Boom-laka-laka boom…. Hell with it. I just wasn’t made for these times (Although I do hope that recent major, life-altering surgeries perhaps get me ready for times ahead.)
And I’m not
just talking about THESE times, as in the last few months when I’ve been
Missing In Action from my News Brothers chronicles, public John Lennon worship
and other ceremonial and benevolent duties. Hell, for a couple of weeks of that time, I lay in a fog and
in constant pain while helicopters whirly-birded outside my window dropping off
heart-attack victims, shredded motorcycle drivers, chainsaw casualties, victims of guitar duels and castrated serial
killers. Or whatever. I found the 'copters amusing as I gazed in pain from the ghastly uncomfortable bed with its plastic anti-piss and blood-resistant cover and automatic torture controls that nurses use to keep you in your place. Literally. It actually was a nice place.
I was busy having my neck and spine rebuilt,
two operations separated by two-plus months because of a fiercely violent virus I
contracted during pre-op before the second surgery, which then was delayed. That ailment took me by surprise and really pissed me off. Afraid of an illness delaying what, to me,
was life-or-death … cripple-or-walk … surgery, I had holed up in Da Basement
since Christmas Eve. Visitors must wear
masks (or preferably use the phone or leave me alone.) 'Twas precaution wasted,
as a vile and viral occurrence struck me down when I went into the waiting room
for a February pre-op, days before my second (and most massive) surgery. Hordes
of smelly patients and family members were playfully swapping flying phlegm. I
figure I got sick there from someone’s boogers floating like invisible
zeppelins, driven by a whole lotta love through the hot, still air. So, a late-February daylong rebuild-my-spine surgery (my neck
discs had been overhauled and replaced in January) was put off until the next
available date … late May.
I first ran into Brian Wilson and his brothers, cousin and their buddy, Al, one night after I made a miscalculation about the best way to get into a concert in Ames, Iowa. He's dead now. I interviewed him during my career and wanted to play in his sandbox.
In between
the surgeries, and when I wasn’t too ill to make it to my office, I wrote here occasionally, acting like all is well in FlapjacksLand. I didn’t talk about my health, because I
figured no one really cared. Really,
other than the occasional foray into my sick and twisted mind, for most of the
last six months, I’ve been “missing” from my failed write-for-sanity
exercises. Resounding silence here in this "brotherhood" taught me what
I’d already figured was the case. Fortunately, my long-time sidekick, Rob “Death” Dollar – one of those I told
about my surgery -- kept The News Brothers page alive and, at my request, kept
my condition a secret from anyone except his best friend, Columbo. Not the
one-eyed detective. The lovely stray cat
he’s adopted. Oh, I'm sure Rob told his Mom, who I love and who likes me very much, as she should. Just one more thing on second thought: He may have told the late Peter Falk, as well. Or our pal, The Lone Ranger, also deceased.
I only told a
few people I was having the new spine and neck installed. I’m intensely private,
though I used to run around in skin-tight, pink, tie-dyed long johns with my
sidekick, Jocko. That was a long time ago, a half-century-plus. I still have
the pink long johns—the rear end was torn off by a 6-foot-tall woman with red
hair and a hungry heart (everybody’s got one, lay down your money and you play
your part) -- in the bottom drawer with my high school letter sweater. "We are the Dingbats, mighty, mighty Dingbats." Hell, I’m 73. Long time since the Class of 69 -- including me in a burgundy tux and a girl who would ditch me when her ignorant, acne-covered college boyfriend came home -- danced to Baby Huey and The Babysitters at Lake Forest Country Club. I need to toss that refuse from a
life nearly fully lived. I will hang
onto the yellow socks I wore on every test day since seventh grade, though ….
Maybe wear them right on into the furnace or Metro garbage bin. I know I’ll be wearing The Lone Ranger mask
Clayton Moore (aka “Mr. Lone Ranger) autographed in the winter of 1983, my
Working Class Hero T-shirt and red Converse “Chucks.” Fifty-six years ago,
those same style shoes were called “Jack Purcells’’ and we all had to have a
pair for physical education (“gym class”).
And an extra-extra-large athletic supporter. I only got quick peeks at what the girls were wearing to protect their invisible scrotums.
