sac·cha·rine

Another reason why I am going to Hell.

Over the past handful of days, I managed to sleep in my contacts two full nights. I swam in the ocean, stood in smoky rooms and generally abused the shit out of my eyes.

I woke up this morning to my right eye completely sealed shut. 

Last night my friend leaned into my face offering cheerfully, “You look like a Batman villan. Are you stoned?” I wasn’t. Just incredibly tired and running on 30 hours in the same lenses without break.

I peered around my too-bright room with half of my normal vision and somehow dragged my ass to Duane Reade’s walk-in clinic. Dr. Cute called my name which was cool because I later got to describe my “eye discharge” to him as “well, you know… snottish?” He prescribed me some eyedrops and warned me how contagious my eye jelly condition can be. “Don’t touch your eye and then… touch… people.” It was a steamy sentiment. While dropping off my script and making small talk with the pharmacist, an employee ran up.

“There’s smoke! Fire! Explosions! The train!” She looked breathless, making wild eye contact with all her coworkers and my own set of dripping peepers. I stood frozen with whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck on a fast reel in my head. “We have to leave!” she continued. Many of the employees stayed standing, unsure of the next move. The shouter was clearly not in a very high-up position because no one followed her cue to flee.

“Can I just stand back here with you?” I asked the girl with whom I’d been chatting. I sometimes subconsciously widen my eyes when asking favors, a habit I’m sure did not help me this time given the current circumstances.

Then someone official turned down the aisle. “We need all customers to leave,” she said with a sad smile on her face. Here I was, to enter what I imagined to be a tear-gassy shit show version of Union Square. Alone. (Note: Apparently it was an electrical fire in the train tracks. Not the apocalypse, but still scary.)

The first woman took my upper arm and guided me out to a loading dock, letting me out onto a relatively calm 13th Street. I didn’t know what to do so I ate a burrito, watching Broadway passerby out the window.

Rain poured from the sky, pooling into small, hurried streams. This reaffirmed my choice to wear canvas shoes. I crossed back onto 14th and saw Duane Reade’s block taped off. My prescription wasn’t to be gotten. Not today at least.

The weather shifted to much colder than I’d planned so I graciously wedged myself between two enormous men on the L train. The man to my left, as it must have been, turned out to be the proud owner of the world’s largest dick. He refused to squeeze his thighs together in the slightest to accomodate my across-the-board tiny body. “Really?” he muttered under his breath, sliding to unlock his iPhone. The screensaver was a pretty girl in a pink bikini, squatting in heels with her own knees a distance from each other similar to the phone owner’s. She was smiling. He was not. He started to watch rap music videos on his phone in between heaving sighs of disgust and disbelief native in most diarrhea people. 

I just reclined in my coffee-less haze and head and cracked open an Ames memoir. The train stopped at 1st and a few people vacated, leaving more spacious seats open on other benches but I remained planted. I mean, I was comfortable. And these two huge dudes were actually doing a pretty good job keeping me protected from the roaring AC. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” my friend to the left whisper-yelled, likely regarding my sloth. His immaturity and giant phallus was too much and I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face. It always impresses me when such assholes make it to adulthood like that.

Around Lorimer, my left hand floated up to my oozing eye, wiping eyelashes beneath glasses before returning to I Love You More Than You Know. The grumpster kept pouring forth dramatic sighs until I rose at Graham. When doing so, I rested the back of my book on his knee to hoist myself erect, briefly holding his knuckles as I swung to the door.

I am probably the worst person I know but I feel like sometimes people deserve it. And just maybe I deserved my eye disease to begin with, too. Who knows/cares.