How Not to Pour a Cup of Tea
This is an extract from The Life of Henry Fuckit:
Of course, it is worse when I am acutely anxious or fraught with existentialist depression like the other day when I was at home in my filthy little chamber at the Olympia Residentia and it was late morning and I thought I'd make myself a nice pot of rooibos tea to steady and comfort myself because I was feeling very shaky for some obscure reason, finding life rather unbearable and feeling rather overwhelmed by the pain and humiliation all around me wherever I looked. So there I was trying to pour myself a cup of tea. As I say, I was at a very low ebb and floundering in a slough of insecurity and self-loathing. My intention was simple and mundane, merely wanting to pour a cup of tea, but as I lifted the teapot I was filled with embarrassment and misery at the spectacle of my hand upon the handle, it looked so weak and ugly. It was bony and the knuckles were white like gristle and it was a weak hand and the skin was red and blotchy and ever so ugly. The hand quivered and shook and the tea came out in a feeble, wavering stream that cut me to the quick. Right to the very core I was cut, bleeding and raw and weeping inside. It was a direct attack on my integrity, my very persona, this pitiful stream. It was like an old drunk pissing, uncertain and erratic. This wasn't rooibos tea, this was piss darkened with blood, and MY piss would be like this soon, a tincture of blood and piss in stinking fish water. Miserably I regretted trying to pour the tea. I shouldn't have poured the tea; I should never have tried to pour the tea. What right did I have to try and hold a teapot steady and aim a steaming spout at a gaping c#nt of a cup? Instead I should have crawled under a blanket and crouched there under a blanket in the dark, shaking and trembling inside and wanting to whimper. Why, I asked myself, why am I like this, how has it come to pass that I am like this? This is what I asked myself there in the room, in my hour of dejection there in that anteroom waiting to be summoned into some frigid abyss. Why am I like this, I kept asking myself, why am I like this? I don't know why I'm like this. I couldn't drink this pernicious decoction, this foetid infusion. I wouldn't drink it. No ways. The more I thought about it the more agitated I became. I blamed myself for my own despicable weakness, for I should never have tried to pour it in the first place, knowing what I was like, not being able to do anything right, not even the simplest of tasks. I was a shivering cur, better off with brains kicked in and guts spilled in the gutter. Oh, it was a very dark hour for me, I can tell you. Such debilitating wretchedness. That's why I'm so worried and am forever casting about, this way and that, looking for some kind of explanation, some definitive diagnosis that would help me to overcome what appears to be a relentlessly progressive malady.
If you enjoy this kind of piffle, you can read all of Henry’s monologue here.
To view my longer pieces, you can find me on Smashwords here.
