Diary of a Very Dark Tuesday
Night of rain, lightning, and thunder. Monday night sliding into Tuesday. One of the worst nights of the week because, while you’re awake, it’s still Monday, and when you finally fall asleep, it’s already Tuesday. Besides Monday, is there anything more hateful than a Tuesday? At school, they used to tell me that, being so optimistic, I could have been Italian, thanks to the Mediterranean air. The truth is I also have my Nordic side, when I contemplate existence with horror, as I imagine the Finns do, or people like that, who live in order to die young and quickly recycle themselves into nature, disappearing into the seams of a forest and leaving behind, as their legacy, a certified letter: “Dear Earth, I consumed very few resources.” In my case, the note would read: “Darling, there’s still beer left.”
Long early morning. Fed up with the news, I battle insomnia by staring at the ceiling. There are 37 small cracks, two large ones, and something that looks like a spider, though it could also be a Chinese spy drone. I’m not wearing my glasses. The doctor suggested I’ve been on sleeping pills for too many years and should quit. I replied that he’s also been wearing a stethoscope hanging from his neck for too many years (no metaphor intended), and that perhaps he should give up medicine altogether. He won. And now I sleep like everyone else who isn’t a journalist — that is, without mixing whiskey and sleeping pills. In other words, I don’t sleep.
I look out the window. It starts to hail, and that relaxes me. But just as I’m about to drift off, the hail stops and the wind kicks in like a hurricane, and that puts me on edge. Desperate, I pick up Roger Scruton’s The Soul of the World, knowing my brain is fried enough that I won’t get past a page. I read 50. Finally, my neurons reduced to a scrambled mess of Kant and Darwin, I fell asleep like a baby. Glory be. Six minutes and 40 seconds later, damnation. A massive bolt of lightning decides to set up camp on the building’s lightning rod. I never saw the Bosnian War, but I’m convinced the thunder was softer there than what we experienced at home. At least the screams weren’t in Bosnian. Mine were in perfect Aramaic.
I wake up with my heart pounding a thousand times a second, arrhythmias, and that urgent feeling that makes you sprint around the dark house like an idiot, crashing into furniture, splitting your lip on a doorframe, and finally stopping dead in the gloom to check that you still have four limbs, telling yourself: “How about you stop being an idiot and calm down?” Another nearby lightning strike interrupts my reasoning.
The night drags on between Scruton and failed attempts at sleep, in the middle of a biblical storm. On Radio Maria Spain, they’re praying the rosary; I join in and finally fall asleep. I feel as exhausted as Maduro must have felt when he finally lay down on his prison cot after a long international tour. Thirty minutes later, the alarm goes off. I snooze it for two hours. A full day of recording a special program about a train accident in Spain and the incompetent government that has let our infrastructure rot lies ahead of me, and I need to be rested. At least two more hours.
Not even two minutes after hitting snooze, my phone rings. A complicated family issue I try, unsuccessfully, to postpone with a thousand flimsy excuses. The negotiation is brutal because the storm cuts communications every few seconds, so it turns into a conversation between Martians who only know half the alphabet.
The call drops. I stare at the ceiling, on the verge of tears. In the mirror, my face looks like Donald Duck’s after another month without a paycheck, desperately trying to scrape together rent money. I head for the shower because the family drama apparently cannot wait; some people always seem to be standing in the middle of a fire when they call.
I step into the shower. My phone rings. I ignore it. It rings three more times. I get out without turning off the water, balancing one foot under the spray and the other outside. I try to answer with wet hands, but can’t unlock the phone. I feel like Alf trying to unlock Willie Tanner’s phone with his fingerprint. I punch in the PIN with my nose, which I dry on a towel, and resume the argument. Mid-conversation, realizing this is going to drag on, I step back into the shower without noticing I still have the phone pressed to my ear. As if the first splash weren’t enough, it slips from my hand and lands at the bottom of the tub, under a good foot of bubbling water.
I put my hands over my face. The intercom buzzes. A visitor at 7:14 a.m.? Unless it’s the coroner… A package. I answer the door dripping wet, clutching a tightly wrapped towel. The delivery woman asks me to sign, as if we were still living in the 20th century. I grab the hateful digital signature pad and scribble something that looks like “FUCKYOU DÍAZ,” instantly feeling the towel drop to my feet. Why doesn’t the floor open up when you actually need it to?
It all happens in seconds. I close my eyes. I reflect briefly on the meaning of life. The delivery woman leaves with a forced smile that irritates me more than outright laughter would have, and I hop back inside, absurdly shuffling backward with the package in my hands, holding it over my nuts like a desperate shield. I haven’t even locked the door when my phone starts ringing again. Three messages arrive too: two from the bank and one from the Spanish tax agency, which I’m fairly sure isn’t wishing me a happy birthday. I pinch myself to confirm I haven’t died and ended up in Purgatory for my many sins, now including involuntary indecent exposure in front of a young delivery woman.
I stare at myself in the mirror, looking for any remaining trace of a man capable of facing the day. My phone keeps ringing, reminding me I’m late for an appointment. I glance out the window to see if it’s still raining and notice that a courteous traffic officer has thoughtfully left me a ticket on my windshield. My head is spinning, but always in the same direction. I’ve done 74 laps. I’ve been awake against my will for 35 minutes, and I already have more problems than I can reasonably deal with in the next 40 years.
They say man is a social animal. I believe that, above all, he’s a creature of habit. I don’t become social until after my coffee. And all of this happened before the coffee. Now that minority rights are fashionable, it’s time for a serious conversation about those of us who are physiologically incapable of dealing with life before our first cup. I feel deeply discriminated against by this fascist, oppressive world. I’m sure any good liberal reading this is already designing a grant program for my unfortunate group. And, as part of the benefits package, a set of towel clips.
I know the day ahead of me — dawning already — will be something like a long H. L. Mencken quote: “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”
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A Fairly Open Response to ‘An Open Letter to Europe’
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