remake/remodel

trinity of dumb fear

Three anxieties, one of the body, one of the infinite, and one combining the two:

1. The idea of a tracheotomy terrifies me, that bloodsoaked union of asphyxiation and the scalpel. Somebody once told me the story of an acquaintance, then employed at the office of a kind old family practitioner, who spent an evening at the apartment of a nurse, the two of them drinking and snorting speed through the broken shaft of a ballpoint pen. At some point well into the night there was a pounding on the door; they opened it to a frantic neighbor, who explained that an old man on the floor was having a diabetic seizure, slowly choking to death. The nurse grabbed the broken pen and a nearby razor and strode down the hall to perform a perfect tracheotomy on the man, saving his life.
2. The elevators at my office open onto a drab landing with a door to the left and a door to the right, a security camera positioned over either door. I want to pull up a stepladder and point the two cameras at each other, but for some reason, this fills me with an inexplicable animal dread; I picture the guard at his desk, the closed-circuit television flickering between two images of black HAL-like lenses, each looking at each other looking at each other looking at each other.
3. Drinking a tall glass of water while at the same time pissing.