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Life Before Kant


by Meg Tuite


The nurse checked my vitals and squawked, NORMAL, in a screech too loud for a sterile room that held nobody but me. She scribbled into her chart. I had barfed up the oysters and beer scarfed down at the bar earlier and had proceeded to faint again in the ER waiting room.

 

I should have squatted at home with the TV or People Magazine. Instead, I dragged myself out to drown in another online genius of a date, who mumbled, “There was no life before Kant.”  Another word similar to Kant came to mind. This dumb ass hated humans, TV, animals, sleep and the entire 21st century.

 

I doused back three Buds in the time it took him to detest a variety of subjects including the naivety of quantum physics and pregnant women. I woke up from my stupor and ordered this swain, now eyeing my breasts, and myself two shots of Jack Daniels along with a plate of sliders. The least I could do was get a free meal and a good buzz off this screwdriver, who was now twisting home his theories on facebook fanaticism and the sterilization committee needed to halt the propagation of the species.

 

I brightened up as this wretch's speech declined, sinking into his suspenders, the drunker he got. He was an overeducated, dumb-of-wheat-beat that parted his sparse hair on the side like a five-year-old. He bristled on about his mother and living the life of a recluse when nausea overcame me. While he battered over mathematics, I started to do my own arithmetic. How long had I been dating these online freaks?

 

By the time I figured out that my knockers were knocking together like two, sodden sailors and I'd been schtooping these guys for over three months I was on my way to the bathroom as bile moved up my throat toward the sky. Oh God, I prayed for the first time since last year. Not again?

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