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I am going to taste this in the car. Either the hotdog or the cheese, the<br />
cheese I can handle, which means I'll taste the hotdog. I'm going to taste<br />
beer for the next three days. I hate beer. I hate the taste of beer. Barley wine<br />
is not wine, it is beer. This is an important lesson. I'm going to taste beer<br />
until I drive the concept of what beer is from my mind. It's carbonated... I<br />
don't trust carbonation.<br />
Last night the beer came out first. I stood over the sink staring into my<br />
own dark black eyes. I don't have black eyes, but I couldn't see rust, or olive<br />
green, or copper-gold, or any of the other bullshit colours I'd use to paint<br />
my eyes. I could see an automatic flashing distress signal triggered by the self<br />
destruct command code. I clenched my abs and let my neck coil backwards,<br />
letting the humidity drip up my nostrils. I brought my shoulders up to my<br />
ears and jerked forward.<br />
A mouthful of bitter foam.<br />
I spat into the sink like a child on Christmas morning opening a box<br />
shaped like an action figure only to find a clever parent had learned the<br />
ancient art of molding an origami kit into the shape of something that<br />
someone would actually enjoy owning.<br />
I stared at the ugly, sweaty thing in the mirror. Withered arms and giant<br />
hands clenching the edge of its beige tile countertop. Scars and bruises,<br />
darker than they should be, darting across both arms supporting a gaunt<br />
frame with slumped shoulders, dark blue veins cracking through oily gray<br />
skin. The slender fingers flail and crack with bulging knuckles to pull back<br />
a now wild patch of once combed auburn hair, just long enough to start<br />
curling around the ears.<br />
I asked myself if the bubbling froth in the sink was enough. My mouth<br />
tasted acid, bitter, not stomach acid, which I can handle, but bubbles of beer<br />
still popping as they transverse my tongue's crevassed terrain. This was not<br />
over.<br />
Another quick clench. My head jerked. Bent at the waist I closed my eyes<br />
and heard it splatter. The water was running.<br />
I opened my eyes. The sink was full of red water and floating chunks of<br />
pink pineapple. It had been my understanding that pineapple should not be<br />
pink, though I wasn't feeling all too concerned.<br />
An advantage to the sink, as many party goers and fourteen year old<br />
girls will surely attest, is that with the water running the splash of bile is<br />
virtually undetectable from the other side of most bathroom doors, no<br />
matter how thin.<br />
The major downfall of the sink is that little metal stopper. If you can<br />
96 Oil on canvas
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