“Tim Ghianni: You haven’t changed a bit in 50
years,” the tall woman, signing her name only as “Red” wrote on Facebook a
couple of years ago while she was sitting with other female alums at an Iowa State
football game. It was a compliment. She was proud that I’d escaped the adult
humdrum and was spending my time writing in Da Basement. Grew old, not up. Surprising to many, I did not die before I got old, as Roger Daltrey predicted. I just never got old. I have many friends, however, who followed Roger's advice, or that should be "had" many friends. Roger's now just an old man with short hair who sings with wounded pipes while Pete stumbles while attempting his flying guitar windmill. See me, feel me, touch me, pick me off the floor. Still a decent show, especially when John Entwistle and Keith Moon make aboriginal appearances. Of course, normal people would call them "apparitional appearances.'' I've seen them many times. I do know Who they are....
I wonder if Red’s
got the big, cotton ball that was safety-pinned and then brutally snatched
from my long johns’ rear end? I really didn’t mind, although the draft was
a little uncomfortable. It was Red’s attempt at cracking away at the mysterious
young guy who sometimes only shaved half his face. That’s another story. I did
shower twice a day, though. And I never missed class. Despite it all, I was an honor student, I think, though I may have squandered that all away.
An old woman
one night went to her front porch in Ames, Iowa, where I was a scholastic legend, and scolded us for “necking” on her
sidewalk. It was kind of reverse from a scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life,” where
a fat, old man with a pipe and wearing a wife-beater, told Georgie he should
kiss the girl. Youth is wasted on the young, he complained. I was with Red that
night. I also spent time with “Blondie.” It was smart to identify them by their
hair color so as not to get them confused.
Jocko was with “Mo,” I believe. Champo
and Jocko and Curly Mo. Blondie and Red? Was Carpy with us? Nardholm?
Anyway, those
of you who knew I was undergoing a full-body overhaul this winter/spring/summer
have been good about not sharing that information. You didn’t know my first
scheduled main spine surgery got almost to the operating room when the
anesthetist said he’d not put me under. Too sick, remember? He said he didn’t
want to kill me, an admirable sentiment not shared by all. But it delayed that
final surgery by about two months. And, according to experts, it got a little
scary on the redo in the OR when I sprung a two-unit gusher that further fueled
my chronic anemia while the surgical nurse fought with what she said was a tough job of getting me stitched up and getting the blood to stop squirting. I’m still undergoing fierce rehab, but I did grow two inches
and can walk with support from a walker, cane, my wife, Suzanne, or my son, Joe, who came
down from his home in Minneapolis to help care for me. His bosses allowed him
to be remote for six weeks so he could tend to his old dad. “Not all bosses are
assholes,” I told him, "although most of mine certainly were.”
I am
surprised some on this page, the bulk of whom had no idea I was risking it all,
or at least most of it, in an eight-hour surgery, didn’t comment on my absence from posting commentary and photos. I thought we were News "Brothers?" I kinda felt like Old Yeller, in that when they found out the dog's true value, they put a bullet between its eyes. The Invisible Man finds out his true
value. So did The Elephant Man. I am a human being, so instead of succumbing to loneliness, I hit my last number and I walked to the road. Hell, I don’t know where
that sentence sprung from, other than a dead guy named Tom Petty. I love the
dead. He’d have been glad to meet me if my surgery failed: “You belong among the Wildflowers,” he tells me, time to time. "Or maybe DEAD flowers," I correct him. He always gets the giggles. And some Twinkies.
