Here I am, underground in an ankle-deep stew of dead and, in some cases, mostly dead rats. The heavy smell of mildew and stagnant runoff hangs thick in the air. Might as well be breathing through a bar straw lined with black mold. Every limb burns; screaming to get back the oxygen spent within the last half hour. Every pulse point is thumping heavily, rhythmically mistimed even for the middle age mush I’ve evolved into. With each pump of blood, the overstretched arteries near my temples cause a nagging headache to go with the existing headache I’ve had prior. That plus a definite concussion and you have a hunch of how I’m doing this evening. 

Squeak! Squeak! Gurgle.

The thrashing of tabby sized rats sputtering quadrupedal death rattles echos from every direction. The rounded sewer tunnel provides a disturbing resonance. Hacking, high-pitched last words squeak at me in a cacophony. A chill shimmies up my spine, which one might deduce is a result of the horror dungeon I’m presently lost in. Not the case here. The sensation is actually from the violent tugging on my grime-soaked pant cuff as pin-sharp claws pierce the fabric. A pair of phone books idiotically duct tapped around my shins for body armor have become waterlogged, making it hard to maneuver. They also don’t shield the back of my legs as the little attacker is now demonstrating on my untoned calf. 

A ball of matted fur frantically stares at me with its beady black eyes each time it bobs out of the murk for a gasp of air, using me as a ladder. I would normally feel an ounce of sympathy for the beastie had it and the rest of its ilk not attempted to eviscerate me a moment ago.  

So, to this little fella, I say, “Fuck off!”

Shaking my leg with what little strength left to dispose of, I manage to punt the soggy critter into the inky darkness at the far end of the tunnel. Kicking up a splash of sewer water, an unhealthy gulp of metallic flavored sludge finds its way into my open mouth. A much-needed baritone, I join in on the hacking chorus provided by the countless sewer rats dying around me. The wet thud of the airborne vermin splatting lifelessly against a brick wall furthers along my guts to a retching heave. But at least he won’t be bothering me again, unlike the hundreds of its cousins forking a lazy river of demise around my ankles. 

I wonder how many vaccines I’ll need by the end of all of this?   

“Shit! Which way did I come in?” my voice rasps to no one. 

I find talking to a pretend studio audience has become a strange habit since living alone these past few months. Weird? Yeah. Good for staving off loneliness? Kinda. Helpful when realizing you don’t know which sewer tunnel leads out of this nightmare factory? Not in the slightest. I’ll continue to delude myself all the same. 

The water smelled slightly better than expected. A heavy rain earlier this evening helped wash away the excrement-laden runoff, though the occasional turd emerges to remind me exactly where I am. 

Not like I needed reminding.

Tiny bloated bodies continue to float past, eerily caressing my lower extremities. Normally, I’d be wreck but this is not the time for a panic attack, not after what I’ve endured thus far. I just need to center myself. I’ll shut my eyes tight, take three deep moldy breaths, open them and I’ll be alright. Shutting my eyes, the sounds are now somehow worse. I breath through it. I can taste shit in the air. I open my eyes.

Nothing. 

Afraid of wiping god-knows-what into my eyes, I blink hard only to reopen them to blackness. Did I mention the batteries in my LED headlamp are from an old television remote from my coffee table? Smacking my palm against the goofy looking headlamp, it flickers dimly back to life for the time being. 

“I think it was the left tunnel. Yeah, the left tunnel-- I’m almost sure it was the left one. I think.” It sounds convincing enough in my head. 

You’re probably wondering what in the fuck is going on right now and you have every right to ask. You’re thinking, ‘What is this asshole doing in a pitch-black sewer tunnel wading through rat broth with phone books taped to his legs? Why is this jerk off telling me about it? Where is this all going? I quit drinking a year ago and I’m thinking of starting up again after this hearing all this bullshit!’

Sound about right? Now, take a moment and imagine yourself as the aforementioned studio audience. It’ll make the absurdity I’m spewing a bit easier to stomach. I mean, for all I know you could be in my head pretending to care-- or not care. Either way, let’s go back about month. Back to my crap-hole apartment where my nights were spent thusly; 

Click.

A cooking show. 

Click.

A reality show where D-list celebrities have to live in a mansion, which they could in no way afford even with the paycheck from said program, only to debase themselves for our enjoyment by spouting ignorant drivel while completing embarrassing physical challenges. 

Click.

A show about the history of junk food and how it shaped our lives. 

Click.

A show where the dance prowess of other D-List celebrities are voted on by lazy, do nothing home viewers who secretly regret never getting off their asses and learning to dance. 

Click.

The fifth spin-off of a popular crime drama about homicide detectives investigating murders so horrific they could’ve only been ripped from today’s headlines. The title is random letters creating snappy initials with the name of a major city after a colon. C.S.I.L.M.N.O.P.: Miami or some such shit.

