Friday, December 29, 2006
before noon (Dentistry, Oil Changes, Work)
Wake up, bm, shower, shave, dress, brush the teeth, filling falls out, head to work, make phone calls, talk, chat, look up and invoice, leave work, chatting with the receptionists at the office, refill temporary filling, oil change, home, smoke, change, pack up the back pack, smoke again, grab bike, pick-up car, back to work. It's not even noon, yet.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Caught
As the instrument did stretch
And the sun did bless
And the harp did play its tune
So the fingers could grasp
This hapless mass
Of the boy Above his tomb
And the sun did bless
And the harp did play its tune
So the fingers could grasp
This hapless mass
Of the boy Above his tomb
A Blast From the Past
The ringing is so loud, so piercing that before the blood shoots up like an uncapped fountain pen, passing your shin, above your knee, before the singeing; you only think about the sound. Right now, the pain is in your head, and not metaphorically either. The waving lights, the violent wa wa sound filling up the cave of fear above your shoulders, this is what is commonly referred to as reality. Now, fright is what you know. You recognize it easily by the trademark sickening feeling and an inescapable cold horror. You plug your ears. The blood, now spilling everywhere, making your white shoe a blackish-red—collating into a pool like watery pudding—is seeping into the crumb and fur covered short hair carpet. The metal thumb, pulsing in between the curvy parts of the fourth and fifth metatarsal is a burning ember.
The high-pitch ringing mutes Richard’s yelling. His strained eyes, full of panic, stare back at you and through you in disbelief. There’s no relief when the painful crescendo subsides enough to focus on his molasses-like actions. His outstretched finger; you put what you were holding down on the table. The metal with the pearl-inlay gently rocks itself to sleep on the hardwood dinette wood. He wants to know what you’ve done. You think quickly, excuses fail. Trembling lips above your ten-year-old teeth begin to move and a lie slips past the thick layer of Doritos’ nacho cheese flavored film covering your ten-year-young enamel. Of course you say it was an accident.
Richard’s mom, the former PI, is gone. She left hours ago, and by now is on her third round of legs up with the man from the Polaroid—The guy with the mullet, the mustache, and the horse-cock. Richard laughed at the photo before he made you put it back in her nightstand. From where you stand now, laughter is just an echo from the back room an eternity away. Richard, looking faint and wobbly, is about ready to pop as the weight of reality crushes down on him. Us looking through his mom’s shit seemed like a pretty great idea at the time.
Family Ties makes for a shoddy pacifier while you sit on Richard’s couch stricken, yet strangely calm. Richard finds out, 911, due to it’s trial phase, isn’t available in the current area. Your area. The front door is open and you can hear the heaving coming from outside. Yours and Alex P. Keaton’s voices are the only sounds filling the empty house. You sit with the phone in your hand the cord stealing away into a crevasse behind the big TV . You try not to sit on the side of the couch where the cat pissed, but the throbbing makes cat piss seem like cat piss compared to the pain your in. You call the operator and you calmly explain the situation. There is blood everywhere now and you’re not feeling like explaining. You hang up. Now you formulate the exact wording and dial. “Mom…” Straight forward works well enough. You hang up the phone. She’s racing from across town. White Pinto. Silver gas cap. The ambulance is racing from the other side of town. Who will win? Richard is back and wants desperately to tie up any loose ends so when the questions start everyone's on the same page.
The white Pinto is first. You say a joke to fix things, to make light of a bad situation. Mom, who’s calmed oddly by your odd calmness and Alex not P. Keaton, the one who took you on runs, are glad your spirits are up, but find the timing tolerably distasteful. The ambulance arrives. Paramedics clear the way and start with their questioning. All the while the scissors slice through your jeans and bloodied white ProWings. Richard is crying. He’s got his portion of the story down. This portion conveniently leaves out how minutes before the big bang, before your current universe changed course; you with the .38 derringer and he with the 12 gauge were cops and robbers throughout the house catching each other square between the eyes point blank, or in the back of the head, tumbling through the mildewed piles of laundry. Of course this was after you’d had removed the hollow-points and mistakenly replaced them with the regular .38s.
