Fever

There are people out there who just love having a fever. Most are probably workaholics who secretly want to lie in bed all day stoned on over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. I once knew a guy who never did any drugs. When he had a fever, he liked the vague sense of his head hovering over his body. He would float over his flushed forehead and try to lick the sweat, but his tongue would pass right through because he, the floating head, was just a hallucination. He told me it was like licking his own brain. That guy is dead now, of self-induced fever or embarrassment, I forget which.

If you are one of those fever-lovers, here you this: For out-of-body experiences, the fancy mushrooms you can buy on the black market are better than a fever. That said, they can be much, much worse if you don't have enough pot and candles or if you have too much pot and too many candles. The former causes you to dwell upon going to work in the morning. The latter causes you to internalize all of your crazy thoughts and then set the place on fire.

This guy, my friend, used to like his intense and irrational fever dreams: his brain cells' way of saying, "Why the fuck is it so hot in here? Fix it."

When I have a fever, I dream of dinner plate sized bedbugs moving very slowly towards me. I can see their legs and antennae in great detail, and I can't move at all. When feverish, I keep a hatchet under my pillow in case I ever get movement. Anyhow, the bedbug dream is better than the other fever dream, where a pack of mini-skirted teenage Ukranian girls stands around my bed pointing at me and insulting me in broken English. They howl high-pitched laughter, neither natural nor vulnerable, and they're secure in the knowledge that their burly, bearish fathers will snap my neck if I throw my hatchet at them.

Me, I'm not such a big fan of the fever.
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