the snot of damocles
2004-10-04

Today riding home on the subway I had the privilege to sit underneath a very large man, which is uncomfortable in and of itself, but this particular large man had a short-cropped beard from which a drop of snot was hanging by a thread.

It was like the sword of Damocles, only more vomit-inducing. I watched his chin like a hawk to see which way the drop was swinging. How did that snot get there, anyway? There wasn't a tell-tale trail of drool, so it must have somehow ejected itself from his nose right onto his chin. (Or maybe it was another substance? But how? You'd think he'd wipe his mouth.) Every time the train jolted I cringed. I thought about telling the guy "Hey, there's something nasty in your beard," but something stopped me. Masochism? Pure fear of a man who would go around with body fluids on his face?

I was spared confrontation as a seat across the aisle opened up and I ran towards it with utter relief. The couple who were sitting next to me looked over at me and grinned, I tapped my chin and the guy nodded back. Disgust brings people together, yo.

My parents came up this weekend to see my grandmother, and by extension me, and they brought a whole trash bag full of books. Most of them were actually from my mom's Genuine Poet Friend and I thought they would be very esoteric, and not include "Girl With a Pearl Earring" for Christ's sake. Maybe he gave her the middlebrow books because he's keeping the good stuff for himself?

In any case, I'm now struggling through Margaret Drabble's "The Red Queen," which is such pain and involves academics, as all these books have to do. Half the book is based off of a Korean princess' memoirs, which you would think would be exciting stuff as her husband was mad and ran around killing people while he wasn't sleeping with his sister. Eventually he was starved to death in a box. Somehow it all comes off as very boring, though. I know there's a fad for retelling the stories of Tragic Royalty through fake diaries or memoirs but this woman actually wrote her life story about four times, so there's no reason for someone to make a psychlobabbly reimagining 200 years later.

I haven't really gotten into the 20th century part, where the academic is all possessed by the story of the Korean princess, but it does include the sentence (in reference to our later-day heroine's appearance): "It is not a lonely breast. It is a voluptuous breast." So I assume it's meant to be a satire. It's impossible that it's a serious sentence, right? Apparently later on it gets to the Academics in Looooove part, which should be fun, but I'm not sure if I can make it to where those breasts get put to good use.

If you'd like to bother, here's the Guardian digested read so you won't have to read the whole thing.