For nearly two weeks now, I have suffered from this annoying cough. It charges at me from the back of my throat, reminding me that all the systems within my physical body work in so close a unison that if one is only slightly behind schedule, the whole must suffer.
Except, of course, while intoxicated.
What a shameful secret to discover: that tequila mixed with a couple of gin and tonics can cure, if only for a few numbing hours, the severity of the common cold. In a very green room, amassed with rectangle green billiard tables and women, I forgot that my ribs ache with this cold.
I felt like a tuberculosis patient on leave. Free from a day of bloody spittle cupped in a mockingly pure handkerchief, though of course I'm exaggerating.
I'm the intellectual, but not really. Nor am I the writer that has a thousand clever words and metaphors for billiard tables and that specific color of nothingness that bubbles up from the bottom of a glass of watered-down gin.
But I am the woman, who recalls my love for Morrison after four drinks and two hours of very bad pool. And someone who recognizes a kindred spirit in the milieu of hastily drunk women. Her shy, averted eyes lit up when she spoke of Faulkner and Walker, praised Morison�s The Bluest Eye, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. All this after the last call for drinks. All this after I had apologized for a wayward insult and defended an ex-girlfriend whom I will never speak to again.
"It's because you're a Taurus...you're the conquered bull instead of the conquering matador."
And there I was, pushing my hair back from my forehead agreeing for a moment until I caught myself. "No...how do you know? You don't know a thing about the Taurus sign."
Smiling cleverly. "You're getting faster at this game."
Yes, Amy (who really wanted to be Jo), perhaps I am getting faster at this game, though I still don't have a thousand clever words.