This city is trying to kill me

Alternate title: How Doc Holliday is keeping me from quitting and moving home. Alternate alternate title: Fuck Bangkok.

So, I am writing this spiteful blog post from my bed, where I have been lying nonstop since Friday after work, except for two food runs and a quick trip to the hospital where they told me I have a throat infection.

I've had aches and a cough for the past day or so and my loathing for this city is growing with my fever.

But, I have made a significant dent in the new book I am reading, "They Call me Doc," a biography of Doc Holliday, who alongside Wyatt Earp and his brothers, fought the Cowboys at the O.K. Corral.

So when my throat got sore, and my temperature rose and I got all achey, my first thought was, "I have tuberculosis just like Doc!" followed by my second thought, "I have dust pneumonia!" It should become clear to you, the reader, with this insight to my thought process that I have pretty much been living in books for the past few weeks.

But reading these books is teaching me something. They are reminding me to tough it out. Don't let anything take me down. Nothing as measly as a polluted, superficial city 14-million strong can defeat Molly Mullen.

It's like the motto of the Last Man's Club, the men who signed an oath never to leave the panhandle of Oklahoma, no matter how bad the dust storms got. "Grab a root and growl." This was when they were eating mostly roots, beans and canned tumbleweed. Well, I too am grabbing a root and growling. If by root they mean chicken and rice and by growling they mean coughing.

Or as Doc Holliday supposedly said, "Die with your boots on. Die standing up. Die standing for something."

Well, I don't exactly stand for something at the moment. I'm not really standing at all (ahhh, I crack myself up). But these men and characters in these books have become my closest friends lately. And my other friend, Woody Guthrie has been playing on a loop with his "Dust Bowl Ballads," so I am taking their advice.

When I recover from this consumption, ok ok throat infection (sorry for the melodrama), I am heading back into work, I am going to continue to live my life here until my time is up. Because it can't defeat me. No matter how hard Bangkok tries, I ain't quitting.

Or as, the Last Man's Club would say, I am staying "until hell freezes over."

If anyone needs me, I will be in bed watching the commentaries on Jason Segel movies and listening to This American Life. Feel free to drop by. Room 104. It's unlocked.