Helios, Let Me Be

This morning I was reminded how cruel sunlight can be when uninvited rays of yellow pierced through my eyelids, ripping me from blissful unconsciousness and back into the world around me.

I surmised my surroundings, pulling in details of the foreign room around me. Overturned orange bottles, emptied of the local brew they played host to not so long ago, dotted a small wooden dresser near the bed. Five by seven glossy prints were haphazardly posted about the walls, testifying to any newcomers to the room that this person was, in fact, a Dionysian party animal with a variety of friends, each comrade clearly capable of freezing a hazy, fun-lovin' smile on their face for posterity.

Oh, why must one day inevitably lead to the next. Why is life a a malicious march of time to be endured? I felt so much disappointment toward the rhythmic march, but not enough that I might actually bother to extricate myself from the offending situation. Such is the limbo of my mind that prevents me from engaging in or rejecting the world about me.

I put aside the questions to address a more pressing query.

Who had I gone home with?

Turning over slowly in bed, my bones aching with discomfort, I tugged at the sheets spread over the softly breathing creature next to me. As I watched him, memories of last night came back to me within the space of a blink.

A ferret. I had been wooed and taken home by an affluent, college-age ferret whose fur coat glowed with an alluring blend of cinnamon and lily white hues.

Perhaps it had been a hasty decision - after all, as I recalled, Frankie had been the first ferret I had met on my bar crawl last night. He had been a fast mover. Within ten minutes I had gone from the object of his gaze over a pair of dark sunglasses to the bouncing blonde on his knee, giggling at his accurate, if not slightly obtuse, observations on the elements of Chekhovian tragicomedy that had worked their way into the third season of "King of Queens."

But when you live fast and intend to die young, you don't have time to get the biography of each person you use to achieve the temporary distraction of an explosive orgasm.

As I gazed upon Frankie, his left paw gently nuzzling his pink nose as his thoughts cascaded through a dream world consisting, I imagine, of peanut butter, bananas and his next conquest, I slowly slipped out from his velvety sheets. I glared at the rays of sun, angry that they were so insistent I be forced to recall in the truth of daylight what I did the night before.

You might best me every day, you burning ball of gas, but unlike you I have the more promising fate. In a limited number of years I can escape this dull, indifferent world, but you in your celestial throne must be forced to watch it, even give life to its confused inhabitants whether you like it or not for centuries to come.

Another day, another ferret.