Updates
I’m spending my 29th birthday largely naked, scuttling around my house in a mask and underwear. After sweating through three shirts this morning, I gave up on clothes altogether.
I am rewatching Beau is Afraid, which I first watched yesterday. I am rewinding the part where Joaquin Phoenix writhes pathetically on the floor, begging his mommy for forgiveness while Patti Lupone lists his many sins. I am watching it because it is art, and not because of any kind of underlying sexual pathology on my part.
The thermometer says my body temperature is between 98.9 and 99.4. I have taken my temperature half a dozen times and every time the screen flashes green, indicating a normal temperature. “But my baseline is like 97,” I text Lou, because I cannot text the thermometer. I feel like it is minimizing my experience. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I deserve a red screen. Yellow would be nice.
I have consumed approximately three liters of Gatorade Zero since noon (time of writing: 6:52 pm). I have effectively transformed my piss into pure Gatorade Zero. Now I am eating pho ga, meaning my piss will be Gatorade Zero plus the finest broth South Sacramento has to offer. If you were thinking of drinking my urine, today would be a great time to start, excepting the epidemiological risks.
You spent your whole life going around, asking every half-wit you could find, ‘If I do this, can I avoid this, or will that happen?’ As if you were born without the mechanism to choose. You let it all resolve itself in the absence of you. You make everyone do it for you. You think that makes you innocent?
Jesus, Patti. Shit.
All over the counter cough medicines can kill you if you take antidepressants, a fact I learned from a tweet and not a medical professional but which is nonetheless true. Well, not kill, maybe. It isn’t recommended. My cough is an omnipresent tickle at the back of my throat, not the kind that seizes you but that you have to initiate manually, which is more humiliating. I’m afraid someone will hear the slightly forced sound and think, they didn’t really have to do that. They could have endured the tickle. I try to stretch out the time between coughs, but I’ve never been good at tolerating discomfort.
Linus and I went for a brief walk in a wealthy neighborhood a couple miles away (me taking a recess from the day’s nudity). He feels more at ease absent the sounds of barking dogs and motorcycles and freeway traffic. Most of the houses have large trees on the front lawn, and a good deal of these have a swing hanging from a branch. I’ve long suspected that the number of swings exceeds the local population of children, and recently I’ve started examining the patch of lawn beneath each swing. If the grass has been scuffed off, indicating habitual use, the house get a pass. If the lawn is intact, I mentally label the house’s inhabitants as poseurs.
I should get to go on that swing if they won’t, I think angrily. But I can’t, because of the fascist laws of individual property, which by the way is theft, according to some posts that I’ve seen. This is pretty stupid, not least because I myself grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and had an entire play structure with a tube slide and two swings in my backyard.
My Gatorade Zero consumption has now reached approximately four liters (time of writing: 8:52 pm). It is occurring to me as I write that I may be getting too much sodium…
By my calculations, I’ve consumed 1920 miligrams of sodium, about 84% of the FDA’s recommended daily allowance, in Gatorade Zero. Switching to water.