Sick thoughts

by RAF KATIGBAK

I’m in love and I can’t do anything about it. I’m sweating, shivering and getting hot flashes. I’m listless and can’t concentrate. I have a pain in my chest and I can’t even get out of bed.

Wait. Actually, no. I’m not in love. I’m sick. Do you know how I know? Because I’ve been in love and that’s more painful and confusing. Also, I have yet to meet a girl that gives me an explosive case of diarrhoea like the one I have right now.

As I write this, I am burning up under my down comforter. My entire body aches and I have a temperature that I believe is approaching 40 degrees. I suppose I asked for it. My mother always told me never to leave the house without a scarf. But when I ran out last night I did have a scarf. Maybe I should have been wearing a jacket. And pants. And not just ski goggles and a rubber diaper with a raccoon tail pinned to it. Who would have thought PCP could be so bad for you? I mean, it’s only three letters.

Being nauseous is the worst. It’s worse than that hurt when you find out your father was injured in a freak cock-fighting accident. Then also finding out, yes it was that meaning of “cock.” It’s like finding out your dog has just died. Actually, it’s more like finding out your dog and rabbit just died and your dream of having cross-breeding “dabbits” will never come true. But don’t feel bad, it’s not like you didn’t try, you even got them really drunk. And nobody at the pet store told you dogs and rabbits could get alcohol poisoning anyway.

There’s nothing worse than being bed-ridden. Unless you count being boat-ridden, or even worse, raft-ridden. Or even just plain ridden. Unless you’re into weird stuff like pony play, then I guess it’s not so bad.

Having a flu headache is like getting hit with a sledgehammer only worse, because it’s the sledgehammer you lent to your neighbour four months ago and why didn’t he return it to you sooner and where is that Weedwacker I lent you ages ago, asshole? Jeez.

I suppose if I wanted to feel better I could just take some aspirin or ibuprofen, but I don’t believe in drugs. And I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny or Jesus or the Dalai Lama either. But I do believe in Santa Claus because once I woke up and saw him kissing my mom under the mistletoe. She told me not to tell my dad. Maybe because Santa Claus smelled like booze and kind of looked like my dad’s best friend and that it would really freak my dad out to find out he goes bowling with Santa.

I guess I could read a book. But all the books I have are pop-ups and they’re scary. Maybe I should go to the doctor. But I don’t want to wait in line for three hours only to go into the doctor’s office and wake up days later to find out they mistakenly gave me a sex change and now my name is Rafaela and I start walking the streets turning tricks only to be picked up by a wealthy business tycoon who cleans up my act, falls in love with me and we live happily ever after, because I hate waiting rooms.

I’m not sure what to do with myself. I guess I could do what everyone else does: lie around, watch TV, drink psychedelic tea and go on a visionquest. But I don’t want to be like everyone else. I’m a renegade like that. I want to go against the grain. I hate grains. I want to be different. I want to scream my different-ness out from the top of my lungs. Or from the bottom of my lungs. Or from the bottom of my stairs, to the top of my stairs. Or from the top of my stairs through several flagged checkpoints along a 15-kilometre trail. I think I just invented cross-country screaming.

Sometimes to break the monotony of sickness, I like to play jokes on my roommates. I secretly fill a bottle marked “suppositories” with white jellybeans and I ask them to hand them to me. Then I eat the jellybeans in front of them and we all have a good laugh. But then they stop laughing when I stick them in my butt.

But there’s no point in over-extending myself. I suppose I’ll just lie here and wait for the Neo Citran/PCP cocktail to kick in. Tomorrow I’ll probably feel much better and I can just get on with my life, doing average joe stuff like getting coffee, doing groceries and milking the spiders, and staring at my hand that’s morphing into a snail and… whoa.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca