You Give Me Fever

Published April 22, 2008

By Ryan Headley

I hate to bum one, because when they’re in your pocket it’s more fun. But if I must I do it vicariously, through a friend, one who I know I’ll smoke down again. If I had to bum a cigarette from anyone in any time: Rod Sterling. Because when I’m watching the Twilight Zone, I know there is something better than this college, I know I’m not alone. Because his voice is chrome and pearling, yet blackened, harkening hollow metallic.

And I could imagine for a conversation, I could feel the human crackle of a record player needle that menstruates from the respiratory chords of another being. And I can imagine his insight would fit right in my mind, his gray scale suit, and pushed over peachy hair commits me to believe his every hoot. If we were only running into each other, I could see that he gets it, smoke it through my teeth to my head. If we both spoke French, “fume a ma tete”. The Twilight Jones, from black and white pictures. Because I bet he too spent midnight hours reading cups of joe, and Edgar Allen Prose. His mask of agency is homely and believable, his continuity is achieved and amiable, dark phantom fathomable. And he resembles my father not Lead Belly, my birth father without the mustache and all the policy.

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