I always believed the best medicines hurt.  I used to pour the brown bottle of fizz on my open wounds, despite being told not to apply hydrogen peroxide directly.  If it hurt, it meant it was working.  When I have a sore throat, I drink grapefruit juice.  If it stings, it’s healing something. Of course intellectually, I know none of this is true, but it feels true.

My life, as evidenced by my recent entries, has been on auto-pilot with memories of sickness and blood donation and thoughts of death by ‘rhea, wondering if my beneficiary forms have been updated.  I realized today that I was in the same clothes for the past three days.  I hadn’t left this apartment, or this room.  I’ve been writing and re-writing.  I hadn’t seen my friends or brushed my teeth until tonight. Shut up.

“Do you know, baby, that it would be okay if it were just us?  Go lick my blister.  Go on, right there.  Yeah, that’s my good moo shoo.”  This is still my life.  The same story.  Another Linus licking story.  I can’t help it; it’s what I’m living, with the Linus curled into a comma, ears pinned back, going to town on my blisters, healing them with his magical canine saliva.  It hurts, but it feels strangely like it’s working. When he finished licking my salty wounds, he climbed onto my stomach and looked up at me.  “It really would be okay, you know, if it ended with just us Linus.”  It won’t, but it’s nice to know that I’d still be okay if it did.

I’ve just come from dinner at Compass.  I ordered the crispy skate wing with peanut sauce over something that tasted like a citrus Asian slaw, but wasn’t.  I consumed it with two glasses of Gewurtzaminer, alone with my laptop, until my friend Kim joined me for my second glass. She opted for green tea.  It had been too long, three weeks, since we’d last seen one another.  I needed to see her, to be near her, to swap stories and hear her laugh.  She is one of the most beautiful women I know.  Sometimes you don’t know how much you’ve really missed someone until you see them.  This wasn’t one of those times.  I felt her absense while she was away on vacation.  I kind of ached for her.  Maybe it was good for me, made me appreciate her more.  The kind of medicine that hurts.

Afterwards, I arrived home to the notorious D.O.G., and I realized, I am happy with my life.  I’m perfectly happy, living with my dog, writing full-time, coming home to those ears and that FACE.  I NEED to grab that face and hold it.  Then I instruct, “On the brown!  Gimmie the belly.”  “On the brown” means Linus needs to move toward the edge of the bed, onto the brown towel.  “Gimmie the belly” gets him to quickly roll over, belly exposed for some rubbing.  He has a bald spot on his chest I like to kiss.  I know this sounds absurd, but it makes me happy.  And even if there weren’t a man across time or town waiting for me to meet him at his apartment, so he’ll have someone to come home to, I’d still be happy.  I feel fulfilled, as if someone just irrigated my wounds and kissed me where it hurt.