Mortimer (From 2005)

I.


Mom Can Cook.
It's just past the corner of Sierra and Soledad. That's the place where this was conceived.
As it happened, I ordered a green thai curry.
You had pineapple fried rice. It was somewhere in the middle of November, which makes it a few weeks after I started moving my things out. The winter weather came late last year. In fact, the rain just started last month--towards the beginning of March. Regardless, it was a good night for spicy food.
Extra spicy, I ordered.
And when it came, I gave it a full compliment of condiment from the carousel of peppers: crushed, dried, pickled, and otherwise.
We didn't exchange many words after that point; I was locked into conversation with my dinner. And my dinner, she was loud and spiteful and vicious, like passive-aggressive glances and silences--when she, my dinner, had a chance to speak of course.
It took no more than ten minutes. Mouthful after mouthful, I shoveled rice doused in extra spicy thai curry into my mouth. Tears from the corners of my eyes ran tracks down to my nose which forked its own runny excrement down and along the viscous saliva that was already drooling from my mouth.
So engaging was my curry, that I only took a few moments otherwise to notice such classics as "Sea of Love," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and "Speak Softly Love" transcribed for electric piano, saxophone, and drum machine as they looped over the restaurant P.A.. Or to notice I had in fact ordered tofu curry, but was served chicken in its place. Or to notice, approaching my last bite, I was out of water.
So when I did take my final bite of extra spicy green thai curry and reached for my glass, I could do nothing but suck on ice while frantically waving arms in the air to catch the attention of our waiter.
And when he came, he laughed.
"More water?"
Maybe even you had to laugh.


Completely bloated from guzzling glasses, I ate my complimentary mint and left money for the bill.
We left our separate ways.




II.


The whole drive back home, I struggled to keep the spice on my tongue under control by drawing long, exaggerated breaths through clenched teeth. And because of the thick, post-skittle-esque spit that was flowing forth from my salival glands, the sound produced was something like a resonating, hollow slurping. I eventually progressed into a meditative trance, focused only on the patterns in the rhythm of my breath--like running through Le Mans routines in the last moments before birthing.
Slurrrrrrp. Hoo hoo, hah, hah.
Slurrrrrrp. Hoo hoo, hah, hah.


After hastily parking, I pulled some powerwalking maneuver across the lawn and flung open the front door. With three giant strides, I was in the kitchen and in the refrigerator.
Damn, no milk. No bread. No groceries.
With the same superhero alacrity and labor-ridden urgency that brought me through the door, I found myself naked in the shower, screaming into the downpour of water. Letting it just well in my mouth and fall in percussive streams to the shower floor. 
The water ignited the spicy residue on my lips. I could feel the outline of the where the residue ended. I must be a messy eater. The oil extended up where my nose meets my face. Using that as a rough radius, I could easily trace a sloppy circle around my mouth. A smeared, trashy lipstick job on a hopeless transvestite. I should take more care when eating to do so properly. Especially around company.


After 20 minutes of flushing my mouth with the additive ridden tap water of Santa Clarita Valley, at last: relief. 
Adrenaline and endorphins still coursed through my body. I closed the lid to the toilet and sat letting my fleeting euphoria subside.
In my enlightened hindsight, I realized that it was clearly wrong to taunt the Thai Curry. I was over-ambitious, surely, in thinking that I was accustomed to spicy foods. The back of my throat ached like a junior high bulimic redhead. My cheeks, my lips--cratered with sores. 
I dried off and popped open a cold beer.
Deliverance. This beer was like swigging on a bottle of calamine lotion to my insatiable palate.  Cold, fermented, torrential relief.  I swished it all around through the fold between my gums and my lips. I gargled. I propelled it back and forth through my teeth until it became a frothy mess. Then, like birthday cake frosting, I spread it with my tongue around the outside of my lips.


I finally got into bed by around 3a.m.. And it was right around the time I got into bed that I first noticed a little bump that had formed on the inside of my lip. 'Bump' might be somewhat of a misnomer. At this point, it was more like a spongy mass with a firm, dowel-like center that pointed off to one side. I could redirect the spine of the mass in different directions, but it always came to rest pointing up and to the left, almost resting against the inside of my lip.
I was severely tempted to get up and check out my new growth under the harsh flourescents of the bathroom, but that urge was overruled by the need to sleep. I assured myself that it would be there in the morning.
That night I got up twice: once to get a drink of  water, and the other to piss.




III.


Interesting.
It looks like a reddish, slender penis with a white spongy tip. It's probably no more than 3/4 of a centimeter long. At the base, it tapers out into a small mound. The mound looks a deep rouge, and somewhat swollen.
I simply cannot fight the overwhelming urge to nibble on the tip of my little phallus. I lean it over between my incisors with my tongue and just gnaw at it: side-to-side, or crushing. It's so very interesting. There's no feeling in it at all. Just this puffy, spongy mass at the top of this little shaft of flesh.
I wonder if I should take this to the doctor.
I think it will probably go away on its own.


Throughout lunch, the growth continually gets caught between the gnashing of my teeth, or twisted between the cracks. I'm having enchiladas and spanish rice at 'Los Tacos del Torritos,' which is around the corner from where I'm staying. It's disturbing, at least it has me disturbed, how easily I mistake the spongy part of the growth for rice.
I've determined by now, that the spongy part of this thing is impenetrable--at least as far as my teeth are concerned. When I bite down on it, my teeth almost spring back. And it wont sever, wont tear. It's not like I wasn't trying.


