Earworm

by Aaron Thomas Milstead

  I stepped into the living room and glanced at the computer monitor and saw that the young lady with the thick red lips was still choking on a foot-long hotdog. I didn’t have the heart to check out the files to see if they contained ear porn or if that was something my decaying brain had constructed along with the corpse and the murderer who looked like he could have stepped right out of a bad 80’s slasher film: he was as big as leather face and his white mask looked like the lovechild of the mask worn by Michael Myers in the Halloween movies and the distorted mask from Scream.

  I was so terribly tired. Obviously, I wasn’t just physically beaten, but also mentally and spiritually. Dehydrated and deflated and disenchanted. I carried a horrible secret that I had only shared with my psychologist, Dr. Angela Chod. Just a few months prior I had gone in to see my primary physician, Dr. Kegle, in order to offer up my butthole for prodding and to have my blood drawn so that it could be confirmed that my cholesterol and blood pressure were still dangerously high.

  I felt compelled to admit to Dr. Kegle that I had recently begun to develop additional symptoms that were indicative of a lifetime of poor decisions. For one, I had become so forgetful that I would frequently be driving to a job and suddenly realize that I had no idea where I was going. Or worse, I would drive home and not realize my mistake until my irate manager, called me and asked why I hadn’t showed up at the client’s home. Secondly, there were the intense headaches that made my previous bouts with migraines pale in comparison. I had also developed a horrible tremor that manifested in my hands and forced me to stuff them in my pockets or tightly clench my fingers, or risk looking like Michael J. Fox 2.0. Finally, I came to the inevitable conclusion that I was an alcoholic and quit drinking less than a year before, and I think I somehow justified the poor health as my body’s continued rejection of my day-at-a-time approach after two decades of almost daily over indulgence. Dr. Kegle told me that my withdrawal symptoms should have been long gone and he was concerned that I might be suffering from chronic meningitis.

  Turns out my sobriety had nothing to do with my symptoms. Sober or perpetually drunk I was in some very deep shit. To determine how deep, Dr. Kegle sent me to a specialist in Tyler who took a CT scan and then quickly sent me to a more special specialist in Houston who took an MRI and then quickly sent me to the most special specialist in Dallas, an Indian man who put me through a painful spinal fluid test that confirmed the worst possible results. Dr. Bhaskar spoke with such a thick accent that his nurse had to translate much of the findings. I’ll give you the cliff notes version: I was diagnosed with CJD, or if you want to be fancy, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The translated words that the nurse laid on me that made the biggest impact were: incurable, swift, and fatal. By swift they meant that I’d be lucky to live six more months and that a few of those months would be so painful that a morphine drip would provide about as much relief as an aspirin.

  Turns out only one in a million people get CJD, so it was almost like I had won the lottery. Symptoms are lack of muscular coordination, personality changes, impaired memory, judgment, and thinking; and impaired vision. In addition, I had won insomnia, depression, and the potential for unusual and frequently painful sensations all over my body. I would likely soon go blind and quickly lose the ability to move or speak. Eventually I’d go into a coma and then die. Some people refer to it as mad cow disease for humans.

  Cool.

  I understand my condition, so you can see why I doubted the legitimacy of what had happened in that now empty bedroom. Nightmarish hallucinations weren’t specifically on the list of symptoms, but they weren’t excluded either.

  I locked the door behind me, skipped the last couple apartments, and went to the main office to turn in my master key. The woman working the desk, Sloan Douggle, was a middle-aged woman who might have been attractive if she wasn’t perpetually pissed off. She kind of looked like Sandra Bullock if she was playing one of those Housewives of New York, or Atlanta, or wherever, only she had lost her wealth and was forced to work a minimum wage job to make ends meet.

