déviation.

"totalement, tendrement, tragiquement."

two days in the last five get an exclamation point; or maybe an interrobang. See also: colonostrophe, quotentheses, typhoid.

chapter one: Saturday

sometime around eight, before the tournament began: dizzy. feverish. something high enough to make hot feel cold. i was already commited to play so i ended up staying until one in the morning, reeling. decent luck, but i attribute that to the african wristcharm. (thanks.)

one o'clock. don't have my keys.

"don't have my keys."
"shit."
"can you meet me at home?"
"rather not."
"can you work it out?"
"yeah. hold on a second."
"you know i can't trust you when you speak in units of time."

two o'clock. enter the apartment. darkness. three lightswitches: no, no, no. fuses blown. i fumbled around with a lighter. yanked out all the fuses, rearranging them. three lightswitches: no, no, no. repeat.

two thirty. still dizzy, pukish. no. no. yes! kitchen light works. find medicine. lie down. phone rings seven times. can't get up, too heavy. where are you? come fix this. come with a cold rag and fix this.

six-thirty o'clock. sleeping, finally. pool of sweat.
six-thirty one. awake, coughing.

chapter two: wednesday

completely alien lovesickness. what is this? heavy like a fucking fever. further punctuated by utter confusion; looking at myself from the outside. who is that?

concerts are sold out. stay home to wash dishes, unthinkingly exhausting a very finite supply of hot water.

bad idea #99345: i'll cut my own hair! should be simple enough. i have clippers. (something they never tell you about clippers is that they only work on the parts of your head where you can push them against the grain. so if you have hair like mine, which just sort of juts out directionlessly, well, they only work in a few select places, leaving you ridiculous-looking.) so i'm left ridiculously-looking, but still covered in itchy hair, which i can't shower off for fear of hypothermia. fuck, fuck, fuck.

so, naturally, i vaccum myself. and the floor. file my nails. wait for the hot-water heater. completely alien lovesickness. what is this? i unintentionally water it, and it thrives (like the late-great milton, god rest his little jacinthe soul).

in a fit of something, i jump in the luke-cold shower and get the spiders off me. i dry off. dress. run to the arab shop.

a cup of tea. beers like tiny hugs. next up: pills.

"donc, tu m'aimes totalement?"

excerpts.

"pencil me as an adventurous and felicitous cat; hardly anyone knows me better than this."

"je me suis pris un rateau
trente-six chandelles sur le gateau
on a fait l'amour sur un bateau
mais ton amour tombait dans l'eau.

"women don't say know with their hands. they say no with their mouths."

"who will be the fastest to recover?
the one who's first to find another lover."

"you'd think that these days nobody outside the clergy could make it past sixteen with a hymen."

shortly after arriving in paris last year, my hard drive exploded. it didn't crash or malfunction or any sillily such euphemisms. i plugged it in, it made a blam! and then smoke came out of it. i lost all my documents, hundreds of pages of writing, hundreds of albums of music. luckily i had copied all of the documents onto a laptop. its drive crashed a few short days later. chagrin!

"i'm not the devil, but I possess you."

"emotional insurance
the best kind of assurance
i can't spend money, but honey
i can sure spend time on you."

and all the things i've forgotten to write down.

plaqué.

i guess this is my first valentine's day alone since i was old enough to be together. for fear that i might actually not care, i spent yesterday compiling a heartbreaking playlist, beating hours of jiltitude into my tiny head. in effect, i managed to convince myself that i was still in love, that i wasn't capable of it, that i prefer masturbation, and then that gravity didn't exist. it is, you know, just a theory. no one in iceland believes in evolution. and vice versa. some lowlights...

1. Roy Orbison - Crying
2. The Smiths - I Know It's Over
3. Patsy Cline - I Fall to Pieces
4. Jacques Brel - Ne Me Quitte Pas
5. TV on the Radio - Don't Love You
6. The Broken Family Band - You Broke My Fucking Heart
7. Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
8. Magnetic Fields - No One Will Ever Love You
9. Beat Happening - I've Lost You
10. Carla Bruni - Quelqu'un M'a Dit
11. Silver Jews - Random Rules
12. Hank Williams - Lovesick Blues
13. The Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes
14. Love - Live and Let Live
15. Otis Redding - I've Been Loving You Too Long
16. The Sixths - As You Turn to Go

and much, much more!

saint valentine was beheaded i think. so, in his memory, tonight we shall drink whiskey and watch the texas chainsaw massacre.