cow dung, human feces, dog shit

I sink deep into the couch, its faux leather notwithstanding. I instantly become drowsy. I only slept two hours this morning, half of which was spent chasing hopping clocks on stilts in a surreal dream. I’m not sure if I still have the strength to masticate the ham sandwich I have just ordered. I don’t eat pork and they don’t have salad. A ham sandwich with bits of wilting lettuce is the best compromise, which, by the way, is something that I seem to be doing more often as I grow old—compromising, not eating ham sandwiches. It’s a siphon that sucks out one’s essence until one becomes ordinarily bland and inane like a soap opera.

I bury my body deeper into the comforts of the black, cheap leather, which faintly smells of dried sweat and fossilized conversations over coffee. You suggest I formally take piano lessons. I’ve long been thinking of that. My brother issued post dated checks for that when I was a kid. I rejected them all, partly because of my arrogance (I studied solfège on my own at the age of 13 and played the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at 15), partly because the damn checks couldn’t even cover half of the tuition. You suggest I contact your friend who is taking her master’s degree in Piano. I might just give it a try, like all the other things I have tried without actually knowing the grimy consequences. I need more of that, stuff that don’t give me a clear vision of what lies ahead. Risks can submerge my head into a well full of liquefied cow dung, human feces, and dog shit. Alluring. Sensuous. Nauseating. And in the process, I come out refreshed. The mind discards rust when challenged with something hideous and banal.

My teeth, braces and all, hurt at every bite of the sandwich. I should’ve settled for just a glass of iced tea, but even that cannot irrigate my arid throat. How come we’ve never visited this coffee shop before, I ask. You mention that you have just found out about it. This place is so shabby yet comfy, I comment. The paint peels off from the walls lined with tacky mirrors like it were some disproportionate motel room. The overhead speakers blare cheap music from a popular FM station with a crass DJ. The ordinariness of it all magnetizes me. I know I have hated the ordinary all my life, because I thought I wasn’t ordinary until I saw that I had the same appendages as everyone else and my spinal column does not support wings. Everyone is entitled to delusions of grandeur at least once in their lives. And vegetarians should also eat ham sandwiches when coffeeshops have run out of salads. I like this place, you say. You say something else but my mind drifts slowly into a filmy world of floating carcasses. I hear nothing but the last few discordant chords of the piped-in music.