Last Caress: VI

I can’t even recall my name.

Friday, July 27 around 9 o’clock in the PM

As the day slowly fades to night I’m left to speculate about my roommates yet my imagination and short-lived nods have twisted reality into a paranoid kind of hysteria. I hear the guy across from me typing away at what must be some kind of a laptop computer and it seems his typing speed picks up any time a nurse comes in to tease me with my ration of pain medication and I can only deduce from this that he is definitely
some kind of spy. If he’s able to type with such stealth and abundance, why is he here in the first place? What is he writing and why is no one coming to visit him. He is brought a lunch that he consumes effortlessly and all the nurses go to him immediately before and immediately after coming into my “room” which is just a curtained off area that is continually being left open by everyone who leaves the “room” only fueling my paranoia and confirming that the staff is in on it too.

There is a school aged boy who shows no physical symptoms of anything worthy of a stint in the hospital and I also question what he is doing here. His family is respectful of the others in the room but I can sense them keeping an eye on me and apparently he has a girlfriend who visits when his family isn’t around whom I saw wearing a typical, slightly tarted up school girl uniform which, it goes without saying, sends my imagination into a spiral of Japanese Hentai porn that I will go no further into at this time.

Again the old guy next to me has a coughing fit that lasts long enough for me to buzz the nurse call button on his behalf because it is clear that he is not going to be able to get himself out of this one on his own. Make no mistake, I do this out of my own selfishness, not out of any kind of compassion on my part. I just feel like listening to him die would kill the small buzz I have going on and just like when his alarm didn’t stop going off last night, I have to take matters into my own hands. I don’t know how far this will go but nothing is certain and I feel like this could get messy.

As I’m lying here in my bed, watching my breath come out of my mouth and crystallize in mid-air, my thoughts flash back to the first time my dad, Dave had a heart attack and I couldn’t find the hospital because I kept going South instead of North on Highway 270 and the girl I was with finally had to go home and I think about how long ago that must have been because I didn’t have any mobile device whatsoever in which to communicate with anyone and I deduct by the girl I was with and by the car I remember driving that I must have still been in High School and it blows my mind momentarily. That means that I had been visiting Dave in the hospital, hospitals not so different from this one, in the same condition I’m in now or worse, on a regular basis for half of my life. Well, until last November that is, when he died.

Another faceless nurse comes in and delivers her line, “You know, how long you are here all depends on you.” and I have little to no idea what she’s talking about. I tell her to bring me a bag of pain medicine or I’m going to slit my own throat with the needle sticking out of my arm and she smiles at me with a flirtatiousness that fuels my next nurse/ patient fantasy and I ask her if we can get some air freshener for the stench in the room. She looks at me blankly before turning around and vanishing off camera.

All the times I had to see my dad just like I am now; laying in a hospital bed, shaved in all the wrong places, weak, bruised, tubes and needles sticking out of me, pathetic, sore, and drowsy. I think about Keiff and I feel guilty and ashamed at the state I’m in. I don’t want him to see me like this, I can’t even pick him up. I could barely say, “Hi.” to him if he were here.

My hallucinations are alluding that myself and the dying guy next to me are in fact connected but in different ways at different times. Time is not happening in its usual, liner form, it is much more fluid and difficult to fully grasp in any sort of sane manner. Sometimes the guy is my dad, Dave just before he died, sometimes it’s my dad as a young man. Other times he is me as a kid or in about 30 years time and Keiff isn’t
coming to see me anymore because he’s given up on me, everyone has. Sometimes he is Keiff in different stages of his life, unable to break the cycle.

It occurs to me briefly that I didn’t actually do anything to cause this, this isn’t really my fault and am able to find some comfort in that but this is my life and I believe you have to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Maybe this is sort of a preview of exactly what it’s like to have a heart attack or two or three and then just be generally unwell for so long that your body, mind, and spirit simply give up and all decide to just sort of disappear.

The coughing coming from the old man next to me is getting worse and more persistent and harder to ignore until it’s all I can hear. My thoughts start to drift in and out and throughout time and space, almost flashing before me. Back to Dave and the way he used to cough so horribly that you were certain something was sure to rupture and then I couldn’t help but think that I’m sitting here with something ruptured in me and I start to understand how Luke Skywalker felt when his hand was cut off by a light saber and he got it replaced by a mechanical hand and how that was obvious foreshadowing of how easy it is to take the steps that turn a boy into his father and someone from off camera
whispers, “Break the cycle.”

