AFTER MIDNIGHT I TALK TO MY T-SHIRT

AFTER MIDNIGHT
I TALK TO MY T-SHIRT
By Dr. Mel Waldman

The night is a beast. It eats my brain for an after-hour dessert. TV is a pacifier, dope for the lonely hearts, a late night fix for the living dead and me. But when the audio-visual dose doesn’t work, I turn the machine off and detoxify. On a toxic night, not even Fallon or Letterman can take away the blues; and computer heaven (or hell) is the wrong fix too.

I drown in an ocean of silence. But my death wish is weak, and just before the point of no return, some time after midnight; I talk to my T-shirt, smell its ancient perfumes, and enter Proustian heaven. Exotic, obscene, sweet-smelling and foul, esoteric, enigmatic, and ecstatic, and depressive and apocalyptic odors evoke my past and its inhabitants.

I speak to my people, alive or dead, and I’m not alone.