GRANDMA & GRANDPA BURTON

If you were to ask my Grandma Burton which one of her grandchildren she loved the most, I would imagine she would respond in the following manner;

“I love all you little shits the same.” Then, after taking a sip of her gin and tonic, she’d add, “But it’s TJ. Definitely TJ.”

My blind grandfather, in his baritone voice of reason, would pipe in “Your grandmother loves all of you the same.”

My grandmother would then glance over to us and silently, but very articulately mouth the syllables “T-J.”

The fact of the matter is we’ve never had to ask my grandmother who her favorite is. She’s always made it painfully clear that she loves my older brother TJ the most. TJ was the first born of her grandchildren, giving him a strong advantage over the rest of us, and his love of marching band cinched the deal. For reasons unknown, the woman has always been obsessed with marching band. All three of her children participated when they were in high school (which might have some reason to do with it), and when TJ showed interest, she was over the moon. Although increasingly immobile, my grandma – the same one who’s catch phrase is commonly known to be “Oh! My sciatica!” - would giddily drag herself and my grandfather up a rickety set of bleachers to watch my brother play the trombone during half time at his high school’s football games.

TJ turned out to be quite the trombone player, and grandma’s quickly dubbed him “Wonder Boy,” which she would shout any time he entered a room. During her own mother’s funeral, she pushed through all of her grandchildren like Moses parting the sea, grabbed TJ and screamed with utter delight “Hey Everyone! This is one I’ve been telling you about. This is Wonder Boy!” The rest of us were left in the dust completely un-miffed. We all looked at each other and thought the same thing; “Where’s the dead body?”

It was made clear to the rest of us grandchildren that if we were to compete for my grandmother’s affection, we better learn an instrument. We all dabbled here and there, but collectively agreed once we discovered my grandparents weren’t exactly Rockefellers, that the potential inheritance did not equal the shame of performing in the marching band. So instead, we all waited patiently for my brother to give up band, which would surely lead to his fall from grace. But much to our chagrin, TJ continued playing throughout college, and then after graduating became a band teacher – ensuring that none of us could ever de-thrown him.

Asking one of us if we were pissed that my grandma loved TJ the most would be like asking an Eskimo if he was sick of snow. We had grown up with it and accepted it as a way of life. My grandma would move heaven and earth to see any and all TJ related festivity – band concerts, plays, graduations, everything. If they had sold tickets to my brother losing his virginity, my grandma would have been there front row and center clapping her hands slowly and screaming “Wonderboy! Wonderboy!” She never really attended many of my functions, but her absence didn’t exactly bother me. During one of her visits, my parents made me show her one of my paintings from a recent art exhibit. She took one look at it, laughed and shouted “well that’s just about the ugliest little boy I’ve ever seen!” When my mother explained to her that it was suppose to be a girl, she laughed until I sulked out of the room.

Recently my grandparents moved from their large home in Pennsylvania, and relocated to Raleigh to be closer to my Aunt Lynn. The distance, in combination with recent health problems, made it somewhat surprising to me when I heard that the two of them were driving up to see TJ perform as the lead in his local community theater’s performance of Oklahoma. Although, after two seconds of thought, it dawned on me that it made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t they drive 4 and half hours to see TJ in a community theater version of a musical they hated? Why wouldn’t they? What did surprise me though, was the phone call I received from my twin that evening. It was a Friday night, and I was getting ready to meet up with my friends for drinks when I got a call from Matt.

“Hey Brother,” he said in his standard casual greeting. “Just thought I would let you know that grandma and grandpa got into a car accident.”

“WHAT!?” I screamed. “OH MY GOD! Are they…wait…which ones? Miles or Burton?”

“The Burtons.” Matt responded.

“Oh…” I said. There was a brief pause. “Well, uh…yikes…Are they okay?”

“Well Grandma had a heart attack and grandpa broke his neck, but other than that they’re just fine.”

“Oh my God! Do I need to come down?”

“No, mom said that she thinks they’re going to be okay,” Matt reassured me. “I’m sure they’ll call you if they die or something.”

In the background I could hear his car door shut behind him. “Where are you? Are you going to see them?”

“No, I’m going to get drunk.”

“Well, do you think I would be a bad person if I went out and got drunk too?”

“No,” Matt said. “They would want it that way.”

The next morning my mother called to give me more details. My grandparents had only been a few minutes from my parents’ house when they got into the accident. Despite the fact that they have been there hundreds of times before, they decided to use the navigational system they had received for Christmas. It had taken them on a route they had never been on before, but they put their faith in it and followed it blindly. When it told them to take a long, windy gravel road - they did. And when it told them to proceed straight through an intersection – straight they went, straight through a red light. Another car slammed on their breaks to avoid hitting them, but knocked into the back of their car, flipping it over into a ditch on the side of the road. With the car on its side and a broken windshield, my elderly grandparents dangled precariously in their seats, above four inches of broken glass. When the paramedics arrived, they removed the roof to fish them out. When my mother told me this, I told her “At least they finally got that convertible they always wanted” – to which my mother informed me that my father, my brothers, my sister-in-law, my Uncle Ed, and one of the neighbor boys had all made the same joke. “And I didn’t think it was funny any of those times either.”

My grandparents were rushed to a nearby hospital, luckily only minutes away. My grandma, who had been driving, was shaken, but not seriously injured. The doctors did, however, find an enzyme in her heart that suggested she may have had, or was about to have a heart attack. They kept her overnight, and in the morning decided she was fine, and let her go home with my parents.

My grandpa on the other was not in such good shape. When my parents arrived at the hospital, they found him covered in glass and blood, strapped to a gurney, and yelling at the nurse who wanted to cut off his “good shirt.” My grandfather, usually a quiet and stoic man, was demanding painkillers to numb the pain. They refused to give him anything until they had determined the extent of his injuries, so there he laid, strapped to a hard board and unable to move, with bits of broken glass underneath him, all in his good play-seeing shirt. X-rays showed a small crack in his neck that would require surgery to repair. It wasn’t a Christopher Reeves break, but serious none the less. After his surgery, he remained in the hospital for a couple of days, and then was transferred to a recovery facility close to my parent’s house.

My mother insisted that neither I, nor my cousin Kelly needed to come down from New York to visit our grandparents. The rest of our family was there though. Kelly’s mom and dad, my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Ed, had put their annual beach trip on hold and raced up from North Carolina to be with them. Even my reclusive Uncle Chuck and his wife Lisa came down from Pennsylvania with their children to make a cameo appearance. Riddled with guilt, Kelly called me crying late one evening.

“I feel so bad!” She told me. I could hear her sniffling on the other end of the phone. “Our entire family is there, and we’re so far away.” Her tears moved me, so I agreed to go down with her the following weekend. I later found out that they were not tears but a minor sinus infection, and that Kelly was only planning to swing by briefly while she was in the area to see her boyfriend. I felt duped.

