Impressive."
The kid lurched and roiled, her limbs spasmodically jutting and recoiling, her face squeezing and relenting, and so on, until her eyes snapped open abruptly. They were like dollops of ink, mesmerizing in their obsidian newness, breathtaking in their innocence; they were the eyes of the unfazed... an odd countenance, really, for someone who has only experienced thirteen days-worth of fresh air on her face.
"What are you, some kind of fucking lunatic?" she asked, somehow, through unmoving lips. I plainly gawked.
"I didn’t say compartmentalize," she continued, "because I haven’t said anything as of yet." She gestured dramatically, a though conducting an orchestra through a particularly powerful musical swell. "All I can do, for the time being, is squeak like a mouse, maybe let a scream loose here and there." Her eyes narrowed. "I’m not happy about it, but there you go. You, on the other hand, are in need of some serious sleep. I think fatigue has hammered your head soft."
I leaned in, smiling, with a mind to give the little cutie an Eskimo-kiss. She raised her arm again, as if asking for quiet from the percussion-section, and punched me directly in the eye.
"Get a hold of yourself, pops," she said. "My mouth doesn’t even work yet—stop putting words in it."
With that, she struggled out of my grasp, fitfully yanking her blanket from my grip, and balanced on my forearm like a four-and-a-half pound trapeze-artist on a tightrope. She looked back at me and shot me a glare of warning with those eyes, freezing me to the carpet before leaping off into the air, twirling and wrapping herself tightly in the blanket as she spun toward her crib. She tucked into a somersault as she landed, rolling along the mattress before finally sprawling open on her back, like a starfish in repose, suddenly and unquestionably asleep.
The girlfriend walked in then, looked at the kid peacefully cooing and eeping in slumber, and saw me standing four feet from, my arms still miming the act of holding a baby, which, incidentally, looks very much like the starting position for some type of elaborately-choreographed spectacle: hands spread open across the chest, hips swiveled and rotated for maximum torque, head down awaiting the cue...
"You all right?" she asked, in a somewhat worried tone. "You’ve been dancing, have you?"
I dropped my hands and tried to look nonchalant, but with nothing to lean casually against, I crossed my arms several times before settling on a pose that looked like something resembling competence.
"That kid of ours," I said, haltingly. "Boy, she’s something."
The girlfriend frowned. "Yes, she is," she said, sliding over to the crib. The kid continued to coo and eep under the girlfriend’s watchful eye, and I took the opportunity to announce that I was going to have a nap.
"Good idea," said the girlfriend without looking up. "You go kind of funny when you haven't slept."
I gently, gleefully swayed her back and forth, beaming at this new, utterly surprising development: my baby’s first word.
"Compartmentalize," I repeated softly. "That’s a good one."
She cocked her head to the side, brought her balled-up little fists to her face and sat them on her cheeks. She yawned and stretched, uncoiling like a miniature panther.
"Pretty amazing," I said. "I’m almost sure that most kids’ first words are monosyllabic." I stared at her. "Impressive."
The kid lurched and roiled, her limbs spasmodically jutting and recoiling, her face squeezing and relenting, and so on, until her eyes snapped open abruptly. They were like dollops of ink, mesmerizing in their obsidian newness, breathtaking in their innocence; they were the eyes of the unfazed... an odd countenance, really, for someone who has only experienced thirteen days-worth of fresh air on her face.
"What are you, some kind of fucking lunatic?" she asked, somehow, through unmoving lips. I plainly gawked.
"I didn’t say compartmentalize," she continued, "because I haven’t said anything as of yet." She gestured dramatically, a though conducting an orchestra through a particularly powerful musical swell. "All I can do, for the time being, is squeak like a mouse, maybe let a scream loose here and there." Her eyes narrowed. "I’m not happy about it, but there you go. You, on the other hand, are in need of some serious sleep. I think fatigue has hammered your head soft."
I leaned in, smiling, with a mind to give the little cutie an Eskimo-kiss. She raised her arm again, as if asking for quiet from the percussion-section, and punched me directly in the eye.
