Laurie
Chekhov play
Starbucks, November 10, 2008
I am turning into a Chekhov play—the one where the women stand at the window of their provincial outpost and pine for Moscow. Moscow, Moscow, Moscow is all you hear about in The Three Sisters. Moscow is society, surprise, strangeness—all the things a great city is supposed to be. In a city like that, the streets are your arteries and veins.
“You have the look of the last Tasmanian,” Richard says, “the only speaker of your language.” Before I moved to Arizona, he said: “You’ll miss your life, your friends,” I said: “Don’t be ridiculous. I can work anywhere.” When has anything you thought about the future turned out right?
My friend Alan lives in my apartment; technically it’s still mine, but when I see his belongings all around, I’m restless and unhappy. I have traveled far and often but never so far afield and never without knowing I was coming back. Can you hear me Major Tom? Toby has been dead a year. We are all the only speakers of our language.
We visit Kierland Common, an outdoor shopping mall designed to look like a village with a square and fountain in the center. The stores are the usual suspects: Barnes & Noble, Banana Republic, Eileen Fisher. Scattered about are a few expensive restaurants and a place you can get a sandwich and coffee, but this is not a neighborhood where people live; they come and go by car. “It’s based on Main Street, Disney,” Richard says, “rather than an actual town square. It’s an evocation of village centers that in reality have been abandoned.” What a smarty-pants my boyfriend is. He’s wearing a carrot colored T-shirt, and his silvery hair spikes up. The streets are a break from the Valley’s dominant suburban sprawl, punctuated by strip malls and condo communities, and I’m trying not to live in my old patterns. But who am I kidding? Kierland is depressing and not all that different from other shopping sections of the Valley; all have been constructed by developers and aren’t attached in any network. There’s no urban area to get lost in.
Richard asks why I’m sighing, and I don’t know I am, and the air between us starts to get a black, funnel cloud look. I say this place, this place where we live is an indistinct fuzz ball and in it I’m a fuzz ball, too. I have one or two almost friends, but it takes an hour each way to drive to them. I talk about the difference between an urban facsimile and a city that isn’t planned, rather evolves as an emergent system, little by little, and is shaped by the language, and clothes, and art, and food of its neighborhoods. Richard says that all cities are constructed around commercial interests and that western cities and eastern cities are based on different models. He says what eastern cities have is a patina of use and wear. My head goes on fire and I raise my voice a little that sounds to him like shouting and I say: Are you suggesting that the difference between a mall and a city is soot? And he says: You like to fight, you just like to fight. You need to fight. It’s something about you and your mother. And we are thinking: Why did I throw over whatever the hell I had for this hidebound flame thrower, but I am also thinking: I would be just as lost in New York without my love. But my love is pissing me off with his crack about fighting, even though he’s right. I am just like my mother. I am just like my mother in order to fend her off. But why is he protecting Arizona? I say: What’s Arizona to you, huh? Every day when you write, you don’t situate yourself here. You’re in England, wandering down cobbled streets or trucking across wind blown moors. Or you’re in New York, listening to jazz or riding the subway and looking out for muggers. You have hardly any friends here, too! So what’s this defense of Arizona? And he says: There’s something to what you say, but I feel that badmouthing Arizona is snobbish and an easy target for outsiders, and I just hate snobbery. And I say: Well, I’m not a snob, and I want to talk about my experience without you thinking I’m attacking people who live here. And he shoots me a grumpy smile, and I see his even row of top teeth, and he says: What the hell am I defending? And it hits us we’re defending ourselves against being swallowed up in the other, and I think I could talk to this man for the rest of my life. It’s not that rash an idea. I mean, how much longer do I have?
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Taking from nature
Richard
Taking from nature
Stabucks, April 16, 2007
We lope along beside coyotes with extra spring in their steps and quick brown rabbits, creatures who have learned to live in the desert. Laurie is not one of them. With her black umbrella and silk pants, she looks like a variety act in a Vaudeville show. The desert is alien to me, too, but I’ve lived here long enough to look local, kicking up red soil in worn boots, long cotton pants, and a straw hat.