So I traveled down to Virginia Friday evening after work. The house was packed. My parents, my Uncle Lynn and Aunt Ed, my grandmother, Kelly and her boyfriend Bryan, and my twin brother were all there. It was too late to visit my grandpa, but I was just in time for my Aunt Lynn’s birthday dinner. I felt bad for my Aunt Lynn. It was her birthday, and she was supposed to be vacationing with her friends at the beach. Instead she was here with us, in suburban Virginia, nursing her battered parents. Not exactly how I would choose to spend my birthday, but she remained cheerful throughout - even at dinner, when in front of her daughter’s new boyfriend we each went around the table and recited our favorite Lynn story – all but one involving her frequent flatulence.

That night I reflected on my relationship with my grandfather. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the man. As infants, his mere presence inexplicably caused my twin brother and I to scream uncontrollably – which forced him to ride in a separate cars and eat alone in the kitchen whenever we were around. As children, we stopped screaming, but he still remained a mystery. He’s a quiet and gentle man, never speaking unless spoken to. He’s lost a lot of weight these last couple of years, but even still, he remains large – tall, broad, and brooding. Having advanced stages of Retinitis pigmentosa, he’s almost completely blind, and therefore doesn’t move unless absolutely necessary. He will get up to play a game of horseshoes though, where I’ve ever seen him lose a game. How? No one really knows, but it has led many of us to question his poor eyesight – or it did, until he took a shit in the bathroom sink.

When I was in middle school, my brown-nosing cousin John wrote a paper for one of his classes about my grandpa, entitled “My Grandpa - the Hero.” We made fun of him for his clear attempt to raise his rank in the will, but when I read it I learned a lot about my grandfather that I didn’t know. As a young man, he served in the US Army, stationed in England during WWII. There, he worked in the hospital, where he witnessed – technically speaking – some pretty gnarly shit. My grandpa was an extremely handsome man, and when we returned home from the war, he met my grandmother – a looker herself, and the two of them married, settled down, and shockingly punched out three strange looking babies.

The next morning, a group of us went to see my grandfather in the recovery facility he had been transferred to. As we pulled into the parking lot, my grandmother pulled out a handicap sticker she had stashed away in her purse. It was one of the few items my Aunt Lisa had retrieved from their crushed vehicle. Lisa, being one of the thinnest of the family, had volunteered to crawl into the wreckage to recover some stuff that was left behind. She came back with an atlas, seven umbrellas, and most importantly, two handicap stickers the state of North Carolina had given my grandmother to aid her while she assisted transporting my grandfather. Grandma forcefully handed it to my father, and insisted that he park directly in front of the facility’s doors. He refused to take it however, as there were quite a few empty spaces just feet away. “Being lazy is not a handicap” he told my grandmother as he handed her back the sticker.

“Oh yes it is!” she shouted after him as she slowly hoisted herself out of the car.

As we got out of the car, my mother informed us that recovery facility they transferred my grandpa too was technically a hospice.

“A Hospice?” I shouted. “Is grandpa dying?”

“No!” my mother sighed. “Hospices are more than where people go to die. They specialize in treating the elderly.”

Seconds later, we entered the foyer - filled to the brim with funeral bouquets. Every inch of table space, countertop, and windowsill was occupied with large flower arrangements, so many in fact, that many had to be stacked across the floor. Some of them still had banners on them, printed with messages like “our hearts are with you,” and “our deepest condolences.”

“Are you sure grandpa isn’t dying?” I asked my mother.

My mother stopped to examine one lily arrangement. “People just drop off the left over flower arrangements here after funerals.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Matt muttered under his breath. “We are in God’s Waiting Room.”

The group of us maneuvered through the field of death flowers like Dorothy walking through the poppy field. As we approached the double doors that led into the hospice, my mother stopped and turned around to address us all.

“Take a deep breath now while you can because it smells like urine in there.” As she said this, she noticed a dryer sheet clinging onto the freshly cleaned pair of pants that she had changed into earlier that afternoon. “Oh!” She said with a pleased look on her face. “Perfect!” She took the dryer sheet into her hand and spread it across her nose, paused and took a deep breath in, and then pushed the doors open.

Through the doors, the bright and cheerful foyer turned into a dark, dingy – yet sterile environment. There was no natural light - just the yellow hue coming from the florescent lights above. Everything was yellow, the walls, the ceiling, the people, even the air seemed to be yellow. The aroma of urine and cleaning fluid punched me in the face as soon as we entered. It was potent, just like my mother had warned. I saw my father come up behind her and try to steal her dryer sheet she had covering the bottom half of her face. “Get your own!” she shouted.

The hall was lined with the elderly people in their wheelchairs. They each sat facing the door, watching us with their sad dull eyes as we walked by. It was unsettling. These people were old. Very old. Unnaturally old. Looking at them, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps humans weren’t made to live this long. Their bodies were tiny and frail, with liver spots and wrinkles covering every inch of their gray flesh. I tried my best not to make eye contact as I walked by. It was easy to tell that each and every one of these people thought that we were the family they had forgotten. They would perk up in their wheelchairs, hoping that dementia had caused them to forget that they had full grown daughter and a grandson with a shaved head.

As we walked down the halls, we heard a low moaning sound coming from the room ahead. As we got closer, the moaning turned into shouting. It was a man, yelling “Jesus Christ! God Help me!” he repeated himself over and over again. “Jesus Christ! God Help me!” As we walked by the room, Matt and I both looked in. An elderly man lay on his side, his back to the door, completely nude. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted again.

Matt looked at me and shook his head. “Lord, please take me when I’m young.”

“That’s crazy! I was just thinking the same thing.” I beamed. I still, to this day, get excited when Matt and I share certain “twin” moments. It genuinely surprises me that as different as we are, he and I still, on occasion, share the same thoughts.

My mom turned around to squash our moment. “Oh please,” she whispered. “Like we all weren’t thinking the same thing!”

Finally, at the end of the hall we found our grandfather’s room. As we walked in, I heard a vaguely familiar sound. Something from my early childhood – loud and funky. Grandpa was lying in his hospital bed, a brace tightly wrapped around his neck and a remote in his hand. He was watching a rerun of Soul Train with the volume on as high as it would go.

I gave him a big hug and a gentle pat on the head. “Grandpa!” I shouted.

“Chris?” he asked. “Is that you? You didn’t have to come down to see me.”

”Grandpa? Are you watching Soul Train?” A busty black girl was on the TV gyrating her bare mid section.

“Soul train?” He said confused. “I thought this was the Redskins game.”

Grandma, who was trailing a good five minutes behind us, came into the room. She walked straight up grandfather and kissed him on the mouth. I didn’t bother averting my eyes, assuming it would be a quick peck. I was wrong though, and I accidentally observed the two of them full-on, open mouth make out. It lasted for what seemed like minutes. It was awful and disturbing. I had never seen two old people French before – especially not these two old people. Neither one of them was much for physical contact. In fact, the most interaction I had seen between the two of them was limited to when my grandma led my grandpa by the hand to the bathroom.

