Continued from Perpetual state of disbelief

It’s funny how the taste of cold pizza generates feelings of nostalgia towards the inciting initial introduction. The event when the pizza was hot, when the taste was fresh and the company was moderately above average.

I had been out on the fringes for quite some time. I hadn’t felt this distressed since Poland. The previous evening I had been sitting as I am now in my grimy dog box of a kitchen. The doorbell rang and I opened the door with a glee for trouble. It was only Gorak, my musician buddy, who was always looking to borrow money. He looked at me the way a vegan looks at lard.

“How do you live like this, this pigsty hasn’t been cleaned in months…look at you, a mere fraction of your original whole, a gaping hole, a disheveled fifth generation copy of your former form”.

“Shut up” I candidly replied taking great care to give Gorak no opportunity to continue with his pseudo intellectual banter that he always employed to disguise his crass requests for loans of money to pay the rent and other such made up utilities normally required to be paid by the caring and good populous of the world. Gorak was not one of these. He stood squatted, with his prehensile hand propping his pancake mix posture up with the doorframe.

“Its Friday night” I said “Have you nothing better to do then to come around here bothering me”

“I have a favor to ask” he retorted.

“I don’t have any money,” I stated, predicting his every intention like a chess master.

“There is a job that I need help with” he replied ” I will meet you in one hour at Fifth Amendment”

“The Pizza Place?” I asked.

“On Lakeshore, yeah” he confirmed ” I need you to use your acting skills to pretend to be someone else”

” Oh sure, no problem, I love using my studio training for surreptitious identity theft projects”, I responded.

” It has positively bad ramifications for someone you hate” he added

I thought it over for a second and realized that I hadn’t eaten in two days and that digestion was a step in the right direction.

“Ok let me shave,” I insisted. “I haven’t washed since Monday”

“See you in an hour”, he qualified.

I adequately sustained a measure of coherency for at least three quarters of an hour, enough time for me to shower and shave. I grabbed my anorak and exited my squalid apartment into the crisp evening. As I bounded towards the lake thoughts of exodus from the proverbial frying pan ran through my head. “Into the metaphorically enhanced furnace I go”, I thought.

Next: Burnin’ fevah!’