November 29, 2010; Travels

I was sitting on my little raised bed (an ottoman) and I was strangely hypnotized by Skeeter's game, World of Warcraft. I couldn't hear anything as he was wearing his headset but his computer screen was a lightshow of explosions and little cartoon people fighting and killing and flying about and riding on what looked like fucking rhinos.

Later, I was in the La-Z-Boy with him as he tapped away on his iPad; doing his Facebook thing and Twitter thing and all sorts of things in a strange world in the air. Finally I had to say something. "You spend a lot of time elsewhere."

"Yes," he said, pretty much ignoring me and tapping away.

"Why?"

"'Cause."

"WHY!" I barked.

He gave me that impatient noise he gives Boo-Boo when he's reading and Boo wants to talk job, but he added the impatient face and the hysterically impatient sigh and finally stopped tapping away. "What the fuck do you want to know?"

"Why?"

"Because it helps me to escape this wretched world and even deal with it."

"Isn't that what travel is for?"

"Yes, and I did that before I was forced to go to a clinic three times a week, and besides, from what I read and hear, even if I could travel I'm not sure I'd want to."

"Why?"

"Stories about these new security measures in airports. One guy was patted down so hard his appliance came away and he had to board the fucking plane in a pair of piss-wet pants. He's come out publically and I admire him so much for that. And there's a guy in the network I'm part of online who had another agent who insisted he take off his appliance and he did and the agent actually barfed. The guy told this in a funny way but both stories just make me enraged!"

"Have you noticed you're like that a lot these days?"

"That's where WoW—"

"—World of Warcraft—"

"—helps. I can be in another place and when the anger of the real world gets to me, I can kill shit."

"Yee-ikes...kill shit."

"Well, that's how I feel sometimes, little one. But I do miss travel. I miss that sweet, sunny April day in front of the statue of Peter Pan in London, watching people exploring the bronze with their hands..."

And his voice petered off and he stared out into his darkness. "Snap out of it!" I bellowed. "You sound like fucking Mimi in La Bohème with her fucking spring flowers except you ain't going to fucking die of consumption in Act III. You aren't in fucking Haiti dying of cholera. You're not even your fucking blind girlfriend with diabetes. Get a grip!"

He stared at me then said, "You're right."

"When are you going to learn I am always right."

"And I will travel again someday," he said.

"Yes."

"And leave your little white butt in a kennel and be away from your mean fucking temperament for a bit."

"WHAT?!?! KENNEL?!?!"

He gave me a peck on the head and said, "I am impressed by your knowledge of opera."

"Just don't start with the fucking Wagner. And what's this with the kennel. No fucking kennel. I want to stay with Cate."

"Oh, my little idiot, everyone loves you, no one wants you."

"But you need me," I said.

"Oh sure I do," he said with more than a whiff of sarcasm.