Fever

Fever.
It’s 7.30 in the morning and I am trapped inside an office cubicle, across the wall from the majestic American corporate skyline.

Hating every second of it. I still refuse to believe that I’ve rejoined the regulars. That I respond to the corporate version of my name, and open my mouth, and spit out cryptic technical terms like I belong. I thought I had left the surreal office props for good. But mimicry comes with hunger.

And hunger comes with betrayal. When he did that, when he turned his careless rock star back on me in every imaginable way, I had to regroup and fill in the gaps. A trusted friend, an amazing but very moody guitar player, an occasional lover, a partner in crime, a home, a belief – gone through the roof, into the abysmal vortex of darkness and grief.

I had it so bad for a while that it almost does not hurt anymore.

A strange New Yorker boy who promised me this and that if I only believed him, who was going to absolve me of all my sins and give me the blissful human friendship forever, but then, got distracted. Shit happens.

He was passionate. Highly educated. Moody. Unreliable. Long live the king.

F-f-f-fever.

Floating in space, I don’t feel bitter. The truth is, he simply brainwashed me into the matrimonial trap. Zombified me into loving him. Or, as Janis Joplin put it, “he fucked me into it”. Credit.

But he was not in my taste. I knew it from day one. I know it, and as I grieve, I try to smile. I breathe in the air of my long awaited freedom. Life is exciting. I know how to be me, I know how to duck, what else does a human need?

Boys. A human needs pretty boys who know when to shut the fuck up and not hurt my brain.

By association my mind goes to Los Angeles. The custom-made, plastic-organic paradise where elf-looking men are plentiful, and grazing peacefully on the evergreen pastures of the promised la la land. Somebody praise my syntax.

Models. Actors. I smile again. Come here, and don’t you even dare open your mouth, unless you have something original to say. Oh no, I am not dominating, just sufficiently self-protective [scream]. Shhhhhhhhh baby, shhhhhhhhhh.

One day… One day you, too, will become. One day I will take you to my secret place, the planet where people are real and fear is not necessary. A place where I was born. Based on the look on your face, the oxygen there may burn your lungs.

But one day you, too, will discover actual …love. (Fuck. I won’t say this bad word again, as it does put wrinkles on your pretty face… let’s talk about sexy nothings instead, shall we?)

Now, sleep, baby, as I walk out of your door for a good eternity. Sleep.

…The last thing I remember, my mind shutting down slowly into the bright luminescent light, is the word “fever”.