"Get a hold of yourself, pops," she said. "My mouth doesn’t even work yet—stop putting words in it."
With that, she struggled out of my grasp, fitfully yanking her blanket from my grip, and balanced on my forearm like a four-and-a-half pound trapeze-artist on a tightrope. She looked back at me and shot me a glare of warning with those eyes, freezing me to the carpet before leaping off into the air, twirling and wrapping herself tightly in the blanket as she spun toward her crib. She tucked into a somersault as she landed, rolling along the mattress before finally sprawling open on her back, like a starfish in repose, suddenly and unquestionably asleep.
The girlfriend walked in then, looked at the kid peacefully cooing and eeping in slumber, and saw me standing four feet from, my arms still miming the act of holding a baby, which, incidentally, looks very much like the starting position for some type of elaborately-choreographed spectacle: hands spread open across the chest, hips swiveled and rotated for maximum torque, head down awaiting the cue...
"You all right?" she asked, in a somewhat worried tone. "You’ve been dancing, have you?"
I dropped my hands and tried to look nonchalant, but with nothing to lean casually against, I crossed my arms several times before settling on a pose that looked like something resembling competence.
"That kid of ours," I said, haltingly. "Boy, she’s something."
The girlfriend frowned. "Yes, she is," she said, sliding over to the crib. The kid continued to coo and eep under the girlfriend’s watchful eye, and I took the opportunity to announce that I was going to have a nap.
"Good idea," said the girlfriend without looking up. "You go kind of funny when you haven't slept."
Thursday, September 24, 2009
So: I was yanked from my slumber last Wednesday by the girlfriend calling me from the shower. She was seeing what she described as "little fireflies" in front of her eyes, a symptom we both knew to mean that we had to call our doctor, and that we had to do so post-haste. As the girlfriend normalized, she finished getting herself ready for work, what with all the gussying-up and lunch-making that entailed, and I groggily set to waking myself up with vicious head-shakes and self-administered slaps to the face in lieu of coffee. On our way to the hospital for a quick check-in before work, the girlfriend and I recalled her co-workers’ decision to present their goodbye-present just the day before, regardless of the fact that she wasn’t booked-off for maternity-leave for another eight business days. They, the co-workers, were mothers themselves many times over, and after one evidently prescient look at the girlfriend on Tuesday they had intuitively determined that there was no way she was coming back.
At the hospital, hooked up to all manner of wires and heart-monitors and baby-contraction counters, the gussied-up girlfriend looked very professional when our doctor arrived and gently told us that we should, in her words, "get on with it". We stared at each other, the girlfriend and I did, with surprised, minute smiles tugging at our mouths. The suddenness was staggering; we were expecting another three weeks to pass, another three weeks of climbing up that mountain before we had to jump... but there we were, setting our footholds for an early dive on the back of a syringe of induction-gel crammed up the woo-hoo. Flushed, elated, and with a late-afternoon gel-cramming scheduled, we did what any couple in our situation would have done: we went grocery-shopping.
That girlfriend of mine, I tell you.
By the time of our next appointment, we had a fully-stocked fridge, food in our bellies, and two heads swimming in the calm that comes from clarity: the baby was coming early, and we were as ready as could be expected. The plan was for us to call the hospital the next morning at six, at which point the double-dosage wave of induction-gel should crest, allowing the doctors to properly induce the girlfriend under controlled circumstances. We got home at around eight o’clock that night, and the girlfriend thought it best that she rest up for the day ahead.
Now, I should mention here that, four days earlier, I had shot a video for a friend of mine who had managed to qualify for some sort of poker-themed game-show, and I was charged with editing it down into one good bite-sized piece in time for a Thursday due-date. The gods of fortune, however, had a different idea in mind, one that refused to allow me to manipulate the footage due to the inability of a certain editing-program to get along with a certain file-type. This time-crunch was such a calamity that, completely out of character, I actually got sick of watching myself over and over again on the video; that I could hear the girlfriend quietly moaning upstairs did nothing to mitigate my frustration over this conflict, and I wondered why she seemed to be having so much trouble sleeping...
"I’m fine—you work on the video."