Break the cycle. Of all the thoughts that I should be focusing on; my stomach, the faceless nurses stabbing me with random needles, Mama and Keiff and so on, the only thing that I can think of is that phrase, “Break the cycle.” If the old man lying next to me is a version of my dad at different times of his life, and at times different versions of myself, and still at other times different versions of my son then what I must do is clear. Past, present, and future. Suddenly it all becomes clear, time has flattened itself out and I am now able to see the full picture. I know what must be done.

The first thing I need to do get my strength up without looking like I’m getting my strength up. I do a couple of reps of leg lifts and sit-ups. I hold the bars on my bed and lift myself up a couple of times but then stop, I must appear frail and bedridden. I wait until the nurse makes her final rounds for the night and when she is walking off the set she slips on the ice. When all is still and quiet I get to work. Only the sound of the old man’s heaving coughs and the pitter-patter of the spy typing away at his keyboard can be heard.

I start by carefully taking all the tubes out of my body, first the one jabbing my forearm. I remove the needle from my vein and a stream of dark red blood streams down my arm onto the white sheets of the bed. I quickly take the bedpan and put it under my arm to catch the blood. I must be very careful not to leave any evidence that they will find after the deed is done. I also must work silently so that the spy who is still typing away on his computer, keeping close tabs on me isn’t hip to what I’m up to. Next I slowly remove the tube that is inserted into my stomach to vacuum out the remnants of my appendix. The tube doesn’t just pull out cleanly though, the scar is no longer bloody and lubricated, it’s now dry and only comes out after tearing through already healed flesh and stomach lining. The tube is black with thick chunks of dried blood and pus caked onto it like the stem of a water bong that hasn’t been cleaned. I wrap the tube in gauze and lay it carefully on the night stand and take another handful of gauze and shove it into the hole in my stomach to stop the freshly opened wound from bleeding out.

This causes me to give an audible grunt and I hear the spy across the room stop typing. A wave of terror runs through my body beginning from the hole in my abdomen and spreads out to my extremities in long pulsating bursts. Break the cycle. I look down and the gauze that is
sticking out of my stomach has become drenched in blood and rotting appendix and is beginning to drip. I shove it deeper into my wound and wrap the gauze around my whole stomach to hold it in place. The old man is no longer coughing, just breathing heavily in his sleep. The spy has stopped typing and the room is suddenly thick with silence.

I decide that the time is now, I must act fast before the nurse’s midnight inspection cycle. As to not make any noise, I stealthily lay down on the floor on my stomach and do a military crawl under the dividing curtain into the old man’s area. It smells like feces
and the ground is so cold that I’m sliding on my belly like a penguin. I stop and notice that I’ve left a dark red streak of blood coming from my side of the curtain.

I slowly pull myself to my feet without making a sound, careful not to slip on the ice and am now within inches of the old man. All I can see is a dark figure lying still and the breath coming from his mouth. I hold up my iPhone and click it on to illuminate the old man’s face. His skin is dark and spotted with thick black pox that smell malignant. His face is hollow, his cheeks sunken in and it looks like he is having a dream that he is being tortured with rusty pliers and an industrial sized grill scrapper.

The director yells, “Action!” and I take a roll of gauze and slowly begin to wrap the old man with it, tying him down to the bed. I start with his chest and arms to immobilize him so if he wakes up he’ll be unable to escape then I work my way down to his legs so he can’t kick or squirm. Just as I’m tying off the mummification of his lower body I hear a high pitched moan and I look up, the old man is staring at me with a terrified look in his eyes. He starts to moan again, trying to yell but he can’t find the air necessary to pull it off because I have his chest and stomach tied down so tightly. I take the roll of gauze and jam it in his mouth causing him to gag violently but I just keep pushing the roll of gauze further into his mouth and down his throat. Muffled heaves tell me that he is involuntarily vomiting and I assume that he is choking to death on it so now I don’t need to use a pillow to suffocate him. On the table next to us is a box of latex gloves and I put one on each hand, careful not to make a snapping sound. Once the gloves are on I wrap my hands around the old man’s throat and begin to squeeze tightly and I can feel
his life slipping away from him from beneath my fingers. I study his face as his muscles start to relax and I’m thinking that this is all happening much more quickly than I had thought it would so I’m planning my exit strategy but then something happened that was
definitely not in the script. Nothing could have prepared me for what came next.