Laurie steals wild-flowers, ocotillo branches, and rocks. She also makes deposits in nature: apple cores, olive pits, and lumps of bread, defying the maxim, “Leave no trace” that I learned from the Outward Bound, wilderness-loving folks I worked for some years ago. Laurie argues that human history is all about leaving a trace—indeed a great dirty, lusty slash.
She has a point. Ideas about the wilderness regularly flip. Up until the 19th Century, the heavenly city was the site of salvation and the wilderness the wellspring of temptation. Jesus meets the devil in the wilderness, and Hawthorne’s Puritans watch their their libidinal fantasies come to life in the forest. With the Romantics and the Transcendentalists, the holy place relocates to nature. People journey to mountains and woods to refresh themselves spiritually, which leads us to Thoreau, the righteous bastard, who throws around lots of cleansing imagery. These days we construct the wilderness in wildlife parks, preserve the pristine. This is just the sort of contradiction Laurie pounces on, and although I recognize the philosophical inconsistency, I’m against her interfering.
“What if everyone took rocks?” I pose.
“The rocks where we walk approach an infinite number. No amount of collecting can diminish the total.”
She has a point. Out here, a path is a place where the rocks have been cleared.
“So, we’re not exactly talking about untouched nature, are we?” She says she’s “relocating” rocks with arresting striations and smudges of desert varish in order to make something of the nothing of our patio. “This ‘don’t move the rocks’ doctrine is pretty essentialist, don’t you think?”
Walking ahead to mount my next argument, I look back to see her inspecting a large branch of dried ocotillo with its beautiful latticed chambers. She approaches me, beaming, and in her smile I see a wildness that sloughs off rules and wakes up a wildness in me. Instead of demanding she put back the branch, I suggest she hide it, thereby conceding the argument. She takes off her shirt (actually my shirt she’s stolen), wraps it around the branch and sticks it in her backpack. She looks like a woman carrying a large branch wrapped in a shirt.
My only victory is turning an open vandal into a furtive one. I credit Laurie with introducing nature rage into our relationship.
Taking from nature
Stabucks, April 16, 2007
We lope along beside coyotes with extra spring in their steps and quick brown rabbits, creatures who have learned to live in the desert. Laurie is not one of them. With her black umbrella and silk pants, she looks like a variety act in a Vaudeville show. The desert is alien to me, too, but I’ve lived here long enough to look local, kicking up red soil in worn boots, long cotton pants, and a straw hat.
Laurie steals wild-flowers, ocotillo branches, and rocks. She also makes deposits in nature: apple cores, olive pits, and lumps of bread, defying the maxim, “Leave no trace” that I learned from the Outward Bound, wilderness-loving folks I worked for some years ago. Laurie argues that human history is all about leaving a trace—indeed a great dirty, lusty slash.
She has a point. Ideas about the wilderness regularly flip. Up until the 19th Century, the heavenly city was the site of salvation and the wilderness the wellspring of temptation. Jesus meets the devil in the wilderness, and Hawthorne’s Puritans watch their their libidinal fantasies come to life in the forest. With the Romantics and the Transcendentalists, the holy place relocates to nature. People journey to mountains and woods to refresh themselves spiritually, which leads us to Thoreau, the righteous bastard, who throws around lots of cleansing imagery. These days we construct the wilderness in wildlife parks, preserve the pristine. This is just the sort of contradiction Laurie pounces on, and although I recognize the philosophical inconsistency, I’m against her interfering.
“What if everyone took rocks?” I pose.
“The rocks where we walk approach an infinite number. No amount of collecting can diminish the total.”
She has a point. Out here, a path is a place where the rocks have been cleared.
“So, we’re not exactly talking about untouched nature, are we?” She says she’s “relocating” rocks with arresting striations and smudges of desert varish in order to make something of the nothing of our patio. “This ‘don’t move the rocks’ doctrine is pretty essentialist, don’t you think?”
