Читать книгу Escape from Coolville - Sherman Sutherland - Страница 10

Resin:

The buzz is good.

The buzz is nice.

The buzz is great

at this low price.

* * *

All that talk the other day about the Grab Bag made me totally determined to find it, once and for all, or at least know for sure if some cockmunch actually did steal it.

I still can’t believe that somebody could’ve stolen it even if they wanted to, because I’m sure I would’ve hidden it someplace where it’d be almost impossible to find. But I can’t find it.

I remember one time I hid it in my box of books because I knew nobody would look in there. But it’s not in there. I kind of sort of remember hiding it someplace else, but I don’t remember where and I’ve looked everywhere and it’s not anywhere, so maybe some shit brained assface did steal it.

When I couldn’t find it, that just bummed me out and made me need to get stoned way more than I needed to before I started looking. So I scraped the resin out of every smoking device I could find in the apartment.

For a resin buzz, I’m pretty hi-i-i-i-i-i-igh.

* * *

Then I realized that all I wanted to do was eat some bacon and take a bath (preferably in that order). So now the tub is filling and the oven is heating up and it’s totally obvious that the tub will be ready wa-a-ay before the bacon, which is a total drag because right now it seems like the need for bacon is way more urgent than the need for a bath.

* * *

If anybody ever dies from eating too many Cheetos, tonight will be the night. My News of the Weird obituary will say, “An Athens, Ohio, man died of a heart attack after eating every last Cheeto he had in his apartment. Allegedly his last words were, “‘I was in the mood for something cheesy.’”

* * *

It’s not too late to take a bath is it? The water filling up is loud as hell. The landlady upstairs will be stomping on the floor in a couple minutes.

(Note to self: never rent a place where the landlady lives upstairs. You may think it’s a great place, the rent may be cheap, but you’ll never be able to listen to your stereo ever again. She’ll stomp on the floor first, so you’ll assume she dropped something, but then she’ll come down, all pissed, saying she just called the cops again, so you’ll get one of those headphone extensions, but it’ll always make those little crackly noises when you start dancing. Basically, if you want to really jam out to your music, you have to do it in the little six-foot half-circle in front of your stereo, so most of the music you hear is in your head. Or just make sure that your iPod is always charged; it seems like mine never is.)

* * *

I’ve got all these things in my head that need to bust out. It’s like my head is this tea kettle and the steam has just been building up inside.

I’m a little teapot, about to explode, there’s where my brains’ll be, and there, my toes.

* * *

But then it’s like, the spout just becomes unstuck and the steam can start getting out and I can start to think again. It’s like, something in my head just snapped, and I don’t mean in an I’m-about-to-go-postal way, but in an I’m-incapable-of-rational-thought way and, up until five minutes ago, I don’t know how I was even able to function.

* * *

I forgot what I was going to say, but I’m pretty sure it was brilliant. It’s like I’ve got all these brilliant thoughts swirling around in my head, but they’re like these slippery fish, and I don’t have a net, and I’m trying to catch them like a grizzly catches salmon, only I don’t have the claws or the sharp teeth, so I can’t catch any of them and they just keep swirling, swirling, swirling.

* * *

How cool are these stain rings on the side of your tub from setting down your cup of coffee every day? Does that mean your coffee cup leaks or you dribble when you drink? You should clean those someday.

* * *

Your tub’s full. While you’re waiting for the oven, it’s a good time to shut the lights out in the rest of the apartment and light some candles in here, huh? Yeah.

Apparently lighting candles makes you think in second-person.

And sing.

Except the song you’ve got in your head is Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life,” which sucks because the song’s ruined because whatever cruise ship company it is still plays that song in their commercials. And they totally misrepresent the song, that’s what sucks; all they sing in the commercial is “lust for life, lust for life, lust for life,” like it was written for families who want to run on beaches and go jet skiing and rock climbing and putt-putt golfing but, in the song, he’s singing about liquor and drugs and stripping and a bunch of other stuff that nobody would want their adolescent daughter doing, whether she’s on vacation or not. Stupid cruise ship ass munchers.

