Memoir – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

I, YOUNG CYRANO PART(S), THE LAST

Rites of Passage: First REAL Date

From the previous blog…

I discovered note-passing was very much akin to fishing. Because with note-passing, I could, and did, get some “bites.” I found that a really clever note or poem passed to some girl seated two rows or more away in study hall was somewhat likely to get my foot in the door at least, meaning that I could actually score for myself a sunny, pretty-girl smile sent my way from across the classroom now and then. Which, by the way, the first time that happened was when I realized that if I put pen to paper, and then let the paper do the talking instead of me, personally— why, my words on paper could boldly say what I didn’t have the little guts to say in person. Yes, that would be so much more do-able than trying to express myself out loud while gazing eye-to-eye into the face of some bewitching little Shirley Temple… only to discover that my tongue, like Elvis, had suddenly left the building.”

So… that’s when I became my own, one-man Cyrano de Bergerac. I became a cowardly little serial-note-passer in school. I mean, it was better than nuthin’…

So, you know when you’re out there on the lake fishing, and you’re getting pretty bored with all those little nibbles that keep stealing your bait? Or when you do land something, it’s always one of those little sunfish that nobody wants? And you keep dwelling on the depressing fact that you’ve actually never caught a decent fish in your entire life, and never will? But then, all of a sudden…

SPLASH!

You’ve really got something on the line for once!

Well, surprise of all surprises, one of my poem-notes snagged a popular cheerleader, if you can believe that. And cute? Oh yeah. And at first it left me thinking, What’s wrong with THIS picture? Because I mean this was the kind of girl that would make my little circle of cronies fall down and die in disbelief! And wonder of wonders, this girl already knew me and yet honestly seemed to like me! I mean, what was she? Crazy?

OK. I was a year older than her. Maybe it was that weighing in my favor. And probably part of it was because I was on the basketball team, even though basically all I did in that capacity was ride the bench. But, hey, maybe I just looked good in the uniform?

Anyway, her name was… no no, let’s not go there. Let’s just refer to her as… Sandra (Dee).

She went to our church, so like me she was a Methodist. Our parents knew each other and were good friends, so that made the process of me getting to know her even better a lot less unnerving. And her mom thought that the two of us as a “couple” were “cute.”

My mom not so much. She didn’t think I was ready for dating.

But this girl and I really enjoyed talking to one another, which to me was astonishing. We held hands! We ended up going on a couple of movie dates! I even, you know, “accidentally” dropped my arm (from where it was nervously resting up on the back of her seat) onto her shoulders, and… wow, she didn’t even mind! She liked it. And it was great, I tells ya!

I was head-over-heels in love. (Picture here a very anomalous Darth Vader here rasping, “The Crush is strong with this one!)

Of course now, as an adult, I realize I was only head over heels I a crush. But, man, I was on the phone with her all the time.
Not only was I happy. I was SOMEBODY!

And then one day on the phone, this girl let me know something: her parents were going away for an overnight that weekend, and she was going to have to stay home to babysit her baby brother. Excitedly, she told me she wanted me to come over to help babysit. I was dumbstruck! Yes! The whole idea seemed like a dream come true.

However for me, there was a fly in the ointment: that would be Ma.

Oh, I wanted to do this so badly. And no, I swear it was not for any of those prurient reasons you may be thinking of, as you will soon see. I just wanted to get to spend a nice long and cozy evening with my girlfriend. However, embarrassed and in agony, I had to tell her the truth. And it made me want to cry.

“I would so love to do this. I honestly really really would. But I can’t.”

“Oh? No? Why not?”

Jesus, didn’t I hate to have to let her in on this dark secret of my crummy little life. I mean, I was an eighth-grader already, practically a grown up for crying out loud, right?

“Because my mom will never consent to it.”

(long pause) “No? Your mom? Why not?”

“Because… well… you know…” Oh, I really so didn’t want to have that conversation.

(long pause) “Uhmmm… no. I don’t.”

I wanted to die of shame right there. It took a while for her to drag it out of me, but finally, and painfully, I managed to choke it out that… Ma didn’t “like” the prospects of… well, you know, what could, and definitely would in her mind, happen any time a boy and girl were left alone together. There. The secret was out. I was a namby-pamby Momma’s boy!

I wanted to run away and hide. And puke.

“I’ll tell you what,” she surprisingly said, still sounding cheerful and totally undeterred. “I’ll have my mom talk to your mom. My mom can talk anybody into anything.” And knowing her free-wheeling, fun-loving, mom, I didn’t really doubt that for a second. However…

“Sure. Any mom but my mom, that is. See, my mom’s never gonna buy it. So please. Don’t, OK? There’s no point. Just… don’t have her do that. Alright? It’ll just make a lot of grief for me.”

Of course it won’t. How could it?”

(Oh, let me count the ways.)

I was feeling about as small a gnat. And so very sad for myself! Because truth? I could see the writing on the wall. This little complication with Ma could mushroom out of control and spell the end of our little boyfriend/girlfriend thing we had going. And that’d just about do me in.

Still, no matter what, I couldn’t talk her out of having her mom call mine. So that meant that if I knew what was good for me, I had to face Ma right up front and give her the heads up about the soon-to-come phone call. And what it was gonna be about.

Ever hear the expression ‘mad as a wet hen’?

“Well, that’s just not gonna happen, I can tell you that right now! I’d never say yes to something like THAT! That would be just asking for trouble!”

This is how I knew it would go. After all, this was the woman who’d made Denny and I pledge that WE’D never get any girl pregnant… right after some high school girl who lived four houses up the street from us got knocked up.

(And me? Why yes sir, I took that oath with all the solemnity of saluting the American flag! Because I was a good little soldier. (Of course, being only six at the time, I had no frickin’ idea whatsoever what the hell it was I was pledging not to do.)

Yes, this was the woman who angrily sent me (at about the same age) to bed early one evening for interrupting dinner simply by asking out of curiosity, “Say, just what is sex anyway?”

This was the woman who would never let us go to the movies on Sundays.

This was the woman who refused to let us play with cap guns on Sundays.

In short, this was the woman who really made me despise Sundays! God, my life sucked! I mean, what was I? A damn eighth-grade little Momma’s boy, that’s what!

And of course the call did happen. And I spy-listened to it from the next room. Man, that was one long, long phone call. And I really wasn’t liking what I was overhearing of the debate on our end. But…

After she’d put the receiver back in its cradle, she called me out to the kitchen. Still the mad old wet hen, she informed me that OK, I could do what was being asked of me, but on one condition and one condition only. That being… that there would have to be a third person present with Sandra (Dee) and me at all times.

“You’re actually saying it’s… it’s OK? That I can go?”

“Well, it’s not what I want! At ALL! But…”

I was thunderstruck! So it was true then? There really was a Santa Claus? But boy, she was still pissed.

“But still… you’re saying… it’s OK though…?”

“Not OK at all! Not with me. And I really don’t appreciate being browbeat about MY own children by someone outside this family!“

Happily, it turned out Sandra (Dee’s) mom had already cemented the deal with the promise that my girlfriend’s best friend Wendy would be spending the night at their house. So… there you were.

“But… you listen to ME, Mister. There had better not be any… trouble resulting from this! Or I don’t know what!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So there I ended up that Saturday night, sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by a ton of toys, and just having a ball with Sandra (Dee’s) baby brother. I loved him. It was a great evening we had going there. The TV was on and I was watching some of that too while rolling around on the floor with the little tyke. Couldn’t ask for a more fun night.

But then I was told it was finally time. Time for the little fella to hit the hay. Aw. That made me feel sad, because he and I were having so much fun. But… what were you gonna do? So Wendy, our third-wheel-in-residence, told us not to worry, that she’d take him upstairs. And up and away they went. So Sandra (Dee) and I were going to get some alone time. So we huddled together, cuddling on the couch.