Walking ahead to mount my next argument, I look back to see her inspecting a large branch of dried ocotillo with its beautiful latticed chambers. She approaches me, beaming, and in her smile I see a wildness that sloughs off rules and wakes up a wildness in me. Instead of demanding she put back the branch, I suggest she hide it, thereby conceding the argument. She takes off her shirt (actually my shirt she’s stolen), wraps it around the branch and sticks it in her backpack. She looks like a woman carrying a large branch wrapped in a shirt.
My only victory is turning an open vandal into a furtive one. I credit Laurie with introducing nature rage into our relationship.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Johnny Folkes
Richard
Johnny Folkes
Starbucks, Jan. 12, 2008
Johnny Folkes was the most talented and graceful athlete at Humphrey Perkins. We were on the same teams for soccer and rugby in winter, cricket and athletics in summer, and basketball all year round. He had the well developed muscles of a man, not, like me, the slender physique of a fifteen-year-old boy. He was beautiful, too, with a fringe of curly blond hair that gave him the look of a Greek statue. The girls all eyed him, but he didn’t go out with any while we were school friends. Other people, even girls, hardly registered on him.
I don’t remember him bullying anyone off the sports field, but a streak of cruelty surfaced in competition. Playing soccer, he’d trip an opponent making a run, or grab a player’s shirt when the referee wasn’t looking. He’d attack the man not the ball. It was unnecessary. He had the skill and poise not to foul, but he liked to. He’d rise from a nasty tackle wearing a grin of malice, and it helped create a protective shield around him. No one wanted to be his target and wind up carried off on a stretcher. In the wilder game of rugby, he was even more dangerous. Routinely, he’d lead in points until the referee sent him off for gouging or stiff-arming. Mr. Williams, the sports master, would look despairing; he’d been handed the most gifted athlete he’d ever seen, but he was unable to reform him. Johnny couldn’t grant people space even in his reflected light.
He qualified in trials for the national teams in rugby, soccer, and cricket, but each time he’d miss the final pick or be dismissed early for unsportsmanlike conduct. I studied him, looking to carve a safe place in his proximity, and instead of giving him a wide berth as most did I became his friend. I passed to him so he could score. I specialized in events he disdained, among them, long jump and high jump. We were easy allies in sprint relays, and being Johnny’s friend meant I was protected, too. It wasn’t a calculation, rather a role I’d practiced while trailing my willful, older brother, Roy.
I didn’t question Johnny’s cruelty, rather treated it as a force of nature like his larger, stronger muscles. I would have avoided him if I could have, and my friendship, for that reason, felt inauthentic. I competed with him openly only in displays of wit, winning his confidence, in part, with fast putdowns of people he despised, i.e. everyone who appeared smarter than him, except me. Telling jokes about the teachers and talking out of turn earned me as many detentions as Johnny got. We bonded as kings of sport and fellow rebels, although I felt his cruel streak was a sleeping cobra that, once awakened, would strike. I was brought up in a family where physical violence wasn’t threatened. Even raising your voice was disapproved of. I was fascinated as well as repulsed by Johnny’s freedom to lose control.
It’s summer vacation, 1966, and out of the blue he invites me to spend the day in Loughborough, fifteen miles north of Syston. He’ll meet me at the bus stop by the market on Saturday morning. I feel flattered and obligated. I don’t wonder if he likes me, really, any more than I like him. I don’t wonder if he’s lonely. He has an impulse to reach out that matches mine to say okay. We’re boys, thinking with our reptilian brains.