Anyway, I’ve had Jocko and Rob “Death” Dollar to call. It is part of an All-Star team of disease and bodily malfunction. Jocko is recovering from multiple myeloma. Rob has a bad heart with a half-dozen or perhaps eight pig valves and three from a buffalo. Like old people do, we talk about when we were young and what’s wrong with us. Oh yeah, then there’s Jim “Flash” Lindgren and his Parkinson’s. Friendship with me is something outrageous, contagious, courageous, because no one gets out alive. Jerry “Chuckles” Manley couldn’t call because he’s forgotten how. And Scott “Badger’’ Shelton is long dead, although I always welcome him into my dreams about our friendship with Mr. Lone Ranger. Rob’s always in those dreams, as well. And there's my old college friend, Dr. Tom “Carpy” Carpenter – who first met me (I was a junior) when he was headed with his parents to his assigned room to begin his freshman year. They all had to step aside because I was surfing down the dorm hallway on an ironing board (“Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of a girl,” I told the virginal veterinary-hopeful with the typical frosh buzzcut. Or something like that. Actually, I just said "Surf's Up." And I don't think his parents were helping with his luggage, but I like the story. Carpy, a loyal and loving lifetime friend, has even checked in from the golf course where he spends his time spending the money he got from a successful vet practice on the SoCal Coast. He even was the vet for John Wayne’s dogs. True. He is a cancer survivor, clear and strong now as he also spends nights at the blackjack tables at a seedy old-style casino a half-mile from his Las Vegas estate. He doesn’t drink anymore. Most of us don’t. “Can’t have just one,” the potato chip people proclaim.
"Surf's Up, Champo," he said, one afternoon when I caught him a week ago on the Vegas golf course after his 5-iron shot dropped into a water hazard filled with alligators and rotting gangster bodies.
Whiskey and food writer Jim
“Culinarity” Myers has done a welfare check and recommended some of his
family’s famed Milwaukee remedies to chase away the pain as my body tries to
heal. I think he’s healthy, though he’s finally discovered age, like Dexter, is
creeping its homicidal scythe his way. He drove home to Wisconsin this summer, but the Nazi border cops at the Illinois border stopped him on his way back with big wheels of cheese and 12 cases of Milwaukee's Best in his trunk. He gave the beer to the cops. The wheels of cheese he had to use as spare tires because the coppers used spike strips to stop him and tore the wheels of his '87 LeBaron.
Anyway, this
little piece of writing began with me stating I don’t belong in these times.
And that’s really what I am writing about.
“These Times”
when some of my preferred icons disappear from the material world and people
offer the common explanation: “Well he (or she) was 82... And then there were
all of those drugs.’’
The latter comment always carries a note or
three of jealousy. Or perhaps unearned righteousness. Yes, folks. There were
all those drugs. Or did you forget, conveniently, who you were before you “grew
up” into a successful, white-starch, career person with a jolly Scots whiskey
belly, two kids, khakis, Kiwanis membership, green greed and a boat you seldom use?
Or are you,
like me, continuing to fiddle away with the piano keys in the sandbox of your
mind and nod, affectionately looking in happy poverty back at your random and sometimes benevolent life?
When
discussing fallen heroes, for the self-important and chubby, it’s as if that
too-much-dope “he had it coming” dismissal might deaden the pain caused by the
worm-bait remainders of the recently breathing, who helped punctuate my own
7.35 (or something like that) decades.
Generally,
when folks of the caliber and personal import of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson
die, I quickly turn the rich, black soil and worm bait of my own soul and do
one-take "Flapjacks" reflections that end up being examinations of my encounters with them
and of the holes they leave and the ones their corpses fill. Sometimes the dregs of my soul innocently spill
out onto this word stew. I can’t stop
them.
I didn’t
write of Sly Stone’s June 9 and Brian Wilson’s June 11 deaths, even though both
men, artistic genius and culture wagon-masters, had massive impacts on me simply
by passing through my life while laughing, inhaling, stumbling or being
passed-over-a-crowd-like-a-beach-ball-in-a-mosh-pit. I was way too ill and crippled up to write.
Since music
owns half-plus of my soul, I am fortunate to even have personal, quite shallow
to my skin, stories to share about such magnificent and revolutionary musicians
as these recently deceased geniuses who brought smiles to my often deadpan or
otherwise altered façade.
Sly –
Sylvester Stewart -- made his mark by proving that different skin colors and
musical textures, i.e. The Family Stone, could have universal, color-blind
appeal. And every time I saw the band perform, I did, indeed, want to hear his
organ and say “ride, Sally, ride.” As noted earlier, I was glad to add some
bottom, so the dancers just won’t hide. Of course, on winter nights, that
bottom was chapped.
I guess my
biggest and best memory of Sly is from one of those concerts, 50-plus years
ago, in the Armory at Iowa State University.
I believe it was the first time I’d seen him in anything other than
celluloid dreams and personal smokescreens.
