Well, it has been nearly five months since I’ve posted anything to this blog. It seems like a few people were reading it, so I apologize to those who were waiting with bated breath for the next piteous installment.
One would think that five months would equal an insurmountable pile of tales to catch up on. Not so. Here’s what has happened: I’ve been drinking at home since getting unceremoniously ousted from my long-time watering hole, years of unwavering patronage notwithstanding. It has been dull. I’ve been drinking less and reading more. Going to bed earlier. I had a birthday, so I’m 53 now. I spent my birthday with my twin sister, Norma (I know, I know, our parents were hilarious and clever) and her husband, Glenn. We each had a bottle of wine and a steak. Later, Glenn gave me some of his sourdough starter and tipsily impressed upon me the finer points of sourdough bread-making. So, I’ve been making my own bread for the past few months. Which is definitely a way you can spend a Saturday night without getting into any trouble. It’s been something of a self-imposed house-arrest.
Other news: Mr. Pibb has gone to that great fishbowl in the sky. I came home from work one evening in May, ready to celebrate the last day of the spring semester with another innervating evening of baking and BBC news. There were no bills or annoying circulars in the mail, it was payday, there was a mostly-full bottle of Johnny Walker inside; I was happy.
Then I saw him. Or rather, I didn’t see him. The fishbowl where for the previous 8 months he has presumably wanted for nothing was mysteriously vacant. “Mr. Pibb?” I called stupidly, as though I expected him to poke his bulging eyeballs from behind the little plastic castle I presented him with at Christmas, and answer, “Yes, be right with you, I’m just freshening up a bit.”
“Mr. Pibb? Pibby?!” I cried frantically into the afternoon gloom of the darkened living room. Bewildered, I sank onto the sofa. Maybe the cat got him, I reasoned. Only I don’t have a cat. And then something caught my eye, a blot of color peeking out from beneath the drapes. Something orange.
I’ll never know why Mr. Pibb leapt from the watery safety of his fishbowl to certain death upon the rug. Maybe he was terminally ill. Maybe he was rehearsing a new trick with which to impress me. I’d always heard that goldfish are blessed and cursed with shockingly short memory spans; each lap around the fishbowl is a new experience- they circle and circle in delirious oblivion. But a bit of internet research suggests that this is not actually the case. So now I find myself wondering if his suicide was somehow avoidable. Maybe he sought death as a means to escape the sheer ennui that I simply took for granted as a fact of his life. What if I had bought him a larger tank, more plastic plants, an aerating system that included a little diver with bubbles issuing from its old-fashioned helmet? Hell, what if I’d gotten another fish for him to mate with, play with, fight with? Poor Pibb. Did I subconsciously impose solitude and bachelorhood on another creature simply so the burden of my own wretched fate would be shared?
I try not to think of him gasping for water, the sting of the stale air in his gills as he flopped about on the carpet. But I keep having these nightmares about drowning in my own living room. I am sitting on the couch, but I am underwater, my lungs burn with hunger for oxygen. Panic gives way to resignation. So this is how I will go, I think to myself. And then I wake up.
My sister says I’m taking it too hard, to get another fish and move on. “Or maybe don’t get another fish, Norm. Maybe it’s not a good idea. You know, you’ve got your sourdough to mind, and that’s a bit like a pet,” she counsels. “Or try a cactus.”
But I can’t name my sourdough starter. Every farmer in the world will tell you not to name something your plan to cook and eat.
1 Comment
June 30, 2008 at 8:10 pm
F Man.
You are so freaking depressing.
You need to get out there. Stop being such a loser for Christ’s sake. Nobody is going to want to read this shit but other losers.
I might not ever read it again, thats for fuck sake!
Shit man!