Waking up on a Sunday morning is always a sensory overload. Especially here: a damp basement where mold and dust marry each other, and erupt into an unsavory odor of their own microbial consummation. Debris ejaculate smells like mildew. The air becomes an expansive womb that carries little dust-mold fetuses, bellicose zygotes that take absurd amounts of delight from being my nasal disasters.Compound this with the fumes from oil paint still drying on haphazard canvasses, cigarette smoke, and the toxicity of my own breath, and you have the perfect recipe for respiratory apocalypse quarantined within these four walls.

It must be at least noon. The sun has managed to force its way through the army of dust that stands guard on the window pane. Morning sun cannot do that. Morning sun is lethargic, nursing its malaise at having to break the stratosphere. No, this was definitely noon sun. Or later, even.

I squint at the tiny window buried a few inches next to the door that gives out to the sidewalk. The frequent vroom of cars outside affirms that the world had not died in my sleep.

In a self-absorbed effort to minimize pleasure and maximize misery, I have opted not to have a bed. Or a mattress. I have only recently come to the realization that convenience and comfort do not fuel my creativity at all. So I sleep on an arthritic futon that I never stretch out into its full, sleepable grandeur. I unglue myself from its sweat-soaked embrace and let my mind wander along rhetoric of how its unrealized potential is a profound echo of my own. I would let my mind wander farther, had it not been guillotined off by the agonizing blade of Mr. Over. First name: Hang.

My face hurts.

I lean in close to the tiny mirror hanging on the wall facing the futon. There is a very noticeable scab running the length of the right side of my nose, ending at the inner corner of my right eye – blood spatters caked around the edges.

Shit, it happened again.Chalk it up to another drunken tumble where the weight of my head clearly staged a formidable mutiny against my center of gravity. My friendship with concrete is apparently sealed in blood.

Thoughts: how long before it heals? Will it leave a scar? Wait. This is garden-variety vanity. I should not succumb to such self-conscious behavior. But explaining this scar at work will definitely give me some grief. I will have to endure punch lines from friends for at least a few weeks. I need to think of witty comebacks. Quick! Where’s my pen and pad? I need something clever –

And the guillotine drops again, pummeling and severing off whatever my poisoned neurons were sluggishly trying to relay.

I need some pills. Little white encapsulated stealth bombers to shock and awe my inner disaster. But they are all docked upstairs. And this apocalyptic air in the basement is already making me nauseous.

Must. Go. Up. Stairs. Now.

The stairwell from the basement to the living room is dark, and I stumble halfway up the stairs before finding the light switch to turn on the solitary bulb that hangs from the ceiling.I flip the switch on and off a few times. Still dark. Nothing. All I get in return is mocking silence from the bulb. Fuck you, bulb!

I crawl up the remaining steps and when I reach the last step, I fall headfirst into the door, swinging it wide open with a jolt that sends it jackknifing into the wall behind it. It swings back and slams into the top of my head with a vengeance, finishing off whatever the guillotine pangs had spared. I slide back a few steps, my head reeling from the assault like an involuntary belfry tower at six in the morning. I did not sign up for this!

The door teasingly bounces back off the jamb, and slowly creaks open, flooding me with daylight from the living room. I crawl past the top step. Eyeing the door with same keenness that the USA has been eyeing Russia since the Cold War, I lay my head down on the floor, the rest of my limp body hanging behind in the stairwell. Like gum – elastic and non-compliant. The rogue communist door slowly creaks back and bumps against my shoulder, bouncing off a few more times before coming to a complete rest against me.Me and door. In divine camaraderie. Communism did look good on paper, right? I bet the futon is seething with jealousy.Suddenly, the frigid bulb that refused to be turned on by my fingers does not matter.

I hear the idiot box from a distance. A horribly cooked vat of aural jambalaya, grating against my eardrums, nuking the last of my brain cells into cranial dust.

“Please. Mute. Hush.” I mumble with eyes half-closed, hoping there’s at least one living soul who might hear my plea.

Dare I open an eye? It is so peaceful behind these eyelids. I do dare.

I should not have.

A scabby grey rat is my welcoming party. Inches away from my now publicly exposed eyeball, nibbling away at toe-nail clippings. Who the hell is leaving toe-nail clippings behind so casually? The rodent is so close that I can smell the rabies off of it. I want to react. I want to shoo it away, or maybe try to engage it in a cosmically profound inter-species dialogue. But all that I have energy for is inhaling oxygen that has been peppered by floor dust.

