The Ordinary Times

Ooo wa ah ah ah.

I’ll never forget this thing I heard about Ecstasy once. I think it was a line from a movie, or maybe a book or off the TV but the guy said, “Each time you do E it’s like taking one ice cream scoop out of your brain.” I wondered if it was true? I still wonder. It seems possible. And the more I think about it, the more I’m certain it was from a movie and I’d probably be embarrassed to find out what movie it was I was watching but, why would they say something like that and not check the internet to make sure it was true first? Or perhaps that was the irony in it. What the fuck am I saying. Of course it’s not true. I’ve done E like five or six times and I still have all of my brain.

I bought Monopoly for nine dollars yesterday. I got it in my head that once I played it, all the fun I had as a kid being the dog or the top hat and loading Baltic Avenue up with those red plastic hotels would come rushing back. I haven’t gotten to find out yet.

Thursday I woke up at five am with a terrible feeling in my stomach. I sat up, touched the skin above my belly button and frowned. I know this feeling, I thought. I went to the bathroom and sat down to pee. I sat for a while, hoping the nausea would fade. I tried laying back down and then realized the sick feeling was indeed intensifying and oh god, don’t let this be what I think it is. I am going to throw up.

In fact, I threw up for eight hours from both ends of my body. The kind of cookie tossing that leaves your eyeballs pounding, clinging to your sockets for fear of breaching the contract they hold with your face. I was sweating and disoriented, and passed out on my bedroom floor because I couldn’t find the energy to move three feet in any direction.

Monday approached me. She clearly thought I had chosen to spend the day as her life-sized body pillow. She made a thousand biscuits along my back and then sniffed at my hair, grazing my cheek with her paw. Brrrraw? She cooed. “Uhhhhhnn,” I replied.

Thankfully, I have people in my life. People who’ll cover you with a second blanket and buy you more toilet paper and turn in your very first college paper that’s due at the exact same time you’re actually, dramatically, thinking it will be your last. Although now I wish I could have changed it’s title to something other than “Paws and Effect”.