Mustard Chicken, Ham and Beans.
A chain of insignificant moments, signifying nothing.
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I wake up late, in the indeterminate light that filters through the closed blinds of the cell I call my apartment, and go about doing morning things even though it’s not technically morning anymore.
I’ve been letting entropy have its way again. I clean up a little. Make the bed for a change. I had this thing going for a while where I believed that making my bed was one small thing I could do to push back the ever-encroaching chaos.
Lately, though, I’ve not really been fighting it so much anymore. The chaos, I’ve learned, is going to have its way with you whether you push back or not. Some days, I just don’t care enough to rage against the dying of the light.
I cross the invisible dividing line between my living space and the tiny kitchen and flip on the small fluorescent light over the sink. I dump some ice cold water, a scoop of creatine, and a packet of green apple-flavored electrolytes into a plastic shaker bottle and mix it up. I drink the whole thing in two big gulps, and for some reason today it feels like the most refreshing drink I’ve ever tasted. I must be dehydrated.
I push the button on the espresso machine to warm up the boiler, slide the portafilter into its little slot under the grinder, and let the aroma of fresh-ground coffee fill the space as it noisily whirs. While I’m waiting, I wash the disposable clear plastic coffee cup I’ve re-used too many times with a spray of dish detergent and a green and yellow scrubby sponge. I drop one of my big square ice cubes in, then pull a double shot right onto the ice, melting grooves where it hits. I prefer iced lattes this time of year, but that’s just espresso topped off with a bunch of whole milk. Most people don’t realize it, but whole milk has about 12 grams of sugar per cup, and my coffee cup can hold twice that. Two of those iced lattes a day means roughly 40-50 grams of carbs from lactose. I haven’t exactly quit carbs, but I’m trying to reduce them, and I’m not sure I want so many of the ones I allow to creep in to be wasted on just coffee. So I make an iced Americano instead. Theoretically, it should be mostly coffee and water with a splash of cream, but I accidentally dump in way too much half-and-half. I pulled that move where the container is almost empty and you think there’s less in there than there is, and then when you upend it, you wind up with way more than you bargained for. Oh well. I top it off with more water from the fridge and pop the top on.
The next one, screw it, I’m just going to use the milk.
I’m not sure if I’m hungry or not. I felt like it when I was still lying in bed, but that seems to have mostly passed. I’ve been told I’m supposed to eat something before coffee so the caffeine doesn’t spike my cortisol, but I’ve gained about 7 pounds since I started doing that because I keep eating in the morning when I’d usually just skip. Just in case, I turn on the burner under the white ceramic pot with the leftovers of last night’s dinner, my first attempt at making Poulet à la Moutarde — chicken with mustard — and shove what’s left of the mashed potatoes from that meal into the microwave.
Then I do what I really want. I grab a cigarette out of the first pack of smokes I’ve purchased in over two years. American Spirits, because nobody apparently sells my Dunhills anymore. I take my coffee with me as I head outside. It’s overcast and cool, about 65 degrees. I sit on the concrete steps to the upstairs apartments and light up my smoke with a gray plastic flip top lighter with a psychedelic design on the front that I picked up from a shop back in Michigan. Other than the occasional cigar, I’ve never been a regular smoker. I was always a “smoke while drinking” kind of guy back when I didn’t have to drink alone, and even then, usually only if somebody else had a pack. I can count the number of packs I’ve purchased for myself in my entire life on both hands. But sometimes, I just crave it. It’s not really the nicotine — I’ve got pouches of the clean, synthetic, tobacco-free kind for that — but the whole…experience. The ritual of the thing. I realize, around my second drag, that I left my phone inside, and shrug. Probably for the best. The whole cachet of smoking is in taking a minute to do a thing in the physical world that requires steps, involves several of the senses, and even a little bit of the magic of fire. Scrolling would just ruin the moment. Instead, I stare at the weathered old mulch in the landscaping and take a sip of my coffee-with-too-much-cream. I decide to just allow myself to notice things, like we used to do in the old days, before we all had a Palantir in our pockets.
There’s an old chicken leg bone, darkened with weather and age, broken off at one end. A clear plastic capsule with a pop top that looks like it used to have some kind of paint inside. A cheap mini butterfly hairclip lacquered up to look like gold. Roofing nails in various shapes and sizes. I see that the sliding glass door to nowhere on the side of my unit has an angle bracket screwed into the track. That’s interesting. Even if I wanted to open that door to let in some air, I couldn’t.