He asks if I’ve got money when I step off the bus. I have a pound. It won’t be enough, he says, to buy beer and pie at the pub. We can go to his dad’s and he’ll ask for a fiver. It’s the first time Johnny has mentioned his family, the first I know he doesn’t live with his father. In the market, sellers hawk fruits and vegetables at open stalls. It’s colorful and noisy, a scene that has played in the square for hundreds of years. We turn onto a side street lined with red brick terraced houses. They lack gardens, and the front doors open directly onto the narrow pavement. Halfway down, Johnny stops and knocks loudly at a door, and after some time an angry looking man in his fifties appears. “What the fuck do you want?” The resemblance between father and son is unmistakable. This is how Johnny will look if a god in a machine doesn’t snatch him up to safety; Johnny’s looks were once squandered by the man with the blotchy face and body gone to flab. He wears a string vest. The fly of his trousers is unbuttoned. He’s been awakened from a drunken sleep, reeking of cigarettes and stale beer.
“I want a fucking fiver,” Johnny says, and their eyes lock.
“Fuck that.”
“You owe us, so ‘and it over.”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Don’t give me that, you bastard.” Johnny inches forward, his right hand balling into a fist. Next door a baby cries, and no one tries to soothe it.
The man looks back at his son and sighs. He’s too tired to fight, or he knows that Johnny could hurt him, or he has a change of heart. He digs into a pocket, withdraws a clip of bills, peels off a fiver, and hands it to his son. “Tell you what.” His voice is a bit softer. “Go down to the off license and get me some fags, and you can keep the change.” A half-smile crosses his face, or it could be a wince.
Johnny grabs the note and walks off, on his face the look of grim determination he wears on the sports field. He doesn’t turn as his dad calls, “Don’t forget. You promised.”
I’m invisible. Johnny doesn’t introduce me, and his father doesn’t ask who I am. I am a fly or a spy, and I’m excited and embarrassed, for I’ve never seen a father and son dare to speak to each other with so much raw emotion, and although part of my embarrassment is for having a dad who treats me kindly while Johnny has never known this, I can’t help wondering how it would feel to see my father in the grip of such emotion, to see him flare with feeling rather than stamping it out, like lit matches dropped on the kitchen floor, whenever someone cries or speaks with passion.
We don’t stop at the off license but spend the money drinking at the pub the next few hours before I board the bus back to Syston in a beer-infused haze. Thick as it is, I know that Johnny will never be picked for a national team—no god from a machine is going to lift him up. What will I become? Someone who neither shrinks back from violence nor feels entitled to explode. Along the way, I’ll encounter many violent people—Hell’s Angels, muggers, a pack of pub brawlers who follow me and a friend back to our flat—but somehow their full fury doesn’t come my way. Looking back at the boy on the bus, I see him discovering the unavoidability and poignancy of brutality in men’s lives—and finding a way to sail through it in one piece.
Johnny Folkes
Starbucks, Jan. 12, 2008
Johnny Folkes was the most talented and graceful athlete at Humphrey Perkins. We were on the same teams for soccer and rugby in winter, cricket and athletics in summer, and basketball all year round. He had the well developed muscles of a man, not, like me, the slender physique of a fifteen-year-old boy. He was beautiful, too, with a fringe of curly blond hair that gave him the look of a Greek statue. The girls all eyed him, but he didn’t go out with any while we were school friends. Other people, even girls, hardly registered on him.
I don’t remember him bullying anyone off the sports field, but a streak of cruelty surfaced in competition. Playing soccer, he’d trip an opponent making a run, or grab a player’s shirt when the referee wasn’t looking. He’d attack the man not the ball. It was unnecessary. He had the skill and poise not to foul, but he liked to. He’d rise from a nasty tackle wearing a grin of malice, and it helped create a protective shield around him. No one wanted to be his target and wind up carried off on a stretcher. In the wilder game of rugby, he was even more dangerous. Routinely, he’d lead in points until the referee sent him off for gouging or stiff-arming. Mr. Williams, the sports master, would look despairing; he’d been handed the most gifted athlete he’d ever seen, but he was unable to reform him. Johnny couldn’t grant people space even in his reflected light.