This portion of the story also refrains from mentioning your insistence in having some fun. This is also not the time to mention Richard’s mother’s whereabouts or the photos or the mullet, the mustache, or whatever else having to do with other people’s private matters. This version adheres strictly to the facts. Your arm dropped. You were told not to. You persisted. Richard tried to warn you. You were uncharacteristically disobedient and Richard’s mother had to care for a friend who was not a Polaroid model.
You think about the gum you’ve been chewing for hours as your mother with that solemn look, the one you’ve seen before, climbs into the bench next to the paramedic who is assuring her you will survive, you decide there’s still flavor, it’s best keep it around. You can still hear the sound of the ringing slightly in your ears as the sirens are switched on and the ambulance starts to roll away.
You can barely remember the smiling face of the receptionist as they wheel you on the gurney into the emergency room. Fuzzier still is the talk of something called Morphine. Heaviness. You fade. The pain and terror are more manageable. You wake up some time later. The surgeons, they’re discussing a shoelace. It’s in your foot; sticking out, like a mouse tail dangling from the guilty lips of a satisfied cat. Blood mixes with a brownish sanitizer. They tug on it. You kick violently and you scream bloody fucking murder. Ten is a creative time vocally. Your mom isn’t there and though you were asleep people are now holding you down and speaking in controlled tones. There’s talk of more morphine. Your lids get heavier. You fade away as the Greatest American Hero, recoiling from a pedi-revolt, says it must have wrapped up with the spin exiting the chamber and removing it from the bottom is the most prudent means of its excavation.
You wake up. A nurse is telling you she’s going to give you a shot. You ask if it’s going to hurt. Your mom gently pats your head. It’s dark and the room is different. You wake up in a chair and you’re having a hard time moving and people are trying to work you into a position. You pass the receptionist and she’s smiling and giving caring eyes and she’s whispering to another girl, a brunette. You feel groggy and strong and embarrassed. The future stories and explanations will make short of those feelings.
You howl as the wheelchair bumps the retracting doors on your way out of the hospital. You miss a few weeks of school and people come over occasionally. Your mom tells Richard’s mom it’s ok and not to worry and you’ll be ok and boys will be boys over the phone and no she won’t sue. You don’t see Richard again for months and you never see his house again.
You spend hours crying and screaming in pain as you try to dip your unwrapped foot in the steaming bathtub with Epson salt. Alex and your mom insist it’s the best thing for you and it will get easier with time. It does. But, not before the gauze tears old scabs anew.
Back at school every fifteen crutch-hobbled steps an uncontrollable spasm jerks your leg straight, slamming receded blood into your damp wound, making you drop in agony to the linoleum floors, filling the school hallways with screams and curses. Soon your classmates begin to count the hobbles and the torrential outcries less and less. Soon you don’t need the crutches all day. The ball of pain in between the fourth and fifth metatarsal is measurably decreasing. A fact your follow-up doctor finds surprising. He tells you how lucky you are. You force yourself to run with Miss Ritterscamp’s PE class.
The high-pitch ringing mutes Richard’s yelling. His strained eyes, full of panic, stare back at you and through you in disbelief. There’s no relief when the painful crescendo subsides enough to focus on his molasses-like actions. His outstretched finger; you put what you were holding down on the table. The metal with the pearl-inlay gently rocks itself to sleep on the hardwood dinette wood. He wants to know what you’ve done. You think quickly, excuses fail. Trembling lips above your ten-year-old teeth begin to move and a lie slips past the thick layer of Doritos’ nacho cheese flavored film covering your ten-year-young enamel. Of course you say it was an accident.
Richard’s mom, the former PI, is gone. She left hours ago, and by now is on her third round of legs up with the man from the Polaroid—The guy with the mullet, the mustache, and the horse-cock. Richard laughed at the photo before he made you put it back in her nightstand. From where you stand now, laughter is just an echo from the back room an eternity away. Richard, looking faint and wobbly, is about ready to pop as the weight of reality crushes down on him. Us looking through his mom’s shit seemed like a pretty great idea at the time.
