Friday, December 05, 2003
Next Time I’m Choosing the Movie
I could hear them clawing on the other side of the door like nails against a blackboard. The groaning was getting louder. At first just the sound of a whisper from your best friend in the movie theater, now the sound was a room full of dentists drilling 150 decaying teeth.
At first, I couldn’t decide what to do. Should I barricade the door? Jump from the window? Hide under the bed? Call all my closest friends and tell them all the things they did that irritated me and then say “I love you” and hang up? Then I remembered the phone didn’t work, and when I looked out the window they were out there limping around the streets, heads down and drooling.
So, I wrote letters to all my friends, addressed them and placed “please spay/neuter your pet” stamps on the corner. I sprayed them with perfume and included lipstick kiss smudges on the flap of the envelopes. I had to make up for all the love letters that sat unsent in my desk drawer. All those years my mom said I wasn’t girly enough to get a boyfriend. She was wrong, but I felt like I owed her one since this would be my last hour, two hours, three hours here. I wasn’t sure. They were much slower about breaking down the door than I had thought. It had been at least a half an hour. There was no thrilling Jack Nicholson style axing, and surely Jason Voorhees would be disappointed in these guys.
I was starting to get bored, trapped in my bedroom. I wanted to do everything but all those things were out there with them. I wanted to make microwavable pizza bagels, take a shower, watch Fight Club and read Lolita. All those things were out there in the living room, kitchen, bathroom. Everywhere I was not.
I looked around the bedroom. The disconnected Snoopy telephone, the vibrator with dead batteries, the digital alarm clock with the flashing 12 O’clock, the A-L Yellow Pages, ten dirty t-shirts waded in the corner and a pair of jeans that didn’t belong to me. Two months ago, I made it a mission to clean up, shape up and make this place livable. I failed. I still had a pile of rejected letters on the coffee table, and I still hadn’t finished chapter one of the new story. I was living out of boxes and eating mini pizzas and ramen everyday. I had to admit that this starving artist stint was not want I thought it would be. Then I heard the wood crack, and their arms tore through, splintering the last remains of me against them. I sat on the bed and waited the inevitable. I hoped the cuter one would get to me first.
I had been romanticizing them for all this time. They weren’t even scary, more like sloth-like smelly regulars. The usuals. The people I saw in the post office, Subway and dive bars. There was nothing great about an army of undead after the only brain left in town.
¶ 11:40 AM
|
I could hear them clawing on the other side of the door like nails against a blackboard. The groaning was getting louder. At first just the sound of a whisper from your best friend in the movie theater, now the sound was a room full of dentists drilling 150 decaying teeth.
At first, I couldn’t decide what to do. Should I barricade the door? Jump from the window? Hide under the bed? Call all my closest friends and tell them all the things they did that irritated me and then say “I love you” and hang up? Then I remembered the phone didn’t work, and when I looked out the window they were out there limping around the streets, heads down and drooling.
So, I wrote letters to all my friends, addressed them and placed “please spay/neuter your pet” stamps on the corner. I sprayed them with perfume and included lipstick kiss smudges on the flap of the envelopes. I had to make up for all the love letters that sat unsent in my desk drawer. All those years my mom said I wasn’t girly enough to get a boyfriend. She was wrong, but I felt like I owed her one since this would be my last hour, two hours, three hours here. I wasn’t sure. They were much slower about breaking down the door than I had thought. It had been at least a half an hour. There was no thrilling Jack Nicholson style axing, and surely Jason Voorhees would be disappointed in these guys.
I was starting to get bored, trapped in my bedroom. I wanted to do everything but all those things were out there with them. I wanted to make microwavable pizza bagels, take a shower, watch Fight Club and read Lolita. All those things were out there in the living room, kitchen, bathroom. Everywhere I was not.
I looked around the bedroom. The disconnected Snoopy telephone, the vibrator with dead batteries, the digital alarm clock with the flashing 12 O’clock, the A-L Yellow Pages, ten dirty t-shirts waded in the corner and a pair of jeans that didn’t belong to me. Two months ago, I made it a mission to clean up, shape up and make this place livable. I failed. I still had a pile of rejected letters on the coffee table, and I still hadn’t finished chapter one of the new story. I was living out of boxes and eating mini pizzas and ramen everyday. I had to admit that this starving artist stint was not want I thought it would be. Then I heard the wood crack, and their arms tore through, splintering the last remains of me against them. I sat on the bed and waited the inevitable. I hoped the cuter one would get to me first.
I had been romanticizing them for all this time. They weren’t even scary, more like sloth-like smelly regulars. The usuals. The people I saw in the post office, Subway and dive bars. There was nothing great about an army of undead after the only brain left in town.
¶ 11:40 AM
|