* * *

Is it toxic when you burn all the dust and crap sitting in the top of the candle?

* * *

Note to self: The oven probably heats up faster when you actually turn it on.

* * *

That salty residue at the bottom of a bag of chips—I’m thinking specifically of Tostitos Bite-Sized Corn Chips—somebody should totally market that. Just put it in a bag and sell it—call it Salty Residue—I’d totally buy that. Just design some kind of packaging that allows for convenient pouring into one’s mouth so you wouldn’t have to snorf it all off the front of your shirt like I’ve been doing for the last couple minutes.

And they’d probably have to sell it at head shops, but that’s okay.

* * *

Without the water running, it’s so quiet that this cockroach crawling up the shower curtain sounds like an elephant. Maybe not an elephant, but definitely something way louder than a cockroach. And then I about had a heart attack when I thought I kicked a snake, but it was the extension cord, so everything’s cool because extension cords don’t usually bite.

* * *

The landlady’s playing her music again. Or still. Maybe it’s never stopped and I just don’t notice it anymore. “Ah Moe ah me toe phone ah Moe ah meat oh phone ah Moe ah me toe phone ah Moe ah meat oh phone ah Moe.”

I thought I understood it for a second, but I guess not.

* * *

Why do I have an extension cord in the bathroom? It’s not like I’m using it for anything. It’s just sitting on the floor giving me a heart attack.

* * *

I totally forgot what I wanted to remember and all I can think about is all the stuff that Viking Boy was saying at work the other day. How the goals everyone sets for themselves—to be rich, or famous, or to save the world—are all arbitrary and stupid when you realize that you’re living on this tiny mole in the armpit of God, waiting for all the pure energy of the whole entire universe to get simultaneously in synch and make this beautiful white implosion and then explosion and then the big bang and everything starts all over again. It doesn’t matter what you do, or how you do it, or who you do it to, because you’re just this tiny part of this infinite kaleidoscope that is the universe.

* * *

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* * *

Maybe you have ADD. You’ve passed—or failed, depending upon how you look at it—all those ADD or ADHD or OPP tests online that say, “If you score where you just scored, you definitely have ADD or AHAD or whatever. You need prescription drugs, man, that’s the only thing that’ll save you.” (Survey courtesy of your caring friends at Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck and Pfizer.)

Ooh, the oven just beeped. Time to put in the bacon.

* * *

Where were you? Oh, yeah. You don’t know.

* * *

You’re either too stoned or not stoned enough to concentrate; you’re going to base your actions on the not-stoned-enough theory.

* * *

Yeah.

* * *

Okay, I just figured out how karma works: say the universe consisted of just the people in this apartment house. The way it is now, if a new guy forgets a box of fabric softener sheets in the laundry room, somebody else will take them, and then the new guy with the fabric softener sheets will assume that’s the way the universe works, so he’ll keep somebody else’s roll of quarters and then the quarters guy will steal my brand-new jug of Mountain Fresh Tide and the first thing I’ll think is, Oh, that’s what I get for leaving a brand-new jug of Mountain Fresh Tide in the laundry room where anybody can steal it.

My question is, Why can’t it go the other way? Why can’t we get positive karma to go around? What if nobody stole the new guy’s box of Bounce? And then he’d leave the quarters and the quarters guy would think, Hey, somebody left my quarters, so I won’t steal this brand-new jug of Mountain Fresh Tide. And then eventually people would expect to find their stuff where they left it and the landlady could throw away the “Not responsible for lost or stolen articles” sign and everybody would help everybody else find their stuff because that’s what we’d want somebody else to do. And I could do laundry a week later and my Mountain Fresh Tide would still be there.

All we need is one person who doesn’t steal everybody else’s stuff when they leave it in the laundry room.

I’ll start as soon as I make up for my Mountain Fresh Tide that some dickface stole.

* * *

Is it just my imagination, or are my eyebrows really growing inside my head?

