Yes friends, Taffy has been prostrate on the couch for two straight days, reduced to drinking fluids and watching talk shows, energy sapped, defenses down while his guitar and notebook mock him from the corner, leaning against the wall. The upside of this is - need I even say it - not being at work. Every moment away from there is a moment that I savor, much like a ravenous carnivore diving into a plate of lunchmeats with a sort of carnal abandon. I am coughy. I am sneezy. I am exhausted. But I am not entering data at work. So there is that, at long last. The flip side of that goodness is that my supervisor, under the paper-mache thin guise of 'checking up on my employee' has phoned here every couple hours to see how I "am doing". I want to scream into the phone "Leave me be!" but I haven't the strength to even pick the phone up so instead I scream it inwardly, as if to my own self.
Had a rather interesting event transpire yesterday though. Since I had the day to myself and further since I am - look away ladies - on day 3 of no clean underwear, I decided that the time had come to arrive to do some laundering. I grabbed fistfuls of dirty underthings and t-shirts, stuffed them in a giant potato-sack and toted them across the street to "Tucker's Laundry". I walked in and to my great surprise and horror, with whom did I see, but the tiny rat-like tenant of apartment 8 putting items into a washer. Yes, this the very soul who agonized me last week by his careless and inconsiderate partying but whose terrorizing deeds also aided my birthing of a new song (see below, Dark Monsters in the Complex). My initial instinct was to run across the street, back to from whence I came but it was too late. He spotted me and waved me over.
"Hey Bro" he muttered, with a sort of sick satisfaction. "Don't you live in the C"?
Assuming this was some putrid bastardization of the Regency Towers, our shared residence, I nodded glumly.
"Sweet ass digs, don't you think? he asked. I wasn't certain how to respond, if at all, so I began to extract items from my potato bag and insert them into the round slot in a vacant laundry machine. My head was spinning, urging me onward to the arena where I'd just say something to him. Anything to take him down a peg. What came out was this:
"Not working today then?".
This caused him to cackle hideously, like some underwater garden creature. I could see the sharp uneven canine teeth protruding from his gums.
"Naw Bro. I don't need to work. Work is for fools".
It took a second to realize he wasn't kidding and then a slow lazy burn began to gurgle in my stomach. This is the exact embodiement of everything that is wrong with the current situation in my life.
"Oh" I said "And why is that"? I asked this
"My dad has so much money bro. I am set up. Once I hit twenty-five it is all mine". And he continued to cackle, like some evil witch or some plaster of paris she-beast. And my nightmare continued. Jets of white-hot anger blasted across my face like a wave of unhappiness. The garden rat stuck out his hand.
"I'm Ron Mealman".
His hand was dainty. And moist. But I stuck mine out anyway and shook it, wondering how quickly I could get to a sink.
"Mealman?"
"Yeah, but you can call me Fat Ron". As if to address the silence he anticipated coming from me, he added "Cause I roll 'em fat". He gave me a wink as he said this as if I was suddenly a part of his conspiracy to do bad and wage annoying parties. Then he said: "What's your name bro?"
And normally I might pause here or get self-concious or something but I looked him dead in his little rat eye and said immediately:
"Taffy. But you can call me Sunburst".
His eyes were confused and frozen, so I said
"Cause sunshine ain't a bad thing".
My heart was suddenly thumping, not able to believe that I just said my new name out loud. He looked at me as if I were wearing a shirt made of lettuce fronds. Then he said: "Your first name is Taffy?"
He was a baffled mule, one of lesser intelligence, and I was the one cackling, laughing on the inside, so hard it hurt. HA! I thought: HA!
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