I got some new gloves because I've been having really vivid dreams lately.

Without fail, every night as I lie in bed and read, I pick at my toenails. I suspect that if I were more flexible, I would spend a significant amount of time biting them. It's not a nervous habit, I don’t touch my feet during the day regularly (naps excluded), but as soon as my socks are off and I'm horizontal, toes beware! I'm a madwoman, peeling and ruthlessly pruning ingrown toenails back.

I've considered munching. Sometimes I lie in bed hungry for no reason other than laziness. Other people get so much joy out of their fingernails, I should surely enjoy a thicker, more brittle, more calcium-rich toenail, but I just can't do it. It feels like a waste to consume, to turn the food cycle into a circle, when it's supposed to be a line, and so I look on with pride as my Sam's Club extra-value-size mayonnaise jar approaches the brim, fascinated by all the extra matter I have created to be released into the world.

It's like imagining all the waste you'll ever produce and the possibility of one day having to take responsibility for it. Like, how much would the rent be on the apartment that would house all the excrement you'll ever produce? How much of your monthly income would be spent on just the real estate for popped blackheads? Would lost hair fit in a bowl, a box, or a grain elevator? Would waste originating on another person but in your keep be reposessed to promote responsibility? If so, wouldn't that inspire countless numbers of the best angry-breakup returns ever?

I think it's best to have a good idea of these kinds of figures and be prepared for them long before the horrid day we're finally called to task. I have a moderate amount of money in escrow, accumulating interest like a number of small restaurants with good reviews poised for a culinary breakthrough. I also have a nice property picked out. It's in New Jersey, but close enough so I can visit, make deposits, bring guests, etc., near one of those big towers of ventillation for the Holland tunnel. Very proximal. Very exclusive. When I found this house, it was decorated in mid-century dutch furniture with lots of brightly colored bubbly-looking light fixtures hanging throughout. I'm permitting the people who live there now (a kind but forgetful older couple; I wouldn’t be surprised if they're doing some of their own long-term storage there without my permissoin) to keep the furniture as long as there is a provision in the contract for them to do heavy lifting when it's time for them to go.

My dreams are of this house. I wander through it in my mind, looking through doorways, checking on bathtubs full of urine and baskets full of leg hair, tucking in human-shaped masses of phlegm before heading down to the kitchen. In my dreams it's not that it's a house of my bits and pieces anymore, it's that it's a real lived-in home, and that what once was a part of me has now found a world of its own here in New Jersey. The kitchen has all the regular bottles and boxes, tubes and cans, crates and cartons, but instead of their regular labels, the words have been subtly manipulated to say things like, "New Improved Puss," and, "Iodized Tears" I have this nesting instinct to provide for my full house of offspring, improvising desserts and nutritious alternatives from what I find in the pantry.

It's ultimately a hopeless task. I'm working against the clock, I'm eating very little solid matter myself, and practically no fiber or roughage. I keep myself on a strict regimen of water and smoothies. The way it looks right now, there's practically infinity room in the converted pool, but solid matter is a tougher question. The poolhouse is already full, I was certain that was the answer, but it filled up in my second dream-visit delivery. Like a disabled child that takes attention away from the others, my crap is getting all the good spots in the house, taking over bedrooms, forcing blood and scabs to share a room (a dangerous idea if you know how the two get along), filling the chests of photographs and antiques, staining the felt upholstery.

So I got these teal blue gloves at H&M that look like the kind of thing a Hitchcock character would kill in. They're knit cotton, so they're warm, and not at all tacky like the lycra ones you buy on the street. These gloves shall be my salvation. I have a lot of hopes and dreams riding on the efficacy of them. Whether I sleep in a union suit, a saucy little teddy, or flannel pajamas my mother bought, these gloves shall be with me. Some might ask why not just wear socks? Well, I've tried that, honestly, and I'm too good. I can peel a toenail through a shoe, if I have to, but not if I've got gloves on.

 

KANDY KORN is a kameleon. She kan be who you want her to be. Her karisma and kreativity have led her down a number of kareer paths. She kan blend with any scenery and kooperate with any group. She enjoys the kwiet pleasures of kanoodling as much as a krazy night of kristal.