Cuddling was such a new and welcomed step in my boyfriend-skills evolution. Another check-off on the old bucket list. And basically, it was just like being on a movie date. I had my arm around her, and we put our heads together and just watched whatever was going on, on the TV. And let me tell you: I was in seventh heaven right there! I was clam-happy! That was the life. What I’d been wanting and waiting for all along.

A real girlfriend.

At some point later, however, it occurred to me that we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Wendy, “our official babysitter.” One TV program had just ended, and another was starting up. The time was ticking right along.

Maybe Wendy’d gone to bed upstairs early. My curfew for that evening was 10:00. And there was still most of an hour left. I was glad. I was in no hurry to go home, that was for sure. I was having too good a time.

But then all of a sudden down the stairs came Wendy. She walked to the center of the living room and stopped right there before us, blocking our view of the TV. And she continued standing there.

I thought to myself, That’s odd. And it felt like she was… studying us… at least, to me it did. Standing there with her feet shoulder-width apart and her little doubled-up fists pressed into her hips, looking at us like some army little drill sergeant. I mean, why was her expression so serious… and maybe a little pouty? It felt like she was judging us or something. Like she was sizing us up, and what she was seeing was seemingly not meeting with her approval.

“What?” I asked her, thinking, UH-oh. Does she feel we’re being rude, cuddling as we are right in front of her? But my question just hung there in the air, getting no response.

On the other hand, I’d suddenly gotten this eerie feeling that there was some form of communication going on in that room that didn’t include me. I mean, first Wendy stared right at me. Then her stare swung over to Sandra (Dee). And her expression slowly morphed into a stern, but puzzled, look. It was giving me the distinct impression that Wendy was… soliciting a confirmation about something, but what?

And that’s when I felt my girlfriend hunch her shoulders beneath my arm, the way somebody does when they’re silently signaling, I dunno. Don’t ask me…

Wendy was shaking her head now. She seemed a bit exasperated by something.

“What?” I demanded a second time.

She sighed, did Wendy. And then, lamenting “Oh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!” in one of those What am I ever gonna DO with you? tones of voice, came over and plunked herself right down beside me on that couch! You wanna talk about confusing?

I thought to myself, I don’t have a clue what she’s up to, but at least she’s not blocking the TV anymore. But before I could even begin to get back into the television program, I felt Wendy elbow me right in the ribs, hard.

“Hey! EXCUSE me?” I said. That got no response. But then, after a moment, I felt her ramming me hard with her shoulder like she was trying to bulldoze me into my girlfriend seated on the other side.

“Hey! What… What’re you DOING?!” Me, eyeballing her now. “What’s going on?”

No answer. She was looking straight back at me, shaking her head and rolling her eyes, like I was some object to be pitied. By then, any thoughts of my girlfriend or the TV show had momentarily flown right out the window.

All at once, Wendy decided to sit straight up. No more bulldozing her bony shoulder into mine. And then the weirdest thing happened. Something that I totally could not understand at all. It seemed Twilight Zone-ish.

She reached down, took my wrist, and lifted up my left hand.

I was at a loss. I was like, “Uhhmmmm?” Then she softly clamped both of her hands, like a bracelet, around my wrist. And just… held my wrist tight.

NOTE: I can think of so many song lyrics that can perfectly express what I was feeling right then. Buffalo Springfield’s “There’s something happening here. But what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Or Bob Dylan’s “You know something’s happenin’, but you don’t know what it is… DO you, Mr. Jones.”

And then, slowly, gently, she began guiding my left hand straight across my chest.

“Uhhh… What’re you doing, Wendy?”

No answer. I didn’t feel comfortable with what was going on, so I began resisting. But jeez, she was stronger than I’d have imagined. For a moment, I found myself losing the arm-wrestling contest, or whatever it was we were having! Mostly because the whole sudden turn of events had taken me so completely by surprise. But the worst thing? I honestly had no frickin’ idea just where exactly my hand was being driven to, but… oh jeez, suddenly I did know, sort of: the destination appeared to be somewhere between Sandra (Dee’s) lap… and her chin! And the thought of that just scared the bejesus out of me!

“Hey, whoa! Whoa whoa WHOA! What’re ya…?” I hit the brakes and managed to yank my arm back. Thankfully, my hand fell safely into my lap. Oddly, I felt them both sort of ‘slump‘ beside me at the same time.

But I did not slump. In fact, my whole body remained hypercautiously coiled! I was a little man of steel! Stunned. Confused. Very very confused. Like, What the heck just happened here? And I felt myself grinning idiotically hard! A forced grin. Like… maybe I just hadn’t got the joke yet. In a moment, maybe they’d explain it all to me, and we’d all have a good laugh over it.

Maybe. But the three of us just sat there now in total silence. All of us just kinda vacantly staring down at our knees. Me wondering, Isn’t anyone gonna say something?

And then someone did. I heard my Sandra (Dee) softly say, “Never mind, Wendy.”

What? I thought to myself, ‘Never MIND??? Never mind WHAT?!’ But apparently, nobody was planning on divulging anything anytime soon. So, we all just continued sitting quietly for another little while. In a trance. Not moving for a bit.

Me, waiting…

Finally, Wendy turned to look at me and, with a frown, broke the silence. “Well, you’re a lot of fun, aren’tcha!” Then she got up off the couch and disappeared off into the kitchen.

Hmmmm…?

So I looked over to Sandra (Dee) to see if she had anything to offer by way of explanation. But all she did was turn to me with a blank look and say, “Ooops, I just heard the baby crying upstairs. I’d better go up there and check on him. I might be a while.”

“I didn’t hear him.”

“Yeah. But I did.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Yeah. He probably needs his diaper changed, you know?”

“Oh. Sure. I see.”

And no sooner than I said, “I see,” I actually was… beginning to see!

I was beginning the mathematical process of putting 2 plus 2 together. And oh boy, when the unexpected sum of 4 clicked slowly up into the display of my very-slow calculator brain… I was mortified!

My face was burning! Because I had just been slapped in the face with one very harsh reality! No wonder I’d been getting along so famously with Sandra (Dee’s) baby brother! Because compared to Sandra (Dee) and Wendy, I was a toddler myself!

I wanted to slap myself in the forehead! How could I ever have been so THICK?! There I’d been, all along, little virgin-brain me, imagining that all that wonderful hugging and cuddling was what people on TV or in the movies meant when they talked about getting to second base!

Second base? I wasn’t even the bat boy, for crying out loud! I had ZERO experience in the dating game, hadn’t I!

I didn’t belong in the dating game, did I!

God, no wonder, Wendy’s eye-rolls!

I mean, OK… I guessed they must’ve been thinking from the start that… you know… because I was a year older than them…

Hell, in reality? They were twenty years older than me! Apparently. At least!

Aw jeez, I’d just spent the better part of the night like a lamb in the den of a couple of she-wolves! And them hoping all along that I was really the big, bad wolf that they’d believed I was in sheep’s clothing…?

I was so embarrassed!

But still… it had felt so warm and nice, all that hugging and cuddling…

I mean, she must’ve felt at least some of that too… hadn’t she?

But whatever would’ve happened if I hadn’t resisted? I mean if I’d just let it go? How far would it have…?

Jesus. I wasn’t ready for this. My head was spinning.

You know what you want to do when something embarrassing like this befalls you? Run! And hide! You just wanna run away and hide! For months maybe!

So I forced a sickly smile. “You know… actually, it’s getting pretty close to my curfew. So… I mean, I guess I might as well take off now anyway.”

“Oh. OK. Sure then,” she said flatly.