As I’m sitting here alongside the old man with my hands firmly around his neck,suddenly the features of his face begin to change. First his nose morphs into a thicker, longer version of itself, next his mouth and sunken cheeks begin to fill out and finally he opens his eyes lazily and blinks two or three times before settling in on me. The face that I am now strangling the life out of is my father. A cold breeze runs through the room that causes me to shiver, the spy begins typing again, faster and louder than before as I double down on my squeezing efforts while my father just stares at me expressionless and frigid. I push down on his throat even harder and then the features begin to change again, this time his skin gets smoother and the nose softens, color returns to the lips and ears and suddenly I’m looking at my son. He is a man, of about 27 but it’s him no doubt, handsome and well chiseled. He too looks at me peacefully, not choking on the roll of gauze still in his mouth, not struggling at all, just looking on at me with an almost bored gaze. I notice that I’ve released some of the pressure on his throat and, not able
to stand any more of this, begin squeezing again even harder than before. The spy’s typing becomes frantic and it sounds like he is slapping his keypad. The smell of shit is thick, causing me to choke and I bury my nose in the sleeve of the hospital apron I’m still wearing. I squeeze harder on the throat and when I notice drops of water falling on my grown son’s expressionless face I realize that I’m weeping. I wipe the tears on his face away before they freeze and when I take my hand away there is a new face that is looking back at me. It’s old and wrinkled but I immediately recognize it as my own.

Panic quickly takes hold and I’m frozen, shivering, sobbing looking into my own eyes, relieved that I still have all my hair, though it’s thinned substantially. As disturbing as this all is, somehow the blank stares coming from both my father and my son were something that I was able to work past but now, looking into my own empty stare brings on an existential dread that there are just not enough Xanax on planet Earth to curb. I can’t look at it anymore, I can’t take any of this any longer. In a frenzy I reach behind my older self’s head and rip the pillow that I’m resting on. I smother my older self’s face ashard as I can, so hard that I’m screaming out into frigid air, “No!!” I hear the spy slamming his computer on the metal bars on the side of his bed and finally he throws the laptop across the room and into the curtain where I am slumped over what is now just a wet pillow covering a pool of melted ice and I’m sobbing, “No, no, no.”

Exhausted, I’m now whimpering on the bed alone, gripping the frosty pillow and when the spy throws open the curtain I slowly turn to face him. It’s Dr. Feelbad from the first hospital and he’s smoking a clove cigarette with a bamboo stem and tearing up the script, tossing it in the air and shouting into a bullhorn, “No, no, cut! This is all wrong!” In his German accent. He’s holding a black leather leash that is connected by the neck to the nurse with the blood red lipstick and jet black hair who is now naked and wearing her hair down and it’s crimped and waist length. She has blood stained vampire fangs and is drinking an Avian through a straw and looking like there are a million other things she would rather be doing right now.

I want desperately to ask what the hell is going on but all that comes out is a whimpering, “Wha…wh…”

Dr. Feelbad is barking orders in German at the Japanese crew from his bullhorn and from no where cameramen, stagehands, and extras start scampering around and suddenly I can’t understand anything that anyone is saying. My father is sitting in an actor’s chair smoking a Benson & Hedges cigarette, wearing a bath towel and a gold pinky ring with a hebrew character on it and he is yelling at a 5 foot 3 inch tall midget
with ginger, spiky hair and stubs for fingers on his left hand in a language I’m not at all familiar with. There is a pair of conjoined twin ballerinas sharing a pair of faded blue jeans and an old school Elvis Costello concert T-shirt who are twisting themselves around each other like a wrung towel and they are getting taller and taller with every twist until blood starts hemorrhaging from their eyeballs. There’s a guy in a garbage can
freebasing meth through a straw who looks like a real life Oscar The Grouch who is getting a double fisted hand job from Marilyn Monroe’s corpse. Three sumo wrestlers wearing traditional kimonos are gang raping a young boy, maybe 11, who has dead flowers where his eyes used to be and is having a heated debate about the pros and cons of using pink vs. yellow highlighters with someone named Flo on an late 90’s
model Motorola cell phone. A 230 pound mentally retarded kid wearing a blue suit with an oversized blue and yellow polk-a-dotted necktie that is tied around his head is beating off to Russian older brother/younger sister porn on an iPad and above him is a seascape painting of a lighthouse after dark.

