The Cause or Result of My Daffiness?

Oct. 24,

5:00 am

My wife’s cell-phone wakes me up. I have the urge to pee. So I pee for the third or fourth time since falling asleep, five hours earlier.

My wife, crazily, gets ready for work.

I wonder: What kind of person wakes up so early? What kind of person cares so little about sleep? What kind of person is this person, my wife?

I get back in bed and happily doze. The wind from the open window smells nothing like steam from the subway. It smells like aged green, like wet leaves and smoke. I fall asleep wondering if my wife might be the type of person who would say: Tootle-loo…

6:55 am

I wake up, again. I find, to my surprise, that I feel refreshed. I walk into the kitchen, test my blood sugar: 138. What the fuck? Why is my blood sugar so high? I make about five, six calculations. Finally I understand: The chicken. I ate too much chicken last night.

I accept it. I drink Noni. I jab a needle into my abdomen, inject three units of insulin.

Then, my first thought of the day as a writer: Can a writer possibly write about blood sugar hassles with coolness?

A few years ago, just after I was diagnosed, I considered my coolness quotient irreparably wounded.

This morning, I take my insulin, I eat my toast, I jump down on the floor, do fifty push-ups. Then I leave the house wielding my weird little blood-tester as if it’s some sort of badge of triumph.

Fuck it. That’s what I say when I leave the house. Fuck it.

In this way, I convince myself: Coolness is possible. And levity, probably, is mandatory.

8:00 am

I drive to work. It’s raining so hard I have to pee. Why do I always have to pee? Is it possible to write a story exclusively about one guy’s never-ending urge to pee?

That story would be about me.

8:15 am

I get to work, pee.

9:00 am

I pee. I test my blood sugar: 145. OK fine.

9:01 am

I look in the mirror. I’m so in thrall of my face it’s obscene. I think: when I was a kid, looking at the gorgeous faces in my brother’s magazines, this is exactly what I wanted to look like. Exactly! I’m so excited!

Maybe, I think, I’ve always looked like this. Or maybe it just happened recently. Or maybe I always looked like this, but I only recently learned to see it. Likely, I’m utterly narcissist. I’m doomed. There’s a small chance though, that the obscenity of loving one’s own face is actually quite fruitful.

And maybe, I think, I just need to say this to my wife: You’ve always been as beautiful as you are today. Always. So buck up. What’s done is done. You can’t help if you’re born this way. You can’t ever be any less beautiful than you were last night, in that goofy green shirt. It’s not obscene. It just is. And I think it’s cool.

10:05 am

I pee.

I walk out of the bathroom and there’s this woman I work with, making herself a cup of coffee. She tells me a secret. We’re standing by the coffee urns and she tells me a whopper. We just stand there, looking at each other. She’s trembling. She probably needs a hug more than any person needs a hug right now.

I say: come here.

We embrace, warmly. She cries. I rub her shoulder blade.

I tell her, in terms of work: I’m here, so don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll take care of everything.

Walking away, I ask myself, When did I become the guy who says: I’ll take care of everything?

Then I think: Why am I so fucked-upped and wounded?

Why is everyone is fucked-upped and wounded?

10:12 am

I sneak away, read Shalom Auslander for five minutes.

I answer my question re: Why is everyone so fucked-upped and wounded?

Just because.

11:43 am

I’m sick of everyone asking about the new girl working with me. I’m sick of telling everyone that she’s my best friend’s sister. Yes, I know, she’s gorgeous. But back off.

So I change tactics.

This guy walks up, asks: Whose the new chick?

(He smiles, weirdly.)

I say: My sister, why?

He says: Oh.

11:44 am

I tell the new girl some people might think she’s my sister. I pee.

11:57 pm

How goofy and horrible is life?

12:00 pm

Fucking conference call. Do people actually enjoy conference calls? Perhaps that’s why they ask so many questions, consequently prolonging the conference call. I hate conference calls. The conference call might just be the thing most opposite writing.

Why am I here, doing the thing most opposite writing?

When I should be writing?

How did I get to be 31 without figuring this problem out yet?

