Sitting on my ivory throne, reading Christopher Gilbert poems, eating a Rice Krispies Treat, I blow crumbs off my countertop.
A single sugary rice grain remains—halfway on the countertop’s edge, halfway from falling into the at-capacity trash bin. At gravity’s mercy.
The odds! I marvel. I couldn’t repeat this if I tried.
Suddenly I’m back in class, in the back row, the backs of studious heads sizing me up. Pop quizzes. Gravitational constant times mass divided by distance equals force of gravity. Blah blah blah. You know I Ask Jeeves’d that shit.
Then there were my cheap Sanyo headphones, Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory growling into my brain, an inflamed case of the bacne, Mr. Jenkins’ pale hairy gut bulging out of his size-small Abercrombie and Fitch polos, Columbia and her perfect white teeth, her brown M&M eyes. Her budding breasts. Jesus. Distractions, sirens, the lot of them! Will this portal ever close? Will bygone days ever leave me be?
The hanging sugary rice grain speaks up, and before I can freak out I remind myself I’m tripping. Its voice is soft, like Crispin Glover’s. It says to me, in nearly a whisper, “Hey, c’mere, come closer, please.”
I, uneasy, lean in. “Yes?” I inquire.
“Being pushed to the edge, and not a nanometer farther, is a numbers game,” it says. I can barely make out its mouth, this teeny-tiny little slit. “You’ve been playing it your whole life and didn’t realize it. I’ve the math to prove it. Check it out on my pocket calculator, which to you probably looks like an atom.”
“Stop it,” I beg. “Don’t ruin my life for me, you big stupid little liar! You trifling chimera!”
“You are unoriginally repeatable,” it judges, “a set of equations, simple arithmetic, and don’t you forget it, you overexcited self-absorbed pothead.”
I sit up straight and feel a slight headrush, my lower back achy. I try to comprehend I’ve just been schooled and burned by a punk-philosopher food item. A wee parcel. But I’m tripping.
And I get it. As with anything else, this game we’re in is all about asking the right questions first. Because equations without formulas—discoveries without intent—are merely unremarkable accidents. Incidents, minus context. The trick is knowing there’s no room for magic in this world of the slowly dying. The briskly vanishing.
I make another brilliant breakthrough, pat my own back at my moment of clarity, then cough. And cough again. That’s all it takes to cut off my train of thought.
What the hell am I going on about? I think. I’ll never arrive again at this teetering-grain result, at least not in my lifetime. The event came, then went, like everything else that’s happened to me. By tomorrow, I’ll have eaten more frozen meals, fake-listened to more people, solved more of my own petty problems before the next wave attacks.
Space Invaders. Life, baby. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat! How’s this for an equation: The living divided by the dead times three hundred sixty-four (the purported number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop) equals the nature of reality, quantified.
Constant change—accept it then lean into it, like I did with my edible little friend.
A banging on the door.
“You still in there? God help me, how long can a man poop!”
“I’m reading!” I shout at my wife. “I’m getting to the good part! This is Me Time!”
“Whatever, I can smell the weed all the way from the kitchen. How much longer you gonna be?”
“JUST A FEW MORE PAGES!”
I hear her sigh, patter away. Wives’ retreating footsteps: the glorious but momentary soundtrack of respite for husbands abroad. Nirvana forbid this husband’s spouse (read: one hundred thirty-seven-pound ball-and-chain) ever catches on.
I’m being unkind. Even in my altered state, I’m cognizant of my fortune having a caring mate such as mine providing asylum from ghosts of My Past. After I’m finished here, I’ll puppet her around the living room, as I’ve developed a habit of playing from my phone Roaring Twenties jazz songs on YouTube and from behind my dearly beloved piloting her noodly limbs wildly to the music. It’s amusing for both parties. Try it out on yours sometime, health and inner weather permitting.
We all must figure out—on our own—how to best navigate toward the inevitable.
Welp, I think, Me Time’s over. Was splendid while it lasted.
I wrap what’s left of my roach in toilet paper—a conservative two squares because it’s Charmin Ultra Soft—and slip it under the rug. I suck in all the oxygen I can manage and blow that Last Grain Standing to kingdom come, which is somewhere behind our combination washer and dryer. I mock-whisper to it, to great satisfaction, “Who’s repeatable now, bitch?” Then I flush the toilet and wash my hands.