Originally Posted Tuesday, September 17, 2013
I got up without thinking of the day. I don't watch television, and I hadn't been listening to NPR and so had not been warned. Funny, I think now, that a day so auspicious could fly completely under my radar, but it is not surprising, really. I have cut myself off from most of the outside world, or have been cut off perhaps, by pain and circumstance. Not matter, though. I got up in a foul mood on a day that was supposed to end in fun. Red is back in town (nobody knows for how long), and "Renoir" was playing at the neighborhood art house movie theater, and she, being an artist herself, I thought would be good company. I had been told by friends that the movie was beautiful.
But I have lived with too much pain for far too long now, pain that is not relenting, pain that will not go away, and it has left me defeated and empty. I rise in the morning to pain as I walk to the bathroom, as I sit on the toilet, as I walk to the kitchen to feed the cat and make the coffee. The only relief comes when finally I can sit at the computer, slumped so that the sacroiliac is bunched onto the hard wooden seat in a certain way. Then I can almost pretend to be normal.
But eventually I must shower and get ready for the factory. The motions of cleaning myself in the shower, then standing at the sink to shave and perform other necessary ablutions send electric waves of electricity through my buttocks and into the thick hamstring muscles then down into my calves until I am twisted and buckled and crying out to no one for relief. There is none. And so I continue, first putting on a shirt, then pants, then trying desperately to get on socks and shoes, finally falling back onto the bed sobbing and soaked with sweat, the lying back being no relief at all. And so I continue, walking to get my bags together, to pour a go cup of coffee, feeling that horrible smack of searing pain as I swing my legs into the car, waiting for the relief that comes from sitting once again.
On 9-11, though, I went for a walk in the morning. I cannot run, so walking is my saving grace. I walked two miles before turning back and heading home. And when I got there, the electricity was turned off. Oh no. I know what you think. But it was not that. I have an auto-pay system hooked up. No, they had turned it off to do some repairs. And so pained already, I showered in the warming air and tried to dry, but it was useless. By the time I had gotten dressed, I was soaked. I would need to shower again that afternoon before going to the movie, I thought. I looked like my hillbilly relatives, dirty and worn.
When I got to work, I told my secretary that I was ready to kill someone. The first person who looked at me sideways, I said, would find himself lying on the floor. I wanted to inflict pain, to share it, being sick to death of wearing it all alone. We are supposed to suffer silently we are told. "Don't be a baby," we are chided, for babies will not suffer the least discomfort silently. But I have and I do. It is the credo. It is the code.
The day wore on, me groaning to myself when I had to get out of my chair, walking like the old man I am rapidly becoming, my smiling a horrible parody of a smile, the grimace of death that you see on Hemingway in the late photos when he, too, wore his pain, a lip curling upward but the death eyes looking hollow and empty out at you. "That is me," I think, "that is me."
I suffered through the day with shakes and vibrations and a terrible fatigue that has come over me. "Parkinson's," I think to myself. "This is probably the end." But I am brave if sad, and I was going to drink and eat with Red who I had not seen in so many months in an art house movie theater with reserved tickets I had gotten from a friend of a friend who was a member. I was going to show her how I lived--like Euro-trash royalty, like an American swindler or swine. No kidding, though, I thought, it will be cool.
And so I left work early so that I could go home and shower. I wanted to feel good and enjoy myself, for I hadn't in oh-so-long. It would be grand. Cocktails to start. I needed one, I thought. That is, of course, always a bad sign. But I did. And so through the usual traffic I hurried as I always do, aggressive and purposeful, waving those with low I.Q.s and little critical thinking out of my way.
Then. . . Kaboom!
I don't know what happened. A car in front of me was half in the turn lane and half in mine. Cell phone in one hand, I was unable to make the cat-like move I usually can, and by inches--and I mean inches--I grazed him. It was so slight, I thought to drive on as if nothing had happened. But it had.
"Oh fuck. I just hit someone. I'll have to call you back."
He was already out of the car assessing the damage. He was a man my own age though he looked nothing like me. He would not believe it later when it became apparent. I had creased him and had taken most of the damage.
"Are you O.K.?" he asked. He was alright. He was a decent guy.
I looked in the car and saw an old woman hunched over in her seat. She had tubes running into her nose.
"I'm taking my mother to the hospital," he said. "She has kidney stones. She is bleeding."
"I am done for," I thought. I could see the problems this would bring. There was nothing to do, no damage that needed to be looked after.
"Let's pull over into the gas station," I said.
When I got out of the car, he was on the phone with his window up. He was reading my tag number into the phone. It had begun.
When the policeman arrived, he was pissed off and grumpy. It was hot, a steamy five o'clock shitty afternoon, and he was feeling it. He, too, was my age, and I guess he should have been more than a street cop by now. Yea, he was pissed, and I knew not to talk. The other fellow, though, didn't seem to get that part. The policeman got madder and madder as the fellow from New York did what he did. I just sat back and watched. I wouldn't get to shower before the movie, I thought. And my insurance will go way up.
"Give me a Grey Goose on the rocks," I said.
"Don't you want a martini?" Red asked.
"Really? Look at the bartender. How old is he? Do you think he could make a martini?"
We were sitting at the outside bar. It was lovely. I was a crab. Just then my phone rang. It was my ex-girlfriend who is also my tenant. Things were going wrong. I needed to come up to the apartment. Etc.
"Oh," I said, "that will not happen tonight."
But the little boy mixing drinks was at least savvy enough to pour me four fingers of vodka in a glass full of ice. At least there was that.
At the allotted time, we went to our table in the theater. It was a good table, a respectable table with our names on it. We were that, at least. And then there were more drinks and food, and then the movie. I wasn't in the mood for a French film about Renoir, I guess. The French silences that are supposed to be so full of meaning only pissed me off. "Fuck Renoir, "I thought. "How'd he do it?"
Well. . . that is the short version of a long tale. After the movie, Red and I had a couple more drinks, then I prepared for what was to come. As if I could. But that is a tale to tell next. This one has run on a bit too long. Who cares for other people's troubles? Why. . . everybody, of course, if the tale's told right. Nobody likes suffering unless it is somebody else's. I can give you that in treys.
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