Having not heard from finite jester for a number of days, I took it upon myself to go and see what that weird creature was up to. The sight that greeted me when I finally forced in the door to his apartment was one so shocking, so depraved, that I had no choice but to write this post about it.
The apartment was clean; (fyi: the mere suggestion of the jester cleaning his apartment is enough to cause derisive laughter in all who know him) the dishes were done, the floor was free of clutter and appeared to have been swept and vacuumed. Even the air smelt sweet, something was wrong.
It’s a small apartment, but it took me a good five minutes to find him. The jester had actually managed to climb up the walls and was somehow clinging to the ceiling; how he managed this I’ll never quite know, as his fingernails appeared to have been gnawed down to mere nubs.
He was wild-eyed and sweating, slowly navigating the ceiling’s surface like some demented spider who’d lost half its legs. I finally managed to coax him down by waving about a bottle of scotch, convinced him to stay put on the couch by pouring him a glass, although that process took some time - (who would ever think to look in the jester’s cupboard for dishes?), and asked him what on earth was wrong.
“Wrong?” he exclaimed, “Nothing’s wrong, everything is great, simply grand, couldn’t possible be better, look around you, I’ve cleaned!”
It was a dicey bit of maneuvering by which I admitted that the apartment did in fact look wonderful, but was still a cause for concern by it’s deviance from the norm. It was during this little speech of mine that I finally noticed a glaring absence.
The ashtrays were gone, and finite jester hardly looked himself; sitting there with a glass of scotch in one hand, you expected the man to have a cigarette in the other, but that was not the case.
“Holy shit!” I said, “You’ve quit smoking!”
“Indeed I have, and it’s going wonderfully.” The jester replied, and I had to lunge forward, almost spilling both our drinks, to grab hold of his shirt and prevent him from scurrying back up the wall.
February 27th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
I have to admit that I think I might have played some small part in this utter madness.
You see I myself made the plunge a short time ago and transferred my daily dosage of nicotine from the orally administered variety to the kind that comes in a sticker.
When I was sitting white-knuckled and gasping in a chair at his place while he blithely puffed away across the room he asked me a simple question.
“So why did you quit? Coughing up the strange brown matter in the morning getting to ya?”
“Well, there is that,” I responded. “But to be honest the main reason was I wanted the mental challenge. If you don’t use it you lose it and all that crap.”
A strange expression crossed his face. I think that the seed was sown at that moment. For if anything, the Jester appreciates a challenge as much as a good joke.
I think this was both, because as for myself I’ve been sneaking smokes now and again…