faucet leak

December 12, 2019

So I fell asleep after that last night  — didn’t have the brains to rabbit on about the rest of the misadventure. Actually, I’m kind of wondering if I should write this down instead, cause I get tired of talking, but I’ve figured out I can do shit like hoover and wash the dishes while I talk, so it isn’t all bad. So, anyway, turns out Galilei’d really gotten herself into a mess over those damn shoes. Like, I really should’ve known, but I was so fucking obtuse that I didn’t realise it until much later. See, now I don’t know how to put it kindly, but Galilei can’t afford shit. Only reason she’s still afloat is because her dead uncle was famous and has a string of contacts literally everywhere  — he was some bigshot architect  — and he left her some inheritance that she just tosses into world-bopping. It’s not much. She’s been working at the AIO off and on for the last couple of years, cause she’s pretty much broke all the time. Oh, and before you ask me what the AIO is, let me tell you: I don’t fucking know. It’s not on Google. It doesn’t say so on the signboard. I tried asking Galilei once, though. Let me tell you how that went...

So I said: ‘Hey Lei, what does the AIO mean?’

And she said: ‘Not sure, Academy of … Institution of … they teach English there.’

And that’s it. Anyway, first thing I noticed when Galilei crashed into me was the Doc Martens, and her being broke and the Doc Martens being hella expensive, it didn’t take me long to put two and two together. That added to the fact that Galilei was talking at like 25x her usual speed  — as well as why I’d been abandoned out of nowhere to freeze my ass on the park bench that morning  — suddenly made sense too. I waited for an opening to appear in the conversation before I confirmed I was right though, cause I’m real sensitive like that. Galilei seemed real excited, but I wasn’t sure if that was real or if she was just trying to cover up for ... well, what I think she was trying to cover up for. She showed me her shoes. I told her they looked nice. She grinned. ‘I was reading — like until really, like, late last night … morning?’ she was saying. ‘Anyway, there’s this thing … about Van Gogh’s shoes and I was just thinking… You know about them seven word stories?’ ‘Like — Hemingway? Baby shoes, never worn? … I don’t remember the full thing,’ I said. ‘Yeah, that!’ She clapped her hands together, super excited and all. ‘So I entered one of those competitions, totally on a whim you know, expecting absolutely nothing, and they called back this morning to tell me I’d won!’ She stuck her feet out. The Doc Martens were red, and shone like It the clown’s nose in the sunlight. I had a bad feeling about this. ‘Do you think Thor’ll let me use his camera to take a picture of them?’ Galilei asked. ‘I’ve never had shoes this freaking expensive before. I’m looking SHARP, don’t you think?’ she said, and laughed. I couldn’t help it. She looked so proud of herself for the pun that I smiled. We talked for a little longer, then she helped me lug myself and my IV bag soul back home. It was a pretty normal day after that  — got yelled at by Thor, made lunch, started on an assignment and failed to move past the first hundred words. Kickass, absolutely normal day. Galilei left sometime after five in the evening, and I was just about dozing off again when the landline rang. I picked it up, and wished I hadn’t, because someone called the Signet had called and was demanding I pay them 300 dollars. In cash. ‘I don’t have that kind of money, bro,’ I said. I started to hang up, but then the Signet called me a bitch. It irks me when people swear at me. Like, fuck off please. I was about to tell the Signet-person this much, but then they said: ‘If you don’t bring me the 300 dollars to pay off for those Doc Martens, I’m going to drag you down to hell as well. Mark my words.’ For some reason, I shivered. Maybe because someone’d just threatened to take me to hell  — like, I couldn’t even find someone to take me out on a date, but here was this rando calling me up and promising me hell. I was so annoyed that I missed his comment about the Doc Martens, and I just slammed the phone back down onto the receiver. It hit me an hour later.

December 11, 2019

So, like, naturally, I thought I’d gone senile or some shit. Because I swear -- this was literally the same baby cupid I’d sat my bag on in the park, same goggle-eyes and all. Of course it’s totally like 100% possible that the exact same statue hung out in all parts of Venice like some compulsive landmark, and some ayahuasca-fuelled street artist’d decided to compulsively vandalise every cupid baby in Venice, but I digress. Anyway, baby cupid was sitting next to the bench outside the AIO, so of course that meant I couldn’t sit there, cause it was really giving me the creeps. I mean ... what if it suddenly grew fangs or something and attacked me? Don’t @ me, it’s a very valid fear, ‘specially when you’re someone like me. Literally on death’s door and all — Oh, fuck, I should probably talk about that too. I mean, for if-someone-comes-across-this-a-hundred-years-from-now-and-needs-context purposes. I see you, future historians. So anyway ... why the hell is this so awkward? Ehm. 