He qualified in trials for the national teams in rugby, soccer, and cricket, but each time he’d miss the final pick or be dismissed early for unsportsmanlike conduct. I studied him, looking to carve a safe place in his proximity, and instead of giving him a wide berth as most did I became his friend. I passed to him so he could score. I specialized in events he disdained, among them, long jump and high jump. We were easy allies in sprint relays, and being Johnny’s friend meant I was protected, too. It wasn’t a calculation, rather a role I’d practiced while trailing my willful, older brother, Roy.
I didn’t question Johnny’s cruelty, rather treated it as a force of nature like his larger, stronger muscles. I would have avoided him if I could have, and my friendship, for that reason, felt inauthentic. I competed with him openly only in displays of wit, winning his confidence, in part, with fast putdowns of people he despised, i.e. everyone who appeared smarter than him, except me. Telling jokes about the teachers and talking out of turn earned me as many detentions as Johnny got. We bonded as kings of sport and fellow rebels, although I felt his cruel streak was a sleeping cobra that, once awakened, would strike. I was brought up in a family where physical violence wasn’t threatened. Even raising your voice was disapproved of. I was fascinated as well as repulsed by Johnny’s freedom to lose control.
It’s summer vacation, 1966, and out of the blue he invites me to spend the day in Loughborough, fifteen miles north of Syston. He’ll meet me at the bus stop by the market on Saturday morning. I feel flattered and obligated. I don’t wonder if he likes me, really, any more than I like him. I don’t wonder if he’s lonely. He has an impulse to reach out that matches mine to say okay. We’re boys, thinking with our reptilian brains.
He asks if I’ve got money when I step off the bus. I have a pound. It won’t be enough, he says, to buy beer and pie at the pub. We can go to his dad’s and he’ll ask for a fiver. It’s the first time Johnny has mentioned his family, the first I know he doesn’t live with his father. In the market, sellers hawk fruits and vegetables at open stalls. It’s colorful and noisy, a scene that has played in the square for hundreds of years. We turn onto a side street lined with red brick terraced houses. They lack gardens, and the front doors open directly onto the narrow pavement. Halfway down, Johnny stops and knocks loudly at a door, and after some time an angry looking man in his fifties appears. “What the fuck do you want?” The resemblance between father and son is unmistakable. This is how Johnny will look if a god in a machine doesn’t snatch him up to safety; Johnny’s looks were once squandered by the man with the blotchy face and body gone to flab. He wears a string vest. The fly of his trousers is unbuttoned. He’s been awakened from a drunken sleep, reeking of cigarettes and stale beer.
“I want a fucking fiver,” Johnny says, and their eyes lock.
“Fuck that.”
“You owe us, so ‘and it over.”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Don’t give me that, you bastard.” Johnny inches forward, his right hand balling into a fist. Next door a baby cries, and no one tries to soothe it.
The man looks back at his son and sighs. He’s too tired to fight, or he knows that Johnny could hurt him, or he has a change of heart. He digs into a pocket, withdraws a clip of bills, peels off a fiver, and hands it to his son. “Tell you what.” His voice is a bit softer. “Go down to the off license and get me some fags, and you can keep the change.” A half-smile crosses his face, or it could be a wince.
Johnny grabs the note and walks off, on his face the look of grim determination he wears on the sports field. He doesn’t turn as his dad calls, “Don’t forget. You promised.”
I’m invisible. Johnny doesn’t introduce me, and his father doesn’t ask who I am. I am a fly or a spy, and I’m excited and embarrassed, for I’ve never seen a father and son dare to speak to each other with so much raw emotion, and although part of my embarrassment is for having a dad who treats me kindly while Johnny has never known this, I can’t help wondering how it would feel to see my father in the grip of such emotion, to see him flare with feeling rather than stamping it out, like lit matches dropped on the kitchen floor, whenever someone cries or speaks with passion.
