Well, I’ve managed to get myself addicted to Afrin nasal spray again. I always start off slow, a couple of tiny squirts when I’ve actually got a cold; my nasal capillaries shrink back neatly into my head, proving yet again the majesty of modern medicine.
But soon I’m squirting every night. Two, three, four times. I wake up in the morning with the bottle sticking out of my left nostril. I start wondering if allergy season is lasting longer this year. For the record, it’s not. The bottle starts to smell like the inside of my head, so I make a trip to the store. Hey, Costco carries two-packs. Better get eleven.
The Afrin addiction starts tacking minutes onto my nighttime routine. Randy lies in bed, waiting for me to finally come out of the bathroom. “It sounds like you’re doing twenty lines of wet cocaine!” This is probably worse for me.
Eventually, the spray stops working at all. My nose rebels. Any contact at all with the Afrin and I erupt into an hour-long sneezing fit that leaves me shaky and completely damp. My heart is either atrophying or doubling in size, I can’t tell. When the sneezing subsides, my nasal capillaries are the size of miniature marshmallows. I start mainlining Sudafed and Benadryl, but since I’m not actually sick I just fall asleep for twenty-two hours with a resting heart rate of 94.
I wake up this morning with a guinea pig jammed up my nose. Somehow I manage to rationalize a tentative spray. The reaction is immediate, like I’ve flooded my nose with feathers and fire ants. Conveniently, I now remember my grandfather telling me the main ingredient in nasal spray is fiberglass insulation. I briefly consider squirting nail polish remover up my nose.
So long story short, I guess I’ll be sleeping sitting up for the next couple of weeks. Technically there is a rehab I could go to, but last time I had to share a room with a Q-Tip addict and a ChapStick junkie. They just don’t make earphones big enough to blot out that kind of screaming.
A Thoughtful Reminder Rundown.
2002: The one and only year we attended as guests. I apparently misunderstood the invitation and thought “black tie” meant “wear a teal sequined dress that makes you look like a slutty peacock”. Thanks for the heads up on that, by the way. I started sobbing halfway through the evening when I found out a friend was having her baby. Alcohol may have been a factor, there. You led me out by the hand because my eyeballs were coated in liquid mascara. I carried my shoes. I also somehow got home with a
2003: Our first year as members, meaning the year the event officially stopped being fun. For anybody. I wore pants this year in an effort to atone for my peacock whore ways. In what I can only assume was a strategic move to lose the foundation thousands of dollars, you signed me up to deal blackjack. We’re just lucky that one guy stole two buckets of chips and then bought all the auction prizes—he diverted attention away from my complete inability to add.
2004: I got out of dealing blackjack by hiding. I don’t remember what I wore, but I’m sure I strove for a happy medium between parking attendant and streetwalker. I’m also pretty sure I failed. Fairly uneventful evening, if you don’t count spilling red wine all over a sitting judge, throwing my shoes away, and aiding and abetting the theft of a miniature schnauzer.
2005: I got out of dealing blackjack by working in the fundraising store. Nothing says charity like hoofing a dirty, forty-pound ficus tree out to some drunk dude’s BMW in a princess gown and four-inch heels. This was also the year we made the brilliant decision to go to the strip club afterwards. With your kid. Whereupon you promptly fell asleep with your head on the table, becoming the first man ever to get caught snoring in a titty bar. WITH YOUR KID. It was, I think, the worst parenting decision I’ve ever been involved in. When I woke up the next morning, I had three shoes.
2006: You were the registration assistant this year, so I worked with you. It worked out well; registration is outside and there’s very little trouble I can get into outside. Like a five-year-old. Or a chimpanzee. I wore the same dress I wore the year before—why spend money on a new dress when you can barely see any of the stains on this one? Once we came inside I immediately reverted to my indoor behavior, running around barefoot and lying to people. This was also the year I professed my adoration of competition kickboxing to that random Della chick, and swore I’d train with her and her three-time world champion cage fighting coach in the basement of an abandoned armory. I spent the next four months screening my calls. I looked into changing my name. I never found those shoes.
2007: Last year. I wore the same dress I’d worn the previous two years. Why buy a new dress when I can just scotch tape the hem of this one? You were the registration captain this year, but regardless of all my “outside safety recess”, I still found time to fuck shit up. For starters, I came way too close to having sex with a Sean Connery impersonator. On the “let’s go” scale, I was a solid “4” and that’s just unacceptable. I bet his own wife never gets above a “6”. There’s just no excuse for that. Della was there again, and I can’t remember whether I again swore my allegiance to competition street kickboxing, but I DID agree to bid on a ten-day cabin vacation with her. Which we then won. To the tune of $2400. You later found me lying on the floor of the car under a blanket. To say that I was shoeless seems redundant.
SUMMATION: I am a danger to myself, you, your children, celebrity impersonators, their wives, and kickboxing enthusiasts. If I attend this event in 2008, history dictates that I will: a) punch somebody large in the face, b) steal a car, or c) drop someone’s baby. Plus I don’t have twelve hundred dollars. And I’m running out of shoes.
ADDITIONALLY: I’m sure you haven’t noticed, but I’ve gained some weight since I bought that dress in 2005. Twenty pounds, give or take. Probably more give and less take. My point here is that I tried it on yesterday and I’m not going to lie, it was a problem. Like trying to shove a kitten into a pantyhose leg. And you’d be surprised how much wear and tear a dress can show even when it’s only been worn three times. Maybe it was all the rolling around? I don’t know. Anyway. The big problem here isn’t that I need a new dress: the problem is that I’m still going to wear this one. Yeah. Exactly. You don’t know me very well if you think I’d let something as trivial as constricted blood flow, the disgusted glances of hundreds, and a collapsed lung stand in the way of tradition.
So think about it. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me to sit this year out.
Last Friday, Randy and I attended a charity fundraising thing across town. Don't quote me here, but I'm 90% sure all the proceeds went to benefit poor teenage equestrians in Paradise Valley. Which, if you're at all familiar with the Paradise Valley area, is akin to raising money for underdressed debutantes in Martha's Vineyard. But it was either go and lament the increasing cost of farriers and velvet pants over chewy steak, or stay home and just eat chewy steak. So we went. And I don't know what happened, exactly, but somewhere along the way Randy accidentally got left to his own devices and he bid on this giant cowhide.
Which is great. I was just thinking the other day how we needed more enormous animal pelts. And as I lugged this 18% of a cow around for the rest of the night, I pointed out-- louder and louder and with increasing frequency-- that it would have been significantly cheaper to just go home and skin our dog.
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