there is no recovery here

Life can suck sometimes. The suckage of life usually occurs in two doses. Small doses such as locking one’s keys in the car or larger doses, such as realizing you are (A) Charlie Sheen’s neighbour and (B) not a prostitute who enjoys crystal meth on your ‘down time’.  These larger doses present opportunities for the only legitimate uses of the phrase “fuck my life”, but then, your life has already been fucked, so even still the statement is out of place.

While such happenstances are difficult to recover from, the graceful have prevailed. Plus, comebacks are always good after a fall.

However, there are some things it is almost impossible to recover from. Case in point, the mullet I woke up to this morning. Such is the problem with finding one’s self rooming with a Black Bear named Sherman. And by rooming, I mean parking my current residence (my 2000 Hyundai) beside the place he ambles out of to get his honey in the morning. 

Not that any other Black Bear named Sherman would be moonlighting as a professional hair-care artist at First Choice, but mine does, making me vulnerable to such over-generalizations regarding all bears.  The last time I woke up to such a mullet in my bed it was on someone else’s head—a former Hell’s Angel’s biker who refused to answer to anything but ‘Ma-am’ as this was the name given to him by the friendly (and dare I say personable) individuals at the department of secret services once he decided to abandon what he only referred to as “that way of life” before shuddering. Unfortunately, this time, the mullet was soundly affixed to my own head.

“Damn it Sherman. I don’t ask you to do shit like this!”

Admittedly, this is not the kindest response one could offer in reaction to a free hair cut. And to be fair, if I had been in the mood for a mullet, this one was nothing to sneeze at. It certainly wouldn’t have gotten me laughed off www.ratemymullet.com, but maybe I wasn’t hugged enough as a child to appreciate the gift in Sherman’s gesture—hence my ingratitude toward the bear. 

Of course, he cried. He is very sensitive. Normally he conceals this insecurity under a deep foundation and snarky demeanour, but before his morning cup of coffee he responds in a pool of tears. Knowing that, of the long list of people I have pissed off in life, I don’t want the bear who knows where I sleep to be at the top, I apologized.  

“Gosh, I’m really sorry Sherman. I love what you’ve done to my hair,” I lied. I’m not generally considered to be a good liar, but since Sherman only speaks bear, he kind of bought it.

“Really?” he asked, needing further reassurance. Geese, if I knew an inter-special relationship was going to be this exhausting, I would have just paid rent in a human apartment. 

“Mmm-hmm,” I grimaced between clenched teeth. “This new look should do wonders for my unemployment.”

“I just thought you needed a boost,” he smiled, feeling vindicated.  “I was just about to add the blue hair dye to complete the look.”

“Perhaps it’s best not to mess with a good thing,” I said, all but having convinced myself that the mullet wasn’t so bad, as I looked at my own Deliverance-like reflection in the babbling brook that whisks by my current residence of Sherwood Forest—Lot 7. “I actually really like the highlights you added.”

“Those are dew-worms,” Sherman pointed out.

“Oh, well that’s gross.”

This all could have been avoided if I had paid closer attention to the last Did You Know segment on John Tesh’s radio show. Tesh is like a male Oprah in that you know you don’t want to fuck with him because he’ll blow a gasket. I am quickly learning that they are not unlike Sherman in this way.  Unfortunately, having been taken in completely by the easy FM music he presents, I was unable to multi-task and either watch the road, or retain such ‘useful’ information.

The information I chose not to retain was “make good decisions”. There was probably something about drinking too much coffee too, but coffee is my crack, so I was obviously going to ignore that.

In retrospect, my decision of the previous night was not “good” for the following reasons. Firstly, I was feeling really good about life and felt like celebrating with a wheel of brie cheese and a bottle of wine. I thought it would be fun to make a high-class meal for me and the bear, but since I barely cook to begin with (and definitely do not cook without a stove) that was as far as my planning went.

Sherman was less than impressed. “I am lactose intolerant,” he began. I knew this. I am greedy and wanted to eat all the food myself. I was strategic in getting something Sherman couldn’t share. I know that makes me an ass, but I did buy what I thought was a lovely bottle of wine that we both could enjoy. It had a baby duck on it, which I just assumed would mean it was animal-friendly. Sherman disagreed.

“Baby Duck wine is disgusting,” he sneered, as though I had just kicked his cub. Having just upgraded from wine-in-a-box myself, I was honestly unaware of the extensive elitism associated with wine and its connoisseurs. This made it different than the brie in my mind.

“Fine then. If you are going to be like that, I’ll just drink it all myself,” I pouted like a baby. This would be bad decision number two if you are keeping track.

I don’t drink normally. I mean this in two ways. I don’t normally drink, but also, when I do, I drink as fast as I can. I also do it through a twirly straw. “That looks like it’s going to be a really good decision,” Sherman laughed in that pretentious-mocking tone smart people (and large animals) tend to appropriately adopt with me.

“Fuck you,” was the extent of my clever response.  I then proceeded to hitch-hike to the closest karaoke bar. When I was rightly asked to leave (i.e. thrown out after puking on the stage), I texted Sherman the following:

                                HELP! I am sick. THERE IS NO RECOVERY HERE. Time stamped: 22:01.

“You fucking ate it before 10p.m. light-weight!” Sherman hollered when he came to walk me home. That was the last thing I remember before I woke up to the mullet. The truth is that there might be a chance of recovery here, but not in the foreseeable future.