Dust. Hanne Alida
Without any encouragement on my part, I am breath to nostril with an asthmatic hippo. Let me elaborate. I didn't wake up this morning. I was ripped from my sleep in a much more brutal manner. The TV had been flickering all night, carving shadows of 0900-CALL-ME girls in my face. It's that faint sleep of the slightly horny, slightly insomniac-ish. Somebody had turned the TV off. I know. Call the cops, it's an outrage. 6 in the AM, blinks the digital alarm. There should have been plenty of high-pitched morning-show girls on to teach me about Paris Hilton's breast implants. The room was bare without the TV on; talk show lights had been the only decorations. I stumbled through the darkness for a while, searching for my glasses. The room had one window, but the blinds shut out the moonlight from the outside. There was no furniture apart from the air mattress, but I had carpeted the floor with my stuff, with banana skins , cigarette packs, butts, lighters, clothes, razors and all the rest of it. It was impossible to find anything without the TV on. I stepped on a bag of crisps and heard a condescending sigh from the other side of the room. He'd come for a visit. This was not my room. I had a father, somebody who had gone through the trouble of creating me, and very little since, who kindly offered me his garage for shelter. He exchanged the TV plug with another plug dangling from the ceiling lights. I had never used those; we prioritized differently. Lights blinked on. I blinked them away, without success. The tube lights sketched out my father's frown with extra care. He filled out the corner with his broad shoulders and his fat ass. He cast an even bigger shadow.
27