Disco and Perfume in a Stuffed Zucchini

My little brother sent me a recipe he found online called Stuffed Zucchini. You make yourself a thick meat sauce (sausage or ground beef, your choice). You take a zucchini and scoop out the innards. Take those innards and mix it into the sauce. Let it simmer for a bit then stuff the shells of the zucchini with your meat sauce. Cover the whole mess with a generous amount of cheese and place it in the oven on 325 for fifteen minutes.

I am inside that zucchini, hot and cooked. Moving, yet going nowhere.

Why? I ask myself.

Why am I back in this hell? This alcohol fueled parade of well-worn high heels and stale cologne.

My legs want to run. Instead they only move in place to the endless Guantanamo bay pop-night-playlist. Useless things. My body does its favorite dance: half-paralyzed-giraffe-swatting-flies-with-shoulder-blades.

Someone puts a human being into my arms.She isn’t very heavy. She looks at me, startled. I look at her, startled. She smells like a child that got bored following her mother around the essential oils department of a JCPennys. I put the perfume-basted girl down. She disappears into the meat.

I continue to move, wondering why my left ear is a little clogged. My arms decide to move along with my legs. Something cold splashes my elbow. I turn and a large man is regaining control of his beer. He growls at me. I give up. I pry my way through the hot meat and find the door.

Outside, with the fiends, I sit and smoke. I look up at the price of a drink, no change. I look at my phone. Six in the damn morning? I look at The Gates. They are guarded by an obese, bearded man staring into a paper cup of coffee allowing a mass of flesh to inundate the den of fiends on their way to the meat pocket. His sad look convinces me.

I get my jacket from check in. I leave through the flood gate. After a few oomfs and muttered apologies, I step in a puddle and make my way out on to the street.

Before I begin my self-remonstrating walk home I stop to put on my gloves next to the looming cathedral. A stain glass window faces me. Jesus is there, watching. His eyes are dark as a dream-less sleep. He is smiling.

I walk home. It is cold.