One of my brothers groaned. “Grandma, stop! I’m trying to watch Soul Train.”

My grandma sat down in a chair beside grandpa’s bed. “Well if you thought that was bad, you should have heard your grandfather on the phone with me at the hospital. It was during the first night that we were there. They had put your grandfather in one room and me in another. I called down to him and told him I loved him and I was I was there to hold his hand. And do you remember what you said Bob?” She asked my grandpa, who was now flipping through the channels to see if could find the actual Redskins game.

“Yup.” He said.

“He said...” My grandmother continued. “He said ‘I wish you were holding more than my hand!’”

“EWWWWWWW!” We all screamed with genuine horror.

My mom jumped in to explain. “He had just come out of surgery and was hopped up on morphine. He didn’t know what he was saying.”

“I knew what I was saying!” my grandpa snapped.

We hung out with my grandfather for an hour or so. The doctors had put him on serious painkillers that made him much chattier than usual. He talked about the Olympics, the comfort of elastic waistbands, and the “little foreign girl” that was helping him with his physical therapy. The entire time, my grandmother sat beside him, stroking his hand and looking at him longingly. It was strange watching my grandparents interact in this way – acting like they liked one another. Before this, if asked to describe their feelings towards one another, I would have said “mildly partial.” I had always assumed they had stayed together for so long for the very same reasons that that morbidly obese man stayed on the same couch for decades – because after years of immobility, his skin grew into the couch cushions. That man and the couch became one – not because they loved one another, but because it was too hard for that man to get off the sofa and find somewhere else to sit. But watching them together, kissing, holding hands, I realized that I had completely misjudged them. They clearly still loved each other – had always loved each other, and even after 50 some years together, probably always will love each other. It was touching. Nauseating, but touching.

After an hour or so, my grandmother began to complain about her blood sugar being low, so we all said good bye to my grandfather. I gave him a big hug and told him to feel better, and he told me to make him proud. It sadden me to think that at this stage in my life, that most likely won’t happen, but I swallowed my feelings of failure, and said goodbye.

I had learned a lot about my grandparents in this quick trip home. I’ve always been extremely lucky to be so close to them growing up. They’ve always been there – readily accessible for me, but even still I feel like I hardly know them. I mean, sure I know them, but I’ve never really seen them as real people, with actual feelings and emotions. To me they had always been just grandma and grandpa, handers out of lottery tickets and wearers of funny Christmas socks. But witnessing the two of them together, I got to see that they are genuine. They’re real people. Old people. Very old. But people none-the-less.

I looked at my grandma as we drove away. She and I were both piled up in the back seat of my parents SUV, and she was rummaging through her purse to find a granola bar she always kept with her for when her blood sugar gets low. She and my grandfather are both diabetic, so there’s always an emergency stash of food that follows them. I could see sadness in her eyes as she dug through her bag – realizing that she would have to spend another night alone, away from my grandfather. I had never seen her like this, so raw and tender, so sweet and full of love.

I reached over and grabbed her purse from her. She looked at me with confusion. “Give grandma back her bag.” she told me. “I need that granola bar.”

“Tell me you love me,” I demanded.

She stopped. Looked at me suspiciously and leaned in. “What did you say?

“I said...Tell me that you love me!”

She let out one of her signature HA!’s and went to swipe the bag from out of my lap. I jerked it back to keep it out of her reach.

“Tell me that you love me or I’m eating this granola bar old woman!” I reached in and grabbed the bar from within her bag and began to unwrap it.

“Fine!” she said reluctantly. “I love you!”

I began to hand the bag back to her, but as she reached for it, I pulled it back again.

“More than TJ?” I asked.

“What?!” She shouted.

“Do you love me more than TJ?”

“Fine! Yes! More than TJ!” She yelled as she grabbed the purse from my hands.

“I love you too Grandma.”

“You’re really something else, you know that.” She said as she took a bite of the granola bar. “Something else alright.”

PAUL

I had only been working at Magnet for a couple weeks when I first spoke with Paul. I had answered the phone with our standard greeting - “Hello Magnet” (it wasn’t really a complete sentence, but it just rolled off the tongue – so much so that I still to this day find myself saying it – saying it when answering my cell phone, saying it when answering the phone at my new job, or saying it while greeting friends on the street.) 

To which Paul responded - “Well hello there. And who might you be?”

I was thrown by this less than standard response. I would have felt much more comfortable if had said something like “Get me Nicole, and don’t leave me on hold for 10 minutes this time!” But his interest in who I was was jarring. His voice was deep and sultry. He hadn’t introduced himself, but I could tell that he was someone who probably would be offended if I didn’t know who they were. Asking him to identify himself was out of the question, so I quickly figured out a way to force him to say his name.

“Hi, my name is Chris and this is my first…” I started to say, but he ruined my plan when he interrupted to say;

“Why haven’t you sent me pictures of yourself yet?”

I was stunned. Had I heard him right? I paused, and then sputtered out, “I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“Why haven’t you sent me pictures of yourself yet? I want to see pictures of what you look like.” He had the vocal presence of a phone sex operator, and every time he spoke, his voice got deeper and sultrier. And while it was somewhat flattering that some sexied-voice stranger was soliciting me for photos of myself, I was getting offended and annoyed at the phone game we were playing.

In a slightly sharper tone, I asked “Excuse me?”

Paul, I’m sure, could sense my frustration, and began to laugh. “Get me Nicole if you don’t mind.” He said. I put him at hold and looked up. Everyone in the office had heard me get flustered and was starring at me to see what was going on.

“Who is that?” my boss asked.

“I don’t know!” I shouted. “Some guy. I think he wants me to send him naked photos of myself.”

“That would be Paul,” Nicole said smiling as she picked up the phone. The other girl in the office put her hand over the side of her mouth and whispered “sounds like he likes you!”

Paul was one of the most talented and well established makeup artists on our roster. He lived in LA and worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest actresses - Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Garner, Lindsay Lohan, Salma Hayek – countless leading ladies had had his hands on their face. Being as he was mostly handled out of our LA office, it was unusual for us in New York to hear from him. I still to this day have no idea what he called about, but for whatever reason, when he was done speaking with my boss he asked her to put me back on the line.

“He wants to talk to you again,” she laughed. “Don’t worry. He’s great.”

I tentatively picked up the phone and stuttered “Hello…?”

“I hope I didn’t upset you,” Paul said gently, “I thought you were someone else.” Being the only boy to have worked in the office for over two years, I couldn’t imagine who he was mistaking me for, but his voice was so soft and genuine it was hard to imagine him being a creep. “But…” he continued, “if you still want to send me pictures, I wouldn’t complain.”

After that conversation, Paul began calling more frequently. I always assumed he was just a chatty guy who would talk to anyone who answered the phone, but it became clear when he started asking to be transferred to my line that he was calling specifically to talk to me. It seemed a little weird at first, considering that I was just a lowly administrative assistant with little-to-no clout at the company. But I enjoyed the attention, as few others in the company could even remember my name.