“Uhmmm… I had a great time,” I told her.

“Huh?” she said, and yawned. “Oh. Yeah. Me too.”

Not so very convincing. So I did leave. Or… escaped, I guess. And began the long walk home. There was so much to think about…

But anyway. That’s the way the evening and the relationship ended.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. First of all, allow me to freely admit that I dragged myself home that night feeling like a freak. And my pity-party dragged on for the next couple of weeks. I couldn’t see any humor whatsoever in it back then. Unlike today.

Today, this story brings me a big chuckle. It’s just one of those typical Rites of Passage stories that we get to look back on many years later from an entirely different perspective.

And, funny thing— while I was tapping out this memory here on my PC, a funny thought occurred to me. See, all of a sudden my mind had just made this spontaneous warp-drive-jump to something from an entirely different time, dimension, and universe. To something that connects to what had befallen me in this story. Something I’d only seen once, but it was quite unforgettable. About how “dumb” (“dumb” being the key word here) I had been for the past couple of weeks, right up until that evening.

A scene from a movie. The final scene actually. I’ve included the YouTube clip of it below for you to watch. And PLEASE. Humor me. Really. Watch this clip, I beg of you. Even though you may have seen it before. It only lasts for a minute and a half. It’ll be fun for you to see it again. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a kick out of getting the joke.

And with that, let me just say Thank you. For reading.

Adios. For now…

—Tom

I, YOUNG CYRANO PART II

From the conclusion of Part I:

“Yes. A whirlwind romance. Lasted a couple of weeks. And then, poof! It was over. Done with. Gone with the wind.

Turned out I was kind of… boring, apparently.

But for me, it was plus yardage: I had had a girlfriend! It was kinda like me belonging to a new and exclusive club.

What would come next?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Part II:

(just a little flashback tidbit)

Kind of… boring? Unlikely, but possible I suppose. But it did feel kinda like belonging to a new and exclusive club. My whole outlook and attitude had gotten a much-needed shot in the arm. Now I was a little more like…

So ME? Yeah. I’ve had girlfriends.

(I’d had that girlfriend.)

It felt like a major step in the ending of the sad little Charlie Brown chapter of my non-love-life. Like moving forward.

THE HERETOFORE IMMATURE AND ANNOYING LITTLE ME

I mean, like before Lynette, I was just another one of those immature and annoying lookitME! LookitME! little snakes-and-snails-and-puppy-dogs’-tails SHOW-offs, whenever some cute girl happened to be around.

For instance, up through third and fourth grades, I’d been Roy Rogers’ biggest fan. In fact my very first bedroom pin-up wall poster was Roy Rogers on his rearing palomino, Trigger.

I mean, I loved everything Roy Rogers. In fact, I wanted to BE Roy Rogers. So when I caught Roy doing some trick-riding on Trigger in one of his movies, I just had to emulate him.

Of course I didn’t have a horse. But I did have a bike named Trigger. So…

I lived up on Pleasant Street, a street that sloped gently downward past our house, meaning you could easily get a good down-hill coasting going on your bicycle. That slope became my training area. And the best trick-riding I ever saw in the Roy Rogers movies was him securing a firm, two-fisted grip on the saddle horn, while getting Trigger galloping at a very fast gallop. Then… wonder of all wonders…

Holding on tight and using that horn as a fixed fulcrum, Roy would launch himself right up out of the saddle, swing his hips and legs down to the left of Trigger’s flank, bounce his boots off the ground there, swing his entire body back up to sail right over the empty saddle only to drop himself down again (off to the right side this time), bounce his boots off the ground on that side, swing himself back up over the saddle once again, and then right back down to the left… and, you know, just repeat that flip-flop maneuver over and over a few more times, left and right, left and right before smoothly just dropping his holy little cowboy butt comfortably right back down in the saddle just like nothing had ever happened.

I know that’s all very hard to imagine, unless you’ve seen it done. But what might be even more difficult to picture is little-fourth-grade-moi coasting my bike at a good clip down over Pleasant Street’s little hill and performing that exact, same stunt! I mean it.

It took a month or more of practice. I had to begin first with the bike at a stand-still, me just holding onto the handlebars and practicing leaping back and forth over the bicycle’s seat. Once I got my balance down pretty pat, I began to up the ante by doing the same thing with the bike slowly moving. Then it was just a matter of increasing my speed day-by-day. And you know what? It became easy after a while. I got good at it. I swear I did.

And lo, Pleasant Street was suddenly blessed with its very own junior Roy Rogers Daily Wild West Show. I mean, damn, I was frickin’ rodeo-ready! (You remember how Tom Selleck was always saying, “This isn’t my first rodeo” on those idiotic Reverse Mortgage commercials? Well this was… my first rodeo, of sorts.)

So it wasn’t totally unusual for the occasional lucky Dover-Foxcroft pedestrian or automobile passenger to get to witness The Amazing One-Trick-Pony Cowpoke fearlessly barreling hell-bent-for-leather down Pleasant Street on any given day at any given time throughout summer vacation.

And I was so proud of myself. Not to mention magnanimously delighted to ever-so-generously perform this daily feat gratis (although I surely would’ve charged admission if I could have thought of a way to pull it off). But each and every time I was lucky enough to have an audience, I could console myself by just imagining all the exclamations of wonder going on inside the minds of those passers-by:

My God! Would you look at that kid! He’s not only BRAVE, he’s extremely SKILLED!

A kid like that? I mean, HE’S GOING PLACES, you know?

Well, all I can say is… you couldn’t PAY me to try something like that!

(And from all the sweet little back-seat daughters):

And he’s SO CUTE, too.

Heck, MY stupid boyfriend can’t do daring tricks like that!

I bet he’s got A ZILLION girlfriends, though!

(OK, yes, I admit it. I did seem to have a little of The-Christmas-Story’s ‘Ralphie’ in me back then.)

RALPHIE of The Christmas Story

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So anyway— one late sunny morning, I was flying down the road for my third performance of the day. And just as I’d leapt off the seat to begin the ol’ left-to-right-to-left-to-right, a musical little voice off up ahead to my left cried out, “Wow! Look at you, Tommy!”

And of course I was going too fast to look at ‘myself,’ not that that would’ve made any sense, but I did look up and…

There she was! Betty-Jane Stanhope!

The very reason I’d been patiently sticking to Pleasant Street over the past week! So. She had finally, at long last, just happened outside while I was potentially enthralling the neighborhood. (I had such a crush on her.) (I mean, what boy didn’t?)

But as you will recall from a previous episode, I was pathologically shy around cute girls. Our eyes locked. And I froze. Which was when…

The handlebars suddenly strong-armed me, yanked me to the right! And WHOA! My rodeo-bronc-bicycle ka-thump-thumped! us over a shallow ditch, slamming my bum hard and pretty much sideways back down onto the seat! Somebody’s Then somebody’s driveway and lawn looked like they were flying beneath us like a rug being yanked out from under us! And Jeez, that damn maple tree trunk was coming at us like Casey Jones’ locomotive!

All that in a blink-and-a-half!

Oh. My. God!

Trigger tried to run itself right up the damn tree like a flag up a flagpole, I swear to God! The tree trunk’s roots were spread out at the base, curving out and down into the earth, providing a curved, though precarious, path for speeding wheels. So with a bone-jarring, ninety-degree change of direction, the bike went alley-oop-up! But not me.

Unfortunately, my body wasn’t built on wheels. I was a high-speed, arrow-straight vector!

Now, I swear there was a one-to-two-second, still-life Wile E. Coyote moment there… with my bike pasted to the trunk and aimed at the sky with me splayed-out-splat! like a June bug on a windshield!