Gradually, the painting comes to life. The dark blue waves start crashing on the rocky shore, the light from the lighthouse starts rotating 180 degrees, illuminating everything in it’s path for a split second and as I focus on the painting, watching the waves ebb and flow back into the vast expanse I can briefly make out a boat rocking back and forth. The stars twinkle in the night sky as I wait for the light to come back around to the boat which is old and wooden and in the boat is a man. I focus in harder on the painting and all the madness going on around me in the hospital room starts to fall away as quickly as it appeared. The light from the lighthouse comes around again and I can make out
the features of the man, he isn’t old but he is haggard beyond his years. I watch the light go back and forth a few times watching the waves smash against the rocks and I wonder why the rocks are still so sharp and rigid, shouldn’t they be smooth by now, warn down by the mighty ocean? I notice that the boat with the man in it are moving closer and closer to the deadly shore yet his expression is unchanged. He remains
clam, leaning back in the boat, not holding on to anything though the boat is now swaying violently amongst the waves, the oars are resting peacefully at his side. He is neither rowing toward nor away from the jagged rocks, he is simply allowing himself to be peacefully carried off into the night. The stars are alive, the stars are real. The light from millions of eons ago has traveled through time and space to grace this night sky and they are real. I wait for the light to find the man in the boat again. The light passes by once, twice, a third time. The man and his boat have disappeared. Disappeared here.

Suddenly I’m cold. I can feel the heat of the sidewalk on my back and although my eyes are closed and I can’t seem to open them, I can feel the warm sun pulsating on my eyelids, but I’m frozen. A voice slowly becomes audible, it’s Mama and she’s saying, “Don’t go, don’t go.” I need her to know that it’s going to be alright so I force my eyes open and look up at her and she’s sobbing outside of the station in front of the clinic holding my head in her lap and rocking back and forth. I let out a weak cough and she looks down at me with bloodshot eyes and says, “Don’t go. Don’t leave us.”

I cough weakly then manage, “Baby…I’m not…going…to make it.”

The End

Last Caress I-VI are featured in the book #DeadFlowers.

Also from Mike Black, the novels #BougBoys and #SamuraiBlues.

Follow on Twitter @mikeblackBB and LIKE on FB at Facebook.com/MikeBlack2left/

 

Last Caress: V

I can’t even recall my name.

Thursday, July 26. Day 3

Today is slipping quickly by in cycle after painful cycle of scoring pain medication, being relieved enough to breathe without grunting painfully, slipping into a semi peaceful nod until I’m awaken again by the pain, then spending the next hour or so pleading with the nurses to give me more medicine until they finally concede and then the cycle continues unbroken. The room is so cold that the bags of medicine start to get slushy and the flow into my veins is slowed, delaying the effect.

Every time I ask for more medicine I’m questioned skeptically about my pain, forcing me to come up with new and colorful ways to try to justify what is going on with my abdomen, and in the best Japanese I can produce I explain that it feels like:

-The Nagoya Dragons baseball team all took batting practice on my stomach.

-You know the movie Rocky? No? It’s about a boxer and he does his training punching slabs of frozen meat. I feel like my stomach is that slab of meat.

-There was a balloon full of crap in my stomach. That balloon got really big and exploded and all the crap is swimming around inside me.

-Nakamura Shunsuke (a famous Japanese soccer player) practiced scoring goals aimed at my stomach…using bullets. -You see that pen in your hand, well imagine I ask to borrow it for a wee second, give it a good looking over, click it open and then STAB you in the stomach with it about a hundred or so times. Now give me the Goddamn medicine!!