The two of us quickly developed a rapport with one another. Paul would ask me how big my penis was, and I would tell him he was a pervert. He would laugh and then ask again, but add ‘but seriously” at the end. It was a thing we had. But Paul was interested in more than just my penis size. He asked me about my family and about where I grew up. We talked about where I went to school and who I was dating. After a few conversations, he knew more about me than most of my friends. It was easy to talk to Paul, and when he wasn’t verbally molesting me, he was very engaging.

After the twentieth time I refused to send him pictures of myself, we compromised by agreeing to be friends on myspace. Paul had recently joined and was addicted, so much so that he decided that he needed two accounts (an official one and an unofficial one). He forced me to be friends with both of them. When he noticed that I hadn’t put either the official or the unofficial Paul in my top friends list, he called me and demanded that he instantly be upgraded. A few months later, when I swapped him out for an old college roommate, he called me within the hour, angry and wondering what he had done to deserve such shabby treatment. When I pointed out that he had never put me in his top ten, he responded “well, I don’t see how that has to do with anything.”

When my birthday came around, I decided not to tell any of my coworkers. I figured it would have only ended in one of two ways – either they would have made a huge fuss, or they wouldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t decide which would be embarrassing, so I tried to avoid the whole situation by keeping it to myself. But, much to my surprise, when I arrived to work, I was greeted by a huge bouquet of flowers and a giant birthday cake. Paul had gotten my birthday from my myspace page, and a few days before had informed everyone in the company so that they could adequately prepare. I had a flood of emails that day, many from people I had never even met, all saying the same thing - “Paul told me that it was your birthday and that I should say hi.”

After a year of conversing on the phone, Paul and I finally got to meet face to face. He was in town working with Mariah Carey, and he insisted that Nicole and I meet him for lunch. It’s always weird meeting someone that you’ve talked to forever but never met in person. I sat quietly during lunch as Nicole and he spoke very professionally about his career, but as soon as Nicole excused herself to go to the bathroom; he leaned in and whispered “Are you wearing any underwear?”

When I got my promotion, Paul was the very first to call to congratulate me. “Well well well,” he said. “I heard someone is a big agent now. You know, I’m the one who told everyone that you needed to be promoted. I told them that you were going to be the best thing that ever happened to this company.”

“That’s so sweat Paul…” I began to say, genuinely touched. He quickly interrupted though.

“So you better start getting me work out there in New York. You owe me big!”

After working at my job for over two years, I decided it was time for a change. When I quit, it all happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to anyone. Just a couple weeks ago I thought about Paul though. I saw his myspace page, and I thought to myself “I should drop him a line and say hi.” I didn’t though. I thought it might be weird after I quit. I was afraid he might be angry with me and give me shit, so I just let it go and went about my day.

Just this week, one of my old coworkers called me to tell me that Paul had past away. No one really knows exactly how it happened – just like how no one really knew how old he was. He definitely was well beyond the 39 years he claimed to have been, but he was still a relatively young guy. Too young to have just gone like that. I was crushed. I sat their at my desk at my new job, fighting back tears while surrounded by people who would read about his death the next morning in the paper, but who would never understand what an awesome guy he was. I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye, tell him how much our friendship meant to me, how much I appreciated all the things he did for me, and finally tell him how big my cock is.

I love you Paul. I’m really going to miss you.

I LOVE THE HOMELESS

I, like most New Yorkers, do my very best to avoid the homeless like the plague (that they must undoubtedly have).  So while walking down Greenpoint Avenue the other day, I saw a hobo walking towards me - much to my surprise. Anywhere else in New York and I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but this was Queens and we don’t see much of their kind in these parts. It’s simply not prime hobo real-estate – largely due to the fact that most of us are just one high electric bill away from living on the streets ourselves. 

We were only a matter of seconds away from crossing each other’s paths, and I knew that he was going to bother me. If I had a sixth sense, it would be sensing when hobos were about to annoy me. It’s almost as if I can smell it coming - which is to say; i can smell it coming.  I had just had a horrible day at work, and believe-you-me, I was in no mood. I started strategizing my escape route.  Putting my ipod on is my usual go-to, but much to my chagrin, I had left my iPod at work.

I thought about pulling out my cell phone and pretending like someone had just called me, but it was in my gym bag and I doubted I could fish it out in time. I contemplated crossing the street, but the hobo was rapidly approaching, and this would require me to dart into on coming traffics.  It was a toss up, but I reluctantly decided that my best approach would just be to ignore him.  I know it’s horrible to treat another human in need as if they were invisible, but I had really had the worst day. To start things off, I had spilled my vegetable shake on my new shirt, and as if that wasn’t enough, the flatbread piada I ordered for lunch had come without the extra Tuscan sauce I had requested.

As the homeless man approached, he (as I had predicted) approached me.

“Hey…” he said.

I kept my head down, avoiding making eye contact, and picked up my pace.

“Hey…” He said again, getting progressively louder.

“Hey!” He shouted. Now we were side by side. I walked faster, relieved that it would soon be over. I quickly passed him and was well on my way down the block. In the corner of my eye I could see that he had stopped and was looking back at me.

“Hey.” He said. “I like your haircut.”

KEYWORD ACTIVITY

I recently started using a program that keeps track of the search engines people use to find my blog, and the key words they type in to find it. Here is the list of the most popular key words people have used within the last 30 days. I think it's pretty telling.

Number - Search Term
5 - judith elissaint
2 - jt fetter
2 - cjmiles naked
1 - oh my, my white blood cells are low!!! what's wrong with me?
1 - cjmiles thumb
1 - at&t relay jobs
1 - sexy jocelny elders
1 - cjmiles photo gallery
1 - miss cjmiles photo

KARAOKE

During college, my friend Eve and her roommate Kathy were two of my closest friends. After graduation, Kathy and I both moved to New York, while Eve moved to Northern Virginia to pursue a career in counseling. Eve and I don’t get to see each other very often, so when Kathy informed me that Eve was going to be visiting for a few days, I was excited that we were going to have a chance to catch up. Eve arrived on a Friday night, and the three of us met at a sushi restaurant, along with Kathy’s husband John for dinner. It was just like old times, and after one too many beers I started doing what I usually do – talking endlessly about myself, pausing only for air and more beer. A few hours later, we were all back at Kathy and John’s apartment and in the middle of one of my long winded rants, Kathy interrupted. “Just stop!” she said, “you’re so full of shit. There’s no way that’s true.”

I don’t remember what I was talking about, but I do remember being taken aback. I looked over at Eve for some support, but I was looking in wrong place though. “Yeah,” Eve said without mercy, “you do exaggerate a lot.”

I guess Kathy, seeing my reaction to their comments, tried to comfort me by adding “I’m not saying you’re a liar. I’m just saying you tend to embellish…embellish your stories with statements that are untrue. ‘Lies’ if you will.”

