It’s five minutes before my noon class on Tuesday, October 11^th, 2011, my 37^th birthday. It’s an otherwise ordinary day: I’m laying out markers, practicing grammatical example sentences, eyeing up trouble students. I pour a glass of water and reconfigure my boxer shorts in an effort to counteract their invasive nature. I lean over, feigning interest in my notes while my hands are in my pockets unrolling them against my thigh.

At one minute to noon, as I am engaging in small talk to get the students laughing but stopping short of breeching my lesson plan, I get the call.

The call comes every October 11^th. The message is exactly the same every year, though the voice sounds a year older each time. I pick up my phone.

“Hello,” I say.

“Happy birthday, you fat cunt!” the voice has the same Cockney, but is a bit more grizzled than on October 11^th, 2010.

“Thanks, buddy.” The students are reading my expressions and whispering amongst themselves.

“Love you, mate,” the voice says.

“Love you too.”

Click. Class begins.

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The alarm goes off at 7 a.m. and I pray for death. I let out a manly groan (sob) as I unfold myself out of bed and peer out the window. It’s a blustery day; windy and wet. A darkness that hints at winter lingers in the air. It’s a perfect Saturday morning to spend in bed, reading and eating cereal shaped like Dracula. Instead, I look forward to seven hours of classes.

After a six-minute shower filled with tears and violent epithets that are better left unpublished, I boil a Moka pot of espresso with the strength, taste, properties and effects of jet fuel. I sip at it and slip on my shoes. Adding insult to injury, the cat is sleeping in my still-warm ass groove. Nothing evokes more envy than a sleeping cat.

This is my penance, for today I am a student.

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“Posaďte se,” she says. Sit down.

She’s all of five feet tall with dark eyes. She points to the chair and I stare at it as though I am eyeing up a stocky Jedi nemesis. Noticing my gaze mixed of awe and consternation, she pats the seat with her fingers and smiles.

I sit down and she pulls the smock over me, tucks in a towel and starts pulling at my hair in scientific inquiry oozing with imagined sexuality. “Co to bude?” She asks. What’ll it be?

“Skratit normální, mašine v zádech,” I say. Normal trim, machine in the back – in painfully bastardized Czech. I show her that I want the clippers on the sides and back, not the top. This has happened once.

“A vousy také?” And the beard too?

I begin to sweat, don’t let her do it, dammit, I swear to myself. I take a deep breath. My beard is full and thick and I don’t want her to trim away my one and only lumberjack quality.

“Ne, dekuju,” I say, no thanks, but it’s clear that I haven’t convinced either of us.

With an invisible click of her thumb she snaps on the clippers and presses them into the back of my neck, rendering me a melting block of Camembert. My eyes glaze over and where once there was a metro station barber shop, there is now a temple atop the Himalayas.

Damn, it has begun again.

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I wake up in the mood for a leisurely Saturday morning. I boil the coffee, open my kindle and get into reclining mode. It’s just cool enough outside that lying under covers isn’t uncomfortable and my pajamas have become a fourth layer of skin I have termed the Comfortodermis.

I spend a blissful hour drifting between sleep and the grizzly tale of serial murder that I’m currently reading. It is times such as these that my lack of interest in spawning is solidified, as I am allowed the pleasures of sleeping, lounging, reading and writing. These joys are heightened by scratching, yawning and leaving the seat up after peeing.

My somnolent state is not fully recognized, however, as I do share my flat with another soul.

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“Let me see your arm,” I say to the boy. We are sitting in the retake test period for students who failed their language exams last spring.

The boy frowns, rolls his eyes and shows me his forearm, which is tattooed by, it seems, the entire English dictionary. “Everyone does it,” he says in an aggravated tone. His subtext is clear: F*ck off.

And then something happens, the origins of which are still a mystery to me. I say, “Well, if everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”

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It begins at about 8 o’clock on Thursday evening. The coughing, that is. It creeps up the back of my throat, into my temples and ears. By midnight I am a wreck. I am drooling, sniffling and coughing. These attractive qualities are compounded by the even more endearing wheezing, groaning and hacking.

Friday, I call off work and curl into a fetal position on my bed. I try to read but my eyes are watering in counterpoint. Moreover, breathing through my mouth makes me sound like I’m on the business end of an obscene phone call.

I top this all off with the manly plea – “I want my mommy!”

The cat leaves the room in disgust.

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“Listening, part two.” My voice resonates through my home office. Retroflex, subsonic liquid sounds in my mouth grate at my nerves. “You will hear about a woman who is a therpapisht at an orphanage for kit-cats.” I stop. “F-

And so, for the third time this evening, my neighbors hear the loudest English expletive since the time a car backfired while the B Monster was sleeping in my lap.

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I start my Sunday morning with Wikipedia’s recent deaths page and strong coffee. It’s not my macabre sense of curiosity; I’ve just found that it’s a good place to start if you want to read about random things on Wikipedia. Furthermore, it is a good companion to the informational access overload at Wikipedia, and my own post-coffee ADHD.

This Sunday’s Recent Deaths page leads me to Napoleon. Through an external link I end up on a page stating that Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo due to a bad case of hemorrhoids.

I set my coffee down. This is big.

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So I’m walking around IP Pavlova, enjoying the sights and sounds that grace this section of Prague. Beautiful women are interspersed with hammered winos and the occasional excitement of a bum fight. Children beg cigarettes from a woman whose dress is so short that it is unclear whether her barely hidden goodies are available for a small sum of Koruna. The kids then step into the local herna – casino – for reasons better left unknown.

And then, standing on a corner like an oasis of tooth-rotting, diabetic love I see a new shop – The Candy Store.

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So early Friday afternoon Lee walks into my flat and presents me with a bottle of Becherovka, four beers and a giant smile.

“Thank you?” I say. I have found that unwarranted gifts mean I am either about to get bad news or an undesirable job. We have a shot and I pour us a beer.  I sense trouble.

Trouble is confirmed when he pours us two more shots and says, “Now, get in the bedroom and get into your bathrobe.” He removes a video camera from his bag and smiles, “Bitch.”

“Doheth!”

I go into my bedroom and slip into my robe, all the while shouting staple excuses meant for escape and avoidance. I feel like a prisoner getting ready for a big date with his cellmate, Bubba.

As I cinch up the robe, I reflect that this wouldn’t be happening if I hadn’t written that damn novel.

Lee has sworn that making video trailers for novels is a highly effective marketing technique and I have promised violent revenge if his theory proves wrong. During the shoot, I am effusive and consistent with these remarks. And as our alcohol intake continues throughout, my sworn punishments become more violent and detailed. Some of them involve loved ones and pets he might own in the future. I think at one point I threaten his computer.

The thing is, I hate being in photographs.

And if being in photos makes me uncomfortable; being in videos is like watching pornography with my parents.

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