Then after another blink-and-a-half, gravity deigned to peel the bike and I off the bark like a wet band-aid and dropped us in a heap onto the grass.

I mean, can you say “out-of-body experience?” Instantly transported to some Danté-esque alternate universe, I lay momentarily paralyzed and prostrated before the sadistic Pain Gods of the Gonads! Meanwhile I was being on-and-off flash-blinded in the pulsating strobes of the corpse-cold, crotch-to-brain aching!

I sorta came to fetal-positioned, sweating like a snowman in the desert, and struggling to roll myself over and crawl myself away from those torturous throes of…

“Are you alright?”

Ohmygod! There she was! Standing right over me! Staring straight down at me! At ME! What with my legs crossed bladder-tight and everything! Clutching my…

“Are you alright?”

“Unnngthhh?”

“I said, ‘Are you OK?’”

Me thinking, Oh please… just… go away! Don’t look at me! Go back inside your house! You shouldn’t be here right now. This is so… I’m so ASHAMED! I was longing to cry, but not in front of her!

I finished getting myself rolled over.

“Should I go get my mom…or… ?”

“What…?” I barely whispered, “No…no…”

“You sure?”

On my hands and knees now. Shaking. Still in a raspy whisper, “Positive.” And then, “Just… don’t!”

“Well… OK, I guess. But where are you hurt?”

Where am I…? Oh my God! Really? I couldn’t believe she just had to go and ask that! “My... knee,” I said, barely able to breathe, and wondering, Does she know? Does she know how it is with us boys? Hell, until that day, that moment, I didn’t even have a clue about just how bad the pain could really be (with, you know, ‘us boys.’) “Yeah. Think I… must’ve bruised it. My knee.”

The physical pain was so extreme, I worried about throwing up! But the embarrassment-‘pain’ was making me want to run away and hide my face. I mean, what had just happened was definitely not something you could just… explain… to a Betty-Jane Stanhope. The word, ‘unmentionable’ comes to mind. It was like… what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, you know?

All I knew for sure was that I was going to spend the rest of my life hiding from Betty-Jane. I was a pariah, even though I hadn’t learned that word yet.

But OK, somehow I did manage to get up on my shaky legs, get my bike up on its shaky wheels, and begin the Long Limp of Infamy back to my house. Thinking to myself (as much as the severe pain could allow me to think coherently), Well, Gloria Cole knocked-me cock-eyed off a playground swing seat, and now I have to accept it that Betty-Jane probably knows something horribly unmentionable about me that she shouldn’t.

The prospect of ME ever finally getting to become some girl’s boyfriend seemed a grim impossibility.

By the way, the bike had fared much better than I had. At least there was that…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But hah! Just imagine, though, how surprised I’d have been if I could’ve looked into some Gypsy fortune teller’s crystal ball and caught just a glimpse of the lurid, two-weeks-long, hand-holding affair I was destined to enjoy in fifth grade with my first real girlfriend, Lynette Barnes, the following year!

Although feeling pretty down and out, I somehow knew that I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel just yet though…

Stay tuned to join me in I, Young Cyrano Part The Last

Please consider subscribing to this blog. Subscribing is (a) totally free, (b) only means that whenever I post a new episode you will be emailed a link, and (c) you can unsubscribe at any time..

home

COME ON BABY, LIGHT MY FIRE

~ ~ 1959 ~ ~

“Hey Beryl! Gimme a Pine Tree Float!” This demand causes my little cousin on the next stool to giggle-snort unsanitarily. Which feeds my ego. I’m on a roll. I mean, face it: that was funny.

But then Beryl, the establishment’s senior-most matron, always humble and sweet and nurturing, actually does fill a counter glass with ice-water, placing it before me on a napkin. I spy the floating toothpick spinning like a compass needle on the water’s surface . “Oh,” I say. “I guess you heard that one already.”

She’s smiling her Glinda the Good Witch smile. “Yes, Tommy,” she replies, “back in… oh… 1935…”

Lanpher’s Drug Store, the local ‘watering-hole for us after-school junior high and high school kids. Belly-up to the bar after the long day’s ride in the classroom saddle, and wile away the hour or so till supper time, nursing a cherry Coke or a root beer Fuzzy. And there’s the juke box, when somebody’s lucky enough to have the required quarter. The soda jerks are a bevy of part-time housewives and moms who seem to take a matronly interest in our tiny soap opera lives, and (the biggest reason we guys hang out here) the part-timers, the pair of hot ‘teen angels’ from the high school. And because we are God’s gift to the otherwise bored world of our elders, we preadolescent good ol’ boys ‘entertain’ them with the little witticisms we pick up from our older brothers.

“So …” she continues, “will you be wanting some dessert, after all that?”

I look to my left and right, surveying my potential audience. The high-schoolers have pretty much been here and gone. OK, so there are a couple of ‘dumb girls’ down at the far end who look like they could stand to be impressed, so I call, “Yeah. Make it a Zombie.” Which elicits a delightful “YUCK!” and a “Gross!” from my intended targets. “Make that two,” says my little shadow.

Actually, I can barely stomach Zombies, which are a phosphate conglomeration of malted milk and every flavored syrup known to man: orange, strawberry, lemon, lime, vanilla, Coke, root beer, cherry, ginger ale, and sarsaparilla. But it is secretly believed, in an underground urban legend kind of way, that a drink tasting this ugly almost definitely has to get you at least a little drunk. My real drink of choice is the ever-popular Root Beer Fuzzy. Girls invariably drink cherry-Cokes.

“Sorry,” Beryl apologizes, “but only the Pine Tree Floats are on the house.

“No problem!” From my pants pocket I ferret out a thin dime and slap it on the counter. “Plenty more where that came from,” I lie. Then I leer down the counter at the girls, hoist my glass, and cry, “Bottoms up!” I perform the ritual chugging demonstration, managing seven or eight controlled swallows before my autonomic nervous system drop-kicks me right into Regurgitation Mode. Slamming the glass down on the counter, I convulse with a couple of involuntary lurches and a shudder that nearly dislodges me from the stool…

“Eeee-YEW!” and “Ohmygod… you are so… disgusting!”.

“Ya got post-nasal drip,” titters my cousin.

“Napkins are right here, Tommy,” Beryl says in her patient, motherly voice. “Would you like me to wipe your nose, or would you prefer to do that yourself?” I glower, and pluck out a hank of them. Then, to kill time, I start to spin on my rotatable counter stool…

Oops! My knees bump into some high school kid seated to my left. “Sorry,” I apologize quickly.

“Watch it, shrimp!” He snorts at my limp apology, and sneers down upon my half-full glass. “Whatsa matter? Lose your appetite?”

“No, I… Uhmmm… I’m…just waitin’ for my friend here to…”

“Sure you are, shrimp boy, sure you are.”

I resent the implication that I don’t have the ‘stuff’ to down this drink in a single gulp. So I bring the glass up to my mouth, press my lips onto the cold rim, tip back the glass, and take a good pretend swig. Sporting a fresh Zombie moustache, I drop the glass back onto the countertop and produce a satisfied Hollywood “Ahhhh!”

“You could really use some acting lessons, know why? Cause you stink at it.”

I glare down into my drink. Suddenly, though, I’m startled by a rock-hard click click click on the counter top. My new nemesis here is tapping a quarter on the Formica as if sending an urgent Morse code message. click click click! “Beryl!” he calls. “Whattaya say? Hit me with a Hot Shot!”

I’m thinking, wait a minute… ‘Hot Shot’…? What the heck’s a ‘Hot Shot?’

Appraising him with her saintly smile, she dries her hands. “Oh no,” she clucks, a mother hen who knows what best for her chick, “You do not want one of those.”

He holds the quarter up like a playing card. “But I do though.”