For the first time since my 6^th beer, I was speechless. My entire life, my family and I had accused my father of the same thing. Through the years, he would tell his favorite stories over and over again, and each time the facts became more and more outlandish. His friend Donny began the “truth or lie” game. After one of my father’s tales, we would collectively decide what in that story (if anything) was true and what was one of my father’s famous embellishments. In the end, we would reconstruct what we believed to be the most likely events behind my father’s story. When he told us about the time when, as a teenager, he scaled the side of the house and threw firecrackers down the chimney while his sister and her friends watched horror movies in the living room – we reduced it to him yelling “boo” from behind the couch. We decided that his “potato rocket” was more likely made of a cafeteria straw and a couple pieces of wadded up paper than a giant piece of PVC pipe and flaming tennis balls. It horrified me to believe that I had become my father, and I told my two friends as much, to which they responded “you’re probably exaggerating about that too. There’s no way your dad claimed to have shot at his RA with flaming tennis balls.” (He did.)

Eve agreed. “That story you told us about crashing your family’s only car during Christmas…Kathy and I both assumed your family was poor as shit and that you lived in some shanty village. Then I show up to your house and you had like six cars lined up in your driveway.”

I tried to explain how my other family members’ cars were all struck down by separate freak mechanical accidents, but the two of them were on a roll. Plus by this point, the alcohol had rendered me incapable of defending myself.

“And that story you told us about when you took your twin to karaoke, there’s no way that was true.” Kathy added. “You said that woman was 80 years old, but why would an 80 year old be hanging out at a bar late on a Friday night. There’s just no way.”

I was flabbergasted that I was being called to defend every story I had ever told, but at the same time I was flattered that they had actually been listening. I had evidence to support my karaoke story – photos that one of my friends had taken that documented every moment. I thought of showing them to the girls, but decided that they would only accuse me of doctoring the evidence. Instead, I decided to call someone that could collaborate my story, so I called my brother.

As the phone rang, I prayed Matt would answer. He was my only hope for defending my name - my only hope on proving that I hadn’t yet turned into my father. The phone rang what seemed like 100 times (an exaggeration), but just as I was about to hang up, he picked up the phone.

“Matt. Talk to me.” He answered.

“Matt!” I screamed as I turned on the speaker phone so Kathy and Eve could both hear. “Tell the story about the time we did karaoke at my place.”

My brother told the following story:

My girlfriend Jodi and I decided to visit Chris over St. Patrick’s Day weekend. We got up on a Friday night, and Chris informed us that we were going to go to dinner and then we were going to meet up with some of his friends to do karaoke at a bar down the street from his apartment.

We get there, we’re drinking, we’re singing and having a good time. Then Chris and I decide that we’re going to sing one of our classic duets – Don’t Stop Believing. I know…Journey is overdone, but it’s always a good way to get the crowd going. So the two of us are up there and just as we’re really start to rock out, this tiny old woman appears in between us, as if from no where. She was easily 80 if she was a day, tiny and prune like, wearing this big crazy wig.

At first I thought she was just trying to sneak on by, but I could tell by the devilish grin on her face that she was there for a little something more. Chris did what he always does when confronted by a woman…acts really awkward and sneaks away (not an exaggeration). But I thought “why not give this old thing a little big of love,” so I put my arm around her frail little body and started to sing with her. She and I are rocking back and forth, and she’s loving the ride, singing away. And then she gets up on her tippy toes and moves her face towards mine. I assume she wants to get closer to the microphone, so I put it to her mouth…just as she goes to whisper in my ear “Don’t be so obvious!” It’s broadcast over the entire bar, and she ducks her head in embarrassment. At this point, everyone in the bar is watching me cuddled up with this old woman, and my girlfriend is taking pictures so she can show everyone. It was awesome.

The next thing I know, I feel her tiny boney hands slip into my jacket pocket. Why she stuck her hand in my pocket is beyond me, my guess at the time was that she was trying to feel me up. Regardless, while her hand is in my pocket, I feel something cold and damp slip off into my pocket. I was repulsed. I assumed a Band-Aid had fallen off her hand. She then snuck off and went back to her table, where she high-fived another woman sitting with her who was probably just as old as she was.

When the song was over, Chris and I went back to the bar. Everyone was dying to know what she had slipped into my pocket. I reached in and pulled out a small piece of paper. She had scribbled her number down on one of the karaoke song request slips.

About an hour later I was telling the story to a girl outside. She grabbed the paper from me and called the old woman’s number. The woman had long since left and was back at home and probably in bed.

The girl screamed “Why are you hitting on my man?” when the old woman picked up.

“Who the fuck is this,” the old woman yelled back. “You’re a fucking pervert!” And then she hung up the phone. We were all shocked. She was such a nice and frail looking old woman, but man she sure had a mouth on her.

And that was that. I still have the number in my wallet. I’m thinking about having it framed.

And with that, I thanked my brother and wished him a good night. When I hung up the phone, I noticed that both Eve and Kathy were standing there with their mouths wide open. “Shit!” Kathy said. “It was just like you said!”

“See!” I shouted in desperation. “I told you I wasn’t a liar.”

Kathy and Eve looked at each other. “Nope,” Kathy told me. “You’re definitely still a liar.”

“Oh no doubt about it.” Eve added.

THE CRAZY

All this writing about how I almost died has really worn me out, so I’m going to take a brief interlude to tell you about a scene I witnessed the other day.

The only thing eventful about my commute this morning was its complete uneventfulness. In my two some years here, I have found that the New York City transit system always has something up its sleeves to ruin my morning. Delayed trains, overcrowded platforms, masses of pushy angry Asian women, there’s always always something. This morning, however, I realized while riding on the downtown 6 train that something was different. I was on time.

It was totally weird.

So there I was, sitting down on a semi-full car, reading my book quietly to myself. There were enough people on the car to fill almost all of the seats, but not enough to pack it in clown car style. Although there were a few seats open, several people chose to stand, most congregating around the door waiting for the next stop.

I was lost in my book, not really paying attention to anything around me, when I heard some sort of commotion going on to my right. I heard a weird noise, and I turned to see its source. I saw a middle-aged African American man sitting on a bench underneath one of the two subway maps located in each car. There was nothing particularly interesting about this man. He was average looking and unexciting in everyway possible. Bearded and bald, he was of average build (siding closer to plump), and plainly dressed in a simple t-shirt and jeans, but with expensive looking sneakers.

Standing over him was a young white woman, who was more plain that he. She was a curvy lass (also siding closer to plump), clearly dressed for a day in the office. She stood directly in front of the man, leaning over him to study the map propped behind his head. Her eyes were squinting, and she stood there hovering, tracing the path of her trip with her finger tip.

When I looked a little closer, I noticed the one thing that stood out in this otherwise completely average tableau was the crazy look smeared across the man’s face. He looked furious, the kind of furious that only a mental patient can achieve. I realized then that the commotion I had heard was him yelling. Yelling at whom or at what was beyond me though. I missed what he had said, so I was thankful when I saw his mouth open up wide, winding up for round two.