I start to blame my blood tester. I start to blame my blood. Bad blood, always fucking me up. Can’t you just start raging with me and not against me?

I decide for the one millionth time: I will never, ever waste another moment again.

Calls over.

I pee. I jab a needle into my stomach, inject three units of insulin. I pee.

Lunch is sandwich and soup, the same lunch I’ve had for about three years. The exact same lunch. I read the New Yorker while I eat.

The New Yorker will save me.

1-3:47 pm

Weirdly, I forget to test my blood sugar. This never happens.

3:47 pm

I’m home from work, on the couch, reading Shalom Auslander. I get up, pee. I doze. I get up, pee. I doze.

4:49 pm

My wife calls, wakes me up, asks for a ride. I test my blood sugar: 120. Not bad.

We get into a bit of a scrape. I eat an apple and some pumpkin seeds. She’s shocked I can eat and apple and pumpkin seeds so nonchalantly.

Not because of my condition. Because of her’s.

She flops into bed. I go there, delay my trip to the gym by nearly thirty minutes.

Afterwards, I jab a needle into my thigh, inject 11 units of long-acting insulin.

6:00 pm

At the Y, on the treadmill. Vogue.

Strike a pose
Strike a pose
Vogue, vogue, vogue
Vogue, vogue, vogue.

Why does Madonna say Rita Hayworth gave good face?

What the hell does that mean? Do I give good face?

If the music's pumping it will give you new life
You're a superstar, yes, that's what you are, you know it.

8:00 pm

Roast Chicken and Epic Sweeta Potato Mash for dinner. Wine too. I jab a needle into my abdomen, inject two units insulin. I pee. I eat a ridiculous amount of chicken.

The World Series begins and I feel celebratory! I drink three glasses of wine!

The life-giving air of baseball.

I tell my wife I’m a spiritual man when it comes to baseball and that her brother is a religious man when it comes to football.

That’s the difference, I say.

Get over yourself, she says.

8:40 pm

I pee.

I sit down to write. I’m thinking about how everyone’s so fucked-upped and wounded, especially me.

Henry calls. He’s on day three of his Master Cleanse. I chide him for chewing gum. He desperately wants to eat a cheeseburger.

Knowing he’s insanely afraid of death, I say, That might kill you.

He promises not to eat a cheeseburger.

I get back to my work.

Just because is not a suitable answer. Just because is lazy.

The only other thing I can think of is that fucked-upped woundedness is probably pretty funny. I think of Daffy Duck.

8:43 pm

“Well?” I shout.

9:07 pm

I love you Miranda July. I love when you say:

"People are always breaking through, like in the Doors song ‘Break on Through (To the Other Side).’ But I really had. I had broken through twice now, and my feeling about the universe was that it was porous and radical and you could turn it on, you could even fuck around with the universe."

I test my blood sugar: 142

I jab a needle into my abdomen, inject one more unit insulin.

10:00 pm

On the couch, with my wife, watching the Red Sox destroy the Rockies. My wife. Her skin, ridiculously soft. Ridiculous! Her coolness quotient, sky-high. Sky high!

She probably doesn’t even think about this kind of stuff.

We grew up together but we grew different in our goofiness.

I wonder: Why does she still like me so much?

Why do I need her so much?

I like her ass. That's one thing.

10:03 pm

I pee. I pee. I pee.

11:02 pm

Awful things have happened to Daffy Duck.
Was that the cause or the result of his daffiness?
His bill blasted to the back of his head.
His eyes bounced around.
Deep inside his meal feathered brain
is the need to fuck or fuck-up
everything beautiful even the Parthenon.
Yet he returns again and again from what
would kill and make inedible
an ordinary duck.
Is this too a power of daffiness?

~Uncle Deano

11:54 pm

In bed, with my wife. I put my hand on her ass. Why do some people call it rump? Rump is a terrible word. Ass isn't much better.

This is the assumed posture of our marriage.

Sleep like a duck in the middle of an explosion.

My wife's ass. That's funny, put the word "wife's" in front of "ass" and the word blossoms...