I am constipated with Life

"You're getting off work soon."

She was a Mexican. She was in her mid 30's and married which meant to me that I had a pretty good chance.

She did not look up from counting my drawer when she talked to me.

"Go home and watch TV. Blog and space out. " She told me.

"I plan to." I replied. "It's all I do anyway."

"I know." She laughed.

So I went home and blogged and spaced out and watched TV on the computer. I did those things because they were the only things I ever did. I guess I could have done something else, but I never thought about doing anything other than "what I always did" until it was too late.

I would look over at the alarm clock perched on my computer monitor and realize it was 6 in the morning. 6 am. Too late to do anything now. Then I would remember that I would have to be at work in a few hours. I would lie down on my bed and try to masturbate. 40 or 50 minutes later, my penis, dry and chaffed would cough out an orgasm like a sick child coughs out phlegm from the flu.

I would try to go to sleep then. Usually it was hot in my room and the noise from the ceiling fan would keep me awake. The ceiling fan had light fixtures that did not work because the light bulbs had corroded into them. The light bulbs would clang around hitting the side of the fixtures because the fan wobbled at high speeds. I needed to run the fan at high speeds because my room faced the sun and always kept a residual heat about itself. I was too poor to run the air conditioning anyway. Not too cheap mind you, just too poor. I could afford the internet or air conditioning, and I chose the internet. I never regretted that decision.

Days pass. Weeks go by. Somehow those weeks turn into years. The only way I marked time was by watching the growth of hair that sprouted up in the most unnecessary of places on my body. Whenever I got bored of plucking all my unwanted hair I would turn my critical attention to my weight or my disappearing hair line.

I lay under that ceiling fan all those nights watching the fan wobble, waiting for it to fall off of its hinges.

Ceiling fans make me think of death. All because I watched the movie Angel Heart as a kid. The movie made a lasting impression on me, and I always told myself that if I ever got to make a movie I would include cinematically impressive shots of ceiling fans as an homage to the movie.

One day out of boredom I stood up on the bed and adjusted the light bulbs in hopes that I could get the jingling to stop. I played around a few times with different positions, but nothing worked. I would get frustrated then and lay back down on the bed. I kept getting aroused by the noise though, so I would jump up and start to have a go at the ceiling fan again, fancying myself some kind of fix-it man.

Suddenly there was silence. Dead silence. The noise from the fan had stopped.

"Are you kidding me?' I asked myself.

"That's it?" My nemesis was a paper tiger. I performed a simple trick and the noise stopped.

"All those freaking years." I mumbled to myself. "I suffered through those bothersome clicks and clanks." But now I had gotten the noise to stop.

Suddenly I felt like a new man. I would sleep now. I would sleep better than I had slept in years. I would wake up each morning refreshed. I could attack the day now with all my new found energy.

I am not sure what happened to that promise.

Maybe the clanks of the corroded light bulbs hid the sounds of roommate's television, or his skulking back and forth to the refrigerator.

Whatever it was it seems it made no difference. No matter the improvement my situation comes under. No matter the effort I make. No matter how objectively the improvement could be presented before me it still does me no good.

I sleep no better than before fan noise stopped. Now I just seem to notice my backache instead of the annoying sounds emanating from above me. I concentrate on the uncomfortable collision that is my back and the cheap mattress beneath me. I am itchy and I wipe blood from my ingrown toenail onto the sheet which sits scrunched in a ball at the foot of the bed.

I still wake up with a pounding head full of dread. I hope tomorrow will be different. But I know it won't. I marshal all my physic energy. I try to convince myself to get up and go to work if for no other reason than to escape my lousy bed.

I hate waking up. I hate waking up more than anything. I do mental calculations to find the latest possible time for getting up. I'm not sure why. I wished I didn't. I would like to take my hatred out on the world, and thereby become a man of conscience. Or tell the world I am tired of it and check out. Become a bum. But I don't.

I guess I have no will power. I am stuck again on that lousy metaphor of being an amoeba. Alive, but with no will. Movements that seem directed, but are devoid of purpose.

I don't wish to sprout nihilism. I don't look all that deeply into the abyss. I am not overrun with the nausea of dread.

I am just constipated with life.