“Bitch! Get your titties out of my face!” he screamed at maximum volume. People around me were looking, so I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I did assume, however, that I had misheard him.

He screamed again. “Bitch, I said I gets your fucking titties out of my goddamn face!”

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what was going on. I assumed he knew the woman, that they were intimately involved, and that they were having some sort of lovers’ quarrel until he opened his mouth again.

“Bitch! I don’t know you! Get your titties out of my fucking face.”

What shocked me most about this whole situation wasn’t what the man was saying, but the woman’s reaction. Or lack-there-of I should say. As this man shouted at her, she continued to stand their, motionless, looking at the map, her titties in his face. No shift in position. No change in her facial expression. She just stood there, her finger continuing to move up and down the map. My first thought was perhaps she doesn’t speak English. But then I figured no matter what language you speak, a crazy-looking black man screaming at you is pretty universal for “get the fuck out of dodge.”

The man continued to yell. Repeatedly he shouted “Get your titties out of my face!” each time with more fury. Each time he yelled something slightly different.

“Bitch! I said get your titties out of my face”
“I said get your fucking titties out of my face, bitch!”
“Get your fat fucking titties out of my mother fucking face!”

He finally jumped up from his seat, and for the first time the woman moved. The two of them were nose to nose. The man was screaming at her “Why don’t you listen to me? I said get your titties out of my face.”

At this point, a large looking white man standing a few feet away stepped in. If I had to guess, I would say he was in his forties. He was a large man, tall and broad, and dressed rather suavely in a suite and tie. Clutching onto his briefcase, he yelled across the train

“Sir? Sir! You need to settle down.”

The black man turned away from the girl and shouted back “Who the fuck asked you, you son of a bitch!”

“Sir! Settle down!” the white man yelled back. “Do I need to call the cops?”

“Call whoever you fucking what!” the black man yelled, “just get this bitch’s fucking titties out of my face!”

At this point, we pulled up to the next stop. A large number of people left, including the white guy, leaving the train almost empty. The black man seemed a bit calmer, and returned to his seat beneath the subway map.

After the doors shut and we began moving again, the woman moved back to the map, and once again leaned forward, letting her titties dangle precariously above the man’s face.

I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for the man to completely loose his mind. I waited, but much to my surprise, he sat their silently. His lips were pursed tightly together, and it looked as if he was truly fighting back the demons inside. The woman seemed utterly clueless, closely examining the map. I thought to myself “she must be really, really, really lost.”

At the next stop, the woman got off. The scene was over, and I sat there amazed at what I had just witnessed. In my head I debated as to which one was crazier. Was it the man for yelling, or the woman for standing there and taking it? Clearly, they both something seriously wrong with the both of them.

And as I sat there, planning on how to best relive the scene for my friends and coworkers, an Asian man sitting next to the crazy guy got up to leave. The look of fury returned to the crazy man’s face, and he screamed “Mother fucker! Don’t hit me!”

The Asian man looked back, confused and concerned, “I…I didn’t hit you…” he stuttered.

“Don’t you fucking hit me mother fucker!” the crazy man shouted again. The Asian scurried out, and there I sat, just me and the crazy dude. I looked down at my book and though “this is why I love New York.”

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

So what's worse then doing nothing for your mom on Mothers Day? Apparently sending her this video...

I ALMOST DIED

PART II

When my friends found out that I was in the emergency room, the first question they asked wasn’t “what happened?” or “are you okay?” but instead “is it like being on that show ER?” I’ve never watched the show, but I assume the answer would be yes - granted you uglied up the cast and swapped out George Clooney with a shit load of homeless people.

After taking my temperature and blood pressure, the raisin faced nurse said nothing to me, just muttered something into the phone that prompted the arrival of a large attendant with a gurney. I looked at the nurse helplessly, is this necessary? written across my face. “Go on now,” she said to me. Reluctantly, I handed Katy my coat and climbed aboard.

With the nurse at the bow and the attendant at the stern, the two steered me through an obstacle course of homeless. Gurnies filled with hobos were parked everywhere, and my two handlers were struggling to maneuver me through the tight turns. It was a maze, and I wondered how on earth they were going to get me through it. I reassured myself, thinking “they’re professionals. They do this hundreds of times a day.” This confidence was shaken, however, when they rammed my bed into one of a sleeping homeless person. His eyes bolted open and we stared at each other screaming – he because he had been abruptly awoken, and I because he wasn’t wearing pants.

The two didn’t stop for apologies. They quickly wheeled me into a small room in the corner of the ER. These rooms – cubicles really – were divided by brightly patterned curtains, offering a hint of privacy from the moaning masses. The nurse situated my gurney next to a large oxygen machine and left briefly to fetch a chair for Katy. It was a tight fit, but she managed to wedge one inside the cramped quarters.

Katy sat beside me and held my hand as the nurse drew my blood. For the next hour or so, the nurse popped in and out, first to drill an IV into my arm, then to stick oxygen tubes up my nose, and finally to give me a hospital gown to change into. It was a complete hospital makeover, transforming me from a relatively healthy looking person into Tammy Faye Baker in a relatively short amount of time.

To pass the time, Katy and I began to play our favorite game There’s no real name for it, but the rules are simple. One of us thinks of someone we knew in middle school, and the other tries to determine who by asking a series of yes or no questions (for example; did they repeatedly throw rocks at me? Were they recently handcuffed and forcibly removed from the local Sam’s Club?) Once accurately guessed, Katy and I then stroke our fragile egos by discussing how much cooler we are than our former tormentors, or if not cooler - at least thinner. This time, our game didn’t last more than five minutes. The fun, smug feeling of superiority just wasn’t the same while laid up in a hospital bed next to a woman screaming “Nurse! The urine! It’s everywhere!”

Fortunately, Katy had thought ahead and brought a magazine for us to read together. Unfortunately, she chose to bring the Valentines issue of Woman’s Day. She read it aloud to me, beginning at the mast head and reading until I begged her to stop.

“Oh look,” she said as she opened up the first page. “The members of the Woman’s Day staff have listed the sweetest ways someone has told them they loved them. Isn’t that neat? Producer Judith Elissaint writes, ‘My sister calls me and puts my 2-year-old niece on the phone to say ‘I love you, Titi.’ It’s the cutest thing in the world!’ Let’s read on, shall we?”

She paused in between Catherine Zeta-Jones’s Secret to a Great Relationship and Tips on Writing a Love Letter and took my hand. “This is kind of nice, just you and me,” she said, “We never get to just hang out anymore. We never just talk.” Then she lifted up her magazine and pointed to the next page. “Now this is fun! A recipe for DIY potpourri!”