“Someone please turn down the volume … TV … please.” It feels like I am screaming the words, but all my feeble decibels manage to do is peak the rat’s curiosity. I think it looks at me. And cocks eyebrow. Like Dirty Harry. Please, Rat, I plead. Don’t do it! I am weak, and I have my whole life ahead of me!

My cheek still plastered to the floor I inhale for air again, and take in with me some more floor dust. I may have vacuumed a few flakes of rodent dandruff off the rat’s furry little scabs.

And it’s quiet. Someone – a Samaritan blessed with the understanding of hangovers – has muted the TV. The only thing I hear is the little wretch’s teeth nibbling on the toenail clippings. It hears it as well, and in a moment of heightened self-awareness, takes one last bite and scurries past me, downstairs … into my living quarters.

“Thank you!” I smile and close my one eye again, inhaling floor dust sans rabid dandruff.

“You’re welcome – are you ok?”

Brain: voice registered … external voice registered … female … unfamiliar … you are lying in a stairwell … head sticking out of basement door … inhaling dust … not good.

“Are you ok?”

I am still hiding behind my eyelids, listening to each neuron slowly inflate back into life, like microwave popcorn.I hear bare feet shuffling on the hardwood floor, getting closer to my head. I wonder if it really is bare feet approaching, or if that rabid little twat of a rat is staging a coup under the floorboards.

“Hi” – she drags out the word, and inflects the greeting into a curious query.

With my right cheek still firmly glued to the floor, I open my eyes, and confront my second welcoming party of the day: feet. Pretty little pedicured feet, an army of ten toes, each wearing a helmet of thick black toenail polish. The pinkie toe sports a corn – the hunchback on notre dame’s feet. I want to rub my facial scab on it, and let our respective blemishes have a go at it.

Rolling my one eye towards the ceiling, I slowly pan up for a wider shot. I can tell she’s petite, but from my bug’s eye view, she seems gargantuan. A Brobdingnagian to my basement-dwelling Gulliver.

“Are you alright?” She asks again.

I think so, I mumble and drag one last breath of floor dust before lifting my corpse up.

I’m actually all wrong. And verticality is a motherfucker. It gives you a keen sense of perspective that horizontality does not. It felt like the elevator ride up takes about a few minutes short of eternity, and I can already feel my brain getting motion sickness. My bowels spasm from a sudden head rush, and I vomit a little in my mouth.

I swallow it.

“Hi … err … did I –”I try not to infect her oxygen with my upchuck breath.

Knowingly, she giggles. “No, nothing like that. I’m Ruth. I just came in this morning. I’m your housemate’s sister.”

“Oh.” I am relieved. There is nothing more intellectually burdensome than attempting to piece together disjointed fragments of an evening swimming in an Olympic-sized pool of 100-proof vodka.

Which one? I ask her, walking over to the couch while reading the news ticker on the muted TV.

Some people apparently died somewhere because of someone’s belligerence. News: it’s starting to get old.

“Which what?”She stares blankly at me, and sits at the bottom of the stairs that go up to the bedrooms.

“Which housemate, I mean.”

Teddy, she says. And proceeds to inform me that he’s upstairs working on something.She’s wearing a loose full-length dress that, despite its casually flowing appearance, does a great job of accentuating all her curves.

You with those curves. Me with no brakes. Accidents really look good right now.

Of course, I say that to myself, in my head. Unfortunately, my penis overhears this conversation, and decides to chime in with its unsolicited opinion.

“Stop your self-pitying drivel, my dear fellow.I am quite aware that you are currently under extreme duress caused by the preceding evening’s gratuitous intoxication. Nonetheless, if I may, in strict confidence, of course: I urge you to summon up the courage and will to overcome your present dull-mindedness and coordinate your faculties towards something slightly more gratifying … something libidinal.”

My penis is an intellectual.

And it speaks with a British accent.

The kitchen is only a few paces away, yet seems like it’s comfortably lounging at an infinite horizon. She must have noticed; she asks if I need some water.

“Please. And there’s some Excedrin in the cabinet too, if you don’t mind.”

She dutifully complies, this Ruth person. She just arrived this morning, and she’s being hospitable. My brain cells eagerly await their medication with baited breath, clinching their little brain cell hands together, their brain cell jaws dribbling with brain cell excitement goo.

