There I am, washing bloody dishes. Everyone stands at the back window, gawping at the sunset. I stop drying silver and go to work the switches, which stick, shy of full contact; the descending dim falls away and I'm given to wander. So I wander out of the kitchen, into main dining, which-- I'm dreaming about the covid lockdown, here, and three jobs back --is all open air, surrounding the decaying house. The wheelchair ramps are half-rotted, soft wood buckling beneath my feet.
I sneak up to Dominic Monaghan, who's apparently one of our new servers. Charlie, from fuckin' Lost. This is a really low-rent dream. Playfully I snap my towel at him-- this was something I noticed our new cook doing, this past week, reviving memories of when I was a grabasser at any-and-every gig --and it cheeses him off. He starts talking trash about my double standards. I pretend to be mollified, but my mockery is muted by pain in my right hand. It occurs to me Charlie here has bandaids on his fingers in the same places I'm experiencing pain. I ask him what happened.
"I turned a bloody doorknob, if you must know, and the rusty bastard didn't spin. Laid me open."
My boss, Emily-- who I've developed something of an internal distaste for on account of her promising a raise at six months, then backsliding & gifting me an 8oz bottle of olive oil instead --appears as if by magic, perhaps irritable to find me here, seated at a staff table next to a waiter who's ignoring the massive reservations milling about all 'round the grounds. He promises to get back to work. I do not, instead preferring to extract the-- what are these, cactus? --needles bloodlessly from my fingers.
The thin bladelike tines slide out of my flesh as cleanly as slivers of glass. Charlie gives me a curious, perhaps sympathetic look, and fucks off. As do I.
Woke and read some more 'The Power Fantasy'. Got to the backmatter & realized Gillen's done a Watchmen riff. I look that up. Gab at an internet friend-- as distinct from the meatspace variety, yes --and then... And then?
Welp, today, unlike yesterday, I am scheduled off. Yesterday I called in sick. Because fuck that place. Spent the day with my husband, because that's actually important. We don't have days off together now. Stumbled across some new-to-me comix in a l'il free library. Read another chapter of 'Vineland', a chapter wholly about Frenesi, the ex-activist, ex-mom, turned gov't informant, and thought about my mother & her association with the Weather Underground. Talked to Sigfried about that stuff some. We went to a park, he had a swim, we documented some butterflies together. All in all a lovely unscheduled holiday.
What I'm not mentioning: the physical fatigue from the weekend at work. The chronic aches & pains, mostly localized along the right side of my body: my right foot, which is still healing from me bloody working on it while injured; my right knee, which nowadays bitches when I take the stairs too aggro, and I try not to think about the inch-wide white scar outboard it where I literally caught a nail in the joint as a toddler; my right shoulder, which I landed on during the wreck that cracked my skull; my right hand, which was split & skinned & sewn together again b/c bike accident; my right elbow, which was the preferred point of articulation to land on, back when skateboarding seemed cool; and the right side of my jaw, which I've come to unconsciously clench until my chipped & fractured molars make sounds of distress not unlike tree trunks scraping together in a hellwind.
Hey, I'm not insured. My job offers insurance. Which is great if I feel like deducting money I'm not making to pay for injuries which, historically, they haven't paid for. They didn't think to deal with Northwestern back when I got some stitches in the-- you guessed it --right side of my scalp, from mis-gauging my distance from the dumpster & laying my head open, on a trash run. Now Northwestern, who's never sent an actual physical bill to my actual physical residence, has turned me over to a collections agency. I've mentioned this to my bosses, a couple of times, and they've done sweet f.a.
So maybe I don't trust these guys to give me insurance. So maybe calling in sick doesn't wrinkle my conscience. Much.
Still, when I start dreaming about a gig, it's time to fuckin' quit.
Anyway, back to my Real Job. Drawing. Let's see if I can accomplish some shit today, and post it.
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