A Tuesday Morning
It was a Tuesday morning, which was leagues worse than a Monday morning; at least Monday was a fresh start, and sometimes the week's troublesome outcomes weren't yet elucidated. On Tuesday morning, Lionel Galloway would wake up at precisely six-thirty in the morning with a headache. No, it was not the product of a hangover, but rather the long (read: a week or so) absence of alcohol consumption worthy of inducing a hangover. The man pondered non-sequitirs in a pre-lucid daze while he laid alone in a bed where the sheets were once white back in the years where he never sweated like a pig (a terrible cliché, that). Galloway pondered the notion—twisted it underneath his thumb and forefinger like the product of impolite, public ear-digging—of staying home like the pitiful man that he was, but no, Hattrick would surely raise Cain, Abel, Mary, and all those sorts if Galloway slacked off again.
He was a disgrace, Hattrick told Galloway. A degenerate.
The thing was, well, Hattrick was right. Curse it all, Galloway could not always play the victim, though he earnestly tried and grasped at the opportunity whenever he gained the chance. Hattrick was always right, the damn brute. A man that drinks in front of his students and hides the evidence—nay, the former was still a damning offense (egregious, as Hattrick would proclaim)—and has students assist him in a cover-up was a shoddy, unreliable authority figure indeed.
God, the stink—his clothes, his skin, his breath—the odor of alcohol permeated his pores to the point where his hidden vice couldn't even be deemed secret. It was embarrassing, really, how openly he let others watch him fall apart. Some snickered, some mumbled and stared pityingly with wet eyes. But that was unprofessional, no matter how much he could impress with literary analogies.
"Licentious," Hattrick barked (as he typically did), though Galloway wasn't sure if the man knew the word's definition. Yes, it did indeed carry a negative connotation, and the appropriateness of the word toward Galloway's character could be well-argued in terms of rule-obedience, but Hattrick had a habit of using florid diction absently—utilizing words that sounded harsh simply due to their consonants instead of their actual meanings. Incontinent indeed meant nearly the same as licentious, but when Hattrick called Galloway this in the middle of one of his English classes, half of the students almost laughed themselves incontinent and Algernon Papadopoulos crossed his pudgy legs and shouted that incontinence was a serious issue not to be taken lightly.
Licentious. Incontinent. Perhaps Galloway was being too ungenerous. After all, he was fortunate, considerably so.
Galloway blinked and grumbled, just knowing that the moment he rolled out of bed he would be accosted by cold.
In the morning, the particular day being no discriminate, the man dressed with little haste, each button taking an achingly long time to find its corresponding hole. And when Galloway stumbled into the adjacent, rather small bathroom, he blinked back pain as he turned the lights on.
He leaned his elbows on the edge of the sink and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. There was a burning in his eyes, a throbbing that the man told to stop; after all, he had nothing to weep about, except for perhaps the fact that his bloodstream was the cleanest it's been in eleven years.
Stories. Surely, many people witnessed their lives as snapshots. Galloway saw blurbs, like newspaper headlines. He thought about a day when he talked to the man that resides on the school property, a man destitute in property but not of character. The homeless man made an off-color comment about Deirdre's rump and Galloway blanched, stumbled away, and never returned to that somewhat vitriolic chap in an unfit scene of lost decorum.
Deirdre Philips. He saw the students' fawning eyes, regardless of gender or preferences. Some imagined her nude—a worthy dream, not that Galloway was particularly licentious or anything; some wrote poems; some painted portraits of stunning resemblance to their art teacher, but said that no, umm, it's just a model or something. If they were particularly abrasive, they would say it was the Greek goddess Aphrodite, or those of lesser intellect would say it was the Greek goddess Afrotittie. Galloway, being a man with a low but nevertheless present hope for humanity, simply remarked—when this unfortunate misspelling (perhaps intentional in regards to certain miserly students) came about—that Afrotittie was an excellent pun that delved into the Freudian exploitation of unconscious sexual desires being personified as a deity. After all, it was better than reading a student's essay about Cyrus McCormick's innovative invention: the mechanical raper, which did the job of one-hundred men—and taking it at face value.
Galloway probably should've shaved.
Before walking out of his front door, the man put his jacket on; the material was thick enough to cushion the impact of spit wads.
Galloway probably should've eaten, but he had a toothache; also, he never ate with fervor, often attributing his erratic eating schedule to dulled tastebuds and a weak stomach. And he was only thirty-four.
It was a New England day. An autumn day. A chill ran from the base of his spine up to the nape of his neck as Galloway ambled outside. The sheen of rain coated the streets, washing the abysmal grays into shades of charcoal blacks, phantom smears.
And Galloway sighed and insisted that today might be a good day, even without raising a bottle.
After all, yes, he was fortunate, considerably so; after all, Crabblesnitch hadn't fired Galloway yet. Though, before the school year ended, Galloway swore he would end up in Happy Volts.