Red nail polish on her fingers. With my hands still outstretched, receiving the glass of water and a couple of pills, I look down at her feet. Yup, black toenails. But red fingernails. I can’t process the visual incongruence into anything meaningful, so I quickly wash down the painkillers with gulps of water.

“Jesus, bless you child!” I sigh and throw my head back into the couch. My little religious grace amuses me. So I add a “or something like that” under my breath, for good measure. Unless I had a spiritual comeuppance during last night’s inebriated slumber, I am pretty certain I went to sleep an atheist and woke up as one.

Tangential note to the religious: If you are somehow inclined to retain your comfortable level self-imposed stupidity via religious rhetoric and orthodoxy, I recommend that you avoid reading like it’s the bubonic plague. Trust me, the bubonic plague was pretty disparaging.

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Do you mind if I turn up the TV just a bit?”

I’m already hiding behind my eyelids again, oblivious to the world, letting the wonderful magic of medication put on its big show in my biological theatre.All I bother to utter is a feeble “Mmmm” which she interprets is safe enough to turn up the volume.

Something about Al Gore. And the environment. And a movie. Something else about growing a beard. And teaching.

I mute it all.

Penis:And behold, world, he has chosen to feign ignorance of my very existence. This uncouth behavior will not be tolerated, young man. Your progenies demand your attention!

Brain: Please leave a message after the beep.

Beeeeeeep!

Off in a faraway land, the newscast breaks into commercials for local car dealerships, miraculous carpet cleaning formulas, and adult diapers. Behind the comfort of my eyelids, my frontal lobe projects images of wrinkled lumps of human beings in diapers, scrubbing the carpets of even more wrinkled Buicks.

The reel scrolls to an end and my widescreen eyelids roll up.Backstage of my mind: reality. She still sits there, at the bottom step, hugging her knees, with her cleft chin cradled between her kneecaps.

She asks me, “Feeling better?” She’s unbearably chipper about her queries.

My neurons are medicated, speeding up to a functional level of relaying perceptions and carting back comprehension.

“Yes. Much.” I attempt a smile, but my scab crinkles up into painful facial plate tectonics.

On the little table between us is a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival and a pack of Parliament Lights. Cynicism calls for a sufficient amount of self-righteous commentary on hollow activist rhetoric. Immigrant hipsters strike me as muddy oxymorons, but I’m certain many would lump me in that category.The immigrant’s reality is but another dimension of the American experience, even though I find that ours is by far the slower and more circuitous route to attaining some semblance of comfort – emotional, financial, or intellectual.

I am amused by my moment of pseudo-profundity (garbage!) and temporarily relieved that the belligerent little guillotine is suspended into a medicated lilt, creaking within devastating proximity.

“So you’re reading Chomsky?” I ask her, reaching for a cigarette and fishing around in my pocket for a lighter or a matchbook. I find a matchbook from a restaurant I don’t recall ever visiting. And her eyes light up faster than my cancer stick.

“You know about Chomsky? I think he’s one of the most brilliant minds of our time. It’s a pity not many people pay him enough attention because they –”She wants to keep going, but cuts herself short, maybe thinking that I’m listening more to my nicotine intake than her.Which I am.

“Keep going.” I might as well indulge her fascination. I muster up another smile, and I feel a scab tear away from my face.

I quickly regret this conversational carte-blanche. She maniacally vomits out her thoughts, and I can only pretend to dodge and parry the bits and pieces so as not to get stained. Instead, all I do is nod along to her pontifications. Capitalism. Socialism. Politics. Policy. Justice. Injustice. The entire praxis reeks of intellectual masturbation, though I pretty much would agree with her – and Chomsky – on most points.But Sunday morning hangover conversations should not wander beyond incomprehensible mumbles and minute gestures.

“So, are you going to take a shower?” She jumps up and stretches as she asks me this. Whatever her reason may be for all her élan, I wish to find it and drown it in a vat of battery acid.Verdict: cruel and unusual punishment for vivacity.

“Yes, eventually.” The word eventually sounds like the longest word, and I struggle with it, mangling into a mumble.

“Well, we should shower together then!” she says. Cheerfully.

Penis: Please ask her to repeat that.

My penis proceeds to put on its finest tweed jacket, a bowtie, and sits there in Zen-like composure, steaming its wire-rimmed glasses with its breath and polishing it to sparkling clarity.

Brain: What the fuck is going on?

The look on my face betrays my brain, and she comes closer. “I’m serious!” She is now sitting next to me, staring me dead in the eyes. “Come on! We should shower together!”

