The morning is blurry and late; smeary sky outside a rain-drabbled window. His head hurts, not surprising given the sawdust mouth. Too many Moscow Mules with the squad last night, and he’s regretting it this morning. He knew he’d regret it as he slammed them back to the tunes of Garth and Reba on the beer-stained jukebox last night, but he’d been hopeful it would help, at least in the short term.
And for the moment, it seems to have done just that.
He flashes back. Pictures each moment.
The bar.
The Mules.
The frantic groping with the blonde in too much makeup and a too-tight dress.
The bleary ride home in the back of an Uber.
These are all things he did.
These memories belong to him; this time was his own.
This hangover is well-and-truly earned.
He rights himself in bed and waits for the room to right itself around him. It takes a minute.
He reaches for his phone. Dials.
The voice on the other end is impatient, eager. “Did it work?”
“Yeah. I’m still me.”
*****
(I have no idea what this is yet, but it came out today, so I thought I’d preserve it. Where’s it going? I have no idea.)
I know this will offend somebody out there, but I think — maybe — if it’s not possible for an animal to share your phobia, then your phobia is basically not a real thing.
Like, fear of the dark. Okay, it’s reasonable for an animal to be afraid of the dark — could be danger out there in the night, or down in that cave, and I, an animal, don’t want to get eaten — so I’d be dark-averse.
Likewise, claustrophobia. Yeah, what I want to do is break out and run free, so being unable to do exactly that thing, especially in a space that’s close and cramped and that I can see no way out of — that would be a detriment to my feelings of well-being.
Or heights. Animals seem to know that a fall from a great height would be bad for them and hence you don’t see a lot of them leaping off tall buildings or cliffs. Heck, my dog is ginger even getting down from the couch.
But triskaidekaphobia? Fear of the number 13? Impossible for an animal to be scared of 13 because they have no concept of 13, so they can’t have any baggage or lore associated with 13.
Same thing tells you why hating Monday is not a real thing. (I mean, it is in that we all hate Mondays, but only because of our sociological construct around Monday being the beginning of the working week for most of us.) Monday isn’t a thing if you’re an animal. You either woke up this morning or you didn’t, and if you did, then it’s a good day.
Anyway, today is Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th is dumb, so I hope yours is perfectly ordinary.
We need words for some of the various social discomforts that arise around public restrooms.
Like, how about that feeling when you walk into a public bathroom, and it’s just … horrific. Like it smells like a decomposing roadside deer crossed with a wretched witches’ brew and a healthy dose of eau de dumpster. And you handle your business in the fog of it, but then as you’re walking out, somebody else walks in, and they can only assume you’re responsible for the atrocity besetting their nostrils. This feeling — that panic where in your head you say hey this isn’t my fault, I did not do this thing, please don’t judge me but in reality you say nothing because to say something about it would be weirder and worse than being judged?
This feeling needs a name.
Or that feeling when you go into a public stall and have to sit down, and there’s no immediate sign that anybody else has been there recently, but when you sit down, the seat is warm. I mean, bathrooms are kinda like hotel rooms, right? You know other people use them — that’s kinda the whole point — but while you’re in there? That space is yours, and the thought of somebody else’s butt on your seat? It feels like a crime against decency.
This feeling needs a name.
Here’s another one: you go into the restroom, not to do business, but for something else. Like you had to check your face to make sure your co-workers haven’t failed to notify you that you have shaving cream on your ear. But on the way in, you pass by somebody just hanging in the hall outside, in a way that kinda says yeah, I’m gonna be here for a few minutes, on their phone, or chatting with a friend or whatever. So you go in there and you do whatever you need to. But this isn’t a hand-washing visit; you just had to pop in. But now you think, shoot, that person out there is gonna think I did my business and didn’t wash my hands. So you think about washing your hands, but then another part of your brain says, no, that’s stupid, nobody’s paying attention to whether you had enough time to wash your hands. But then you say to yourself maybe you should just wash them anyway, but then no, this was not a hand-washing operation, I’m not gonna be pressured to wash my hands just because somebody might notice that I didn’t. So you stand there staring yourself down in the mirror like a maniac because you won’t be self-pressured into washing your hands but you also won’t be socially shamed for not washing them.
This feeling needs a name.
