she was trying to poison me.
"here, have another one," said summer, thrusting the tiny tin of speed at me.
actually, it wasn't speed. it was these damn little penguin mints that are super-injected with caffeine. i can barely handle a cup of coffee without going into sweaty, jittery fits of panic, much less an overdose of cute little caffeinated mints, but here we were.
we were at jory's warehouse, getting ready to watch the theremin documentary with a group of friends. summer and i were running around trying to clean things up. the mints tasted so good and even though i knew they were caffeinated, i kept taking them as they were proffered to me. i popped another one.
"youknowthesethingsaren'treallyhalfbad," i spewed, barely able to see straight. "heyweshouldgettheprojectorfrommyhousesosthatwecanwatchsomeoftheeducationalfilmstoo!"
"yeah yeah yeah!" agreed summer. summer is the queen of sugar and caffeine. she downs pixie sticks like it was powdered water, coca cola is her breakfast of champions and if there really was a willy wonka's chocolate factory, she would break into it and live underneath one of the candied trees, coming out every now and then to go to the clubs.
for reasons that i still haven't quite been able to figure out, my mom has always been very proud of the fact that she used to drink a pot of coffee when she was pregnant with me.
"all these doctors don't know what they're talking about," i would hear her saying to her friends, "when i was pregnant with lorelei, i'd drink a pot of coffee a day and she's not brain damaged yet!" of course it might be able to explain why my brain always seems to be going a little bit faster than the speed limit and why i'm always distracted by doing too many things at once. i can't tell for sure, but i also believe that this is why i can't handle my caffeine. it just does wrong things to me.
"heyheyheylet'sgogetinthecargetinthecargetinthecar!!!"
summer and i jumped into the car and it was a mr. toad's wild ride for the ten blocks it took to get to my house. i couldn't contain myself behind the constraints of the steering wheel and the seatbelt.
"here, have another one," said summer, popping open the tin again. "it says here that three mints are equal to one can of coke!"
"jesuschristsummer, i'vehadalmosthalfofthegoddamnedcandiesinthattin!! whatthehellareyoudoingtomybrain?????"
"but they're so good!"
"yeahyeahyou'reright," i said, as i grabbed another mint and dropped it on my tongue. my eyes were trying to catapult out of my head and i could feel little beads of sweat forming on my forehead. i parked in front of my house, ejected myself from the car, grabbed the projector from the living room and jumped back into the car. it must've taken me three years in fruit fly time, but it felt like 1.86 seconds. i drove the rocketship back to jory's warehouse and set everything up. people were arriving and i could feel my body starting to crash.
"SUMMER!!!" i yelled. i couldn't crash now! there were people here! i needed more mints! more mints!!!!" within seconds, she was by my side, penguins tin open and a grin on her face. i ate another mint and could feel it absorbing into my bloodstream. now i was ready to interact.
i fidgeted throughout the entire movie, i had seen it before and i'll probably see it again. i kept turning around, looking at who was there, adjusting pillows, moving to different chairs, trying my best to not tell everyone about how everything looked so far away. it seemed like a lifetime until the movie was over. now everyone would be able to talk!!!!!
but then i couldn't move. i had barely enough energy to wave goodbye. i crawled into some blankets and hallucinated that people were drawing on me with sharpies. they were mapping my body out and taking measurements, mumbling numbers at each other and writing things down. i couldn't move.
i closed my eyes and vowed never to take the caffeine mints again.
<3.12.00>
all words (c) filmfatale industries 2000