12/16/2005

I Am A Viral Vector


We split the household chores, Littlestar and I, which is why I had no one to blame but myself when I found myself in the situation of scrubbing the upstairs toilet-bowl at three o'clock in the morning in order to make it clean enough to throw up into.

Caveat emptor: this diary is gross.


I awoke from a disturbing dream in which a tall African was checking the oil in our purple Nissan with his own grotesquely long sex, and I came to with his throaty warning in my heart feeling queasy and afraid. The unconventional mechanic had been uncircumsized in my dream, so I chalked it up to smegma-related stress stemmed from the fact that my son will be born soon and his penis won't look like mine.

I went to the washroom to pee and, to my surprise, proceeded to assplode. I considered that I may have come down with the stomach flu, and wondered whether or not I might soon vomit. I examined the flushed toilet and was dismayed to find the bowl stained and filthy, and stinking very much of unmentionable essences.

I could not bring myself to consider kneeling before such a grimy altar, so I took up the toilet brush and jizzed some milky blue cleaner out of the crooked bottle and had at her. As I scrubbed my vomit suspicion became a vomit certainty. I knew that I had to flush the toilet before I let loose or else risk a splash-back mouthful of solvent.

The moments are long as you hover over a toilet, waiting for the flush cycle to complete. I dared not belch.

The release came none too soon, and I was grateful that my daughter was staying at her grandmother's house because I should have hated to have awakened her with the terrible noise of my barfing labours. You see, I've never quite mastered the art of being ill quietly -- I am unable to perform the act without accompaniment by a hoarse and miserable shout, like a fell cheer for some unholy sports league: "Hurrah!"

(Nothing tastes good on the way out, no matter how good it tasted on the way in. Context is everything.)

Inspired by a sense of symmetry the virus within me thought it best to use dual vectors of transmission simultaneously, and thus I was obliged to clench a wad of tissue between my lower cheeks as I hurled so that I wouldn't assplode upon the floor from my projectile efforts. Dignity and the flu are strangers.

I spent the next day in bed beside a barf bowl and a glass of flat ginger ale, sucking on ice cubes while watching a stack of DVDs Littlestar had brought home for free -- Hollywood "blockbusters" rented out of the little convenience concern attached to the liquor store where she's been working. All of the movies were terrible beyond reason, but because of my sickened state I was able to respond in the most appropriate way possible: by vomiting.

What did I think of Nicholas Cage in National Treasure? "Hurrah!"

My quick review of The Fantastic Four? "Hurrah!"

I even threw up during Crash, which people who like pretentious artsy films are supposed to like, but I didn't. "Hurrah!"

I moved on to crackers and literature, chicken soup and Google News. By twenty-four hours time I was right as rain, with virus-laden swill leaping forth from none of my orifices. I failed to infect my born child and my wife carrying around my unborn child. My temporary mission as a propagator of influenza was an abject failure from the germs' point of view -- an evolutionary dead-end, swirled away down my sparkling and pristine toilet-bowl.

I win!

5 comments:

Sith Snoopy said...

Hurrah! :)

I'm glad you are feeling better.

Bleah... there must be something going around up north. Another blogger was suffering the same way, and she's in one of the northern states.

Think I'll go to work wearing a hasmat suit, in case it's heading my way. :P

Now I won't be able to watch National Treasure or the Fantastic Four without thinking of you. :)

[I can't watch Crash at all, if that's the one where they all get off on crashing cars. That's the one James Spader movie I just can't deal with. :P ]

Cheeseburger Brown said...

Dear Sith Snoopy,

Re: Crash

No, not the David Cronenburg Can-con flick "Crash" but rather the more recent American movie "Crash" in which we see several interwoven vignettes of racist people in living in Los Angeles.

My non barf quick-review: good questions are asked, but left unexplored -- a shallow gloss through deep waters, told in broad, broad strokes. A pseudo-cerebral movie for people not smart enough for genuinely cerebral movies. Boring, meandering, mushy editing. Some nice photography. One of those movies that dumb people come out of saying, "It really makes you think."

Love,
Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed Crash, but I agree with CBB that it asked good questions without answering them, and that it was shallow.

I mostly enjoyed it because i'm a sucked for interwoven vignette films. They're rarely done well, but it always makes me happy to see people *try*.

--aphrael

Anonymous said...

er. sucker. not sucked. if that wasn't clear. :)

Anonymous said...

Back in my nanny days, I worked for a family where the father was circumcized but the three-year-old boy was not.

One time we all went out for ice cream. Timmy looked at his cone with the scoop of ice cream all round and smooth, stood up on his chair with the cone held high, and announced, "It looks like Daddy's penis!"