OK now, see, here’s the thing. I practically live at Lanpher’s. I know the menu backwards and forwards. So this conversation is making no sense at all because there is no ‘Hot Shot.’. So naturally, my ears have pricked right up. Not only has he asked for an unknown entity… but she seems to know what he is talking about. “No,” she says, shaking her head in a kindly, agreeable fashion. “You don’t.” What the…? What is going on here?

And here he does something really cool. He lays the quarter down on the counter and just stares at it for a moment. Then he places the tip of his index finger on it, dead center, and looks up at her. A dramatic silence hangs there between them for a count of about six, like he’s James Dean or something, before he inches it forward like a poker chip. “Like I said. One Hot Shot please.” Man, I‘m thinking, that’s how I should’ve paid for my Zombie. My index finger twitches as I imagine sliding that imaginary dime…

“Please don’t ask me to do that, Jimmy. I don’t think you …”

“C’mon, Beryl. I got things to do… places to go…”

“But after a Hot Shot, you might not be able to remember what those things are.” She smiles wisely with an uncomfortable worry. He looks at her. She looks back at him. It’s a standoff. Finally, though, she blinks. “I’m against this,” she says.

What the blue blazes is going on here…?

“Beryl, save it, OK?” He picks up his quarter and holds it out to her at arm’s length. “Customer wants to buy a drink.”

“Well… all right then. It’s your funeral.” Resigned, she takes his money and rings it up at the register. “I wish they’d never started this, though…”.

Guys like me are always on the lookout for tips on how to be cool. We model ourselves after the Cary Grants and Clark Gables on the silver screen. I’m an apprentice in training.

She steps over to the high shelves, looks up, selects an object, returns, and places a little glass vial topped with an old-fashioned glass stopper down on the counter. With an inch of perfectly clear liquid at the bottom. Might be water. Could be white vinegar. The stopper clinks when she uncorks it.

“It’s not too late, you know,” she advises. He just shrugs that off. So with a sigh and a shake of her head, she produces a long-handled ice-cream-soda spoon from under the counter. Man, am I glad I’d decided to come in here THIS afternoon! He nods: proceed. Carefully then, lest she spill any, she drips out some drops into the spoon. When she puts the vial back down, I’m flummoxed. I mean, come on…THIS is the dreaded ‘Hot Shot’? What is it…? What’s it taste like…? Why, there’s much less than a teaspoonful there! A half-empty teaspoonful? This guy’s not so tough.

“Last chance…” she offers.

He looks her right in the eye, draws in a long, deep breath and holds it for about ten seconds. “Down the hatch!” This guy’s really something. Then he says, “Now!”

I’ve never seen a kid his age get spoon-fed, like he was some bibbed-baby in a highchair. Hunched forward on his stool… eyes closed and mouth parted like some faithful penitent receiving the blessed communal wafer… (me, taking notes in my head and contemplating how long it’s gonna take me to dig upmy own quarter somewhere… and what the best day might be to do this, in terms of gathering up a suitable audience. I mean, boy will my twerpy little pals drop dead with envy, or what!)

The scoop of the spoon passes between his teeth. His lips close upon the handle. He swallows. The spoon withdraws, empty. I lean back away from him, the better to frame his reaction. Again, he and Beryl are locked in eye contact, when… Wham! A violent spasm snaps him like a wet towel. He goes rigid! Then his head starts cranking around, back and forth… left, right, left… slowly at first, then faster and faster, like geez, here comes Mr. Hyde!

A rising low-pitched-siren moans in his open-mouthed skull. It grows louder… approaches air-raid warning proportions, the perfect sound-effect for the movie scene where fighter pilots scramble to their jets out on the tarmac! Beryl shoves a clinking water-and-ice-cubes glass toward him. “Here,” she says. He rips it out of her mitt and cracks the rim of it off his front teeth, upending it, ice and all into his mouth. The siren halts as he gulps at it, but then he freezes! He seems to be staring off at some ‘vision’ over Beryl’s shoulder… “Gah!” Then he’s thrashing his head back and forth again, his jowls rattling with ice. And me with a ring-side seat! “More ice!” he commands, like an operating room surgeon demanding a scalpel. Beryl, the obedient nurse, wheels away at once to retrieve! This is incredible! But then his head jerks around and his wild eyes settle upon me. “The hell you lookin’ at!?”

“Errr…” I wasn’t exactly expecting to get involved.

“WHOA!” He spasmed, just about jumping me up off my stool. Then exhales wide-eyed as if he’s just experienced some philosophy-shattering epiphany, and suddenly his desperate eyes are flitting up and down the counter as if he searching out a pen or pencil to jot it down, whatever it is. He’s blowing rhythmically now. Then his wild eyes lock onto my Zombie, right there on the counter in front of me. “WHOA!” he cries once again with another jolt, as if his previous unbelievable epiphany has just been replaced by an unbelievably even more incredible one!

Suddenly he just grabs my glass out from under my nose, tosses his head back, and chugs what’s left! Time to move down a few stools, I think to myself.

Nurse Beryl appears with a refill of ice and water. But with a vehement shake of his head, he declines it. He seems to be meditating on the last remaining intake of my Zombie, which he is now swishing like mouthwash around the inside of his mouth. “No. This… works… better,” he growls. He wildly scans the counter once again. Then suddenly, he’s digging down deep into his pants’ pockets. Out comes a comb, a book of matches, a small jackknife, and a handful of change.

He rifles the coins and plucks out two dimes, one of which he plants on the counter before me; the other he pushes over in front of my cousin. Then, with a big shudder, swallowing his current mouthful, cocks his head to the left in a four-second pose of introspection… sufficient time to clench some decision, apparently… and swipes my cousin’s glass off the countertop as well. And knocks it back.

“Jeez! These taste like… crap! But they work!” Looking down into my cousin’s sheepish eyes, he adds, “Doin’ you a favor, kid.”

“I tried to tell you,” Beryl offers.

“I know, I know. But hey, listen, Beryl.” He yanks a pack of Kools out of his shirt pocket. “You are an official eye-witness on this. Right?” He’s kinda gasping between words. “You watched me do it. So you’ll hafta tell’em, OK?”

“Of course I will, Jimmy. You needn’t worry about that. I’m sure they’ll…”

“’Cause I got something riding on this, if you know what I mean.” He plugs a cigarette in between his lips. “But they’ll believe you, Beryl. You tell’em I did it…? Then OK… I did it.” He lights the Kool, takes a deep drag, and immediately forces down another gulp of Zombie.

“Oh, you did it all right.” Beryl pushes the nearest counter ashtray over in front of him. “Despite my misgivings.”

“Yich!” he says, and takes another hit off the smoke. “Man! That ol’ Hot Shot! It just… it keeps on a-burning, don’t it! Thank God for menthols! I mean… by God! Whew! OK,” he concludes, tapping a fleck of ash from the tip of his cancer stick and then downing most of the rest of my cousin’s grog. And shivers hard. “Gotta get me some fresh air…” He shudders, rises from his stool, and is heading for the door, puffing up a storm…

Leaving me with much to think about…

OK, I already have ten cents in hand. Somehow I’ll hafta scrape up another fifteen… but, that’s what returnable bottles lying in ditches are for, ain’t it. But, need to get it by Thursday, because Thursday’s Boy Scout night over at The Hall, just across the street.

THURSDAY NIGHT…

Vanilla Cokes seem to be the going drink. And I like vanilla Cokes. They go down smooth, a lot like root beer fuzzies. But there is to be no vanilla Coke in my immediate future. Oh no. Tonight…? Water on the rocks!