Which God-forsaken hippie commune did she come from?Eloi! Eloi! Hippie-sabachtani!

“Err … why don’t you go ahead and shower first, and I’ll go next.” I have to be polite, no?

Penis screams in panic, Nooooooo! You heartless traitor! And stabs itself in the eye with a chilled salad fork.

I demand an elaborate explanation for this treachery! My penis is relentless.

She explains, “Well, I’ve been watching all these documentaries about our current environmental crises and everything … and … err … it just feels like we should all do our part to make sure that we’re not being wasteful, you know?”

“Wasteful?”

“Yeah, even with resources like water, which might seem trivial here, but it’s really not. And clean water is a valuable commodity that many in the world can barely afford or enjoy.”

Has she intellectualized it so much that she has completely neglected the tiny little detail about us sharing a miniscule space, naked, surrounded by porcelain, soap, water and steam? Is she being facetious? Or have I sexualized the business of bathing entirely too much?

Penis: You know, brain, maybe you’re right on this one. I must admit I feel slightly uneasy about this.She might be interested in relieving us of one kidney. Or two. Oh, sweet biscuits in heaven, this is the end of days!

Perhaps, I have comfortable with the archaic notion of men being the sexual aggressors so much that the inverse becomes challenging. Intriguing, yes. Sexy, yes. But definitely challenging. Is sexual empowerment of the African woman the equivalent of legislation against male testicular fortitude? Well, shit, that is utterly sexist.

My neurons whimper for help, while the guillotine looms precariously above them, sneering. I cannot process this. I feel like a spectator in my own reality, personifying even parts of my own anatomy as autonomous entities.

Penis: Whatever, dimwit!

Kidneys: You really think she’s after us with this shower talk?

Brain: Please leave a message after the beep.

I have yet to figure out how to successfully navigate the grey borders between nonchalant compliance and active accountability: a weakness that has somehow worked in my favor, much to the chagrin of those that I have disappointed specifically because of it.

Note to self: Self-help books written by others do irreparable harm to the reputation of the self.

She grabs my hand and playfully tugs at me to get off the couch. I comply.

Various organs in unison: Oh shit!

Walking upstairs to the bathroom becomes an exercise in nerves. I consider halting my thoughts and shrugging it all off, but the ambiguity of her reasoning would not let me. Is she that serious about the environment? Is this a trick? Do my kidneys really need to stay en garde against a hostile intruder? Or maybe, just maybe, this whole scenario is just one elaborate charade towards casual sex.

She leads me to the bathroom and closes the door behind her, locking it with elaborate gestures. She hums a tune I cannot quite recognize, while turning on the water in the shower. I am struck by my own awkwardness. I just stand there, staring into a nondescript area between the towel rack and the door hinges.

“Hope the water’s not too hot,” she says behind me. I grope around for some modicum of appropriate behavior. Turning around slowly, I am relieved that she still has her dress on.

Brain: You have one new message from Moral Debt Collection Agency. Please keep in mind that her brother is two doors down from you this very minute, and your moral credit history might be jeopardized if you –

Beeep! Message deleted.

“Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?” She asks me this with disarming cheer.

“Err … you’re serious?” I am still expecting a ta-dah!to relieve this awkwardness – some kind of comic relief.

Penis: I’ll pretend you did not just call me that!

Brain: Feeling insecure, are we?

“OK, I’ll go first if it’s going to make you feel more comfortable.” And with incredible ease and comfort, her dress falls off, and a fully naked Ruth is stepping into the shower and disappearing into a silhouette behind the foggy curtain.I feel like I am playing chess for the first time, without anybody showing me any of the basics.

Monkey see, monkey do. She moved a pawn; I’ll move a pawn.

I take my clothes off, and stand there, waiting for a confirming invitation to join in this inelegant, yet environmentally-mindful activity.

“Are you coming in?” her silhouette whispers. That definitely sounds like a confirmation.

Penis: Halt! Do I have vitiligo?

Brain: What?

Penis: Vitiligo, you imbecile! Do I have it?

Brain: What the fuck is vitiligo?

Penis [in aggravated monotone]: A chronic skin disease that causes loss of pigmentation, resulting in irregular pale patches of skin, commonly on extensor aspects of extremities or in skin folds. It’s also called leukoderma. Or, to peasants like you, Michael Jackson’s sorry excuse to want to be Caucasian.

