Ten Years Before Doing Anything
Ten years before Christopher Columbus sailed across any blue oceans to discover any new lands or native cultures, he went to college. Chris woke up in his dorm room at 1 PM and felt estranged. He went into the bathroom and drank out of the sink, dropping his head down sideways to grab the water with his tongue and mouth. The roof of his mouth felt dry and sticky. He brushed rheum from his eyes and spit in the toilet. He thought I shouldn’t have drunk so much last night. He looked in the mirror. He thought that he was looking different. Fatter. Especially in the face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and the patchy outline of a beard was surfacing on his cheeks and chin. He felt his jaw and then tried to open his mouth. It clicked hard and stopped before he could open it all the way, emitting an intense pain throughout his face and temples. What the fuck. He walked to his window and looked out at the dry October scene of Genoa before him. What had he said to Filipa last night? She had refused to come home with him. Had she? Chris’s roommate was on his MacBook watching Asian porn with his headphones on. Chris felt weird. The room seemed to bend and spin a little, and Chris lost his balance. He swayed backward, tripping over himself, and knocked over his roommate’s trashcan. His roommate didn’t seem to notice and Chris replaced the contents in the small plastic bin. He crawled nauseously back into bed and reached for his cell phone sitting on his nearby desk. He thought about calling his parents. Then he thought about calling his sister. He got his sister’s voice mail. He left her a message saying he wanted to get together later that week for dinner and that he wanted to see her new dog. He checked to see if he’d gotten any text messages or missed calls from Filipa, but he hadn’t. He rolled over and went back to sleep.
