I have eaten the kebab so fast that the man who has gone into the bathroom when I had a plate full of food does a double take when he comes out to see an empty plate and a fat man lounging in a satisfied loaf. It has been an act worthy of a gastronomical ninja. Fries, kebab and cherry Coke have disappeared into my throat at a speed most often seen seconds before someone gives a Heimlich maneuver and then states a time of death.

I open my notebook and run a finger down the list. I take out a pencil.

✔ Kebab (beef)

✔ Fries

✔ Sugar-packed drink

And then we walk out the door with a small nearby pub in our sights, for it is Pizza Day.

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“Of course I can give up bread for thirty days, are you kidding?”

This is something I am apt to say nanoseconds before realizing three things.

First, I don’t have the slightest bit of interest in giving up bread. Second, I don’t have the slightest ability to give up bread, and third, I should not give up bread, but I should give up speaking after four beers.

But, what the hell, right? There’s something about being in your late thirties and still writing verbal checks that my Gluteus maximus has no interest in honoring that makes a guy want to walk head first into a shark tank covered in chum. Other highlights in this area include: “Sure, I’ll go skydiving with you,” or “Sure, I’d love a cat,” and “Of course I’ll go out with your sister, I love mustaches, I have one myself.”

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Nobody will look at me, but I am used to it. I’m in a shop in the Czech Republic, after all. After a few minutes of making my ‘genial man in need’ face – raised eyebrows, soft eye contact, slight backwards nod, smile so as to appear harmless – a man finally notices me. This works out well for him since it must be far more rewarding to notice me, ignore me and then walk away.

I wait for a few more minutes, make the face, but draw no attention. Everyone seems to have gone on break at the same moment. I step out of the shop and back into the mall with its global demographic of teens, old people, screeching children, goths and that guy carrying a radio and wearing suspenders. Judge them though I may, once entering a mall you become part of that demographic. It’s like the Borg; I have been assimilated.

I am at the mall because today I have a task. I have to exchange a sweater.

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About ten years ago, I made a deal with my body.

Every winter I am allowed to plunge into the depths of the fat ass lazy bastard. I drink too much beer, eat frozen pizzas, stow peanut butter sandwiches in my desk. I am allowed, nay encouraged, to lay on the couch eating potato chips dipped in cream cheese and watch reruns of shows that haven’t been on real television since my weight started with a one. I can eat chocolate ice cream sprinkled with crushed Oreo cookies, and fry eggs and bacon in last night’s grease.

I scoff at the suggestion of fruit, walk as little as possible and actually say, “cholesterol, shmolesterol!”

The payoff is that for the rest of the year, I have to act like a responsible adult and be healthy. So when that sun comes out of its hiding spot and spring springs, I have to change my tune. I have to jog, walk, eat carrots and elect chicken over, say, cheese filled sausages wrapped in bacon. I have to say no to the cheeseburger, eat gravel/muesli for breakfast and walk a mile every morning.

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My home is a solace from noise. There are no screaming children, no loud music and no reason to explain grammar rules to anyone. It’s perfect.

So when a neighbor renovates or reconstructs, I take it as a personal attack on my quietude, sort of like when General Zod and his creepy pale companions apprehended Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

Unfortunately, living in a flat in the Czech Republic means that the infiltrating sounds of flat reconstruction are a fact of life. For some reason, Czech people need to redo something in their flats every year and it always means extensive drilling, hammering, men in overalls and a tango on the borderline between sanity and insanity.

Or maybe it’s just me.

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I am paranoid this week; there are many contributing factors.

I am reading J.G Ballard’s stories and though he wrote them in the 1960s and 1970s, he was disturbingly prescient. His stories warned that social networking was going to lead to massive dehumanization and the violent downfall of man, a thing which many writers say these days. However, he wrote about it in 1964. As a result, Facebook has taken on a whole new meaning as I look for my potential murderer in the People You May Know section.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Hell recently. Maybe because it’s been snraining for four straight days (snow + rain = snrain), or because the upstairs flat is getting drilled and hammered into by fourteen morons at 8 a.m. On top of this I have been looking into my summer holiday destination and therefore found myself on Hell’s Wikipedia page. Looking into my final destination, as it were.

But frankly, if you grew up Catholic then Hell probably crosses your mind on occasion. Take a debilitating sense of guilt and parlay it with the ability to obsess on pain and suffering, and you get a lifelong fascination with eternal damnation.

No matter what your religious background – if any – there is some present concept of Hell. In Naraka (Buddhist Hell) a hedgehog lives in the sinner’s skull and eats his brain. In Jahannam (Islamic Hell) shameless women forever burn in fire for exposing their hair to strangers.

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Today I am scrubbing the floor with lemon peels. I am doing this because the internet told me to, and we all listen to the internet.

For the same reason, my bathtub is filled with dirty water and a dryer sheet is sitting in a pot filled with water and the crusted remains of last night’s dinner.

I am now a domestic MoFo.

Why?

Because I don’t live with my mommy anymore.

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It all started when I was somehow tricked into visiting Former Girlfriend’s family in West Bohemia last year. I remember answering ‘yeah sure’ to the suggestion as one might a rectal exam at the hands of a new cellmate. Visiting a new partner’s family for the first time is stressful enough, let alone a family who speaks a language you are not close to fluent in. And my anxiety was based solely on the promise of 48 hours of the Czech language and FG’s family.

Nevertheless, at 9 a.m. on Friday morning, when I should have been in a warm bed, I was on a cramped bus in a snowstorm.

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I am out with Contestant #3, and I am losing. She has a Doctor Who obsession that should be discussed with a medical professional. As the check comes at my eager insistence she reaches for her purse.

“No, no, I’ve got it,” I say, and I mean it. She frowns. I pay and she puts the purse under her seat. Well, it’s the least I can do for a 2.78 hour seminar on everything Doctor Who. I can write fan fiction now. As we collect our bags and she continues the Doctor Who-athon, I look for a blunt weapon of some sort with which to end my life.

On our way to the metro, as people wearing very long, striped scarves pass us, she asks why I paid.

“I was happy to do it,” I say. She puts up a brief argument and I realize that I would kill for an actual Tardis. I’ve been mentally enjoying the glass of bourbon that I’ll pour upon my arrival home. But now, in true heroic form, I wonder how my suffering might aid humanity in some way.

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