Brain: You are deranged, you know that?

Penis: Shut up and check! And check again before you catapult yourself into a situation that can be morosely embarrassing!

Brain: I see nothing wrong, honestly.

I inch towards the shower and take a peek, sneaking my head in past the curtains.

“Come on in then,” she says, handing me the bar of soap. Her countenance does not seem to belie anything devious. In fact, it is her sincerity that I find disconcerting.

Brain: She glistens. Cool. Shiny, too.

I grab the bar of soap and step into the overhead torrent of lukewarm water. It beats on the back of my neck and down my back, while we stand there facing one another. The streams of water that miss the peripheries of my scrawny contour find their way towards her royal shininess.

I do not know what the next move is. Chess is clearly not for beginners. She smiles and asks me to lather her up.

Penis: Bollocks, mate! You’re behaving like an odorous pile of turd right now. Could you please maneuver your arms and do something? This is sheer unsportsmanlike conduct; the kind of behavior that would have warranted excommunication if I had my wits about me.

“Well, this is awkward,” I manage to smile, convinced that acknowledging and honoring the situation for what it is would diffuse the tension.

“Is it? I wouldn’t say so,” she counters, smiling back. Still cheerful. Still sincere.

Shit. Well, there goes that strategy.Back to awkward again. Somehow, my hands find their way to their neck and start soaping her down. I cannot figure out how long I should work on certain areas before it becomes inappropriate. Or worse: creepy.

“That feels good.” She almost sounds helpful, the way she presents that statement.

“Thank you. I’ve been working on it.” I grin, I think. “Wax on. Wax off.” A sorry attempt at humor, especially while working her breasts.

Penis: Stiff upper lip, dear chap. Stiff upper lip!

She looks down towards her feet and giggles. Unaware that I’ve worked her breasts to squeakiness, I ask her what could possibly be funny.

“You are,” she offers, still looking down at me.

Penis: Groovy. She’s checking me out.

Brain: I really hope you don’t have that vitiligo thing you mentioned earlier.

Penis: If I do, there is no sign of detection on her part. Victory shall be mine! Quick! Move to the lower abdomen!There isn’t enough soapy sudsy stuff there!

It just said “soapy sudsy stuff.” A clear indication of curtailed articulation. I feel her hands on me. She moves in closer and kisses me. I wonder if casually stabbing her navel with my British colleague qualifies as assault.

Brain: Moral Debt Collection Agency holding on line 1. Please pick up.

“Listen, maybe this is not such a good idea right now. Your brother is only a couple of walls away.” I manage to squeeze in those words in the midst gluing and ungluing my face to hers.

“You’re right,” she agrees. “We should just finish up and go downstairs to your room. We’re really wasting water, anyway.” How one can consistently reconcile lust with environmental concerns is beyond what my faculties are used to managing. I am impressed in the same way that I was impressed with skyscrapers upon first arrival to America: a casual sense of wonderment that gradually gives way to a casual sense of nonchalant acceptance.

***

Standing outside the Urban Outfitters in Chinatown, I am slowly finishing up my last Parliament Light, inhaling every last bit of its cancerous funk before squashing it on the sidewalk. It makes no sense that I find myself here, especially considering I have no money. I have taken the day off from my cash-paying-under-the-table-educated-illegal-immigrant-mind-prostitution job, and have spent the day wandering about Northwest DC. Chain smoking and watching people between countless cups of morning coffee.

Brain: Go on in and look around. You might find something you like that you will not be able to afford. It will be yet another reminder of your fucked up situation. Then you can go home to mope and whine about how much of a toll your illegal status is taking on your sanity.

I walk into the store, making my way upstairs to the men’s section, past apparel with hobo aesthetics and vehicular price tags. Shuffling through an array of clever novelty t-shirts, I am reduced to a cackling buffoon by what I find: a green t-shirt with a tattered icon of a water drop and silhouetted lettering:

CONSERVE WATER. SHOWER TOGETHER.

My thoughts relapse into recollections of awkward showers, environmental concerns, Chomsky, vitiligo, Sunday afternoon rain clobbering dusty basement windows, graceless sex, and a yellow condom. Exactly what aesthetic or physical esteem is accomplished by coloring a prophylactic into a bright yellow?

The t-shirt costs an obscene $34. That is almost two 14-hour days of work at the plantation that I am avoiding today.

It’s Wednesday morning, and the world has yet to die in my sleep.