Recalibrated

It's happening again. In Adelaide it was a cockroach called Bernard. This time I've started having conversations with a grasshopper that lives in my kitchen. Her name is Lois. Usually I'd talk to my self, but I've been starting to piss me off lately, so I'm giving myself the silent treatment. The stupid thing is I don't even know what I'm mad at me for. Still, I'm determined to make myself stew until I figure it out. I don't mind the silence, I just miss the sex.

Lois started it. Polite 'hello's on the way to the laundry. Some chit-chat about the weather.
'So... hot today, isn't it.'
"Yes, Lois. It's always hot."
'You don't have to bite my head off! That's praying mantises!''
"Why do we always fight?" The relationship developed quickly - like a pre-pubescent full of chicken hormones. There was a time when I thought there might be something between us. Now we're 'just good friends'. She's off every night with that fucking gecko from Accounts. Smarmy little sticky-footed prick - I can hear him laughing at me. He's just using her as an appetizer.

I tried feeding her for a while, but I found I have no idea what grasshoppers eat. I still haven't worked it out exactly, but I know it's not fillet miniogn - there's $23 I'll never see again. She is fond of Hokkien noodles - perhaps the kung fu connection is stronger than I thought. She doesn't like that I'm smoking again. She says I'm ruining my health. I guess that shit is more important when you're lifespan can be anticipated on one page of a calendar.

Smoking is a strange thing. It's said that no matter how long you quit for, you never stop wanting one. For me the triggers were always simple - drinking and watching people smoke on telly. Pour me a beer and pass the sparkie. It's like coffee and newspapers, peanut-butter and bacon, milkshakes and spraypaint - born to be together. However, lately I've been finding I've been having an odd association. It's all because of that disgusting mouth-cancer warning sticker. Now, every time I see someone with a horrible disfiguring mouth-cancer, I'm literally salivating for a cigarette. It's all Pavlovian and shit - and not in a good meringue-y way. It's interesting how quickly the mind can adapt.

It's 10 o'clock and the excitement from Thursday late-night shopping is yet to simmer down. Dogs are fighting wildly in the distance and the headlights of the night-patrol vehicle cut a swathe through the blackness out the back verandah. I've turned the fan off - the constantly moving air has started to give me a headache. And for the first time in ages there is silence. Dogs barking, people yelling, distant doof - it's all like white noise now. I've re-calibrated my senses. This is silence. For future reference; stinky is the new scentless, I engage with the world through my seeing-eye dog, and I've replaced my entire sense of touch with a bowl of packet-made soup.

Fuck it. I've gotta turn that fan back on. I'm sweating like a junkie in a sauna. But apart from that, everything up here is like normal life. The alienness has evaporated. My life here is fun, comfortable and normal. Now I can spend my days talking to my only friend the grasshopper, until one day I wake up to find her dead on the kitchen bench being eaten by ants... what? what? why are you looking at me?