  I’m too much of a feminist to refer to a woman as a bitch, so I’ll just say that she exemplified every quality that society would ascribe to a bitch without any notable rationales or discernable positive results for such behavior. My wife once told me that Kristen Stewart from those Twilight movies suffered from RBF. I thought maybe it was a disease or something, but she clarified that it stood for Resting Bitch Face. I looked up the term and found that urban dictionary defined it as: a person, usually a girl, who naturally looks mean when her face is expressionless, without meaning to, despite the fact that she is actually really sweet. Sloan had RBF, but she wasn’t sweet. When I stepped into the office she regarded me like a turd that wouldn’t flush and said, “You look horrible.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I don’t feel very—”

  She waved her hand dismissively and asked, “Did you spray all of the apartments?”

  I nodded.

  She repetitively tapped on her desk with inappropriately long fingernails that had been French manicured with black hearts. She seemed to be spelling out something in Morse code; probably: eat shit, eat shit, eat shit. She stared into me like she was questioning my sincerity, a look I had often seen in the faces of others. After more tapping and intense scrutiny, her forehead wrinkled and she asked, “Did you though?”

  “I told you I did,” I said. “Every single one.”

  She sighed. “Okay. I think I need to speak to Mr. King about your services.”

  “Who?”

  She regarded me with extreme RBF. “Your boss. Don’t you know the name of—”

  “You mean, Baby,” I interrupted. “That’s what he goes by.”

  She shook her head. “I refuse to refer to a grown man as . . . Baby. For God’s sake, he’s as old as my grandfather.”

  I shrugged. “It’s what he goes by. I assume if he didn’t like it he would change it.”

  “Regardless,” she said, “I need to speak to him. Just so that you know, because I’ve never been one who is catty enough to speak behind someone’s back. I’m going to tell him that we are no longer comfortable with you servicing the complex. On months that you spray we get far more complaints. At least one tenant suspected that you have been drinking . . . ”

  “I’ve been sober for months.”

  “So you say,” she replied.

  Now that would have been a golden opportunity to tell Sloan to run backward through a field full of dicks. That’s the retort that I eventually settled on hours after the confrontation. At worst I could have decoded her Morse code and told her to eat shit. She deserved it, and even the staunchest feminist would have supported me. The problem was that I resisted confrontation at any cost, even if it meant the loss of my pride or self-respect.

  I quietly turned and walked away from a woman who had just told me my hard-fought months of sobriety were bullshit and that I was a liar. She was going to tattle on me to my boss and try to have me fired. Maybe I would have fought her harder if I wasn’t certain that I only had a few months left to live anyway. What did my pride matter once I was buried and forgotten? At best I’d be an anecdote she would tell her catty friends over wine spritzers.

  They got grubby little fingers

  And dirty little minds.

  They’re gonna get you, every time.

  —Randy Newman

  2.

  Fuck Randy Newman

  I cranked up my work truck—a Ford F150 that had initially been purchased when Saved by the Bell was popular—and drove home. As I moved down South Street I realized that a song had penetrated my subconscious and I was softly humming it. The words came easily to my mind, though if I’d been asked I would have told you I didn’t know any of them beyond the repetitive chorus. Somehow, I sang it all the way through and then it began again, like my mind was playing it on repeat:

  You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. When the road looks rough head and you’re miles and mi
les from your nice warm bed, you just remember what your old pal said . . . Boy, you’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. You got troubles and I got ‘em too. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. We stick together, we can see it through. ‘Cause you’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. Some other folks might be a little smarter than I am, bigger and stronger too. Maybe. But none of them will ever love you the way I do. It’s me and you, boy. And as the years go by our friendship will never die. You’re gonna see it’s our destiny. You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me.

  I’d never realized exactly how homoerotic the theme song from Toy Story was. It was really very romantic. I struggled to remember if Buzz sang it to Woody, or Woody to Buzz, or if they sang it in unison.

