Writhing Alone in a Room with a Toothache
He lay down on the mattress staring at the white ceiling.
His new room for the whole next week. It would be a whole week in this place
with the light streaming in through the pale curtains in this silent room with
a funny smell. He reached out his hands above him and turned over his body and
thought about the fact that he was reaching out his hands above him and turning
over his body and how contrived all his behaviour was and thought about how he
was goddamn doing that stupid thing he did all the fucking time which was
fucking stare at ceilings and think and that it was fucking dumb because nobody
else did that shit and Jesus Christ what the fuck why did he have to fucking
stare at walls and think and thought about what David Foster Wallace would
think of him and whether he would think they were kindred spirits because he
was lying on a mattress thinking and moving around randomly and also because he
had just downed a Codeine pill with a hand-cup of water from the sink which
might like super fucking depressed or whatever and thought about how all his
thoughts were just so fucking vacuous and thought about what David Foster Wallace
would think about him and thought about how maybe that was what all people
thought about pretty much most of the time and thought about how he’d thought
about that like a million times before and thought about how he always had the
same thoughts and what the fuck did anything mean and where did it lead and why
the fuck did he think, honestly, he should go actually fucking do something,
like write. Which is what he did, subsequently, and felt a bit better, and the
throbbing pain in his tooth was subsiding then he sensed, though it could’ve
been a placebo.