Yikes!

I wake up to a bed that doesn’t fit me anymore. The dimensions of ‘any place I lay my head I call home’ have somehow shrunk overnight. Or maybe I have gone through a late twenties growth spurt, following a near decade of growing outward from the belly and thighs, and downward from the ass.

It must be a lack of caffeine. Last night was a wild one. I murdered my darlings in such a way William Strunk Jr. himself might have given a pursed lipped nod of approval before affixing his red pen of death to the surviving word count; shredding my precious, dear, darlings out of existence.

I search beside the bed for any remnants of coffee from last night’s caffeine-induced creative outburst. Half a cup of breakfast blend aged three hours at room temperature after burning in the carafe for four hours prior is the best I find. I drink the FDA Certified Unsafe cup of poisonous bean water. Anything to chase off the nightmare of a certain pursed lip professor crossing X’s over every word I have ever superfluously written. We are talking a lot of fucking X’s.

As I try to choke down the coffee, I wonder why I have never ideated ‘suicide by coffee’ before? I’ve thought up thousands of other plausibly impossible scenarios of my imminent doom at my own hand. And here, this coffee, would absolutely end it all in one rancor swoop. It does it’s job, at what cost I am not certain, but William Strunk and his terrifying red pen are relegated back to my subconscious, albeit momentarily.

I take a sip of culture-dish coffee and it pushes my eyes wider. I am awake. I am alert. I try to figure out what is next?

I would check the news. My life however reeks of the privilege not to be emotionally drained by the state of current affairs before nine in the morning. My ‘Is The World Ending?’ scale has been reading off the charts! I am currently projecting a 97% certainty we are in the apocalypse. I, for one, will not be facing the apocalypse on an empty stomach.

This apocalypse feels like a disappointment. it seems like the portion of the apocalypse left on the editing room floor for being inconsequential to the whole zombie narrative. I, for one, feel the amount of times I have spent curled up crying to Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Israel Kaamalawiwo’ole playing on repeat deserves more than being a cut scene.

But, that is just how I have chosen to cope on some days. I have spent others marching in the streets. Shouting in rhythmic harmony with the other generally dissatisfied. The protesting helps like a form of methadone for the concert withdrawals. It’s a vibe you may know, and if you do- then you know.

2020 has been downright over the top. It is radical, and not in the ‘cool’ surfer motif sort of way. If we can cover the 3% and somehow this isn’t the end as we know it, I hope the history is unkind to this godforsaken year. No, I hope the number 2020 takes on Voldemort levels of shunned. Replace 2020 everywhere with the word ‘Yikes!’

2018, 2019, Yikes!, 2021, 2022

History: The year of the Yikes!

If we can cover that 3%, of course.

I brush my teeth, marveling at my ability to achieve basic personal hygiene today. I bask in my self-care before whispering “Wellness.” at my dirty reflection through the toothpaste-specked micror.

It’s immediately back to the poisoned coffee and a slide through social media to read factious ‘news’ enthusiastically pushed in the copy & paste format of those old spam emails. Remember the clown with the candy peanuts would murder you if you didn’t send the cursed email to ten friends? The good ol’ days, before spam-paste ran the gamut of ‘paste for support’ to ‘paste or they will kidnap and rape all of our children’.

*I don’t know if anyone I sent the killer clown emails ever forwarded the message but if someone around the 2003 timeframe wasn’t forwarding the spam emails and one of them is starting to seem oddly specific, please reactivate your hotmail account.*

Yikes! has been a crazy year. This year can be given an effigy in every year survived past it. It needs it’s own abbreviated latin term like B.C. or A.D. because this year was downright reckoned.

New Normal isn’t my favorite term. It came down to New Normal or Post-Covid, but honestly if I can play interlocutor for the masses for a second- fuck Covid.

Without the year of Yikes being littered with any of it’s other litany of offenses, we still have a fucking pandemic to be at continued odds with. I want the year indicted, along with ninety-five percent of it’s participants.

I’ve had my breakfast bagel and a fresh cup of coffee, and am in full blown panic mode as I scroll between Associated Press headlines. I hit the dropdown menu on my mobile browser and hit the bookmark tabs. There they are. National news outlets 1, 2, 3. Local news outlets 1,2. World news. A scroll through of existential terror Edgar Allen Poe couldn’t dream of! I grip my copacetic coping measures: caffeine, weed and nicotine. Before I know it, I am flailing in ironic fashion. Hiding in my closet, fearful of the leviathan’s approach as foretold by demagogue pundits with soulless eyes and a confusing array of cherry-picked statistics.

I don’t understand the world.

I didn’t before when it felt like tomorrow was a new day because Annie said the sun would bring new opportunity. The tomorrows of today only bring heartburn and a growing since we are ballroom dancing in decadence.

I have been here before. My before-mentioned apocalypse meter is the latest innovation to my ‘Anxiety IS Preservation And You’re Going To Die Tomorrow’ meter (patent pending). I have used this tool to navigate my life since I was eight years old and learning how to read from the diary someone left sprawled with sharpie on the hand me down bed frame board situated in the center of a room 2,870.5 miles away from the bed in the room of the house I affectionately called ‘home’. The meter was created under that new bed while I learned words like ‘cunt’ from the archive of personal thoughts and emotions left for me by the previous bedframe owner. I will always remember how meticulous the action to capitalize each letter before ultimately underlining the word seemed.

I was a boy, with a growing fear of the world who knew two things. I would forever feel displaced in society. And in Mrs. Tuttle’s 19997 middle school science class was attended by a girl named Cindy who was a real CUNT.

A cigarette helps pull me from spiraling into childhood memories I’d rather forget. It invigorates me to the fresh traumas this year seems bountiful in.

The coffee and cigarette have pushed me from the doors of my home and into the world. The bowl full of flower guides me listlessly through the public library to wonder if anyone even reads anymore. I find a corner to bring my darlings in to this world. A world I am unsure is ready for anything extra thrown at it. Even brevity finds itself caught flailing, unsure of how to act appropriately in the the vacuum of Yikes!

The things I am capable of creating are envious of how sideways things can go on a regular basis these days.There’s nothing I can create to top wildfires burning the country down. What else do we need?*

*Mass Extraterrestrial Anal Probing in December would fill my Apocalypse Bingo card.

I pull my laptop out to explore subjects of atrocious nature,. Ten minutes in and my mask has completely fogged my glasses up. I try to imagine I am in some ancient writer’s den and in order to create successfully I must learn to blindly tap at the keys and hope the computer will autocorrect ‘factotum’ from ‘fsctotim’. This turns in to five minutes of blind flailing as I try to summon the knowledge imparted to me in three keyboarding classes I barely paid attention in around fifteen years ago.

I stretch the disposable facemask uncomfortably out of place and back in to place, trying to get the wire on the bridge of the overused mask to pierce in to my fucking nose and create a sealed barrier so I can stop being silently scorned by the masked librarian socially distancing herself in the non-fiction section.

I check my internal anxiety index, as I am well overdue for my morning panic attack and continue trying to avoid the world as well as the librarian over in the non-fiction section I imagine is now molting, her skin peeling back and revealing the horror of who she really is.

A pursed lip English professor with a giant red pen.

By Briton Underwood