Cream Scene Carnival

Not to be a dick, but this sucks.

we’re stuck in Grandma’s condo, an exclusive community that caters to the demented.

Held hostage by the holidays, here in No Man’s Land, we are losing our minds. We thought we were on Marco Island, in the Embarrassment of Florida. But the sign says “Palm Spring’s Home for the Advanced.”

Halfway through the trip, flipping though Gram’s albums, we glimpsed ourselves in a Polaroid from Timbuktu, taken tomorrow. To ascertain our time and place, we mailed the photo to ourselves. It returned as a faded postcard with a Portofino postmark.

Everyday is the same: we have cocktails and feed the cockatiels. We eat hard candies from Gram’s purse (and the pills that are stuck to the butterscotch. ) We play shuffleboard, Uno and the same Sinatra record.

On Christmas Eve, she shook things up and broke out Neil Diamond.

Christmas Day was a dent in the monotony. A break in reality. A malfunction in the time loop. We got the easy bake oven we wanted when we were 10. That model was recalled after it caused 700 fires, leading to 1218 deaths.

The rest is a blur. Grandma slipped us something. Or maybe it’s the day drinking.

These oldies know how to party.

They went all out for New Year’s Eve.

We awoke with a killer hangover, in a fit of formless melancholy. We dread our dripping faucets, slumlords and evil overseers. No need to fetch us at Chicago O’Hare Air Terminal. We won’t make our return flight.

We’ve grown accustomed to the retiree lifestyle, to this temperate climate, to the comfortable bubble of Grandma’s condo.

We live here now.