A young woman in a white coat pulled back the curtain and poked her head in. “Mr. Miles?” she asked, “You know we’re open 24-7 right? You don’t have to wait until you’re shitting blood and falling down to come see us.” My initial reaction was who the fuck are you lady, but she quickly introduced herself as my ER doctor for the evening. She was definitely an attractive woman, although looking back, it may have been that she was only attractive in comparison to every one else in the ER. She was funny too, and her mildly sassy demeanor put me at ease. I shook her hand and introduced her to Katy, and then asked her the question I had been wondering since I had passed in the bathroom.

“Is this for serious, or is this just in my head? Because I think I might be faking.”

She paused briefly, deciding the best way to answer my question. “Well, let me say this. I don’t really know you Mr. Miles. I’ve never seen you before. I don’t know what you usually look like, but I can tell you right now…without even looking at your chart…that no, this isn’t just in your head. You see…” she said as she put her hand on my shoulder, “Most people have color in their skin. You, on the other hand, have none. At all. I mean…Have you looked at yourself lately? Have you seen how pale you look? This can’t be normal, can it?” She looked at Katy for affirmation.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” Katy confessed, “but you have been looking very pasty lately.”

The doctor grabbed my hand. “Look,” she said as she examined my palm, “You don’t even have color in the palms of your hands. I’m not even exaggerating. Look!” She rapidly moved my hand close to my face so that I could bask in my paleness.

“I just thought I needed some sun.” I told her.

“You need a lot more then sun!” she told me as she started examining my chart. “We took your blood a little bit ago and tested your blood count. Now, in a vile of blood taken from a normal, healthy person, blood cells account for about 40 to 45 percent of it. The rest is the liquid they’re suspended in. So if a normal person’s blood count is at about '40', do you know what your current blood count is at?

She paused for dramatic effect. “19. Your blood count is 19.”

The only thing I could say was “Wahhhhhhhhh?!”

“If you would have waited any longer to get this treated,” she told me, “you would have slipped into a coma,”
“Or died?” Katy asked.
“If you had waited to treat your ulcer any longer, then yes, it is possible you could have died.” She told us.

I was completely speechless. Katy leaned over and said “Aren’t you glad I made you go to the emergency room?”

“Now, looking at your symptoms, it’s likely you have an ulcer in your stomach where blood is entering your digestive system. You’ve been bleeding internally, basically digesting your own blood, which would explain the black stool. Can I ask you how long your stool has been black?”

I had to rack my brain for an answer, but it was hard. I couldn't really remember a time when I was dropping black ones. I recalled a scene of me entertaining my family with black shit anecdotes at Christmas breakfast months earlier. My mother had to stop me, saying “Stop it! I’m eating grape jelly.”

“I don’t know,” I told the nurse. “Couple weeks.”

She jotted something down and continued. “Now, when you started seeing blood in your stool, there was probably so much blood in your stomach, your system couldn’t keep up and digest it all. That would take a lot of blood, Mr. Miles. It’s no wonder you passed out. The only think I don’t understand is how a 24 year-old gets a bleeding stomach ulcer.”

She turned Dr. House on me and started drilling me with a 101 ulcer related questions.
“Do you eat a lot of spicy foods?”
“Do you drink a lot of highly acidic beverages, such as orange juice?”
“Do you eat a lot of foreign or imported fruits and vegetables?”

No to all.

“Do you take a lot of Advil?”
I stopped to think. “How much is a lot?” I asked.
We both stared each other for a moment. “…How much do you take?”

The fact of the matter is I’ve been popping Advil like it was sweet candy for years. Ever since middle school, I’ve been taking it regularly to help me sleep, in addition to whenever I have the slightest headache or muscle ache. Hangover? I take three. Drunk? I take four to prevent the hangover. Sometimes I take it for no reason, other than the fact that I have a bottle sitting in front of me and I need something to go with my water. Sometimes I take it because opening the child proof bottle makes me feel like a man. I’m at the point where the recommended dose of two doesn’t even faze me. I’m at the point where the assistants at work have to order it in bulk on a special website because the Duane Reid next door was getting suspicious.

I told the doctor that perhaps I may have taken more than the recommended amount, but she wasn’t convinced it was enough to ware a hole in my stomach. “It would take massive and massive amounts of Advil to cause a bleeding ulcer in a relatively healthy 24 year-old,” she told me. We stared at each other for an awkward moment of time - she because she was lost and thought, and I because looking at her face was a better than staring at the curtain dividers. She broke the silence, saying “I’m going to send the specialist down who’s going to ask you a ton of questions that I wouldn’t even think to ask. There has to be a better explanation.”

“So I think it’s the Advil” was the first thing the specialist said as he walked in. Katy and I looked at each other, wondering what happened to the litany of questions we were promised. Like the last doctor, the specialist was young. Unlike her, he was neither attractive nor sassy. I tried to like him, but I couldn’t. He had “douche-bag” written all over him.

“We’re going to be moving you upstairs soon,” he told me. “We’re going to be performing a very simple procedure that will help us find the ulcer, and at the same time repair it. We’re basically going to be sticking a long tube down your throat. This tube has a camera on it that will allow us to find the damaged area. It also has a zapper that can cauterize it once we find it.”

I asked how long I would be in the hospital for. I had hardly been there 4 hours, but I was already hating it. “Well, you’re very ill,” he told me. “Your blood count is extremely low. We’re going to have to wait until your blood count gets significantly higher before we let you go anywhere.”

“So do you have a time frame for that?”
“Well,” he told me, “let’s just say you should inform your boss you probably won’t be in for awhile.” And with that, I had found my silver lining.

Before the specialist left, he ordered the nurses to add another iv drip to my free arm so that I could begin the first of the four blood transfusions I would receive.

Katy and I sat there, soaking in what just happened. “I almost died” I told her.
“I know!” She said. “Awesome.”
“Totally awesome.”

A half an hour went by, when a nurse came rushing in, pulling back the curtain to the front of my cubicle. “We need to move you Mr. Miles. We have a woman coming in, and she’s going to need this area.” A couple of attendants rushed in and tried to move my gurney. With the amount of tubes running into my body, they found it difficult to get me very far. Like a nasty yoyo, I was tangled on everything, so they ended up angling me into the neighboring triage station. They tried closing the curtain as they pushed a woman on a gurney in, but my tubes connected to other machine prevented them from shutting it very far. The woman they brought in was crying loudly. It was an awful and ungodly noise, and I couldn’t help but watch, trying to figure what was going on with her. Her husband stood there beside her. “It’s going to be okay” he kept telling her, but she only screamed louder. My cute/sassy doctor was there with her, telling her that they were giving her morphine to ease the pain. She looked over at me and told me, “We brought her in here to make you feel better by comparison.”

The cubicle they had pushed me into was shared with another man. I instantly noticed that he only had one leg. He was curled up in a ball, motionless. “I almost died!” I told him. He didn’t move.

A nurse came by and told me that they would be moving me upstairs very shortly. “I don’t know how this is going to work,” I told her, “but I really have to pee.” She left and returned with an unusual looking jug – very similar to the container my mother made kool-aid in when i was a kid. “What the hell am I suppose to do with his?” I asked her.
“You pee in it, Princess.”