Family Ties makes for a shoddy pacifier while you sit on Richard’s couch stricken, yet strangely calm. Richard finds out, 911, due to it’s trial phase, isn’t available in the current area. Your area. The front door is open and you can hear the heaving coming from outside. Yours and Alex P. Keaton’s voices are the only sounds filling the empty house. You sit with the phone in your hand the cord stealing away into a crevasse behind the big TV . You try not to sit on the side of the couch where the cat pissed, but the throbbing makes cat piss seem like cat piss compared to the pain your in. You call the operator and you calmly explain the situation. There is blood everywhere now and you’re not feeling like explaining. You hang up. Now you formulate the exact wording and dial. “Mom…” Straight forward works well enough. You hang up the phone. She’s racing from across town. White Pinto. Silver gas cap. The ambulance is racing from the other side of town. Who will win? Richard is back and wants desperately to tie up any loose ends so when the questions start everyone's on the same page.
The white Pinto is first. You say a joke to fix things, to make light of a bad situation. Mom, who’s calmed oddly by your odd calmness and Alex not P. Keaton, the one who took you on runs, are glad your spirits are up, but find the timing tolerably distasteful. The ambulance arrives. Paramedics clear the way and start with their questioning. All the while the scissors slice through your jeans and bloodied white ProWings. Richard is crying. He’s got his portion of the story down. This portion conveniently leaves out how minutes before the big bang, before your current universe changed course; you with the .38 derringer and he with the 12 gauge were cops and robbers throughout the house catching each other square between the eyes point blank, or in the back of the head, tumbling through the mildewed piles of laundry. Of course this was after you’d had removed the hollow-points and mistakenly replaced them with the regular .38s.
This portion of the story also refrains from mentioning your insistence in having some fun. This is also not the time to mention Richard’s mother’s whereabouts or the photos or the mullet, the mustache, or whatever else having to do with other people’s private matters. This version adheres strictly to the facts. Your arm dropped. You were told not to. You persisted. Richard tried to warn you. You were uncharacteristically disobedient and Richard’s mother had to care for a friend who was not a Polaroid model.
You think about the gum you’ve been chewing for hours as your mother with that solemn look, the one you’ve seen before, climbs into the bench next to the paramedic who is assuring her you will survive, you decide there’s still flavor, it’s best keep it around. You can still hear the sound of the ringing slightly in your ears as the sirens are switched on and the ambulance starts to roll away.
You can barely remember the smiling face of the receptionist as they wheel you on the gurney into the emergency room. Fuzzier still is the talk of something called Morphine. Heaviness. You fade. The pain and terror are more manageable. You wake up some time later. The surgeons, they’re discussing a shoelace. It’s in your foot; sticking out, like a mouse tail dangling from the guilty lips of a satisfied cat. Blood mixes with a brownish sanitizer. They tug on it. You kick violently and you scream bloody fucking murder. Ten is a creative time vocally. Your mom isn’t there and though you were asleep people are now holding you down and speaking in controlled tones. There’s talk of more morphine. Your lids get heavier. You fade away as the Greatest American Hero, recoiling from a pedi-revolt, says it must have wrapped up with the spin exiting the chamber and removing it from the bottom is the most prudent means of its excavation.
You wake up. A nurse is telling you she’s going to give you a shot. You ask if it’s going to hurt. Your mom gently pats your head. It’s dark and the room is different. You wake up in a chair and you’re having a hard time moving and people are trying to work you into a position. You pass the receptionist and she’s smiling and giving caring eyes and she’s whispering to another girl, a brunette. You feel groggy and strong and embarrassed. The future stories and explanations will make short of those feelings.
You howl as the wheelchair bumps the retracting doors on your way out of the hospital. You miss a few weeks of school and people come over occasionally. Your mom tells Richard’s mom it’s ok and not to worry and you’ll be ok and boys will be boys over the phone and no she won’t sue. You don’t see Richard again for months and you never see his house again.
You spend hours crying and screaming in pain as you try to dip your unwrapped foot in the steaming bathtub with Epson salt. Alex and your mom insist it’s the best thing for you and it will get easier with time. It does. But, not before the gauze tears old scabs anew.
Back at school every fifteen crutch-hobbled steps an uncontrollable spasm jerks your leg straight, slamming receded blood into your damp wound, making you drop in agony to the linoleum floors, filling the school hallways with screams and curses. Soon your classmates begin to count the hobbles and the torrential outcries less and less. Soon you don’t need the crutches all day. The ball of pain in between the fourth and fifth metatarsal is measurably decreasing. A fact your follow-up doctor finds surprising. He tells you how lucky you are. You force yourself to run with Miss Ritterscamp’s PE class.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)