The Menstruum 38: A Campylobacter Kinda Love.

[FIRST PUBLISHED IN INPRESS MAGAZINE, 07.08.2011]

2.00 am – And it begins. I’d been out for dinner a half dozen hours earlier and now, on my knees and with the rim of the toilet bowl gripped hard under my hands, I’m quite sure I’ve been served up something unexpected along with the mains. The evening’s delights are taking place in reverse and escaping from my mouth. 

Campylobacter bacteria. Image courtesy Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

3.30 am – I’d managed ten minutes back in bed before the Siren’s call of the latrine brings me hands and knees across the tiles. There is nothing left in me, not a scrap, but the heaving rolls on unaffected. My body is contorting into shapes I didn’t know possible, head down, my legs twisting in the air – from a great distance, with bad eyesight, this could be an audition for So You Think You Can Dance.

 

4.45 am – I’ve spent three-quarters of an hour on the floor of the shower. I’d planned for the hot water to be soothing, in the end it was like being poked with a million horrible fingers. The vomiting doesn’t stop; I’m hurling air and moans. 

Philip Glass, 2008.

5.00 am – A rudimentary bed made of towels has been assembled on the bathroom floor. I lay curled up like a pathetic cashew with my head close to the base of the toilet. My iPhone has been brought near, so I cycle through to find some music to appease the beast. I find Philip Glass and Music in Twelve Parts and I lie shivering. The music envelopes me, coming weakly out of the tinny speaker and bouncing around the bathroom’s hard surfaces. 

7.00 am – Philip is a masochist and my saviour. These sounds are perfect and excruciating, the pleasure dolled out as if from a difficult husband: you get the love when he’s good and ready. I will spend the day like this. 

10.00 am – Aspro Clear down. 

10.05 – Aspro Clear up.

3.00 pm – I’ve shifted to the living room floor. Needing a break I shift to Robin Ince: “The moment you are deemed to be on the left, it only takes the tiniest mistake – you are not allowed to do anything that appears to deviate from some kind of socialist agenda, else everything you believe falls flat ... if you’re on the right, you can do anything, you can have sex with the last panda bear alive, you’re having sex with it in the eye, look at me, look at me, I’m killing this panda bear with my cock, look at me I’m A. A. Gill.”

5.00 pm – Water down.  

5.05 pm – Water up.

8.00 pm – I eat a shard of broccoli, 1/8 of a potato.  

8.05 pm – My guts and I repent.

1.00 am – I waltz once more in the arms of Philip: Metamorphosis 1-5, life is a horrendous heaven. I didn’t know I could make these kind of sounds. 

Philip Glass, 2009.

9.30 am – At my desk, writing this. In front of me: a glass of water, a glass of fizzy-good, a glass of lemonade, a quarter of buttered bread. I am so hungry, thirsty. Philip Glass is still alive. Everything will be okay, everything will be okay.