Icebox Records

Got sick over the course of last evening … woke up know­ing I had a fever due to my dreams … fine fine form … per­form­ing a Led Loco show from a large 4 post bed, all of us in it, peo­ple all around us, I sang ”Have a Drink on Me” fairly well, hit the notes … laughed myself awake at one point watch­ing my pal Austin get overly indig­nant with my pal Dan who had just slapped his faux baloney hoagie out of his hands … dri­ving to Mont­pe­lier and fly­ing back on a 757 crammed with scream­ing tod­dlers, some girl behind me going on and on with her boyfriend about how much she LOVES movies, such style and emo­tion, the whole while men­tion­ing fairly mid­dle of the road movies like Glad­i­a­tor and The Big Chill as if they were high art … the plane began falling out of the sky, wak­ing me up

Will be fly­ing very soon … Costa Ricky in 4 days.

So I get up at 6:30am, my skin hot but my inner coil icy, all weak and fee­ble … a cough crip­ples when you’re like that. So I go to the 24 super­mar­ket to fetch some goods for the ill, basi­cally prepar­ing a Sick Bas­ket … lozenges, tea, honey, ther­mome­ter (came out at 100.9), aspirin, what have you … fruit, too. And oat­meal. What­ever. So I buy and leave, try to start the car I just bought from Austin for 500 bucks, and it’s flooded … I sit there and a nice fel­low comes over and offers a jump. I explain, and he sym­pa­thizes wiith me. I feel hope­ful as he waves and dri­ves off … I offer him a small smile.When it finally starts, I see an older woman who works at the Blimpie up the street from our office car­ry­ing too many bags to han­dle com­fort­ably for such a long walk back to the sand­wich shop. I offer her a ride, I guess because the nice­ness of the other fel­low had rubbed off on me … she smiles and gets in, and imme­di­ately her per­fume fills the car, a sickly smell, sweet, like old dirty flower-vase water and over­ripe oranges with cloves pierced into the rinds. I sped up. And got her there in record time.…

…and still the smell lingers. Sure as shit, she left some­thing behind. Fuck­ing kind­ness … just made me feel sicker.