Sly arrived
four hours late (I believe that Iron Butterfly and Moby Grape had to extend
their warm-up sets to keep our attention between announcements about how long it
will be until The Family Stone’s increasingly tentative arrival. Can you
imagine Iron Butterfly doing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida for 90 minutes?) Great White or
Mason Proffit may have been involved like two hangmen hanging from a tree. That don’t bother me, at all. Concerts used
to come in nightlong packages and tickets were $6 or occasionally free with
student ID and “activity ticket.” The free ones often included a visit by me to
the stage, where I played tambourines or worked on my image as the “Dancing
Bear.” I did climb onstage with Joe Cocker once. He didn’t even notice, nor did I. At least
one of us was high with a little help from our friends. Or, in my case, I may have been showing off
and looking at the crowd, needing somebody to come in through my bathroom window. Generally, though, I was
sad because I was on my own. Though hardly "A Complete Unknown" (there was a
movie by that title recently, and I’ve watched it twice to decide it was a
waste of time, enjoyable as a Bullwinkle cartoon. If I want to learn
something about Bob Dylan, the self-created churlish guy or the changeling, I’ll watch
“Don’t Look Back” or “Rolling Thunder Revue” or “No Direction Home.” Why waste
time on a biopic when the real guy is still out there? I learned nothing other
than I really liked the guy who played Pete Seeger, who I did speak with once on the phone. He's dead, too.)
Anyway, “Sly’s
landed at the airport in Des Moines now,” said one of those calm-voiced Armory
PA guys, an example of one of the updates as Jocko and I passed the quart of Old Grandad. Or perhaps it was Everclear.
Since we all
had to trudge through minus-15 Ames, Iowa, winter, we knew that the weather
outside was frightful and likely would delay Sly even longer on the 30-mile
frozen highway. U.S. 69 was often covered by ice and snow of the eastbound
prairie winds. Sly did like snow, but not the frozen field kind. Frozen
forehead pick-me-up? Yep. Hey, don’t forget old Champo, Mr. Stewart. All we
need is a drummer, for people who only need a beat, yeah ….
Sly and The
Family Stone hit the stage at midnight with all the fiery energy money can buy
or ingest and a genius collection of musical talent. He was the front man, the
heart and soul of the best single package of musicians I’ve ever seen share one
spotlight. It was a dazzling carnival that lifted hearts, shook butts and sent
souls to the rafters of the old armory.
Dance to the
music.
And it was
single moments after the show started that me and Jocko were on our feet and
shaking the wooden grandstands. Jim was 6-4 and pushing 250, No. 63, an
offensive guard on the Iowa State football team. I was 6-2-plus a smidge and
240 or sometimes a stone less, depending on beer money. (As noted, with the
neck rebuild in January and the spine in May, docs say four inches taken away
from me by age and general body rot have at least half returned to put me at
6-0, almost 200 and made me a very sweet and generous sort and a massive Taylor Swift fan.)
As for me and Jim/Jocko a half-century ago,
most of our adventures ended up with stops at the all-night Taco Tico, perhaps
even the one where somehow we both acquired aluminum coat trees. He’s still got mine in his home in Florida,
where he stays fit, fights ailments and entertains his grandchildren. His
granddaughter, living a half-mile away from Jim, always expects a fresh apple
from the old man. Sometimes we’d eat from chips bags as we cruised the grocery
store aisles, looking for something digestible. Pay for what we consumed mostly
when we went to the cash register with Jocko beans and Wiedeman or Van Merritt beer (69-cents
a six pack.)
Jim and I
love each other this half-century later.
We’ve had massive personal setbacks and pain, but it all vanishes like
it did the other day when we laughed about my big brother, the now-dead Eric,
who bought a ticket for the Sly pit and stood right up against the center-stage,
easy to pick out of the crowd as he almost always wore a purple/black knit
beret. A girls hat? Sure. You tell the big guy with 278 pounds of muscle and
blueberry pie gut that he looks feminine. He loved hats right up until his death 15
months ago.
“You remember
your brother catching Sly when he fell off-stage?” said Jocko. “And after he got him back on the stage, Sly
fell again and he was passed all around the arena, like a beach ball.”
All’s square
and far out.
