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Edinburgh – Prelude
March 2nd, 2009 by Ice Cream Jonsey

The greatest trip of my life started with a virus. I can’t even be mad at them: it’s pretty awesome in here. Did you know that each morning I get my Star Trek’s Mr. Scott (topical, finally, that mug!) and pour myself a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee? Filled with both Coffee-Mate and sugar? A glucose-fueled fun ride is how my day starts, that’s what I do to myself, how can I be upset if germs want to get in me and be a party to all that?

No, I’m just kidding: most of my friends have adoring wives and husbands, and I suspect they begin their days in the screaming throes of ecstasy. Me carpet bombing my bloodstream with stuff that’s going to reduce my working vocabulary to BOOK, MOVIE, INSULIN and MOVIE in a couple years is a depressing pantomime of happiness, and trying to prop it up because the fucking whooping cough, or whatever I ended up with, lives there is pretty sad.

The Monday before I left, I went running, and at the end, went sprinting. It was a cold evening, and I felt my lungs get a little fiery. It’s not possible to get a cold just because it was cold out, but nevertheless, I felt the slightest bit unwell when I returned.

The Wednesday before I left, I went to work and felt terrible. That night, I was delirious – Delirium was explained to me to be what you get when your temperature reaches 105 F. That’s fair: the last time it happened, I was living in Fort Collins, and called out to my brother for an entire hour, begging him to get some juice from the store. This would have been perfectly rational if not for the fact that my brother was 45 miles away, at work, and a vicious anti-Semite with homonym issues.

I was finally snapped out of my delirium by mentally getting yelled at to focus by a woman I hadn’t met yet, but would in three days. That’s how pumped I was for this trip. I was getting told to shape up by the people I was so psyched to finally meet, after months and years.

I went to work the next day, a Thursday. I shouldn’t have been anywhere near the building, but I felt that it looks bad to take a Sickie right before leaving on a two-week trip to Europe. I was right! I shouldn’t have been anywhere near the building. You know how men are such babies when they get sick? I’m writing a blog post over two weeks later because of how sick I was: that’s how much of a goddamn baby this man is when he gets sick.

I finished my work, and went home. Pinback picked me up at noon the next day. I was going to fly all day. I had never been to Europe. Hell, I had never been out of the United States, except for several Blue Jays games. I was going to do a bunch of stuff I’d never done before, and I think I recovered from the fever so quickly because I just couldn’t imagine a reality otherwise. Being sick for this trip was simply not an option.

(OK, I have no photograph for me going berserk at home, so dig this as I skip ahead: we shall later meet a man named Lex, who played the main character in my 2004 text game, Necrotic Drift. The character he played was named Jarret Duffy. The place where Lex lived was an apartment next to the Buffalo Grill, in Edinburgh Scotland, and the correct apartme– sorry, flat – was listed under a DUFFY. You can’t make this up. Here’s a photo.)


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