Yes, and work I did, getting nowhere almost as rapidly as the girlfriend’s discomfort was audibly escalating. At 10:45, I called the hospital and told them to be ready for us, and a minute later I called the girlfriend’s sister, the planned second support-person, and told her the same. At 11:20, after the girlfriend’s pain heaved swatches of puke all over the house, after I had fastidiously cleaned said swatches of puke so as to prevent the dogs from feasting while we were gone, we finally left the house. We were safely into the Labour and Delivery section of hospital by 11:30, and I verbally-diagrammed the various spots in which the cleaning-staff could find more vomit while the girlfriend was whisked off to the delivery room.
(By the by, our favourite, in talking it over, was the elevator; the girlfriend expelled such a ferocious blast all over the inside of that metal box that the cartoonishly-horrified woman who held the door for us looked on as though I was carting a demonically-possessed antichrist around in a wheelchair. I will remember that woman’s face well-past the day I die.)
Another thing: this girlfriend of mine is as tough as they come, tough as nails; she broke her C2 vertebrae in a car accident four years ago and just flat-out refused to be paralyzed, that’s how fucking tough she is. So, when I found her nails digging into my skin while we waited for the on-call doctor to materialize, when I saw her eyes look through me and into some kind of desperate, transcendental trance, well, that’s when I saw what true pain looked like... and it was then, as she writhed in that unspeakable pain, that we were told that it was too late for an epidural, that she was almost fully-dilated and the baby would be born before the pain-relief could have a chance to take hold. Then, the most wonderful man my girlfriend has ever known showed up, one of the few doctors on staff who was willing and capable of performing a spinal-epidural, or, in layman’s terms, of providing immediate relief. He protested meekly against the procedure, citing its dangerousness, but he could see that he was trying to hold back a hurricane with a handkerchief, and agreed to help.
It was an agreed-upon matter of fact that the girlfriend’s sister would stand as the lone support-person for any epidural-situation, as only one of us was allowed in the room at the time, and my experience with needles of any sort was, shall I say, disadvantageous... even in that tremendous amount of pain, the girlfriend didn’t want me there to watch her get stuck with what looked like a seventeen-foot needle, so when the girlfriend’s sister arrived just as the doctors shined-up that monstrous pin, I took my leave and began pacing in the hallway like... well, like a husband whose wife was in labour.
Twenty-five of the longest minutes of my life passed before the girlfriend’s sister emerged from the room to fetch me; she spoke gravely, and my heart somehow become engorged in my throat so that all I was able to utter were strange gluck noises. I thought of the girlfriend being paralyzed, of the baby or the girlfriend being hurt beyond repair, of every horrendous worry that the brain usually overlooks to keep human beings from collapsing into puddles of uselessness... I also regained the use of my mouth, and started to recognize the sister’s tone of voice as less grave and more, what was that? Embarrassment? Indeed: the girlfriend’s sister, mother of two, roundly-acknowledged as the unquestioned Queen of Pregnancy, she who was tapped to hold the girlfriend steady while the doctors rooted around in her spine, fainted at the end of it. The girlfriend was fine, it turned out, was a smiling beam of sunshine when I reentered, explaining that she had seen her sister fall and had almost reached out to catch her before she thought better of it.
"I was thinking," she said serenely, "that if it’s between me being paralyzed and my sister bruising her face, well, sorry sis."
"Hell," I said. "I could’ve done that."
The entire room broke into laughter, and it wouldn’t be the last time. No, because then the girlfriend gave a good strong push, and I saw my baby’s head. She loaded up to push again, the girlfriend did, and the doctor fairly yelped, "don’t push!" There, in all her glory, was our new baby girl... and the first words heard in the silence that followed were the girlfriend’s: "That’s it?"