We don’t stop at the off license but spend the money drinking at the pub the next few hours before I board the bus back to Syston in a beer-infused haze. Thick as it is, I know that Johnny will never be picked for a national team—no god from a machine is going to lift him up. What will I become? Someone who neither shrinks back from violence nor feels entitled to explode. Along the way, I’ll encounter many violent people—Hell’s Angels, muggers, a pack of pub brawlers who follow me and a friend back to our flat—but somehow their full fury doesn’t come my way. Looking back at the boy on the bus, I see him discovering the unavoidability and poignancy of brutality in men’s lives—and finding a way to sail through it in one piece.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Sugar times
Richard
Sugar times
Coffee Plantation, March 16, 2007
I’m alone one night watching Field of Dreams on TV. As my blood sugar drifts down, the movie becomes more and more profound. Death isn’t the end! We’re too bounded by reason to catch the shafts of light all around! I look up from the screen and see the living room through a fish-eye lens. The bookcase is swaying, the arm chair mumbling quietly to itself. My hands are attached to extremely long, rubbery strips, and the hairs on my arms, light brown and silky, are beautiful and mysteriously meaningful. A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, splashes onto my thigh, and ripples like a droplet on the surface of a pool. And I think—very slowly and with a smug smile that signals danger—I’m having a really low blood sugar.
I find myself in front of the refrigerator with the door open. Cold air moves across my skin. I’m slick with sweat, just sweating all over, and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to eat. I bite off some cheese (bad idea, it has no effect on blood sugar), and I grab a container of orange juice and gulp (good idea, sugar galore). Ten minutes later, I feel normal again and watch Kevin Costner meet his dead father in a cornfield. He’s stiff, and James Earl Jones is a blubbery fool encountering dead baseball players. I, too, feel wooden and spent, ejected from my field of dreams.
In one rather precariously low sugar, while Suzanne, my wife at the time, was handing me a glass of orange juice and waiting for my jumbled speech to mean something, I was convinced that time was running backwards. I could swear that everything had already taken place—a sustained sense of deja-vu. I said, “I've just drunk the OJ” and “How come time is going in reverse?" If you've seen the film Memento you'll remember that the main character goes around without any operating memory and has to piece together what’s happened to him from notes he leaves on his body. As he constructs and reconstructs this knowledge, the story is revealed to him (and us) in reverse. My experience felt like this, and the odd sense that it engendered—you feel ahead of the game, hence the oily smile—stayed with me for days.
I understand these moments are tricks of blood sugars, but I see them, nonetheless, as special mental abilities. I'm not saying time was really running backwards, rather that I enjoyed the sights and sounds as you might a journey to the Arctic or the Amazon, even though you would not always want to live in these extremes. How many Richards am I? In the rhythm of sudden sickness and rapid recovery, I experience little deaths and rebirths many times, even in one day. The return to a sense of self not shaken in the fist of either a high or low sugar is sweet in the same measure as altered states are illuminating. I feel hopeful as I reassemble the fractured parts of me, languid on a couch, the littlest hairs on my body feeling air moving on them. I am small and excited, ready to evade repetition. Think on!
Sugar times
Coffee Plantation, March 16, 2007
I’m alone one night watching Field of Dreams on TV. As my blood sugar drifts down, the movie becomes more and more profound. Death isn’t the end! We’re too bounded by reason to catch the shafts of light all around! I look up from the screen and see the living room through a fish-eye lens. The bookcase is swaying, the arm chair mumbling quietly to itself. My hands are attached to extremely long, rubbery strips, and the hairs on my arms, light brown and silky, are beautiful and mysteriously meaningful. A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, splashes onto my thigh, and ripples like a droplet on the surface of a pool. And I think—very slowly and with a smug smile that signals danger—I’m having a really low blood sugar.
I find myself in front of the refrigerator with the door open. Cold air moves across my skin. I’m slick with sweat, just sweating all over, and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to eat. I bite off some cheese (bad idea, it has no effect on blood sugar), and I grab a container of orange juice and gulp (good idea, sugar galore). Ten minutes later, I feel normal again and watch Kevin Costner meet his dead father in a cornfield. He’s stiff, and James Earl Jones is a blubbery fool encountering dead baseball players. I, too, feel wooden and spent, ejected from my field of dreams.