It was the
best show I ever saw … at least other than a Faces show I caught with Smokin’
Joe Matejka down at the armory in Des Moines one blizzard-marked night (we had
to spend the night in the back of a station wagon with some girls who picked us
up as we hitchhiked from Ames.) We did
keep warm in that car. But Smokin’ Joe and I were restricted to the back of the
wagon and our chauffeurs stayed in the front.
Now, let’s
giddy-up, giddy-up 409 to the other recently dead hero. His stage style was as
a sometimes smiling statue, nothing like Sly and his gang, but I also saw Brian
Wilson in concert – either with The Beach Boys or as the featured performer at
the Nashville July 4 fireworks extravaganza and vomit-fest or with symphonies
and the like.
I interviewed
Brian two times, and found him an affable sort, though I think he was wearing
his pajamas. Understated and soft-voiced, he had an invisible
smile, like the joke was on him. And yet the words, mostly simple and rhythmic,
were elegant and made me want to catch a wave or drive to the hamburger stand,
now.
One of the
greatest of American artists, Brian – who took many sabbaticals from the group
he kept alive with the sacrifice of his tormented and magical soul – was with
his brothers, cousin and Al, their pal, outside Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum in
1971 or so. They were waiting for It’s a Beautiful Day and The Ides of March to
end their sets. (“I’m the friendly stranger in the black sedan, won’t you hop
inside my car?” sang The Ides in their hit, "Vehicle." I have a very ribald and perverse
version of that song, but it’s too tasteless to put here. The 18-year-old Champo and Jocko would dirty
up any popular song as we performed for ourselves, girls like Blondie, Red and
Mo, university residence hall officials, whoever was in range whenever the song played in a dorm hallway or party.
You should
have heard what we did with The Doors’ “Touch Me” or even “You’re So Vain,”
which we paraphrased when we walked into parties like we were walking, hard-nippled onto a
yacht. I’m digressing. By the way, we
never really sang about wanting “to hold your hand.” “Truckin’” was too easy. And I still have a decades-tested Joe Cocker impression in my damaged body.
Brian and
Mike Love, Carl, Dennis, Al Jardine were joking around, passing more than gas
as they waited for their top-of-the-bill spot in the field outside the Hilton.
That’s where they were when we became lifelong compadres. Or something hazily
similar or probably not.
I was caught
up in the dark result of some sort of mild confusion involving alcohol and a
penchant for getting into concerts for free (this wasn’t included in the
activity ticket.) Me, Jocko and The Coach and maybe a few of my apostles, maybe
even Carpy (though he may have been studying, his one major weakness), skipped
the box office and took a side entrance into the arena, down the truck ramp
where the gear and performers were loaded in.
Hell, I’ll bet Nardholm was with us, too. I'd guess Dog Shit chickened out.
Perhaps my
bright, yellow snow boots failed me or maybe they just made me an easy target,
but within moments I exited the arena up and out the same ramp, with a gentle
Ames police officer holding onto my handcuffed arms and doing his best to help
me smoke my cigarette with his other hand. We joked around, as after all, this
was not really a felon he was leading. Just a barely drunken music fan and
bargain-hunter. He told me I should
have waited until the show started, because at that point security really doesn’t
care. Too busy dancing.
And that’s
how I first met Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. He was with one of the
incarnations of his band on this tour as the cop and I approached them on the
frozen, muddy field.
They all
laughed through their own thick clouds of Iowa’s finest produce and Brian
seemed to laugh the hardest. Nah, that probably was Dennis.
“Hi, guys,” I
hollered to the Boys, who had to step aside to allow me to pass through their
soul-circle and into the squad car.
They cheerily laughed and greeted me and the cop. And the cop took off
my handcuffs and let me sit in the non-criminal passenger seat instead of in
the back. He put his cop hat on my head and laughed.
“Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of a
girl,” the cop sang the song I’d taught him.
“I wish they all could be California Girls,” I
answered. The friendly copper obviously had become fond of me and my suddenly shocked-sober
manners and apologies, and he clearly was enamored with Brian and the Boys.
Later in life, my friend, Rob Dollar and I were friends with a friendly copper
who enjoyed back-shooting suspected felons. I think it was a county
budget-saving measure. Another day………
On the way to
the Ames City Hoosegow, the cop and I chain-smoked and replayed and laughed
about our Beach Boys encounter. His favorite song was “Surfer Girl.” He told me not to feel bad I was missing the
concert, as I got a much closer look at the headliners than I would have
sitting in the arena.
