todd of tacoma

Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
–Wallace Stevens

I’ve gone back to drinking behavior. I’m that dry drunk you hear about. This week, for example, I went off my medication a couple times, then doubled up once I remembered, and on top of that forgot to drink the water I’m supposed to drink and am now on day two of a migraine and a headache with nausea and vertigo and despite all this, and fully knowing better, I ingest a terrible potion that only devastates me.

I eat ice cream.

The Long Man

Even when I’m full from dinner and I think to myself I couldn’t swallow a milligram more, of anything, even then I scoop myself a bowl of ice cream for three and I eat it on the living room floor while fending off my dogs.

Last week, I think it was last week, who among us can really tell? Last week, I was halfway through my first bowl when I gagged. I cold gag. A first for me. I had to stop for a chunk of ice cream so big and so glacial I had to melt it in my mouth for a full sixty seconds to fit it down my throat. It was a sloppy operation, and I’m glad no one witnessed it, given I had to open my mouth in little pah pahs to exhale the cold air around the ice cream and breathe in warm air from the room to replace it and swallow the creamy melt cream in small, frequent gulps.

In the middle of this messy business, I blacked out. When I came to, it was to a knocking on the floor in front of me.

I looked down and drooled some and that’s when I saw him. I saw through the floor boards and to the long man with the silver cane and the crushed top hat. His hair was silver, too, and his beard had mange, his eyelashes, too, and his skin was blue white. My first thought, of course, being the responsible recovering alcoholic that I am, my first thought was, oh shit, how am I going to report this to the police? What if it’s just one of my hallucinations?

Then, he opened his eyes.

Grab two cloths and wet one of them, he said.

I was stunned. I was stunned being what Edgar Allen Poe might write. Or H. P. Lovecraft. Or a blogger.

There I sat stunned, stunned on my rug, as stunned as a blogger.

Bring a damp cloth here and a dry cloth and an empty bowl, if you value your rug!

What for?

I’ll instruct you. Go now!

I did, without question, even though a couple questions were rattling around in my mind. Most of my bowls were in the dishwasher, with the dirties, but I had some clean large cups and jars and I found one I’d consider a bowl in a pinch.

My dominant arm was numb for some reason, probably the way I’d been slouched on the floor. It was usable, the arm, but barely. But I was able to pick out two kitchen towels and dampen one and carry the appurtenances without dropping anything, back to the man with the silver cane between the floor joists.

I sat down.

Good, he said. Take the dry rag and–see that lump over there? Get floor level–see? Glistening in the moonlight, he said.

Street light, I said, splitting hairs.

There was silence.

It looks like I spilled ice cream, I said.

Two bowls ago.

Why did you wait to say something?

I don’t like to reveal myself.

I self-isolate, too.

Pick up the cold lump of cream with the dry rag and put it in the bowl, he said.

So it didn’t really need to be clean, did it? The bowl?

Set it aside somewhere you won’t step on it and spill again, he said.

How about the coffee table?

That’s a great spot, great job, he said, a bit sarcastically, I thought. Now the work begins, he said. With your damp cloth, pad pad pad the melted ice cream away. Keep track of where on the cloth you’ve padded and continually reconfigure it to bring the cleaner regions of your cloth over your fingertips, every three or four pads, let’s say. Once you’ve exhausted clean cloth space, bring the cloth to the sink and rinse it out thoroughly and wring it and bring it back and pad again.

Yes, I said.

My dominant arm was still numb so I had to pad with my weaker arm. When you perform an operation like this, one that needs even the slightest concentration, when you perform something like this with your weaker arm your attention gets bifurcated, one half on the task at hand and the voice saying don’t fuck up! and the other half on the infinite wonder of all that goes into a simple task like removing ice cream from a rug with precision dabbing and stoical blotting and what amazing creatures we are to perform these little complex operations, a thousand or more times a day, like unbidden surgeons set loose on the world, without so much as batting an eye and we must be gods!

Have I been talking? I said.

Not to my knowledge, the long man said.

Are you comfortable in there?

No less than I was in life. Feel the carpet.

I put my hand on it. What felt like bristles once now felt like moss or soft seaweed in a creekbed.

What were you in life?

A character.

Like, a real character, that one?

No, someone imagined. Close to life but not living. Like Pygmalion’s Galatea.

Come to life by love, I said.

By Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, he corrected me. Is the carpet ready?

It feels like the soft side of velcro. But wet, like swimming trunks.

Grab Windex and a carpet cleaner. Do you have a carpet spray cleaner?

I think so.

I stood up and was dizzy from my time on the floor. Sometimes I have thoughts that are too big for my head and I get dizzy.

I grabbed Windex and a carpet cleaner and I anticipated two more rags, both dry, and carried all this to the spot.

Wet the area with Windex and dab again. Do you remember how to dab?

He was condescending to me.

Why are you condescending to me? I said. I’m trying as hard as I can.

To stay awake?

Where is this coming from?

Wet the spot and dab again.

I did so, with consternation, worried we were entering the belittling phase of our cleanup. I don’t take belittling well.

Set the Windex and the dirty rag aside.

I did.

Wet the area again, with your carpet spray. It’s important to wait ten minutes, but no longer or you’ll risk staining the rug and it will look like a dead spot on a lawn. You must imagine your carpet has roots and you must feed the roots only as much as they need to grow.

My rug is growing?

Does that amaze you?

I guess so.

Like it amazes you that you can use your nondominant hand to clean?

You can hear my thoughts!

No rebuttal. I had to assume he could.

I wet the spot and then laid down on the rug, right next to the man in the floorboards. Just ten minutes, I said. I put my arm over where the long man’s bay was like I was spooning him in a casket and I said, this is nice, and the man didn’t say anything, but I could hear his weight shift beneath me and kind of feel his small adjustments as each movement softly vibrated the floor joists.

Why can’t you take care of yourself? he whispered.

I couldn’t think of anything to stay but I strained and strained to find what to say anyway, chasing thoughts too fast for me, down the labyrinthine halls in my brain, until I ended up in a room with nothing but doors that lock from the outside.

I’m weak, I thought, and that thought echoed in the room.

You’re not weak, the man said. You choose this.

Downward Chocolate Chip Cookie Dog

I had meant to refute him, but I was still in that room in my brain, so I fell asleep instead. I know I fell asleep because I woke up. To the rap rap rapping beneath my head and in my head and I saw the silver cane and I heard the old man’s muffled voice yell, get up! Get up! Up! Get! Up!

I’m sorry!

I was on top of him with one foot on the carpet cleaner spot, soon to be a stain.

We fell asleep! the long man said.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be sorry! Dab! Dab! Dry rag dab! Wet another rag, dab!

That’ll make five in all, I said. By the time I’m done I’ll have dirtied five rags.

The old man was closing his eyes and was fading away, but I could still hear him. He wasn’t growing smaller or fainter, just clearer and more like my own, and fixated on cleaning.

Spray cleaner. Spray it liberally, he said. Let it sit and dab it until it’s gone.

Spray cleaner. Spray it liberally. Let it sit and dab until it’s gone.

I did.

And did.

And did.

I grabbed more rags and dirtied some and wet some and kept on going.

I went through sixteen rags and five paper towels and seven socks by the time I was done and it was morning.

The man was gone, gone with the sunlight.

I went to bed.

I tell people I used to have my desk there, where the spot was, that it was rubbed right through to the floor by the wheels of my desk chair.