Instant Pink Eye

Apparently karma works it way back to me quickly. I'm sitting here, squinting from the glaring light rays of my monitor because I have conjunctivitis. Pink eye, if you prefer, which I do. It sounds more gay to me, which makes me laugh, which makes me feel a little better. I've also put on The Cure's "Mr. Pink Eyes" to add another layer to the shenanigans.

That's why I love iTunes - fill it with everything you love, and the always-fitting-to-the-moment soundtrack constantly playing in my head can be accessed with the click of a mouse. This is also why, by extension, I love my iPod. Nothing soothes the annoyance of weaving your way through a crowded subway station than doing so to the bubblegum beat of "Bizarre Love Triangle."

This is starting to sound suspiciously like an Apple advert. What the hell was I talking about?

Oh yes. Pink eye. Karma. I never used to get pink eye. Then a few years ago the Ex got it, I caught it, and now I come down with a bout of it every few months or so. I wake up with my eyes feeling swollen and excessively crusty. Upon inspection, I find Bjork staring back at me from the bathroom mirror. I suppose it's tame compared to most of the diseases a partner could potentially pass on to you, so in a way I've gotten off lucky. But while it's an oddly pleasing thought, I can't really pin this one on the Ex - I'm sure it has more to do with sloppy care of my contact lenses than anything else. I discovered on Saturday morning that in my drunken stupor the night before, I had put both the left and right lenses in the right eye compartment of my storage case.

As I reeled from the horror of a wrench being tossed into my seamless and orderly morning routine, I found myself faced with a minor dilemma: toss both lenses immediately, or try to reasonably sumrise which lens was which and put them in anyway? Seeing as I always take my left lens out first, I thought it fairly likely that the lens resting in the bottom of the case was the left one. So I put them in based on this. But then they didn't feel right, so I switched them. That didn't feel exactly right either, but if I stood in front of the sink debating this any longer I would be late for work. So I said fuck it, and left them where they were.

Typically, I was late for work anway. And now here I sit in my glasses, prescribed anitbioitic eyedrops resting at my side, trying not to touch anything, since pink eye is brutally contagious. As soon as I'm done this post I'm going to draw the kettle and pour boiling water over my keyboard to kill the bacteria. It's the only way to be sure.

Is this what I get for my debaucherous behaviour in the past week or so? Sleep with married men - voila! Instantly struck by painful eye bacteria and confined to quarantine (in theory, at least. I shouldn't even be going to work tomorrow because this is so contagious but I need the hours. I promise to use the hand sanitizer every ten minutes). Not that I particularly want to leave the house in this state anyway. Walking home from the doctor today I got more than a few strange looks. Didn't realize until I got home and stepped into the mirror-walled elevator that I looked like I had just smoked about an ounce of weed.

I suspect I'm not so highly evolved, however, for my karma to turn around so quickly. Which would mean I'm paying for something else I've done. Probably not even something from this lifetime, but some previous incarnation. Perhaps I caught someone's eye on purpose, just to see if I could, and caused them to distractedly crash their bicycle into a cotton candy vendor, where they emerged from the rubble covered in the vendor's crude obsenities and sticky pink floss.

When I consider how much I've done wrong in this life, I think I prefer to keep deluding myself that karma can behave in a speedy, nearly instantaneous fashion. The alternative is way too depressing.

Now, should I cue up John Lennon? Or Alicia Keys? Hmmm...