He also
offered me all sorts of cigarettes and told me not to worry, enjoy the
experience. There was no failure to communicate. Long story, but I did have a
quiet night, smoking and laughing with the cops while we waited for Jim and my
other pals to enter the jail after my five-hour sober-hold expired and say “We’re
here to pick up a derelict named Tim Ghianni. You got one of those here?”
My belt was
returned by the desk corporal, and I left into the cold, Iowa dawn and to the
nearby all-night hamburger stand. Ten greaseburgers for a buck. About 50
greaseburgers went out the door with us and into the Ames morning. Soak up the
night before prior to breakfast in the dining hall.
I’ve told
different and varying versions of the above story at times, but Brian Wilson’s
laughter always is present. Sometimes I even have mentioned Dennis Wilson’s
buddy Chuck Manson, who turned out to be something of an asshole. Helter-Skelter,
my ass, you crazy fuck.
Like I say, I
interviewed Brian many years later, and each time I began our conversations by
recounting how The Beach Boys’ laughter in the sweet smoke of that frozen Iowa
field was among my life’s highlights. He would laugh and kick loose the sand in
the sandbox that surrounded his piano. “Champo, I really like the way you
think,” he said. “Reminds me of myself. You really should stay in your room, though."
The words
above are just rattling out of my head because I hadn’t been able to write
anything after Sly and Brian died.
I admired
them both greatly and have, as close as I can figure, the collected works,
going all the way back to The Beach Boys’ classic “409” on a carefully
preserved 45 rpm.
Giddy up
giddy up giddy up 409 (giddy up giddy up 409)
Giddy up 409 (409, 409)
Giddy up 409 (giddy up giddy up 409)
Giddy up 409...
Nothing can catch her
Nothing can touch my 409 (409, 409, 409, 409)
Giddy up 409 (409, 409, 409, 409)
Giddy up 409 (409, 409, 409, 409)
Sly, well,
nothing he wrote was better than “It’s a Family Affair” and his stoic,
heart-draining delivery.
One child grows up to be
Somebody that just loves to learn
And another
child grows up to be
Somebody you’d
just love to burn.
Mom loves the both of them
You see, it’s in the blood
Both kids are
good to Mom
Blood’s thicker than the mud.....
It’s a family affair………….
I really hadn’t sorted out what to say before I started writing, so I hope the above works as something of a tribute to great men who shared fleeting moments of my life and who continue to populate my soul as well as answer "Where I Been?" these past seven months, even though no one asked.
It's been fun to
relive the Sly show as well as my encounter with The Beach Boys in the frozen
mud and hemp field and fun with Jim or Jocko, as we survived many adventures
together and I would go back in a minute.
I probably wouldn’t even run more quickly down that ramp if I had a
do-over, because I enjoyed my five hours in jail, where I bummed smokes from
the cops and I did pull-ups on the pipes across the ceiling. I even sang
“Imagine" and my version of Chicago’s (still Chicago Transit Authority
and not yet easy listening) “Saturday in the Park” – “Saturday cutting farts,
sounded like the Fourth of July.” Jim
and I sing that to each other during the Independence Day phone calls.
The hoosegow
night was very, very good to me, from the failed bolt into the concert all the
way to my post-dawn release and the fact I hugged the officers “goodbye” as
they set me free. And, especially, my red-eyed outlaw behavior allowed me
to spend time in a frozen field with all of The Beach Boys, years before they
began to splinter and die. By the way, I did go to city court and tell hizzoner I wasn't drunk. "I've had a lot more to drink most nights." He accepted a nolo contendere plea and fined me $25, including court costs.
And any time
I can think of my brother, who was generally a very tame and sacrilegious
fellow, participating in an uncommonly colorful manner, I just have to smile.
Wouldn’t it
be nice if I was younger?
I thought
that a lot in the days I’ve been undergoing surgery, rehab, physical therapy,
the things that have occupied my recent weeks and months and the sleepless nights punctuated by the pain of healing and growing a new spine.
“Pee in this
jar so we can check your volume.”
“You have a bowel movement yet?”