And now that pretty much everybody but me’s been served their frosty little Coca-Cola glasses with straws, and the hub-bub has suitably died down, I slowly draw my right hand up out of my pants pocket with… The Quarter. And CLICK it, loud, just once, off the counter top, like Meeting will come to order! Then I let my lazy eye travel down the bar to gauge the powerful effect my dramatic move has just had on the denizens… OK… nobody’d noticed it.

CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK… CLICK!

There! That got their attention! Everybody’s pretty much all looking over at me now, quieting down noticeably and no doubt wondering, What the heck’s HE up to?

“Beryl?” I call down the aisle behind the counter. Beryl straightens up from jotting down some inventory in a little notebook.

“Hi, Tommy. Decided what you’d like?” I set the quarter spinning like a little upright gyroscope. The two hours of rehearsals pay off; the coin spins on a single spot as if nailed there. And then… WHAM! My palm flattens it dead in its tracks! I place the tip of my index finger on it, dead center, look up at her, and let the dramatic silence hang there between us for a count of about six and then, James Dean-me, inch it forward like a poker chip. “One… Hot Shot, please.”

Everybody freezes! Beryl looks like somebody’s slapped her across the face. “Wha-at?”

“What’s a… a… a hotshot?” somebody a few stools down wants to know. But this isn’t about him, is it. No, it‘s all about me tonight. I don’t even vouchsafe a response.

“Whoa-ho-ho-ho-NO!” laughs Beryl, but it’s a laugh in name only, one with no merriment in it. “No way, Tommy, are you getting one of those!” I’ve anticipated this response, and am pleased to feel the tension growing among the boys lined up and leaning on their elbows at the bar. Me, the gunslinger who’s just brushed back his coat tail to reveal the big iron holstered on his hip. I deliver my line.

“Oh… but I am, Beryl. I am.” Cool. Confident. So…

“Tommy…” she begins, and then just decides to end it with a simple, flat, “NO!”

“Sorry, Beryl,” I say, patronizing her like, sure, I can understand your matronly instincts and so on, but they’re wasted on the hard likes of me. “I’ve got the money.” And with that I zip the quarter over the bar’s polished surface where it slows to a dead stop right in front of her. Heh heh… am I good, or what?

“That’s not going to happen,” she informs me.

“So… what’s a hotshot?” the voice still wants to know.

I go straight into ‘gunslinger mode.’ “I’ll tell you what a Hot Shot is, boys…” me, speaking to everyone in the joint with my eyes, unblinking, remaining locked on Beryl’s. “A Hot Shot is…” and here I allow the silence to tick some seconds off the clock, for suspense, “…twenty-five cents! For the guy that’s got it. Ain’t that right, Beryl.”

“Tommy, you don’t realize it, but a Hot Shot would just about kill you. You…”

“Isn’t that practically what you said to that other kid, Whatsizname? Jimmy? And didn’t I watch him walk out of here? Both alive and well?”

“He’s four years older than you! He’s in High school! And besides, he’s… OK, he doesn’t have a brain in his head!”

I twist my mouth into a wry grin, and point to the quarter lying there on the counter. “I’ve heard that the customer is always right…”

“Well, that may be true, normally, but you…”

“And this customer here is tired of slugging down the same ol’ Zombies alla time.” Heh heh. Just imagine the whispers now: What? He matches drinks with some high school guy? He slugs down Zombies… practically like water? Wow! Man!

“Let me tell you something, Tommy. It’s true, I don’t want to serve you a Hot Shot. But more than that, you don’t want one. You just don’t know it yet. But if I give you one, oh boy will you ever know it then!”

Hmmm. She’s hanging tough. But she’s a woman, and I sense her weakening. “You ever try one, Beryl?”

“No, I haven’t,” she says simply. “Of course not. And I’m not about to!”

“So… how do you know if I want one? Maybe if you had one, you’d like it.”

“Oh you’d just better believe I’m not having one! I know better.”

“There’s my quarter. Bring it on.” She looks at me with a quiet exasperation. But then her eyes soften. She tiredly shakes her head in resignation. “OK, Tommy… you know what? You’re about to learn a valuable little lesson this evening. A lesson I don’t want you to have to learn, but…” She turns and heads back down toward the end of the counter.

“Thank you, Beryl.” I toss a wink, like a bone, to the boys. She returns with the magic bullet: the vial. With a nod, I point once again to my quarter on the counter. Surprisingly, she pushes it back in front of me.

“Paying for this lesson would be adding insult to injury. This one’s on the house.”

“Really? Hey, thanks, Beryl! This way, I get to save my money for the second one.”

She actually glares at me. Finally, “Do you think you’re ready, Tommy?” Her kind, empathetic voice is gone. She’s gotten the ice-cream-soda spoon out.

Well thanks to me, my audience is going to be treated to something special this evening. None of them’s even heard of a Hot Shot before. They’ll be talking about me at school for weeks.

“Any time you say, Beryl.” I answer, all cucumber-cool sittin’ on that stool.

Again the stopper makes the crystal clink as she removes it. Positioning the spoon horizontally, she drips in a few drops. Hah! Look at how tiny that is! So. “Down the hatch!” I cry, eyeing my envious fans doing the only thing they can do… sitting there gawking on me in awe and wishing they had a quarter this evening. I vouchsafe them a wink as I close my eyes and open wide as the cold spoon grazes my lower lip going in.

And as it withdraws, my upper lip squeegees every last molecule from the spoon. The payload delivered…. I swallow. And pop my eyes open.

“What… that’s IT?” I say. “I can’t believe it!” The Big Dreaded Hot Shot, one big… nothing?

I start to glance over toward my Scout buddies, formulating a calculated smirk when…WHOA!

My face does a freeze-frame! And then, with a sudden will and mind of its own, my mouth just opens itself right up without any prodding from me, becoming a growing, gaping hole in the middle of my head! Like home movies when the film gets jammed up inside the projector, halting the reels dead in their tracks… the white-hot bulb melting a growing, black, bubbling, burn-hole in the celluloid which gets projected upon the movie screen like an unexpected, mushrooming wildfire…

…and suddenly, the burn-hole that has spread open across my face, is emitting a long, drawn-out, teakettle siren— WwwaaaaahhWAAAAAHHWAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!!

And like the delayed shock-wave racing ahead after an atomic detonation? FLASH! The IMPACT bodyslams me! My brain goes up in flames like a gasoline-soaked rag! My tongue blackens, curls, and shrivels like newsprint in a woodstove…my throat is EEEing like a blistered steam whistle! A tsunami of hellfire flames comes rolling over and through me, instantaneously smashing down any and all neural breakwaters and dikes and dams and levees designed to fence in my other senses, leaving me hearing the flavor, smelling it, seeing it, shouting it! My entire soul, reduced in a flash to a single four-letter word (HELP!) that my lips and my tongue and my larynx cannot, for the life of me, articulate! And even though my eyes must be running down over my cheeks like molten egg-whites, I am somehow oddly aware now (in a blurred, tunnel-vision sort-of-way) of shelved shaving cream cans, tissue boxes, band-aids, shampoos, crutches and canes inexplicably flying past me, left and right, like I’m a runaway fire engine barreling down narrow streets… hell, I am a runaway fire engine… on fire! My siren caterwauling…! Me running amok up and down aisles past the paperback and magazine section, past the cold and flu supplies, past the vitamins… WAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!! …and back past the soda fountain again!

“Tommy!” calls Beryl from some place embedded deep behind the steaming membranes of my personal nightmare. “Back here! Ice water!”

