Disease

He caught a disease. He bought himself an expensive suit. It was ill-fitting. He turned to vegetarianism for succor after the sight and the smell of uncooked and cooked meat vertiginously stirred his stomach.  He wrote many letters to his girlfriend. The letters basically ended their relationship. He wrote many more letters and explained why their relationship had to end. The disease was not some obscure sexual disease. He hid a box of pornography under his bed. The box was always locked. The key was kept in a very secret place. The one that really rang his bell was Eve by Gislebertus. He wrote his new girlfriend long letters about his Piranesian body that was trapped in a Signorelliean torture chamber. He had a recurring dream of being an origami centipede. A pop song was created to annoy him. A politician talked to antagonize him. A smell was created to disgust him. With vegetarianism came Fletcherization. He joined a gym. He worked out incessantly. The disease made him obsequious and sycophantic. He found a job, in an office. His proclivity for fine clothing set him apart from the other office workers, they could not understand why there was so much detail consigned to clothing, why he spent so much money on a shirt, why his socks had to be silk, why he had to have three buttons on his suit instead of two. He was fearful that death would sneak up on him and so he welcomed insomnia. There were one hundred and six chairs in the office and the only chair to mock him was his own chair. The chair berated him. The chair made him feel very small. He wrote to his girlfriend about the chair. The chair was an over-demanding father, an unfilled mother, a supercilious sister, a jealous lover, an abandoned sweetheart. She wrote back and said the chair was simply a chair. He wrote a letter to his girlfriend. The letter basically ended their relationship. He wrote many more letters and explained why their relationship had to end.

Paul Kavanagh