In one rather precariously low sugar, while Suzanne, my wife at the time, was handing me a glass of orange juice and waiting for my jumbled speech to mean something, I was convinced that time was running backwards. I could swear that everything had already taken place—a sustained sense of deja-vu. I said, “I've just drunk the OJ” and “How come time is going in reverse?" If you've seen the film Memento you'll remember that the main character goes around without any operating memory and has to piece together what’s happened to him from notes he leaves on his body. As he constructs and reconstructs this knowledge, the story is revealed to him (and us) in reverse. My experience felt like this, and the odd sense that it engendered—you feel ahead of the game, hence the oily smile—stayed with me for days.
I understand these moments are tricks of blood sugars, but I see them, nonetheless, as special mental abilities. I'm not saying time was really running backwards, rather that I enjoyed the sights and sounds as you might a journey to the Arctic or the Amazon, even though you would not always want to live in these extremes. How many Richards am I? In the rhythm of sudden sickness and rapid recovery, I experience little deaths and rebirths many times, even in one day. The return to a sense of self not shaken in the fist of either a high or low sugar is sweet in the same measure as altered states are illuminating. I feel hopeful as I reassemble the fractured parts of me, languid on a couch, the littlest hairs on my body feeling air moving on them. I am small and excited, ready to evade repetition. Think on!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Pee
Richard
Pee
Starbucks, November 12, 2008
Over the years I’ve completed scores of surveys about diabetes. How many pats of butter do I spread on bread? Do I hear voices? Can I feel my toes? I’m in San Diego for my annual checkup as part of the epidemiological study that’s now reached its 25th year. I’m in the white examining room at a small table, pen in hand, filling out forms between medical tests, when I come to a survey about peeing. Long-term diabetes can damage the nerves that control urination.
How often do I pee? How long does it usually take? Is my flow strong? Am I able to stop when I want to? I’m not sure. What’s a normal flow? How do you know how good you are at stopping? Do I dribble? Do I stop and start again? Do I really know when I’m finished?
I have lots of opportunity to ponder the questions, as I’m in the middle of a renal test which has me drinking a quart of water every half hour, peeing into a cup, and pouring the contents into a big plastic jug. The container, embedded in ice, has my name on it and looks like it’s filling with chardonnay.
If I can’t tell I have a problem, I figure, then I probably don’t have one, and so I check no to all peeing issues. During stints at the urinal, though, it crosses my mind that maybe I do have issues. Do I empty my bladder in the preferred-but-curiously-unstated way the survey hints at? Does my pee gush in a mighty torrent but one that can be halted sharply in mid-stream—and without residue? Oh my god, there is a bit of residue, I discover, when, toward the end of my visit, the clinical supervisor asks me to lower my trousers so she can measure my abdomen and compare the numbers to last year’s.
I undo my belt, unzip my fly, and let my trousers bag around my knees. I am holding my shirt up, so she can get the tape measure around, and I am looking down at Susan’s head, which is exactly at crotch level, when I notice a dark patch on my light blue knickers. The stain is about the size of a quarter and seems to be expanding. She is right there with it but doesn’t let on. I mean, what can she say? I keep silent as well, but I am aware now there is empirical evidence that I have a peeing issue, no matter what I’ve claimed on the form. Surely, she’ll be cross checking my answers when I’ve left.
Weeks later Laurie finds a particularly fine pair of pants in a sale at Macy’s. They are Alfani’s: 31 inch waist and 30 inch in-seam. They fit tight and look good, and we buy them, a light fawn color. I’m at work, unzipping myself in front of the urinal, when I discover that the zip is short, by which I mean I have to bring my penis up over the bottom of it to point my member, as they say, at the porcelain. It’s a bit of an effort to get a smooth flow, and as I push my dick back into my trousers and zip up, I suddenly feel a spurt of warm liquid around my middle. I look down with a certain horror: a large, dark shape is forming on the front of my pants, announcing to everyone who enters: This man has peed himself. Fortunately, no one enters. I splash water on the stain and duck into a stall to wait. Next time I fill out a form and come to the question: How long does it take your urine soaked trousers to dry? I will be able to answer: 20 minutes, even after you’ve blotted up the excess.
