Another tense half hour through pink smog gets me home.
I feed the cat. The cat acts like she’s never been fed, ever, and then she slumps off and hides under the La-Z-Boy. She must have crapped somewhere again. I swear, some people’s cats are cuddly and use the box. Why does mine have to be antisocial and incontinent?
I find the cat crap, eventually. It’s in my dirty laundry hamper. I count to ten, clean it up, and leave the cat a few extra kibbles.
Then I walk around the corner to my bar. I need anaesthetic.
Shawn, my current bartender, is on duty, thank God. He serves me without carding me now.
Shawn mixes me two Irish car bombs with Kahlua added, which I put away as fast as I can, and then he sets me up with straight Irish whisky and keeps ’em coming.
I often need brain-numbing. Three things do it for me: Exercise, sex, and alcohol.
Exercise is the best one. Hence roller derby. Public derby bouts are the best, because I get the exercise, which is at a manic level, and the wonderful, delicious, glorious, guilt-free prana generated by our skating.
Then there’s sex. The scary one. God, I haven’t had sex in ages. The men who appeal to me above-the-neck are too old to look at a girl who looks as young as I do. And if they are willing to look at a seventeen-year-old, that means they’re creeps who hope to sleep with somebody who doesn’t know what sex is supposed to be like.
Not that I do. Only tried it the once.
You’ve heard that term “suck him dry”? The literal version of that is horrific when it happens in medias fuckus.
So, no sex. I have to be too careful about taking in prana whenever I do it. Which is why I live in a state of constant starvation. And horniness.
But alcohol. Alcohol numbs my brain, thank God. I don’t like drinking alone. Hence the importance of befriending a bartender who can be convinced that I am either twenty-one or a very persistent, mature, underage drinker with impeccable fake ID.