Legally blinded by excruciation, I falter, veer left, then right, and finally lean into a hairpin U-turn to barrel-roll back toward the voice! I stumble up against the counter. A frosty glass is pushed into my smoking hands. Throwing back my head, and positioning my bansheeing wide-open mouth like some starving hatchling in a burning nest, I jerk the glass to my face and douse, more than drink. Cold water up my nose, down my gullet, down the front of my shirt, and… Hallelujah, Jesus! Don’t I feel salvation! I am redeemed, Brother! Blessed be she, the Angel Beryl, among women! I had thirsted in the desert, and I was slaked! I…

Gah! The reprieve! It’s only momentary! With all of the water gulped down, the lining of my mouth re-ignites like crackling tinder, despite the two ice cubes still pouched like acorns in my chipmunk cheeks. I try to cry out, More! but only sputter out a guttural, “MO!” My body and my brain have already done the math and figured out that… there is no way between heaven and hell that I can ever get MO! soon enough, so my legs are already doing what they know they need to… run! WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!! Because they ‘believe’ (the fools!) if they can only run fast enough, just maybe they can outrun the flame thrower! But.. heat runs at the speed of light, and…

WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!! Rat on fire in the maze! Look at him go! Past the prescription counter! Past the curling irons and Vicks vaporizers! (They’d warned me in Sunday school I’d end up burning in hell for all eternity! Oh, why hadn’t I listened?) Past the cigars and cigarettes! I’m afire in limbo here! Down past the front door, where…

Something snags my shirt collar and holds on firm, sending my feet flying right out from under me, jerking me around like a roped rodeo calf! I struggle like a drowning man to get free and flee, WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!! but am yanked back again by the front of my shirt. I know only one thing at this moment: broiling at a standstill is far worse than barbequing on the run! So I thrash! I lash out! And as much as a soul can realize anything when it’s a fireball, my brain suddenly acknowledges that I am inexplicably blinking (What the…?) straight into Mom’s face! WAAHHWAAAAHH!!! Where’d she…? WAAAAWAAAAAH!!! Oh… yeah… pickin’ me up after Scouts…

“Just what, Thomas, do you think you’re DOING…?” She is horrified.

I sum it all up for her: WAAAHHWAAAAAAAAHH!!! No man stands still while going up in flames! I wrench myself free and go pinballing brainlessly down the aisles again like a ricocheting stray bullet. WAAAWWAAAHWAH!!!

Good Lord, I sound like Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy!

But… whatever goes up, must come down, and she recaptures me as I come careening back down the next aisle, this time in an iron grip. “Tommy!” she says, with a face that’s drained of color, a horrified face. “You stop this nonsense! Right now! You’re…” she’s beside herself, “embarrassing yourself! You’re… HEY! I said, STOP it! You’re behaving foolish! You’re behaving… idiotic! Stop this right NOW! Right… this… instant!! You’re embarrassing me! Us! Right NOW, Thomas!”

The poor woman… but poorer me! OK. I gotta try to explain it to her again! So…………. WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!!

This time her face snaps into Serious Emergency Mode. Suddenly she’s steeled, determined, ready to do… whatever she must! Like the fireman pulling a victim from a burning building, she is dragging me (me, her dark, flailing, smoking, family embarrassment and the imaginary engulfed building he’s trapped in!) right out the front door!

Outside, she hauls open the heavy passenger door of our big black ’48 Plymouth waiting at the curb, more like a paddy wagon than ambulance tonight, and I am installed on the front seat. WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!!

The door slams hard after me!

WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!!

“Didn’t I just tell you to stop that?”

I’m practically breaking off the side-door window crank (Must… get… cool… air… into skull!) muscling down the pane. Mom hustles around to the driver’s side.

WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!!

And as she peels rubber out of that parking space like some hot-rodding badass High School Confidential teenager… WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!… me, I’ve got my gaping face hanging out the window like some tongue-lolling Irish Setter…

WAAAAAHHWAAAAAHHWAAAAAHHWAAAAAHH!!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Turns out, I was one hundred percent correct.

Everybody’s been talking about me here at school for days…

home

NOTE: IF YOU LIKED THIS AND WOULD LIKE TO FIND OUT WHAT EXACTLY “‘THE HOT SHOT” WAS, LOOK FOR “COME ON BABY, LIGHT MY FIRE II” TO BE PUBLISHED SOON…

ALTERED STATES II

In ALTERED STATES I, I described the effects that Percodan (Oxycodone) had on my… “sense of humor,” I guess you could call it. To keep from making a too long story even longer, I’d chosen to skip right over the early morning of that operation. So in this post, I’m backing up the clock to fill in that little gap.

Never having had any surgery other than the tonsillectomy at the time, I was of course nervous beyond nervousness. A day earlier I’d become violently ill while being wheeled down en route to radiology for a myelogram. (Myelogram? Think spinal tap) (no, not Spinal Tap the movie, just spinal tap the needle in the spine.) With no time for even a quick explanation to my gurney pilot, I swung myself down onto the floor and limpingly ran away down the hall. I ended up plunging head first into a ladies bathroom and, already making quite a mess of myself and everything around me, fell onto my knees before the porcelain throne and finished the job, all the while hearing the overhead speakers out in the hall issuing an all-points bulletin for the runaway patient on the first floor.

I turned myself in. And because it was obvious to anyone looking at my soiled johnny that I had blown my lunch, I had nothing to prove. So… I got wheeled back up to the 6^th floor, cleaned up, and put back to bed. My doctors were informed that I‘d been diagnosed with a case of the flu, so my procedures would have to be rescheduled for the following day, depending on the state of my health. I was ecstatic. Yes, it was only putting off the inevitable. And yes, I’m such a shallow person I was celebrating my reprieve like Catch-22’s Yossarian when a bombing mission had gotten scrubbed. Anyway, the delay gave me some time to talk to my roomie about what my operation would be like.

He however was hung up and dwelling on is how fast the knock-out anesthesia worked. “It was instantaneous almost! Like that!” he said with a finger-snap. “One minute you see the needle entering skin and then… whoa, lights out. And then suddenly you’re coming to in the recovery room, you know?” I enjoyed hearing about how quickly you’d go unconscious. Even though on the other hand that sounded just a little too much like dying by lethal injection at San Quentin, for my liking.

But on the other hand, it was… interesting, I had to admit that. And my brain had already started started chewing on this information, because I was desperate, wasn’t I. Needing something that would take my conscious mind off what was coming and keep it off, right up until the final moment. The proverbial bullet to clamp between my teeth, anything at all to take my mind off the buzz saw that was waiting for me over at the other end of the lumber mill.

Alright, here comes a silly thing. I had always wanted to be a writer. Not just a writer, but a successful one, a Steinbeck or a Hemingway, you know? And no, it wasn’t the lure of money. It was the great and overwhelming respect and esteem I’ve always felt for the Great Writers. They were my superheroes, just as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry had once been. It was a foolish thing but… see, I hadn’t figured that out yet, had I. And I wanted in, I wanted to belong to that fraternity/sorority. So consequently, I’d been scribbling my life away, jotting down great ideas on everything from diner napkins and to the back of my hand in a fix. And what had I accomplished thus far? Zilch. Absolutely nada. Well, nada and a gigantic pile of used notebook paper and diner napkins.

Why? Because I just couldn’t do it. No matter how I tried. I didn’t have the talent or the stamina it takes. And apparently with my little, small-time, one-horse-town life, I didn’t have anything to write about anyway. But back then, I was still looking. Looking, looking, always looking for inspiration and some usable material. Any material. And listening to my roommate, it occurred to me that I should take really good mental notes when I got the magic injection and went bye-bye. For The Great Book I was sure I was gonna write someday, who knows, I just might need to include a scene of someone getting anesthetized. My own experience would be an invaluable resource. So I began right away, imagining what it might be like, imagining what it might not be like, already preparing my mind to try to stay sharp right up to the end. If nothing more, at least it would be something to keep myself distracted, to keep my fear tamped down inside until this whole operation thing was over and done with.

