Dear Diary,
I’m in Hell. Hell, Norway that is! Bwahahahahahahaha!
But seriously folks…
I’m on the night train from Trondheim to Bodø,
first stop Hell. Hell doesn’t look so bad, but it’s so far north
that in order for the goddamn satellite dishes to face south, they actually
have to tilt down a little! I am not making that up. Seriously, they
are pointing just a little down. I have no idea how pointing your dish at
the ground gets you a clear signal, but I’m sure that they know better
than I do.
As I was saying, I’m on a train. Despite being very comfortable,
things are a little cramped. This has given me the opportunity to take a good,
long, ill-advised, close look at my face for the first time in a while. I
am looking old. Specifically my eyes. They do not look good.
I have always had dark circles under my eyes. I seem to remember
being teased about it in the fifth grade on the day that the anti-smoking
speaker came in and informed us that one of the side effects from smoking
is that dark circles form under your eyes. My classmates hassled me about
it for months. “Ooo look! Leif’s a smoker! Ha ha!” So I
said “I heard your momma doinked the principal so that your could move
on to the fifth grade. If your momma didn’t put out, you’d still
be in kindergarten!” No, of course I didn’t say that. I was the
smallest one in the whole class! The second graders were bigger than me!
Anyway the circles are really dark now and have been for about
a year. I thought it was stress and that after things died down they might
improve a little, but no. Instead they have gotten worse. Now, it’s
not just the dark circles. Little white bags have begun to grow within the
dark circles. They are pretty small now, but they are white and puffy and
they weren’t there six months ago. Little did I know that I was pretty
lucky to just have the effing dark circles! Now I pine for the days for when
I just looked tired, rather than old and tired. Big assed, baggy,
sunken eyes are not cool unless you are Benicio del Toro and before he started
in film, I bet even he wasn’t knockin’ ‘em dead
with those coin purses hanging off his face.
First thing in the morning is the worst. They start out hella
puffy, but they recede within the first 30 minutes or so. All I can think
about is the more they puff up like that while I sleep, the more stretched
out and baggy the skin will get and the older I will look until the bags are
hanging down so low that I qualify for circus sideshow freak, which at this
rate will be in about six months. If I haven’t sold any writing by then,
that’ll be about the time I start freaking out over money, so the new
circus freak marketable skills will really come in handy.
One could argue that nobody looks good from two inches
away. To that, I say, have you ever been to Norway? Have you seen those chicks!
Oh-your-God!
So, the days of me being carded are gone and soon the days of
having to deny being old enough to have an AARP membership will arrive. I’ll
have to get me a blind, Norwegian chick if I ever wanna bag a hot one now.
Sigh.
PS – I’m on the train from Hell now. Hee
hee! Thank you, thank you! I’ll be here all week!