  As I turned down the long driveway that led to the two-story mansion that my wife and daughter lived in, I realized I had already sang the short song maybe a dozen times. By “sing” I mean in my head, I was practically tone deaf and far too insecure to sing aloud, even if I was alone. I watched my beautiful home fade away in my rearview mirror and pulled up next to a much smaller house that was located behind the swimming pool. The white walls and Spanish-tiled roof matched that of the mansion, but it was a mockery of the real thing. Practically a doll house with its tiny bedroom, cramped living room and a kitchenette that I could barely squeeze into to microwave my morning waffles.

  The main house had four massive living rooms, six bedrooms, two separate kitchens that would satisfy the requirements of a quick-fire competition on Top Chef and a dining room that was larger than my entire living space. I should have been pissed, but I was really just grateful that Dare, my wife, allowed me to live on the property. She also gave me a decent allowance in exchange for cleaning the swimming pool, though she insisted that I also maintain some other employment, otherwise it might look like I was sponging off her. It was an idea that her mother had fed her ever since Dare and I had begun dating: “He just wants to use you for your money.”

  It was a terrible lie. I had always truly loved her, despite the wedge created by the vast fortune she was due to inherit. She was worth many millions, though her mother was far too controlling to ever give her more than a taste of it and always with enough strings to make it feel more like a burden than a blessing.

  We separated a few months after I became sober and a few months before Dr. Bhaskar broke the bad news about my terminal illness. It could be argued that she chose a less than sensitive time to break the news to me, considering that my days and hours and sometimes even my seconds were spent fighting an urge to take just one drink of something stronger than coffee. She told me that it had been coming for years; I thought I was demonstrating the willingness to improve myself through my fight for sobriety and should have bought myself more time. No more drunken diatribes or passing out in front of the toilet. No more apologizing for behaviors I couldn’t remember. What I couldn’t have predicted is that the drunken version of myself was far more tolerable than that of the sober one.

  I had grown sullen.

  I had lost my sexual urges.

  I had become more anti-social than usual without my liquid courage to spurn me on. The truth is I was mourning the death of my dearest friend: alcohol. When I was drunk the incessant self-doubts and critical voices were silenced. Without it I felt alone and horribly depressed. My wife probably said it best when she sat me down on that fateful day. At first, she simply said, “I think we need some time apart. I need some time to figure things out.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I sobered up. I’m trying.”

  That’s when she dropped the bomb on me. “I know, but . . . But you just aren’t fun anymore . . . I don’t mean that.”

  But she did, and she wasn’t wrong. I was a horrible drunk, but sober I was even worse. It was a bitter pill to swallow. My only consolation was that, so far, she was only talking about separation. She hadn’t brought up the D-word. I could have told her that I was going to be dead in a few months and maybe that would have garnered enough sympathy to get me back into the house, but I wanted to win her back on my own merits. I wanted to make her fall in love with me all over again—and more than ever before. You might be thinking that winning back her love only to immediately let her know that she was going to be a widow was cruel, but who ever said that love was kind?

  I glanced over at the swimming pool and saw that the water level had almost dropped below the skimmer line, so I made a mental note to add some water in the morning. Typically, the water was as blue as Paul Newman’s eyes, but it had recently taken on a hazy green hue. I needed to shock it pretty soon or the algae would take over. Several fronds from the surrounding palm trees were floating on the surface and I considered scooping them out with the net, but then the pain in my lower-back urged me to wait. Everything could wait: that was practically my life philosophy.

  You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me.

  I realized that annoying song was still rooted somewhere in my brain. It didn’t make any freaking sense. I hadn’t seen Toy Story in years and it hadn’t really made much of an impression on me in the first place. I wasn’t a Randy Newman fan either, figuring that his last decent song was Short People. On a lyrical level, I will admit that I had very few friends, so I wasn’t sure who the rhetorical friend was. My best friend had rejected me and was subjecting me to pool-boy status. The only social group I was even vaguely a part of was a group of stoners I had known since middle school who tolerated my presence during their weekly sessions of Dungeons and Dragons because I brought the liquor. I hadn’t even shown for a game since I sobered up and none of them had bothered to check up on me. I wondered if my level 12 Cleric was still tagging along with the group or if he had unceremoniously been fed to a dragon or a wandering pack of dire wolves.

