“I hate feeling incapacitated,” Janaka said — on his third round of the flu in as many months.
“What was that? You hate living in this house of tears?”
Inanimate Objects
Sometimes I think I need a cat. Or a dog. Or a roommate that’s around more than fifteen minutes a week.
“I just ordered a humidifier!” I instant-exclaimed to my long-distance boyfriend. “It is in the shape of a penguin! What’s its name?”
“Sterling arrived in the mail today!” I updated Janaka over the phone. “Let me read you the itemized selling points on his box, they’re great. I also took some pictures of him for my blog. Uh. I . . . take pictures . . . of my humidifier . . . for my website . . . ”
“Yeah!” he said. “COOL LIFE.”
“Cool life!”
Things I’ve Misheard You Say, Pt 1
We were laying on opposite ends of the couch, reading by different lights. You looked up. “I’ll bury you,” you said.
“You’ll what?” I asked delightedly.
You tilted your head in confusion. “I said, ‘I love you.'”
“Oh.”
Kansas City Bar, 3am
“Don’t do this,” he told me. “You’ll regret it. Why chickens? Honestly that’s the worst animal you could have chosen.”
“Really? But they’re like, small and stuff.”
“They’re the worst things to kill and dress. It’s disgusting. They bleed and bleed and bleed. You chop off their heads, you watch them bleed it all out, and then you pull out their intestines. Don’t do it.”
“We pull out their intestines?” I wobbled a bit in my chair.
“Exactly. And that’s not even the worst part. Don’t do this.”
“What’s the worst part?”
He just shuddered.
“. . . I feel like I need to do it if I’m going to eat meat again.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get why people say this.”
“People say this?”
“Look. It’s traumatizing. I’m worried about you. I think you’ll be traumatized. Just don’t do it. If you can back out now, back out.” I took a gulp of my beer. “Please,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
Image by Dennis.
I Love You
“When you’re around, I feel like the Grinch at the end of the story” I said.
“You feel like . . . the Grinch?” he said.
“Oh, at the end of the story,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.