THE NAUSEA OF TODAY [fiction]

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," she said to me, then turned back to her
computer to finish another article.

I slept in on Mondays, she made coffee at 8am and didn't stop moving
until the Carson Daly show would put her to sleep at 1 in the morning.
I slept in on Tuesdays, she drove 6 hours to Longmont, Colorado to work
at a nursing home. I had a book deal, she was a writer. I had money,
she generated value.

It was never really clear what my role was for her. "A dick in a jar,"
as one friend put it, or rather, a very expensively-maintained dildo. I
performed my duties with ease, but at nighttime, laying in bed
listening to the clacking of her keys, I wanted more.

My novel wasn't going very good. The protagonist, Tony, was devolving
into a weasel aggregation of Mafioso cliches, bad pizza jokes, and
descriptions of strong colognes. He bedded women in the men's room the
way most guys take a dump. If he was an expression of some inner id I
had yet to explore, I wouldn't be surprised, he was everything I wanted
to be for this woman who wouldn't acknowledge me.

On the deck of her patio now, I took another swig of wine and outlined
the next chapter: Tony Gets a Haircut. Inevitably, halfway through his
haircut Tony was introducing the buxom blonde receptionist to Anthony
Junior in the storage closet. As their activities grew louder, other
employees became interested, and poor Tony had a line going out the
salon door to partake in his services (not all of them female either).

I passed out on a deck chair before I could finish the chapter. She was
still typing, still typing, still typing. Grinning, grunting, and
typing.