Next morning, the big moment finally arrived with some guy in scrubs pushing a gurney into our room. I got manipulated onto it and then settled myself down for “the ride” (think The Green Mile, even though that book wouldn’t be getting published for a couple of decades hence). The P.A., or whatever he was, informed me he was going to give me a little muscle relaxant before we embarked. (Probably to keep me from leaping off the gurney if I got sick this time, such being my reputation after the day before.) I was expecting it to be in the form of a muscle relaxant pill but, no, he proceeded to lift the hem of my jonnie and with a syringe, inject me in the hip instead. No biggie. Didn’t hurt that much. Not as much as the Roman Centurion’s spear probably hurt Jesus when he slipped it into his side anyway.

Before leaving, I checked my watch. I wanted to have at least a pretty accurate idea for the record about how long I’d end up being under. “You need to take that watch off,” he told me. I wasn’t too happy about that but then, “Off we go,” he said, and it was off to the elevator with me and down about a mile of first floor hallway with Leonard Cohen’s sepulchral bass intoning “The Sisters of Mercy” in my head the whole way, as I watched the river of ceiling tiles passing overhead. OK, I’ve been told I’m a little overly dramatic at times and that may be true, but I was terrified, you know? And besides that, I honestly wasn’t all that entirely sure I was ever even going to wake up from the ordeal. I mean, I was totally a fresh-fish newbie at this business.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So. The guy parks me in the hall outside the O.R. and leaves…

OK, to my left is a large plate-glass window looking off into the very well-lit operating room. From my low-level position on the gurney, I can make out the gathering of powder-blue-gowned entities surrounding and hunched over what has to be the operating table. I can’t see the patient, but I’m well aware that I’m due to be next on that slab. It’s like waiting for the next available electric chair at San Quentin. I’m in no damn hurry though. Even though I’m praying for this whole hellish thing to get itself over with.

It seems like it’s taking just way too long.

I can tell you one thing. I’m not dressed for the air-conditioning here. This hospital johnny was never built for warmth. And all I have the thinnest blanket you can imagine covering me, and I’m starting to freeze.

Time marches on. Instinctively I glance at my watch, but of course it isn’t there, is it. I really don’t see why I had to leave my watch back in my room. It’s not a huge watch. I can’t imagine how it’d possibly get in the way of them operating on my spine, for crying out loud. I mean, damn, obviously it wouldn’t…

Jesus, how long is it gonna take for them to get done with the current body, and get my body on the slab in there anyway? I mean, come ON, people! It’s freezing out here. Hopefully they’ll at least have the heat turned up in there!

Time continues to march.

Suddenly… footsteps! From behind me in the hall! Somebody coming! Finally! I crane my neck to look, but it ain’t easy, stuck in the dying cockroach position. Ah, but here he is, yes, stethoscope dangling from his neck. He’s…

Wait! Don’t pass right by me! “Uhmmm, excuse me? Doctor?” Jesus, he doesn’t even have the common courtesy to slow down, let alone stop. “Hey. Doctor?” No good. So then, in my high school English teacher voice: “HEY!” And there. He stopped. And turning around, but looking confused, looking around like a guy who knows he just heard something, but…what? “Over here! OK?!” OK, seems like he heard that. God, what do I look like, a goddamn lump of laundry, or what? Or… jeez, I dunno, maybe he’s deaf? OK. He’s coming. Good. And here he is.

“Did you say something?”

Yeah. Deaf alright. “Yes,” I say loudly. “I did. Can you tell me what time it is?”

He leans down, getting a closer look at me. Kinda inspecting me. “What’s that?”

Yep. I was right. Deaf as a post. And me here not knowing sign language. So I try again, loudly and slowly, and enunciating very carefully, “What time is it?”

Now he bends down in even a little closer to my face, his stethoscope bopping into me, him looking a little pained and puzzled. “Sorry? What was that?” he says, shaking his head.

Jesus. “I said, WHAT. TIME. IS. IT?!” I mean, come on, gramps, you got a watch right there on your wrist.

He shrugs his shoulders. Shakes his head with a big, clueless, shit-eating smile. Damn, he’s giving up on me. So he turns, and with an I-give-up shake of the head, just ambles away, back on down the hall!

Where am I, the looney bin for crying out loud?!

More time passes. Guess I must’ve fallen asleep because without warning, I feel my gurney moving forward again. I can’t see the guy pushing me. But man, it’s about time! It’s a wonder I haven’t frozen to death by now. But anyway, we’re off and rolling.

The cart stops. Wow. This O.R. is very dark. Which is odd, considering the other one was all lit up so much more brightly. Well, it’s not pitch black at least, but still… and, surprise surprise, it’s no warmer in here than out in the damn hall, either. Which sucks. It seems my push-cart has disappeared.

Anyway, I tell myself, OK, let’s be ready. It can happen any time at all. Gotta pay very close attention when they put that needle in. And gotta remember all the details, what it’s like, drifting off so quickly into la la land.

But you’d think, though, wouldn’t you, that they’d have started by…

Whoa, somebody’s… crying? Oh yeah. Sobbing, really. What, in here? Right where I’m gonna get operated on?

My eyes are pretty much adjusting to the low light. I look around, take a better look-see. So there’s another gurney right next to mine. With somebody lying on it. And whoever he is, he’s just let out a long, whooping, baleful moan, like he’s trying to howl at the frickin’ moon! I mean c’mon, ladies and germs, let’s get this show on the road. I haven’t got all day! What did they, forget about me?

Actually, there’s more than two gurneys in here. There’s a lot of them. And… they’re not empty, either. Christ, it’s like a parking garage in here.

OK, now somebody somewhere off to my right’s muttering, jabbering like talking in her sleep.

Over and above the powerful clinical antiseptic odors, I smell vomit! Gross. And where the hell are my surgeons? And nurses? OK, I’m starting to panic. Somebody, cries, “Get me the hell outta here!” and it turns … that was me, and because I jumped up a little when I yelled it, a hot, searing pain I swear I can’t even believe goes ripping violently like a chainsaw up my spine. I collapse back, exhausted, promising myself I am never gonna even try to move ever again. Ever. It’s not worth it.

Oh sure, now other voices have joined in, moaning curses and pleas. It’s utter madness… Christ, I’m in a damn zombie movie!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Though I’m a slow study in the best of times, but little by little my re-awakening brain began connecting the dots, and piecing together the confusing but now obvious clues. That doctor in the hall? He wasn’t deaf. It was me. I was unintelligible. My flabby fat lips were connected to a brain-dead brain and were incapable of producing anything more than gobbledeegook. And when the intern, or whatever he was, the one who slipped the injection of “muscle relaxant” into my hip? No shit, Sherlock!. That was it! That was the very thing I’d been waiting for! But, damnit, I wasn’t ready for it! Was I. So yeah, I missed it! I must’ve been knocked the moment he withdrew the damn syringe from my hip. And all of that watching the ceiling tiles on the way down to the O.R.? That’s when I was leaving the O.R., not travelling to it.It was like that Dr. Hook song, “I Got Stoned and Missed it…

So there I was. Lying there, in the recovery room! Post-op. Moaning and mumbling like all of the other post-ops. So, it was all over. All over but the shouting. Me just lying there, waiting the long wait for my ride back up to the sixth floor, where I could commiserate and compare notes with my roomie.

And begin trying my luck at to scoring Percodan from the nurses up there. Chanting the chant: percodan percodan percodan!

home

Tag: Memoir

I, YOUNG CYRANO PART(S), THE LAST

Leave a comment Cancel reply

I, YOUNG CYRANO PART II

COME ON BABY, LIGHT MY FIRE

ALTERED STATES II