So see here, thing is, I’m a little bit dead. Always have been, though it doesn’t say so on my birth certificate. So, like, legally, I’m very much alive and kicking. But ... physically? Spiritually? Psychologically? What-have-you? The doctors couldn’t understand it either, I right out bamboozled them when I popped out, this half-alive infant with attitude issues. It wasn’t an immunodeficiency problem or anything, nah. They just couldn’t wrap their head around it I guess, the fact that my soul was just dripping right out of my body. Wacky, right? It’s a great way to introduce yourself at parties. Aaaaanyway, so my soul drips straight into this IV bag that grows by an inch each year, I’ve got to lug it around literally everywhere. Attracts a lot of looks, I’ll tell you that, though the kids outside our apartment call me the balloon man  — it’s pretty cute. But yeah, it’s a bit inconvenient having a leaky soul, cause if my IV gets punctured, I’d pretty much be dead-dead, not half-dead. Total zombie. God, it’s too late for me to be recording this shit. So anyway, me being half-dead, I really didn’t want to get cursed by some nutjob Venetian baby cupid spirit or anything. ...Actually, I think even normal folks wouldn’t want a nutjob baby cupid spirit cursing them, but  — so I sat on the front steps of the AIO and knocked myself out.

 [a/n: i’m typing this out as it is with minimal embellishments cause i believe in the kino eye. so yeah, take it as you will, here we go.]

December 11, 2019

We were kind of fucked. Or not kind of—like super fucked. Extra large with nachos kinda fucked. I still feel kind of woozy from it all, like. It was kind of wild, kind of … unbelievable like. God, I’m still not over it. Should’ve known from the start really, since Galilei bopped down the staircase at the AIO in her too-expensive Doc Martens and bedazzled skinny jeans. That sounds random, but trust me it isn’t. Galilei’s not her real name, by the by, but she calls herself that cause that’s the name of the airport in Pisa and that’s where the gang met…. It’s stupidly sentimental, but Galilei’s convinced we’re bound together by the red string of fate or some jazz. Except the red string is like, livewire she says, binding the energy of our souls together. I don’t get it, but Galilei’s a cool name anyway I guess. Not that it matters anymore—and this is just between you and me, okay?—but I think it’s highly likely that she’s dead by now. And I’m not saying I called it, though I totally called it, but it was the Doc Martens that started it. It was a chill-ass morning, middle of April, leaves crinkling on the pavement all brown and musty like a buncha paper bags. I say chill-ass not because we were on spring break or anything, but because it was literally chill-ass. My butt was frozen to a stone bench in the middle of some random park on some random street next to this statue of a naked baby cupid in the middle of fucking Venice. I’d been sitting there all night. Why? Just ’cause—well, Galilei’d told me to… (On a side-note, it’s December now. Why am I talking about April when it’s December? Because I wasn’t anywhere near fucking close to dying in April, that’s why. Slow onset trauma response. Anyway I’ll get to why I’m recording this, that really isn’t the point right now, and it’ll become obvious later on so, like, yeah. Anyway.) So I was talking about the cupid statue. Man, I remember it real well, creepy little dude it was — creepier even than you’d imagine, to be honest, and I’ll tell you why, I’ll get to that, really...

Someone’d spraypainted black goggles onto baby cupid’s face. It seemed to blink, in this real unnerving way, and I wanted almost to spit on it to see if its stone mouth would open up to cuss at me. Pff. Anyway, I swung my bag on top of its head so I wouldn’t have to look at it, but I took a picture of it, just ‘cause I thought Galilei would find it funny. Though she finds literally everything funny.

(Long pause.) 

I hate Venice. Fucking, absolutely hate it. I wouldn’t stay here willingly if i’twere the last place on this planet that was fit for human survival. It stinks. There’s so much ... water ... everywhere. And there’s nothing to do, unless you’re the sort that likes drifting on gondolas ... or is into gondoliers, I guess, which hey, you do you. I won’t judge.  Anyway ... I get sidetracked a lot, goddamn. So I was waiting on the bench for Galilei, but Galilei was a no show, and I was getting really really cold and really really hungry and this close to taking a chomp out of fucking baby cupid’s head, so I decided to walk to the AIO and wait for her, maybe grab something to drink if some store was open at this ungodly time of day. So I started walking, only problem being that I didn’t know where anything was in fucking Venice, my phone’s pretty much a busted lung, good for nothing but sending and receiving calls, and I can’t read a map to save my life. That, and I wasn’t too keen on lugging my IV pole around and getting lost. So I did a half-hearted circuit of the area around the park, then gave up and called Thor. My old roommate. He’s a jackass. Or was. Or — I mean, but I’ll get to that. Thor was asleep. Well I mean, obviously. It must’ve been five a.m. He cussed at me when he picked up, but hey, at least he picked up. He asked me what the hell I was on, then before I could answer deduced it was Galilei, and that was the reason he hadn’t seen me since yesterday afternoon and that if I was fucked I really shouldn’t be calling him and expecting a clean-up party. ‘I’m lost,’ I told him.  ‘I bought you a damn map,’ he said. ‘Not to tack onto your headboard, but to use, you dumbass.’