An eruption of laughter bounced around in that delivery room, and I think we can still hear the echo, because it feels like we’ve been giggling ever since. Sure, there was the four-day hospital stay, the jaundice, the girlfriend’s spectacularly-high blood-pressure, the fact that the kid came out looking like Robert Blake in Lost Highway, but I think I’ve learned what every father learns after his first child is born: One, with an unadulterated view of the action, of the placenta, of cutting through the stretched rubber-tubing of the umbilical-cord, I don’t believe there’s even a residual level of queasiness left in my body. Two, with all the congratulations I’ve been receiving for doing basically nothing up to this point, I’ll be changing diapers well into the foreseeable future in an attempt to feel like I deserve the kudos. Third, and most important, I now see everything as clearly as it can be seen: if the baby’s good, if the girlfriend’s good, then I’m so good.
At the hospital, hooked up to all manner of wires and heart-monitors and baby-contraction counters, the gussied-up girlfriend looked very professional when our doctor arrived and gently told us that we should, in her words, "get on with it". We stared at each other, the girlfriend and I did, with surprised, minute smiles tugging at our mouths. The suddenness was staggering; we were expecting another three weeks to pass, another three weeks of climbing up that mountain before we had to jump... but there we were, setting our footholds for an early dive on the back of a syringe of induction-gel crammed up the woo-hoo. Flushed, elated, and with a late-afternoon gel-cramming scheduled, we did what any couple in our situation would have done: we went grocery-shopping.
That girlfriend of mine, I tell you.
By the time of our next appointment, we had a fully-stocked fridge, food in our bellies, and two heads swimming in the calm that comes from clarity: the baby was coming early, and we were as ready as could be expected. The plan was for us to call the hospital the next morning at six, at which point the double-dosage wave of induction-gel should crest, allowing the doctors to properly induce the girlfriend under controlled circumstances. We got home at around eight o’clock that night, and the girlfriend thought it best that she rest up for the day ahead.
Now, I should mention here that, four days earlier, I had shot a video for a friend of mine who had managed to qualify for some sort of poker-themed game-show, and I was charged with editing it down into one good bite-sized piece in time for a Thursday due-date. The gods of fortune, however, had a different idea in mind, one that refused to allow me to manipulate the footage due to the inability of a certain editing-program to get along with a certain file-type. This time-crunch was such a calamity that, completely out of character, I actually got sick of watching myself over and over again on the video; that I could hear the girlfriend quietly moaning upstairs did nothing to mitigate my frustration over this conflict, and I wondered why she seemed to be having so much trouble sleeping...
"I’m fine—you work on the video."
Yes, and work I did, getting nowhere almost as rapidly as the girlfriend’s discomfort was audibly escalating. At 10:45, I called the hospital and told them to be ready for us, and a minute later I called the girlfriend’s sister, the planned second support-person, and told her the same. At 11:20, after the girlfriend’s pain heaved swatches of puke all over the house, after I had fastidiously cleaned said swatches of puke so as to prevent the dogs from feasting while we were gone, we finally left the house. We were safely into the Labour and Delivery section of hospital by 11:30, and I verbally-diagrammed the various spots in which the cleaning-staff could find more vomit while the girlfriend was whisked off to the delivery room.
(By the by, our favourite, in talking it over, was the elevator; the girlfriend expelled such a ferocious blast all over the inside of that metal box that the cartoonishly-horrified woman who held the door for us looked on as though I was carting a demonically-possessed antichrist around in a wheelchair. I will remember that woman’s face well-past the day I die.)
Another thing: this girlfriend of mine is as tough as they come, tough as nails; she broke her C2 vertebrae in a car accident four years ago and just flat-out refused to be paralyzed, that’s how fucking tough she is. So, when I found her nails digging into my skin while we waited for the on-call doctor to materialize, when I saw her eyes look through me and into some kind of desperate, transcendental trance, well, that’s when I saw what true pain looked like... and it was then, as she writhed in that unspeakable pain, that we were told that it was too late for an epidural, that she was almost fully-dilated and the baby would be born before the pain-relief could have a chance to take hold. Then, the most wonderful man my girlfriend has ever known showed up, one of the few doctors on staff who was willing and capable of performing a spinal-epidural, or, in layman’s terms, of providing immediate relief. He protested meekly against the procedure, citing its dangerousness, but he could see that he was trying to hold back a hurricane with a handkerchief, and agreed to help.
