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.