Click.

A cooking competition where chefs are forced to make impossibly complicated meals in an improbable time frame, in no way allowing them to truly display any actual culinary talent, only to be judged by established chefs who seem to get off on berating another person’s livelihood. 

Why did I pay for cable? 

Not that it mattered since my service would be cut off in two days. Cable companies tend to do this when customers flake on payments. Shamefully, I would actually miss the five cooking channels simply out of habit, mostly from the lack of voices filling my tiny apartment with even a modicum of life. 

This was how I lived for six months straight. Look for work. Forget to eat. Watch inane shit on television. Jack off to internet porn-- which vamoosed with the cable-- and, more than likely, pass out on the foldout couch in my living/bedroom.

Well, last I remember the couch had a foldout bed. My daily routine made it so I hadn’t used the bed part of the couch since moving in, the way, say, a normal human being might. But I was not a normal human being. Not anymore. I’d become a strange sad version of a man, or rather the quivering mass of what used to be one. We’re often referred to as ‘late-thirties divorced male with child.’ Nothing lures in the ladies like an out of shape, balding divorcee dad living in a one-room apartment with no cable. 

So, now you know the truth; my couch and bed are one and the same. But, hey, at least I don’t sleep on a futon like some broke ass college kid. 

You can laugh. It’s part of being the studio audience.

Keeping a sarcastically upbeat attitude once the prescription to my preferred choice of crazy pills runs out is no easy task, I can tell you. I hadn’t had health insurance in over two months and rationing anti-anxiety meds during lean times was tough and getting tougher. On the plus side, I’d found a job and my meager insurance would be active in about three to four weeks. My deductible was astronomical but not half as bad as paying completely out of pocket for drugs to not stress about the myriad of things contributing to that day’s bit of bullshit. 

Like running out of pills. 

Gotta love the American health care system. Nothing more than drug dealers who charge a five hundred percent markup on necessities. Necessities that in all actuality cost less than five cents on the dollar to manufacture. 

Crazy pills are my cute little nickname for FILL IN THE BLANKS. I swear I’m not really that crazy. Well, not in the normal sense or so I like to delude. When you’ve been in therapy as long as me, you get to make light of your own mental state, like calling your FILL IN THE BLANKS “crazy pills” and treating treatment like the hokum you don’t believe you actually need. But you do need it, while you pretend to deny the gut wrenching anxiety plaguing your every moment. 

Mr. Sunshine, right here.

It was mid-August during one of the hottest summers on record. I swear they said the same thing last year. I’m of the opinion that weather people get off on giving folks something to complain about. Some kind of sick joke they’re all in on. But hey, if I had to report hypothetical information to a populace hell-bent on bitching about everything even the slightest bit inconvenient, I’d most likely throw those lemmings a curve ball every now and again out of sheer spite. Weather people are only loved on the nice days or weather events like a blizzard or hurricane when everyone is looking to them for some sign of hope before the grocery store runs out out of milk and bread, which, I’m pretty sure, never really happens. Fear and happiness become very good motivators when having to trust someone. Either way, my balls were stuck to my upper thigh from the obscene amount of condensation built up in my boxer briefs. 

God, I missed air conditioning. 

Half-past two in the morning and even the white noise of infomercials wouldn’t shut my brain off. Not surprising. Being out of work long as I was, unfettered nights tended to keep me up well past when normal people powered down. While the nine to fivers who recharged to their bare minimum dragged themselves through a coffee-fueled day identical to the one previous, I remained nocturnal. While office drones stressed about cover sheets on pointless reports their boss might throw a glance at without even an appreciative "good job”, I would watch pitchmen sell snake oil in the guise of cheap gadgetry guaranteed to improve your life for just three easy payments of $19.95; plus shipping and handling. Sleep quickly becomes secondary to a person with no schedule. Whenever my body decided to crash it would, only to wake up three or four times when a sound from the TV or a random catastrophic thought would stir in my head. Hence, the pullout couch stayed a couch. 

Live this way long enough and you understand why folks eventually get their shit together around adulthood. A person needs a purpose, a reason to go on. Stability. And if you’re lucky, stability comes with a job you love to make enough money to be happy. My new job was far from that, though having normal hours again would be a bonus. The hardest part would be trying to shake off the staycation jet lag in order to get a full eight hours of sleep. 

Staycation; a pleasant way of saying, ‘I can’t afford a real trip.’ We, as a society, love to dress up mundane things with catchy, hybrid jargon. How Bromantic. 

The Ex once accused me of being the most negative person she’d ever met. Which was ironic, given my ex-wife spent more time judging her so-called friends on social media than she ever did enjoying their presence in actual social situations. Even worse, a large percentage of these friends were people she’d never actually encountered in real life. Social media coins them as Followers.