It was an agreed-upon matter of fact that the girlfriend’s sister would stand as the lone support-person for any epidural-situation, as only one of us was allowed in the room at the time, and my experience with needles of any sort was, shall I say, disadvantageous... even in that tremendous amount of pain, the girlfriend didn’t want me there to watch her get stuck with what looked like a seventeen-foot needle, so when the girlfriend’s sister arrived just as the doctors shined-up that monstrous pin, I took my leave and began pacing in the hallway like... well, like a husband whose wife was in labour.
Twenty-five of the longest minutes of my life passed before the girlfriend’s sister emerged from the room to fetch me; she spoke gravely, and my heart somehow become engorged in my throat so that all I was able to utter were strange gluck noises. I thought of the girlfriend being paralyzed, of the baby or the girlfriend being hurt beyond repair, of every horrendous worry that the brain usually overlooks to keep human beings from collapsing into puddles of uselessness... I also regained the use of my mouth, and started to recognize the sister’s tone of voice as less grave and more, what was that? Embarrassment? Indeed: the girlfriend’s sister, mother of two, roundly-acknowledged as the unquestioned Queen of Pregnancy, she who was tapped to hold the girlfriend steady while the doctors rooted around in her spine, fainted at the end of it. The girlfriend was fine, it turned out, was a smiling beam of sunshine when I reentered, explaining that she had seen her sister fall and had almost reached out to catch her before she thought better of it.
"I was thinking," she said serenely, "that if it’s between me being paralyzed and my sister bruising her face, well, sorry sis."
"Hell," I said. "I could’ve done that."
The entire room broke into laughter, and it wouldn’t be the last time. No, because then the girlfriend gave a good strong push, and I saw my baby’s head. She loaded up to push again, the girlfriend did, and the doctor fairly yelped, "don’t push!" There, in all her glory, was our new baby girl... and the first words heard in the silence that followed were the girlfriend’s: "That’s it?"
An eruption of laughter bounced around in that delivery room, and I think we can still hear the echo, because it feels like we’ve been giggling ever since. Sure, there was the four-day hospital stay, the jaundice, the girlfriend’s spectacularly-high blood-pressure, the fact that the kid came out looking like Robert Blake in Lost Highway, but I think I’ve learned what every father learns after his first child is born: One, with an unadulterated view of the action, of the placenta, of cutting through the stretched rubber-tubing of the umbilical-cord, I don’t believe there’s even a residual level of queasiness left in my body. Two, with all the congratulations I’ve been receiving for doing basically nothing up to this point, I’ll be changing diapers well into the foreseeable future in an attempt to feel like I deserve the kudos. Third, and most important, I now see everything as clearly as it can be seen: if the baby’s good, if the girlfriend’s good, then I’m so good.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
12:53am.
5.1 pounds.
A baby girl.
Incredible.
5.1 pounds.
A baby girl.
Incredible.
Friday, September 04, 2009
I’m standing at a crosswalk, waiting to cross the street. A bearded and bandana-ed man on a bicycle is leaning hard against the lightpost, and if he’s glaring through me instead of directly at me it’s impossible to tell.
"How you doing?" I ask.
"Terrible," he says, focusing his eyes as best he can.
"Mm, I know what you mean: I’ve got a compost-bin full of maggots."
It becomes apparent that he was, in fact, looking through me, because he is now definitively staring at me, and my confession seems to be grating on him.
"Maggots," he deadpans.
"Not here," I say, gesturing behind me. "Back home."
He grumpily turns towards the street and tries to ignore me.
"I don’t think the garbageman gave my compost-bin enough of a shake last week, because he accidentally left behind a rotting piece of birthday cake."
I raised my voice as I said this, just on the off-chance he couldn’t hear me over the roar of passing traffic.
"I say accidentally because I can’t imagine a garbageman worth his salt doing something like that on purpose."
Bandanaman cranes his head towards me and manages to look both angry and completely put out by the effort.