“You can get
more oxy at 2 a.m.” (“C’mon 2 a.m., c’mon,”
I’d whisper into the sheets of the torture chamber that they consider a bed in
the therapy wing. The lumpy and contorted mattress itself and my ability to
spend 24 hours a day in it was reason enough to have me craving the oxy.
Well,
actually about 20 hours were spent daily in my cell. I did four hours of
painful therapy and, sometimes, around midnight, when I knew there was no way
to sleep in the torture contraption, I’d slip out of bed and collapse in the
chair in front of the massive TV and watch baseball game reruns all night.
That pretty
much was the soundtrack, day and night, as I wrestled with tears and despair
for more than two weeks.
The tears
came pretty much from a combination of exhaustion – I probably only slept 10
total hours during my incarceration at a hospital O.R., the ICU, the stepdown
and then the rehab hospital.
Fiercely
uncomfortable in my near-mortal’s pain, the regular visits by the nurses – “You
feel like getting up and going Number 2?” I was asked until the 13th
morning when we had a victory parade, my meager turd serving as grand marshal.
“I’m so proud
of you,” chirped Tia, the nurse, as she scouted out my meager, brown sample.
“Now that you
can hatch a turd, we’ll probably get you out of here soon,” said a kind overnight tech,
an Army retiree whose body was covered with U.S. Army images and ranks and
likely hearts and tombstones.
“Having No. 2 is important.”
I should have
had that tattooed on my torso as a permanent reminder. I was just glad I could
produce it, so they didn’t need to follow through on their enema threats. I
hate having warm water shot up my ass, though some may like it. I’m not one to
judge.
“Number 2,” I
said with a laugh that usually ended with me asking “Number 9?” from semi-conscious state as I lay in bed all
night, waiting for breakfast and watching MLB replays. “Turn me on, dead man.”
The nurse
just looked at me and said she didn’t know what was on Channel 9. And she
wasn’t one to make light of the dead man reference.
Early on in
my hours of darkness, I gave up on changing the channels, settling in for the
duration with MLB except for the night I spun twice through “Shawshank
Redemption.”
(Oh yeah, I
did also stumble on the film “Kelly’s Heroes” and enjoy the memory of the night
55 years ago when we filled the trunk of my Ford Falcon Futura Sports Coupe and its black vinyl top with a
half-dozen other fellows so we could get in the drive-in in Boone, Iowa, at a
reduced rate.) In case you wondered,
Wikipedia stipulates that Boone is pronounced “Boon.” And every Thursday, they had all-you-can-eat pizza and fried chicken 55 years ago. We'd line our book bags with foil and do an eat-a-slice, steal a drumstick sort of rhythm going.
Back to my rehab a few weeks ago. Held captive
in a bed equipped to set off an alarm if I got out, I wanted to get busy
living.
I guess,
going back to the beginning, that’s the instinct that led me to voluntarily
opting for massive spinal surgery that has resulted in weeks of agony,
irregularly punctuated by constipation and diarrhea. I’m all right now, though.
I learned my lesson well.
“What’s your 1-10 pain level, 10 being the worst?” I was asked in the months leading up to surgery and even today, as
I go in for maintenance work on the steel and concrete construction that is now
standing in for my original spinal column and neck.
“The numbers
all go to 11,” I would say.
That was
then, this is now, when I’ll fess up and admit that the recent months of fear
and loathing (not prayer and redemption) have me settling in at a pain level of
about 3 most of the time.
“I’m not
going to refill the oxy, because it’s really not good for you,” my personal
care physician said the other day as he laughed at my descriptions of my
hellish, sleepless nights in the rehab center after I’d had my spine pulled
out, cleaned with brake fluid, sanded down and Gorilla glued. I actually told
him the oxy was just making me sick, so I stopped taking it weeks ago. No Number 2 sends my brain into a fuzzy No. 9. Turn me on dead man.
I guess I
just wasn't made for these times.
Wouldn’t it
be nice if I was younger?
Boom
laka-laka-laka, Boom laka-laka-laka, Boom laka-laka boom
I laughed as
I thought of me and Jim in our pink long johns and my late pal John Lennon's "Revolution 9" returned from a deep space
in my brain: Then there's this Welsh
Rarebit wearing some brown underpants.
Mine were pink.
