Bedside Cocktail

The cup was there to wash down my Melatonin, right at my bedside where I always keep it. I took a gulp and then looked at the water. Dozens of living creatures were frolicking on the surface playing water volleyball, I think. I had swallowed an entire team. Too late now. They can continue their game in my gut. I shall regard it as an organic protein drink.

Too small to be ants but certainly macroscopic; maybe fleas, mites or some species as yet un-named. They have joined the throng of other organisms who have found a homeland in my entrails.  I had no time to inquire if they were the good guys or those dreaded ones.

It is now 5 days later. I have a slight nasal drip. Is that you, Glopnik, you undocumented fellow you, who I abruptly yanked from a happy splash to my inner sanctum? Maybe you’ve found your way out through one of my orifices. Or perhaps you are now part of my intestinal flora. It’s my gut feeling you slipped in unnoticed to join your ten trillion sisters, and your cousins and your aunts.

Ten days out I’m still alive and mild-mannered, convinced I didn’t poison my well. It makes me wonder how those among us so filled with toxicity got to be that way. What Kool-Aid did they swallow filling their heads with such virulent racism? Their brains must be flying at half-mast along with that Confederate symbol of pathology.

When visiting Charleston some years back I found it oozing with Southern charm masking a simmering hatred for Mr. Lincoln’s war on the South.  There was a palpable longing for those good old antebellum days, in dress and customs. During a tour of the city the guide spoke of how well slaves had been treated and how they fought side by side with their masters against the Union army.

This sort of pernicious falsity plus a gun-crazed society lends tacit acceptance for repeated lethal acts by police and now by an addled good ole boy. It will continue until this country comes to terms with the abomination of gun violence as well as our past crimes against humanity. Anyone wishing to turn in their arsenal is entitled to a sip or two of my bedside cocktail. Apparently, it can’t hurt.