"So," I continue, stroking my beard and looking off into the distance. "I’m thinking, what if, you know what I mean? What if I’m actually dealing with a loose cannon here, some sort of vigilante garbageman with nothing left to lose and a birthday cake vendetta so forcefully ingrained in his subconscious that he’ll stop at nothing to have his revenge on those bold enough, those brazen enough to leave unfinished pieces of birthday cake in their compost-bins?"
He grits his teeth, the man on the bike does, and slowly looks back towards the road.
"Scary thought, that," I say, nodding philosophically.
He lifts himself up on his pedals as the light goes green, balancing and readying himself to push off across the street; then, just before he begins his arduous climb to forward momentum, he turns and violently hocks a loogie at my feet. I laugh at the not entirely-undeserved reaction to my unsolicited chatter, and I laugh when I see him slice into the path of a turning van, and I laugh as he slams on his brakes and screams at the driver and pounds on the door as it passes, and I laugh as I start my walk across the street... but when I look down at the puddle of mouth-juice clinging to the ground, I stop laughing.
Shimmering in the afternoon sun, the pool of gob reflects a sliding rainbow across its length, colouring the drab sidewalk with its mercury-like viscosity and vibrant palette. I look up to find that I’ve missed my window, that the light has changed again, and I take the opportunity to studiously gawk at the surprisingly jovial mess of expelled bodily-fluid the irritable bicyclist left behind. I can feel someone over my shoulder, and I turn to see a bronzed teenager dividing his attention between me and the mound of slop on the ground.
"How you doing?" I ask.
"Fine," he says, a little taken aback.
"I know what you mean," I say, nodding. "I’ve got a compost-bin full of maggots."
Copyright © 2006-2009 "How you doing?" I ask.
"Terrible," he says, focusing his eyes as best he can.
"Mm, I know what you mean: I’ve got a compost-bin full of maggots."
It becomes apparent that he was, in fact, looking through me, because he is now definitively staring at me, and my confession seems to be grating on him.
"Maggots," he deadpans.
"Not here," I say, gesturing behind me. "Back home."
He grumpily turns towards the street and tries to ignore me.
"I don’t think the garbageman gave my compost-bin enough of a shake last week, because he accidentally left behind a rotting piece of birthday cake."
I raised my voice as I said this, just on the off-chance he couldn’t hear me over the roar of passing traffic.
"I say accidentally because I can’t imagine a garbageman worth his salt doing something like that on purpose."
Bandanaman cranes his head towards me and manages to look both angry and completely put out by the effort.
"So," I continue, stroking my beard and looking off into the distance. "I’m thinking, what if, you know what I mean? What if I’m actually dealing with a loose cannon here, some sort of vigilante garbageman with nothing left to lose and a birthday cake vendetta so forcefully ingrained in his subconscious that he’ll stop at nothing to have his revenge on those bold enough, those brazen enough to leave unfinished pieces of birthday cake in their compost-bins?"
He grits his teeth, the man on the bike does, and slowly looks back towards the road.
"Scary thought, that," I say, nodding philosophically.
He lifts himself up on his pedals as the light goes green, balancing and readying himself to push off across the street; then, just before he begins his arduous climb to forward momentum, he turns and violently hocks a loogie at my feet. I laugh at the not entirely-undeserved reaction to my unsolicited chatter, and I laugh when I see him slice into the path of a turning van, and I laugh as he slams on his brakes and screams at the driver and pounds on the door as it passes, and I laugh as I start my walk across the street... but when I look down at the puddle of mouth-juice clinging to the ground, I stop laughing.
Shimmering in the afternoon sun, the pool of gob reflects a sliding rainbow across its length, colouring the drab sidewalk with its mercury-like viscosity and vibrant palette. I look up to find that I’ve missed my window, that the light has changed again, and I take the opportunity to studiously gawk at the surprisingly jovial mess of expelled bodily-fluid the irritable bicyclist left behind. I can feel someone over my shoulder, and I turn to see a bronzed teenager dividing his attention between me and the mound of slop on the ground.
"How you doing?" I ask.
"Fine," he says, a little taken aback.
"I know what you mean," I say, nodding. "I’ve got a compost-bin full of maggots."
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