I'm brushing my teeth and checking out the growth in the mirror. It looks agitated, angry, and most undeniably bigger.
It hasn't been four hours since I've been awake, and already this thing is growing.
The mound at the bottom is particularly tender, and I can feel blood throbbing as it courses to the shaft.

I need to stop thinking about it. I need to stop playing with it and maybe it will go away.
I tell myself these things over and over again, but no good. It's still there. It's long enough now to reach the seam where my lips meet. I roll it around in my mouth and pass it from tooth to tooth.
It's almost soothing by this point; it's comforting in my mouth. It takes my mind off of more immediate happenings.
I'm caught in rough traffic on my way to drop of some letters to the post office. Modern Rock radio is drilling holes into my skull, and suddenly there I am with this thing between my teeth. I'm chewing and wondering if it's just going to blow up in my mouth when I let my guard down. If it's going to explode in a shower of pus and blood and spray like a severed artery. Or if it's going to just gush with no end, filling up my mouth until it overflows over my lower lip, and down the back of my throat.
I'm on hold with customer support for my computer. It's elevator music for thirty minutes before sending me back to the initial prompt again. "Press '1' if you are calling in regards to a repair..." I'm rubbing this thing against the backs of my hands, my arms, my upper arms. I rub it along my thighs, my calves. It feels so different all over different parts of my body. After the saliva rubs off the spongy part, it takes on this silky texture. It's this soft, invincible, white growth. I just can't get my head around it.


By the time I'm finished with dinner, it's even larger. It's long enough now to peek over my lower lip when I smile, when I talk. To the uninformed, it would appear I have some extraneous, super-numerator tooth growing from the inside of my lip.
And it's wider now. And thicker. It's got girth like a tooth now too. From the mound, the shaft is probably as wide around as the head of a match, and features at least two centimeters of length. The shaft ends in a larger, spongy head the size of an Advil. Along the pinkish flesh color of the entire thing runs dark red veins, and it bobs and throbs ever so slightly.


In bed tonight, I dream of my mother -- only she's decked out in a full suit of latex and leather. The room is covered in checkered linoleum from the floors up to the walls up to the ceilings. I'm mounting an office chair, and i'm dry humping the backrest. Some blonde, middle-aged hooker is on the bed with her legs spread. She's masturbating while licking her lips and watching me straddling the furniture. Suddenly, it's my room upstairs in my parents' house. And this dream, i've had before. The smell of the sex is both pungent and distinct.
When I wake, the smell is still fresh in my nostrils. My mouth is covered in some viscous fluid and the growth feels somewhat engorged and limp.




IV.


My jaw aches due to constant gum-chewing. This thing smells like stale, fermented sex. The taste complements the odor. 
Recently, I just stay inside. I've skipped work for two days now and I haven't even begun to think about class.
It's intensely occupying. It would appear that the more I play with it, the bigger it gets. The obvious solution here is to leave it alone and let it settle down. This solution is fundamentally flawed, being that it's essentially impossible to even stop thinking about the growth for even a moment.
I decided I would start keeping a log of its activity:


November 10, 2005:
After an extremely spicy order of green thai curry from Mom Can Cook, I had a considerable amount of oral discomfort. I flushed my mouth under the shower for approximately 20 minutes before giving it a beer gargle. Later that evening, I noticed the beginnings of what appeared to be a sore, or cyst on my front inner lip towards the left side.


November 11, 2005:
I awoke this morning to find the growth had almost doubled in size, taking on an almost phallic shape. Beginning from a mound of flesh, a shaft protrudes about 2 centimeters up and out, and ends in a spongy white mass. I can pivot the shaft around, and I can feel it connected deeper into my lip. The spongy mass has no feeling in it whatsoever.


November 12, 2005:
Being as I am far too self-conscious to leave the house, due to my condition, I have taken to experimenting on Mortimer. Also, being as I haven't had any social interaction in a few days, I've taken to calling the 'growth' Mortimer. Mortimer occasionally will secrete some fluid from some unseen pores on his surface, or maybe on his spongy tip. The discharge is clear, but thicker than saliva. It carries an unpleasant odor.


November 13, 2005:
This is the fourth day since Mortimer arrived. Around 11:00 today, I was able to actually remove a piece of the spongy mass that makes up his tip. By 8:00 in the evening, the spongy mass had not only grown back, but was notably larger than it was previously. I've decided that I will stop trying to remove pieces of Mortimer. I don't need him any bigger than he already is.


I have to admit, I'm somewhat excited about Mortimer. It's not that I have an extensive knowledge of human biology, or any medical knowledge whatsoever, but i'm certain this thing is not ordinary. The doctors' offices are closed for the weekend, but I know if I were to bring it in, the doctors would be utterly baffled. They would be on the phone to their colleagues across the nation seeking advice. All across the world they run extensive laboratory experiments with expensive, government funded equipment on tissue samples from my growth. Within a week's time, I would be touring abroad with said doctor and he would be giving lectures on his new amazing, anomalous specimen, speaking to sold out auditoriums nightly.
And it's not that I want to inhibit the progress of science, or that the sudden change in my life would be unwelcome. In fact, it's kind of exciting to think of all the people I meet, and all the places I can visit. It's not that I'm not grateful for the fortune that has bestowed itself upon my lip. It's just that suddenly I have a new appendage on my body and its function is quite unclear. It feels strange. It feels alien. 
I haven't felt this way about myself since puberty.
Already, I'm in the bathroom with the door locked behind me.

Hello, New Blog.

It never occurred that I could post all my daily writings on a blog instead of a folder full of .rtf files whose titles I'll never remember.  Instead of opening document after document, I can scroll through an archive.  And  maybe someone will reassure me how awful it all is.