When I turned it off the silence wrapped around me like a great foam tortilla.
A faint ringing in my left ear.
The toilet dripped.
My eco-friendly, 15 watt even though they look like 60 watt with their many lumens light bulbs buzzed—no hummed—no buzzed and hummed, louder and louder, pummeling into me the very absence of sound with their constant, distant, macabre, deafening tone.
A brief rush of water. An isolated jingle of a distant dog’s collar.
And then stillness.
Many have been here; I do not walk an unpaved road. And yet—it feels so alien, this silence, this emptiness in the air. It feels so cold. And I’ll miss him. House. And her, Mariska. And them, Carla, Fabio, Ariane and Hosea. Leah and Radhika; Jamie and Jeff. But not Stefan. Who could miss Stefan? What an asshole.
I haven’t figured out where I’ll put my tv during its six-week banishment. I saved the box from when I impulsively bought it the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympics, so I was thinking of creating a little Mantua under my bed and keeping it there. It’s a severe punishment, yes, but warranted. I don’t have my grades yet from this last semester, but I have a strong intuition that they may suck beyond all normal suckage seeing as the only memory I have of last semester was when it looked like the black team was totally screwed because there were only three—all of them women—left, but then they held out for another week and then Michelle totally busted ass and creamed them all, even that vexatious bitch Vicky. It is a good memory, but it’s missing…something.
So for six weeks my TV is off-limits. It will come up for probation on February 19. I’m pretty excited, actually. In six weeks, I figure I’ll have lost 25 pounds, be teaching a fitness class at my local Y, volunteering 20 hours a week at the animal shelter, delivering Meals on Wheels, and be reading ahead. I won’t even notice it’s gone, what with all the achieving and all.
