Took the pills at home today. Not fooling myself anymore. I liked to get to work and consider how I felt, consider whether I needed them for the day. I don’t do that anymore. I take them every day, and I feel fine for it. It’s a side-effect of the job. I gain weight, I get addicted to BP and anxiety meds. Today I took a full 2mg of the Lorazepam. In the past that made me positively loopy. Today, I don’t know if the rain and subway agita contributed, but I thought I’d need the full 2mg. I may have over estimated. The job is making me anxious, no matter the quantity of pills. One incident last week would have crushed a lesser man, I think. Today’s 2mg has me feeling spacy. Loopy. But the other meds have me calmed as well. I took the pills at home, not here at the desk, where I imagine my daily intake of pills might have been observed by superiors and documented in my record. What do they know of anything? Why must employers know anything about my medical needs, unless it interferes with my ability to do the job. That happened once. It happened more than once but most dramatically it happened that I had to get out of here. BP must have been 200/100 at that time, but there was paperwork to sign, attempts at therapy to submit to. Well-intentioned but in the end I learned that I don’t get any respect for this kind of incident before many years of service. You can’t get sick like that and expect any respect at my low-level schlubbery.  I made it to October. The round month, with its 2 Os. Could be more. Octobor? That’s almost 9 full months on this job. Barely a day off. I got two “mental health” days that turned out to be a mistake. Someone neglected to note that I had not been here long enough to qualify for days off. I could have taken the reins on that but didn’t think it was my job. Other than that I think I’ve only taken one full day off, two partial days for dentist visits. And the famous incident where I had to leave because I forgot my meds and could have fucking died right here on this spot. I am looking out the window, down Platt Street. I see people incorrectly refer to William Street as Williams Street. Bastards. I fell them with my neutron nuggets, a seldom-assessed weapon of humane annihilation. It is used mainly in comic book and kitchen warfare but its impact is real. Yes, I feel serene. The pills did their job. I’m gearing up for Tuesday, Wednesday, and maybe Thursday at the bar. I want to see if the woman will be there again. The fashionably/tastefully greying woman who looks about my age, knows the bar scene around Astoria, and just seems nice. Prefers a friendly, welcoming bar.

I keep thinking about time. My relationship with time. Some minutes disappear, others pass like hard labor. Yet every minute is the same. Time does not shape shift or adapt. Yet sometimes it torments my gut, makes it feel arraigned. Today, in this moment, time is taking care of me. I can taste it. Nothing could inject urgency into anything. I have to pee, and possibly shit. I don’t like shitting here but you do what you have to.

I slept well. No dreams to recall but a familiar boner felt healthy and ready to go if only proper company was present. Of course I did the Morning Mas anyway, distracted by a unique spectacle. I have what’s called a Disco Spigot on the bathroom sink. It’s a faucet that illuminates when water passes through it. A cheap tchotchke from a dollar shop, I guess. Don’t remember where I got it but also barely used it for years while the sink was clogged. For some unknown reason the landlord randomly announced that my sink was clogged and that he would fix it. He had, it seems, kept this in the back of his mind for years, this knowledge that the sink was clogged. I never complained because he doesn’t respond to complaints. He chooses what gets fixed.

The adventure that intruded on Morning Mas was when the disco spigot started making sounds and turning colors I’d never see it do. Bright green, then a kind of honking noise. I don’t know what is within the seemingly simple contraption but I didn’t need it bursting into flame or anything. So I stepped up to turn on the water. It was providing all the light in the bathroom now that it’s dark as night when I wake at 6am. Showering in total darkness does not seem safe. But the light bulb is too bright. So  summon the disco spigot by lightly running a slim stream of water.