Here's the first of hopefully many little things I'll publish here:
His daily morning ritual
(This actually starts the night before just minutes before his head hits the pillow with the laying out of tomorrow's jeans and the new white cotton v-neck t-shirt that'll go under the polo shirt, the setting of the alarm for ten minutes before he actually wants to get up, the teeth brushing -- my god the teeth brushing! I don't think there's enough space here to get into the teeth brushing...so but anyway, here we go...)
His alarm goes off with a 240 BPM quarter-note CAW! CAW! kinda thing but he hits the snooze and rolls to his right, unconsciously breathes in that sticky sweet morning smell of her hair pressed against a pillow (and there's her own personal sensuous smell mixed in there, too, we can't forget) that soothes him into 7 more minutes of not quite a dream but more like an atmosphere, like the aesthetic embodiment of the womb, carried on for a little bit longer, before his alarm goes CAW! again and it gets real. First thought always: ugh. Maybe 2-3 seconds of that tops. Second thought: hungry/thirsty/need to urinate. There is no third thought; next it's all a chain reaction. Legs swing out and he sits at the side of the bed, full mug of water on the night stand (oh this is also put in place the night before), chugs whole mug, goes AAH, and finds bath towel on the hook on the back of the door and wanders downstairs to the bathroom making sure to step over the cat and not on her as he crosses the hall. Fan turns on first with a switch outside the bathroom, he thinks that's stupid, the switch being outside the bathroom. The light inside switches on from the inside next to the mirror. His roommate has not hung the bath mat so it's damp and cold under his feet. In the shower he washes from the top down (mostly to avoid washing his face after having washed his ass crack): hair, face, gets a good lather around his balls and then hits the arms, armpit, chest, thighs, ass, calves, then feet. (Never really gets around to his back; that's more of a Saturday morning-type thing where all morning ritual rules get thrown out the window.) He's outta there in roughly 3 minutes and 45 seconds, which his girl simply doesn't understand. Out of the shower he always does a fly-by of the coffee-maker while it hisses and sputters finishing up the fresh brew; the aroma wakes him a little more. Back upstairs he gently opens the door to their room because he knows if you push too hard it'll squeak like a mouse from hell and wake up his girl, who's really probably half awake anyway but he wants to let her have that cherished 30 more minutes of uterine-like stasis before her own personal alarm goes off (which, by the way, sounds more like KEY! KEY! and is at a speed somewhere between a 257 and 260 BPM quarter note). So next he lotions is hands, then face, then his arms but only a little there; he makes sure to spray his Axe body spray outside their room so she doesn't wake with that over-concentrated just-sprayed taste in her mouth, then he rolls the Old Spice Pure Sport on his armpits, down-up strokes 7 times (for Mickey Mantle) where each downstroke is a 1. All this is done naked. Next the boxers go on, then the pre-laid pants, the v-neck, then the polo. The last minute out the door is a blur of keys, wallet, iPhone, coffee, somehow he's backed the car out of their narrow driveway in a haze and again managed to not hit the pedestrians who all seem to assume he's paying attention and won't accidentally eliminate their maps on the spot.
And so if he doesn't follow through on all these little things one-by-one the morning is shot to hell and he's grumpy toward his co-workers and, later, possibly even grumpy toward the motherly immigrant sandwich lady who then won't take quite the care as is needed to properly make his roast beef/swiss cheese/tomato/lettuce/mayo/mustard on pumpernickle, and probably some mustard will poop out onto his shirt, and then the whole afternoon's shot and he starts thinking about how to rectify it all by properly following through the next morning, so the evening's spent going over the day's mistakes, that is until she holds him and says, "honey baby boo it's all right i love you" and they fall asleep more or less in each others arms, forgetting the laying out of the clothes, and the water mug, or even the setting of the alarm, and they both know and don't care that tomorrow's going to be a sick day.
I play drums and sing in this band, and we've just released our debut album! Pick it up for free if you want right here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/eq35b3 or if you have some money and don't mind donating it to us go here: http://thosewolvesactuallyhappened.bandcamp.com Bandcamp has some nice high quality digital formats, whereas that free sendspace link is yer run of the mill 192k MP3.