  Whatever.

  I stepped into the pool house and flipped on the light, the dining room table was covered with bags from Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, and take out from the Super China Buffet. You would think that a Pest Control technician might have better hygiene, but I was having a harder and harder time finding the energy to clean up after myself. I popped a dark roast cup into my Keurig, then stripped out of my sweaty clothes and left them piled on a stool in the kitchen. I stumbled down the hall and hopped into a cold shower. I made a half-ass attempt at lathering myself up, quickly rinsed, and was standing back in front of the Keurig as it finished spitting out my sweet caffeine. I poured it into a glass and then filled it with ice—the only way I could stomach coffee. A moment later and I was smoking an American Spirit cigarette while I guzzled my coffee. Caffeine and nicotine, the best friends of a recovering addict.

  You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me.

  I flipped on my computer and my dual monitors sprung to life. On the left one I searched for my favorite video game players on Twitch. My typical go-to, a middle-aged man who went by the name of Rip Van Winkle and primarily performed challenge runs on Dark Souls, had been MIA. The internet was abuzz that he was fighting an Adderall/speed addiction and was either in rehab or locked up in a cabin on some remote mountain top. I checked to see which of my remaining favorites were playing and quickly settled on a young guy who went by the alias: Wolf. He looked like a young John Denver with thick-lensed glasses that gave him a permanently exaggerated expression, but he had a deep, soothing voice. He was playing some game I’d never heard of called The Darkest Dungeon, which had stylized 2D art that made it look like a live action comic book. I typed in, “Hey, Wolf” and smiled as he mentioned my username: Ripley22. Dozens of viewers were typing on the screen below his play feed and he acknowledged them all, but it was still about as close as I came to a real human connection. I searched YouTube on the other monitor and found a let’s play of the Witcher 3 from a Youtuber named Dan Manning, but he went by the alias “Darkside Dan.” He was a notoriously bad video gamer and half of the fun was in
watching his temper tantrums as he failed.

  I let the dueling voices play softly through my speakers as I turned on the flat screen Insignia television mounted on the opposite wall and flipped to Netflix, settling on Parks and Recreation, Season 3, Episode 2. It was a fairly strong episode, where Leslie got the flu right before her fund-raising pitch for the Harvest Festival. Parks and Recreation reruns had an effect on my psyche that recalls the way my wife reverently spoke about dark chocolate just before she started her period. I sat down on a tan couch—so stained that Good Will would have refused it—and glanced back and forth between the dual monitors and the television. Wolf was laughing because his entire party had been wiped out, Darkside Dan was bitching because he was lost in the sewers, and Ron Swanson was trying to withdraw from an Andy bear hug. I listened to the chorus of voices as my eyes darted around the room. I inhaled the smoke from the gentle cigarette and felt a rare calm overtake me. It was a calm that previously only existed when that first, predictable yet fleeting, buzz hit me during time spent with beer and liquor. It was the sensation of the voices in my head growing more and more muffled and sometimes even silent, for a time.

  Now before you think I’m outing myself as a schizophrenic, understand that the voices I’m referring to are the common voices that we all share. That nagging self-doubt that we all carry inside of us. The echoes of parental advice that sometimes seem almost audible within our inner ear. Those devils and angels that guide our series of moral choices through conversations in our mind that most people, thankfully, are barely even consciously aware of. In my case I was just more acutely aware of these voices than most people and the allure of silencing them through whatever means necessary was particularly enticing. No schizophrenia, just painful self-awareness. But don’t dismiss schizophrenia entirely, I’ll be getting back to that in just a bit.

  I considered my dining options: a four-cheese pizza hot pocket with garlicy crust that I could nuke in less than two minutes or a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese that would not only take more time, but a bit more preparation as well. It was hardly Sophie’s Choice.