Aren’t we all?

Toward the end of our relationship, it was my negativity, which attributed to the inevitable divorce. My therapist and I had been working on it for quite some time until he became our marriage counselor. Our sessions were as such—

“Was I complaining again? I’ll be more aware of those emotional outbursts from now on.” “Why is it whenever I complain about someone, I’m the bad guy?” “Yes, I have been doing the breathing exercises we discussed, Dr. Shit-For-Brains.”

That’s one of my cute little nicknames for him. Not that I’ve ever said it to his smug little face. 

“Have you been mindful of the emotions you display?” he’d ask, making himself even more punchable.  

“Yeah,” I’d answer in order to make the torture end that much sooner. 

Dr. Ass-Hat would follow with, “And how have you gone about doing so?” 

This is where I’d make up some happy moments only to wear the victory like a gold star given to a child for getting an answer correct. The sessions were more to appease the court than to soothe my mental state.

The only ray of sunshine in my crap life was my daughter Bea, a nine-year-old with an unimaginable grasp for reading people’s bullshit. She gets that from her old man. Not sure how proud I am of jading my kid at such an early age, but at least she’s honest. For example, as of late she became an agnostic; a choice made while attending St. Gertrude of Nivelles School for Girls. Evidentially, the sisters took umbrage with Bea’s incessant questioning of the Good Book. For instance, she asked how Adam and Eve, only having two sons, one of whom killed the other, could populate an entire planet yet incest is a sin? Let that theological mind fuck sink in for a moment. Again, she’s nine. Which leaves me wondering why she knows what incest is. 

Freaking internet.

This was still not as egregious as the first time she attended Sunday Mass at age six and bellowed to the nearly silent congregation, "Why is no one trying to get that skinny guy down from the lower-case T?" 

Her words exactly.

For the record, I never discuss religion with anyone let alone my kid, and her mom only goes to church for weddings and funerals, so the hypocrisy of sending her to a private Catholic school was laughable at best. But, then again, when isn’t a person being slightly hypocritical when it comes to their faith. Have you ever seen the Pope’s wardrobe?

Vow of poverty, my ass. Well, that and the rampant child molestation.

I asked Bea during our last scheduled visitation why she decided to be an agnostic and not an atheist if she didn’t believe in God? Her answer—

"I don’t not believe in God. My science teacher told us that in order to prove a theory you have to form a hypothesis. So, I made one. Nobody knows if God is real, for sure. And nobody knows if He’s not. I have to keep finding evidence to prove it either way. Bea paused and continued, “Daddy, can I be a scientist when I grow up?" 

I enthusiastically answered, "Yes."

Thankfully, even with her need to question everything, Bea had developed a compassion for others that Mother Theresa couldn’t achieve. I don’t know where she picked up such behavior. She damn sure didn’t get it from her parents. Bea volunteers for park clean up, helps feed the homeless by collecting for food pantries, even if nobody wants the crap people donated in the name of cleaning out their cupboards.

There’s that negativity again.

And twice a month Bea helps out at the local pet adoption place. She gets straight A’s and reads at an eighth-grade level. I literally have the perfect child and before anyone thinks this is a brag, let it be known, I didn’t try to have a good kid, she did it herself. 

Between my obsessive-compulsive anxiety coupled with bouts of depression and the Ex’s need to create drama when the world takes a break from revolving around her, Bea never took it on. Most kids would act out; become a mirror of their environment. Not my daughter. She analyzed her immature parents and chose to become to the polar opposite. Which gave my Ex and I more time to indulge in our own selfish issues without the burden of warping our daughter.

Parents of the year. 

Seems to me, when I’m low and the world is about to swallow up what little self-worth I still possessed, that sweet, opinionated, amazing little wiseass keeps me—

If not for Bea—

I know somewhere there’s a quote by a more enlightened mind explaining what she truly means to my life. And when I say life, I speak of the mortal coil I’ve come semi-close to unraveling on one or two occasions. She’s my purpose for being. She is factually the reason my brain hasn’t become a Jackson Pollock on the walls of my shitty apartment. And just in case you’re wondering, that’s not a euphemism. Though I wouldn’t give the Ex the satisfaction, even if she is right about me being a broke schlub who never follows through on anything. Which translates to, I can’t afford a gun and if I could, I would never actually pull the trigger. So, I guess it’s both Bea and me being a slacker, which has saved my life thus far.

I’m sorry, we may have gone too far down the rabbit hole of inner psychosis a tad early. Ranting always has a way of dragging out the gloomier parts of memory lane for me. When my insurance kicks in maybe I can go to that better shrink I’ve been meaning to see. ’Till then, I’ll try to rein it in. Hell, you don’t even know my name yet. How rude—  

Next Chapter: Four: Let Me Tell You About My Best Friend (excerpt)