* * *

And, by the way, what’s the deal with mountain climbing? Even if everyone’s goals aren’t arbitrary and certain stuff actually does matter even though we’ll all be dead one day, mountain climbing is the most arbitrary goal of all arbitrary goals in the whole entire universe. It’s cold, it’s windy, they don’t have time to look around and really enjoy the scenery, plus they’ve got their sherpas doing all the hard work, anyway, so what do they even accomplish? And they leave their trash all over the side of the mountain. Mountain climbing is stupid.

* * *

There’s something about easing into a perfectly warm tub that just . . . feels good.

* * *

There’s something that’s a drag about realizing, once you get in a perfectly warm tub, that you left your lighter in the kitchen and you have to get out of the perfectly warm tub and drip water all over your apartment until you remember where you left it.

But then you find it balanced on a dirty mixing bowl in the dish drainer and you figure you may as well light another stick of rainforest incense in the kitchen while you’re there, since you plan on soaking in the tub until you have to leave for work tomorrow morning.

* * *

I should do the dishes. They’re starting to stink. What they smell like is when we had to help Uncle Russell clean up after whatever that river was that flooded. There was that layer of brown, chocolate-pudding-looking mud on everything that didn’t smell so bad, but when you stepped in it, there was that other layer underneath that was black and tarry and totally skanky-smelling. That’s what it smelled like in the sink just now when I knocked over a bowl.

* * *

I bet Matt has a dishwasher in California.

* * *

Ooh, I forgot about the bacon. It’s ready.

* * *

If anybody ever dies from eating bacon, tonight will be the night.

An Athens, Ohio, man died of a heart attack after eating a half sheet pan of bacon. Apparently his last words were, “I was in the mood for something salty.”

Hopefully that won’t be my News of the Weird obituary.

* * *

It’s so quiet I can hear the sizzling of the candle wick.

* * *

Is this moldy black crap on the shower curtain bad?

* * *

Railroad crossing without any cars; can you spell that without any Rs?

* * *

T-h-a-t.

* * *

What if the mountains are alive?

* * *

Maybe to somebody else, our whole universe only lasts as long as a fart bubble in the bathtub.

* * *

Speaking of bubbles, next time I take a bath, I’m totally breaking out the Mr. Bubble. It’s packed away somewhere.

* * *

I bet this is what it’s like to be in one of those sensory deprivation chambers. I was just kicking back, with my arms back behind my head and it felt like my elbows were touching each other even though they were four or five or however many feet apart. I kept trying to figure out what the feeling was, but I couldn’t. Then it felt like there was this big huge fan blowing down on me, holding me in the tub. Then I was flying—I just took off almost immediately. Whoa! He’s too high! Slide down. It’s bumpy.

WhumpWhumpWhumpWhumpWhump. Then my arms and legs started inflating and before I knew it I was as big as those balloons in the Macy’s Easter Parade (or was it Thanksgiving?) Everything inflated except for my hands and my feet and my head. And my penis. And then it was like, Whoa! There goes the penis! It’s inflated! God, it’s huge! And my face expanded too. I was floating like Underdog—no—Long Dong Silver. I looked down to see who was holding my strings and it was this totally hot chick. I got down closer until I could see down her shirt. Sir Lancelot was so huge he was dragging on the street, knocking over cars—Oops!—and a school bus. The girl looked up and caught me checking her out. But she was smiling. She loved it. Then, Whoa! She flashed me her big bazoombas. I picked her up with my penis and gave her a ride to the roof of a building and she put a tractor tire around the top of my penis so she’d have a place to put her feet. And she rode. I had to get out my binoculars to see her facial expressions since she was twelve stories higher than I was. She was loving it. The volcano was about to erupt, I could tell. Then it came. God, it was incredible. All over her. All over the city. Covering cars; filling up jeeps and convertibles. Tires on pick-ups were exploding from all the extra weight. Then it was like, We’re losing air. Damnit, Scottie, do something! She’s going to fall.

* * *

I think I ate too much bacon.