I’ve always avoided urinals, so pissing in a small plastic container in the middle of a busy room while lying in bed seemed pretty incomprehensible. There were no curtains in my new room, so Katy positioned her self with her back to me, standing in-between me and the rest of the room. I moved the bottle under the sheets and carefully positioned myself inside it. My bladder felt like it going to explode, so I cleared my head and tried to unleash the beast, but as hard a I pushed, I simply could not pee.

“How you doing over there?” Katy yelled back at me.
“Still working on it,” I told her.

I shut my eyes and envisioned my happy place…my bathroom at home. While picturing myself sitting on my toilet and reading a shampoo bottle, the pee finally came forth, although at an incredibly slow speed. After five minutes Katy said “Jesus! Are you done yet?”

“I’M WORKING ON IT!” I snapped back. Minutes later, when I finally finished, I thought “Now what do I do with this?” I tried giving it to Katy, but she refused. I was too embarrassed to ask the nurses to take it, so I left it there, in between my legs and under my sheets. When the nurses came to take me upstairs, I worried that it would spill, but when faced with handing them a giant jug filled to the brim with warm piss, I decided to take my chances.

Katy followed me as they pushed my gurney into the elevator, and we waved goodbye to all our homeless friends. The nurses took me to the second floor, and wheeled me into a pleasant room at the end of the hall. They hoisted me onto the bed, said goodbye, and wheeled my gurney away, along with the bottle of piss I left with them.

Laying in my new bed, nurses came in and out, bustling around me. Doing this and doing that. I had been up all night, and exhaustion finally hit me. Katy remained next to me the entire time, holding my hand.

“You can go Katy,” I said to her. “You should probably go home and get some sleep.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
“I’m sure,” I told her. “I should probably get some sleep myself.”

She got up and gave me a kiss goodbye. “You’re going to be okay” she told me. It was about this time when everything hit me. Here I was, 24 years old and in the hospital. How did I end up here? I was alone, hundreds of miles away from my family. And honestly, I was scared. I had almost died, and I had just realized that this was the first time that someone had told me I was going to be okay. But was I going to be okay? Tears started streaming down my face.

One of the nurses saw me and rushed over. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?”
I was horrified that someone had caught my crying. “No!” I told her. “I’m just…full of emotion!”
“Oh…” she replied. She was clearly taken aback. She then but her arm around me, her large breasts falling into my face, “Don’t worry. I have a son your age, and you have Mother Devi here to take care of you.”

I Almost Died.
Part I

Did you know that black colored stool is a sign of internal bleeding? So is blood in your excrement.

All news to me.

A week had gone by with certain aforementioned issues, and I simply thought “that’s odd,” and went about my merry way. I’m not the type to “get sick” per say, so I didn’t think much of it. My view on illness has always been that there isn’t much out there that can’t be cured by a couple Advil and a night without drinking. However, my B.M. issues worsened, and were coupled with chronic fatigue, bouts of dizziness, and an unquenchable thirst (for water, not for power). It wasn’t until I started vomiting blood that I began to think that something may or may not be wrong with me. Face down in a toilet filled with a colorful blend of hemoglobin and New England clam chowder, I told myself “I may need to see a doctor about this…”

“…in the morning.”

So I went to bed, hoping a good night's sleep would take care of business. I had trouble sleeping though, cursed with terrible nightmares about work. Tossing and turning, I finally decided to get a warm glass of water and a couple Advil to help me sleep. I climbed out of bed, but as I got to the bathroom my head started spinning fast and furiously. I had an awful metallic taste on my tongue, and I felt my legs give out beneath me. For reasons I can’t explain, Olivia Thirlby’s terrible performance in Juno raced through my head, and as my hands searched the wall for something to grasp onto, I told myself “I don’t care what people say, I thought that movie sucked.” Moments later I came to, sprawled out on the tiled floor. I had passed out and on my way down hit my head on the counter top and knocked over the trash can.

Laying there, I noticed that there was blood on the floor. My face was throbbing from banging it against the counter top, and I touched it I realized that my nose was bleeding. "Jesus!" I thought to myself, "Another bleeding fucking orifice." I was two bloody nipples away from a complete meltdown. I tried to reach for a handful of toilet paper to stop the blood, but my head was still spinning. So I just sat there with my head in my hands, watching blood drip onto the white bathmat my mother gave me for Christmas. It was then that I decided to start considering going to doctors. Nowish.

It was 1AM Tuesday morning. My roommate Katy was asleep, and I debated on whether I should wake her or not. She had to work in the morning, so I figured I would try to figure this one out on my own. I had never been to an emergency room in Queens and I had no idea what to do, so I returned to my room and pulled out all my health insurance paperwork. The task was more difficult than I had anticipated. Figuring I would never need it, I had filed the letters my insurance company had sent me, unread and still in the envelopes they had been mailed in. I found a booklet I thought might help, but with my brain working at less-than-cull-capacity, I decided that this was beyond me and that I needed Katy's assistance.

I lightly knocked on her door, and surprisingly she immediately responded. She didn’t leap from bed and in a single motion and rip my head from its body as I would have done. Just a simple “come in.” I pushed the door open, and was relieved to see her fully clothed and alone (not that she’s unattractive mind you. It’s just that finding her mid-coitus was the very last thing I needed at this point in time). Standing in her door way I told her “uh…I think I may need to go to the emergency room.”

Katy sprung to action. Within 30 minutes she had found the nearest emergency room and called a car to come pick us up. I, in the meantime, had phoned the emergency hotline number I had found on the back of my insurance card. My head had stopped spinning and I began to think again that maybe if I went back to bed I would wake up fine in the morning. Really, I was just looking for someone to tell me it was okay to stay in my bed. After describing my symptoms to the nurse on the other end of the line, she sat their silently for a second.

“Do you think I need to go to the emergency room?” I prodded.
“Uh…are you kidding me?” She responded. “I mean…” she paused as she carefully chose her next word. “Duh.”

The nurse had demanded that I call an ambulance. But I hate to make a scene, so Katy and I took the car she had ordered. As we piled into the back, I asked the driver to take us to Mt. Sinai Hospital in Astoria, using my most convincing I’m-not-going-to-die-in-your-back-seat voice.

Katy and I didn’t wait very long in the waiting room. My ass had hardly hit the seat before a nurse had poked her little raisin head from behind the door and called my name. Katy and I followed her into a little room where she took my temperature, my heart rate, and blood pressure. I described my symptoms to her and waited for her to say “Oh we get this all the time.” She’d laugh at my naivety, and casually retrieve a pill bottle from an easy to reach desk drawer. She’d hand me a couple pills and a glass of water and say “take these and get out of here. Go get some sleep, you two look exhausted!”

Instead, she picked up a phone and over the loud speakers announced some code. Code green or code red or code Nancy Drew, I didn’t hear what she said. But the next thing I knew I was being hoisted onto a stretcher by some giant black guy and wheeled into triage.