The Morning After

“Oh. My. God!” I shriek into the darkness. “I am staring at a fucking wolf!”

Sherman rolls over on our air-mattress, not even opening an eye. “Go back to sleep Scott. It’s on the other side of the window.”

This is how I begin every day now—freaking the fuck out because I realize that I have moved to the Arctic Circle with my polar bear of a lover and our cat, Ms. Richard Hatch. Perhaps Sherman is right to ignore my lunacy; but, on the other hand, he could show a little more empathy. After all, I left a wonderful life of unemployment several dozen degrees lower than the 60^th parallel where Sherman himself waded on me paw and foot in exchange for a life of freezing my precious little fingers off as I slave away as a teacher in the land that ice takes a vacation to get away from.

This is the thought that runs through my mind when I kick my lover, who has returned to snoring, as the temperature continues to move toward the dark-side of fifty below zero. “Ouch!” Sherman hollers.

“Now you know how I feel,” I cry like a banshee or one of those fame-whores from The Jersey Shore if someone fails to recognize them. I’m not usually this belligerent, but I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept replaying the events from the day before when I had had recess duty and thirty nine children decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at me. I know it was thirty nine children because there are only forty children in my school and the last one was busy peeing in the middle of the playground. I chose to ignore this event as drawing attention to it would lead to the one thing worse than thirty nine children accosting me with snow-bullets—thirty nine kids urinating in public.

Well, the second worst. Apparently the children threw frozen dog shit at one of the teachers last year. So the snowballs are kind of like a minor victory. There is a lot of available dog shit in the community Sherman chose as our winter retreat.

It isn’t that the children throw snowballs at me that bothers me. Who doesn’t like a good snowball fight? Who doesn’t like to pee in public, for that matter? It would save a lot of time driving through traffic looking for restrooms. It was more the fact that two of my colleagues just stood there and watched, like it was the premiere UFC match on pay-per-view. Not that they had what Charlie Sheen would label as ‘winning’ personalities to begin with, but I thought they should have at least said something. I am pretty sure I would have, and I don’t even make the effort to bathe before I go to work. Sometimes I even wear the same clothes two days in a row. I tried pushing it to three once, but I didn’t have the guts—since my appendix was removed a year ago.

Besides, there really is a wolf at our window.

“It’s just staring at me—licking its lips,” I breathe with apprehension into Sherman’s ear. Then I try to kick Ms. Richard Hatch toward the window. She is what doctors would describe as obese-warranting-liposuction and should at least give me a chance to get away.

“A wolf isn’t going to break into a house with a polar bear in it,” Sherman yawns. “They are smarter than humans."

 I would normally bitch Sherman out for a dig like this, but yesterday I almost got eaten by a crow. Ergo, I don’t want to be left to my own devices in this land that enjoys eighteen hours of darkness a day.

That's a true story too. Crows are bigger in the Arctic. Way bigger. They are about four times the size as the ones in places that only have snow for one season and they are about ten times as hungry. I know this crow was threatening to eat me, or at least take a bite out of my ever-expanding mid-section, because there was nothing else alive in the Tundra—just me, the bird and his desire to eat me. Not exactly the ménage-trois I am looking for. I much prefer a date with my two best friends, cake and pie, which is probably why the crow had such high hopes for the two of us.

“It was screaming all night,” I moan.

“No, that was Ms. Richard,” Sherman says. “She doesn’t like the Arctic.”

“There’s a surprise,” I blurt out, Ms. Richard only likes things that are as hot as hell. They keep her body fat in a liquid state, allowing her to find her feet. It’s genetic. The wolves were howling all night too though. They never shut up. It almost makes me long for the days when all I had to deal with were a couple of pesky blue jays in the morning. Oh, how things look so much more appealing from an ocean away.

“You better get to school,” Sherman says, finally opening his eyes. “What are you teaching the hope of tomorrow on this fine day?”

“Oh, we have a big day planned,” I say, rolling my eyes. “First I’m teaching them how to do detention and then we are going to practice pissing in a urinal, because those are two experiences I never plan on enduring again.”

“What about gym class?” Sherman asks. “These kids need to get in shape.”

By kids, I assume he means me. He is just too much of a gentleman to ever say it directly. Fortunately, I am not. “I don’t do gym. I’m going to teach them how to make slingshots though. If they need to attack something I know a crow and a wolf I wouldn’t mind driving out of this village. I might be small and I might be kind of dumb, but when I come to the Arctic I expect to be respected.”

“No, you just want another bonfire in the Tundra with a couple of foxes and some Northern Lights action.”

“That might be true, but when we are out there I can’t take my eyes off of you,” I coo. That’s when Sherman does what he does best. He ambles out of bed, scares away the wolves and makes my breakfast.