25 August 2005

The Vicodin Blues

Wisdom & Laughing Gas

So I'm sitting here with a slowly melting family pack of frozen corn on my face five hours after getting my wisdom teeth out, popping painkillers like skittles, carefully spooning in gazpacho between lips still numb from the intravenous anesthesia, watching The Terminal with one eye and reading Finding George Orwell In Burma with the other. There's a bath towel wrapped around my shoulders like a heavyweight boxer so that the corn pack doesn't melt over my t-shirt.

I am home for the first time in six months. I am home until the Tuesday after next. I have just taken a vicodin. We will table discussion over whether this can be legitimately referred to as coming home to anywhere or whether it's just a visit - and if so, a visit to what? And from where? What is home? - we will table these questions until the holes in my mouth fill and the drugs wear off.

Tom Hanks talks gibberish in the background. I read a web transcription of Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of the Venezuelan president. The corn melts onto my towel.

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