sometimes dante will wake me up in the middle of the night to feed him . . . he’ll sit on my chest and paw at my face, and graze my cheek just barely with one little claw until i get up. and i’ll go out into the kitchen, which is dimly lit purple and red, and i’ll feed the guy. i’ll drink a full glass of water and more often than not pop a few aspirin. i bought this bottle of aspirin in december i think. i got the jumbo pack: 500 pills, baby, all primed and ready to alleviate The Unassailable Pain Of Being Alive. this morning i felt a great sadness when i held up that bottle and saw that i have consumed round about two-thirds of it already, barely six months later. i’m talking over 300 of these things are gone! long since absorbed! i got what i could out of them, and now i think their effectiveness is waning.

when i first started my job, this stand-up dude showed me around, and i remember he opened a cabinet in the kitchen where all the over-the-counter painkillers were. he said: “here’s all the aspirin, tylenol, advil . . . you name it. we go through a lot of this stuff.”

when i really think about it, i’m hurtin all the time. i guess i’ve gotten so used to it that it feels like my default state. my skeleton is screaming inside my body round the clock.

well . . . time to pop an aspirin~

mmmhmmmm