Or, what about — and I’m a guy, so I grant that girls may play by different rules here — what about that feeling when you’re in a public restroom — doing anything, be it your business, washing up, checking your watch, whatever — and another guy in the restroom says literally anything to you? This is an egregious violation of the social contract, but this jerk has done it, so now, what do you do? Ignore the joker who has so little sense of the social order that he wants to open his mouth and say a single solitary word in this sacred profane place? But to do so seems to violate the other social contract which dictates that you speak and respond when spoken to. So do you break the unwritten laws of the restroom and respond, opening yourself up to the possibility of having an actual conversation with a stranger in the last place you want to have a conversation? No, you chuckle awkwardly and double-time it away from the weirdo.
This feeling needs a name.
I dunno. What are some others? Or better yet, some names for these feelings? I am desperate.
A socially isolated toilet, the way nature intended. Sure there’s no plumbing, but thank heck there are no awkward interactions.
This post brought to you out of sheer bloody-minded determination to write something not even vaguely related to current events.
Jafar finally gets the lamp and stuff goes downhill real quick. He goes from super-creepy dude with a mild hypnotic power to being a sultan to being a sorceror to being an all-powerful genie in the space of, I dunno, five minutes of movie time? And it’s like, quickly apparent to everybody that he’s overstepped, got in over his head in his race and rage for power, and just like that, it’s over?
I keep thinking about that moment lately.
Not because of Jafar, in particular — although Jafar is interesting enough as a comparison to *ahem* certain figures in current events. (Lies a lot, power-hungry, more than a little skeevy, more focused on having power than actually wielding it.)
No, I keep thinking about Iago.
Jafar’s accomplice, Iago. His parrot. You know, voiced — annoyingly, yet somehow, iconically — by Gilbert Gottfried? (Yes, obviously, I’m talking about the animated version, but honestly, this little detour works just as well in the live-action remake.)
Jafar gets sucked into the lamp at the end — rightfully so, as anybody in the audience would conclude — and out of, what? Spite? Rage? An unwillingness to go down alone? He drags Iago into the lamp with him.
Poor Iago.
I’m not arguing Iago did no wrong. He did. He was Jafar’s accomplice throughout the whole thing; he even — if I’m remembering rightly (though it’s been a while) — helps to sabotage Aladdin and Jasmine at a few points. And he is certainly happy to avail himself of Jafar’s status and power along the way.
But Iago is not, in and of himself, evil. And certainly not as evil as Jafar. And certainly certainly not doomed to a practical eternity in a lamp with the now power-mad and raging Jafar evil.
Iago was a patsy. A henchman. He was the tool of Jafar, not because he wanted to do evil himself, but by dint of being slave to an evil master.
Had Iago belonged to another master, he would almost certainly have turned out differently. Iago didn’t choose his evil, he was driven to it, and would as easily be driven to good, had things gone differently for him.
So Iago being dragged into the lamp to suffer for millenia just because Jafar is a sore loser?
Doesn’t quite sit right.
But Jafar is who he is, and he can’t stomach losing alone, so he’s determined to drag somebody — anybody — down with him.
So, obviously, the parallel I’m making here is between Jafar — who is beaten and he knows it, and drags down his loyal henchman into the abyss with him — and a certain somebody in American politics — who is beaten and he knows it, and is stubbornly allowing his henchmen to self-immolate in the national media on his behalf, because he can’t stand the truth.
The difference, of course, is that Iago tries to flee in the end — he just can’t escape Jafar’s grasp.
The Iagos of the current day do not seem to be fleeing all that hard.
I’m brain dead after this week, as are so many Americans, but I can’t let today pass without noting how refreshing it is to wake up in a Blue State.
See, I live in Georgia, reliably Republican since the 90s, and I’m surrounded on all sides by supporters of our current president.
And I have lamented for years that my vote didn’t matter, with Georgia being so reliably red. And I was sure that would be the case this year as well. Oh, I raged, and I loudly and proudly voiced my beliefs, but Georgia would stay red and I would just tire myself out.
Except, Georgia looked red this year, until it didn’t. And as more and more votes were counted, it looked less and less red, until this morning, about ten minutes before I woke up, it flipped.
And it remains flipped.
And looks as if it will stay well and truly flipped.
Now, I’m not kidding myself. It probably goes back to being red again at the next major election.
But this year, my vote mattered. The vote of everybody who was sick to death of the orange menace mattered. And Georgia is becoming a major piece of the movement that will sweep Biden and Harris in and sweep him OUT.
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Accidentally Inspired 