Do I have a problem controlling those last few drops, or do I merely lack technique? Where is the advice? It’s not as if you can solicit tips in public restrooms. Well, maybe you can, but I’m too shy, and I fear deportation. So I’ve improvised a solution: to dab a bit of toilet paper at the end of my dick after the pee. Since urinals lack toilet paper, I use a stall. Sometimes, I sit down. It’s restful, and the dribble matter, out of sight, is out of mind.
Pee
Starbucks, November 12, 2008
Over the years I’ve completed scores of surveys about diabetes. How many pats of butter do I spread on bread? Do I hear voices? Can I feel my toes? I’m in San Diego for my annual checkup as part of the epidemiological study that’s now reached its 25th year. I’m in the white examining room at a small table, pen in hand, filling out forms between medical tests, when I come to a survey about peeing. Long-term diabetes can damage the nerves that control urination.
How often do I pee? How long does it usually take? Is my flow strong? Am I able to stop when I want to? I’m not sure. What’s a normal flow? How do you know how good you are at stopping? Do I dribble? Do I stop and start again? Do I really know when I’m finished?
I have lots of opportunity to ponder the questions, as I’m in the middle of a renal test which has me drinking a quart of water every half hour, peeing into a cup, and pouring the contents into a big plastic jug. The container, embedded in ice, has my name on it and looks like it’s filling with chardonnay.
If I can’t tell I have a problem, I figure, then I probably don’t have one, and so I check no to all peeing issues. During stints at the urinal, though, it crosses my mind that maybe I do have issues. Do I empty my bladder in the preferred-but-curiously-unstated way the survey hints at? Does my pee gush in a mighty torrent but one that can be halted sharply in mid-stream—and without residue? Oh my god, there is a bit of residue, I discover, when, toward the end of my visit, the clinical supervisor asks me to lower my trousers so she can measure my abdomen and compare the numbers to last year’s.
I undo my belt, unzip my fly, and let my trousers bag around my knees. I am holding my shirt up, so she can get the tape measure around, and I am looking down at Susan’s head, which is exactly at crotch level, when I notice a dark patch on my light blue knickers. The stain is about the size of a quarter and seems to be expanding. She is right there with it but doesn’t let on. I mean, what can she say? I keep silent as well, but I am aware now there is empirical evidence that I have a peeing issue, no matter what I’ve claimed on the form. Surely, she’ll be cross checking my answers when I’ve left.
Weeks later Laurie finds a particularly fine pair of pants in a sale at Macy’s. They are Alfani’s: 31 inch waist and 30 inch in-seam. They fit tight and look good, and we buy them, a light fawn color. I’m at work, unzipping myself in front of the urinal, when I discover that the zip is short, by which I mean I have to bring my penis up over the bottom of it to point my member, as they say, at the porcelain. It’s a bit of an effort to get a smooth flow, and as I push my dick back into my trousers and zip up, I suddenly feel a spurt of warm liquid around my middle. I look down with a certain horror: a large, dark shape is forming on the front of my pants, announcing to everyone who enters: This man has peed himself. Fortunately, no one enters. I splash water on the stain and duck into a stall to wait. Next time I fill out a form and come to the question: How long does it take your urine soaked trousers to dry? I will be able to answer: 20 minutes, even after you’ve blotted up the excess.
Do I have a problem controlling those last few drops, or do I merely lack technique? Where is the advice? It’s not as if you can solicit tips in public restrooms. Well, maybe you can, but I’m too shy, and I fear deportation. So I’ve improvised a solution: to dab a bit of toilet paper at the end of my dick after the pee. Since urinals lack toilet paper, I use a stall. Sometimes, I sit down. It’s restful, and the dribble matter, out of sight, is out of mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