I have repeatedly asked to go to the bathroom and I feel like everyone keeps telling me to, “Just go.” and I feel like they are taunting me because with all the tubes and wires coming out of me I clearly can’t just go on my own and no one seems to be offering any assistance until finally someone explains that there is a tube coming out of my nerd that is connected to a bag and that I can pee freely and finally everything makes sense. It takes about two minutes to UN-learn not to piss myself and I finally bring myself to just do it, just lying there in bed. After that it’s like riding a bike.

Time is moving in two speeds, slow motion and fast forward depending on how much pain I am in and the stinginess of the pain-killer policy here which has no interest in maintaining any level of comfort for the patients and has turned me into a sociopathic liar. It’s so cold in this room that I can’t tell if I’m shivering because of the temperature or the loss of blood or the medication or some sort of cocktail of all three. All my thoughts are concentrated, due to severe pain, on how to most effectively and efficiently get pain killers off these stingy bastards and I now answer all questions in a way that I believe will get me the biggest dose of medication in the least amount of time. Answering honestly, I have learned, leaves me in excruciating pain for long lengths of time but lying and making a lot of noise seems to be working though it has reduced me to feeling like a child, a prisoner and a junkie.

Friday, July 27, 2012 Day 4

Sleep was very hard to come by last night after the last dose wore off and the old man next to me started coughing loudly but I managed to nod off long enough around dawn to have an absolutely brilliant dream that flashed before me that I don’t remember reading anywhere in the script. The dream was like a television sitcom with the cheesy lines and the laugh track and everything but was in cartoon form and centered around the life and dramas of the Drewrys, a family I knew growing up in St. Louis about 20 years or so ago. As I thought on it, making sure to cement every detail so it didn’t slip away as brilliant dreams are known to do I laughed so hard that I the stitches on my right stomach started to burst, allowing a steady stream of blood to seep out onto the white hospital sheets. Oddly, I couldn’t feel any pain but called the nurse anyway.

They keep me fairly doped up and the day is really beginning to drag on. I ask about something to eat which leads me to think about the last thing I ate which was…when? Had I eaten anything yesterday, the day before? Damn, when was the last time I ate… anything, anything at all. “Dude!” I call myself out loud, “You haven’t eaten since Tuesday night! That’s…” I say counting on my fingers and confirming on my iPhone what day it is and what day all this started before concluding, “Four days!”

I hadn’t really thought about it before now but the idea of not having food for four days causes my brain to do some pretty experimental things; fill in a lot of gaps, cycle around in ways that it has never been forced to do before. There is no telling what lies ahead. When the nurse comes in to stick me with an unnamed needle she turns into a Turkey leg like in the old Loony Toons cartoons. I explain, trying not to lick my lips to perversely, that I haven’t eaten in awhile, four days to be exact and ask if there is any chance I’d be scoring a sandwich or something for lunch today, having already clearly missed breakfast. She says she’ll check and as she leaves her ass turns into two marshmallows that I imagine are being dipped in chocolate from one of those chocolate fountains you see at fancy hotels where you take the marshmallow by a long fork and spin it under the cascade of chocolate that is flowing down like I wish vodka would.

As time drags on and I nod in and out of consciousness in a more or less state of constant pain for like, the fourth day in a row; no food, no brewskis, very little sleep, the line between reality and imagination begin to blur in a very realistic way. I can no longer tell whether I am asleep or awake, if I’m high or just in that much pain that my brain is occupying itself with other things. The room is so cold that my tongue gets stuck to the straw that I’m drinking from and the water has turned to solid ice.

I’m suddenly aware of the old man in the curtain next to me who keeps coughing deeply and while I vividly remember asking him yesterday to kindly go and die somewhere, anywhere else, now as I listen to him cough inconsolably I’m getting an eerie feeling that somehow we are connected and the universe has somehow brought us here together at the same place and time for a very specific reason, though I have no clue as to what that may be and I really just wish he would shut the fuck up and disappear. Disappear here.

Friday, July 27. 12:30 pm

The nurse comes in my room/curtain barrier type place and doesn’t shut it all the way behind her, breaking my concentration and explains that I am not to be served any lunch today or any dinner for that matter and that the bag filled with a clear, water looking liquid will be tiding me over until an undetermined date which she is not yet privy to.

“Cool.” I think, they are being as stingy with the food as they are with the pain killers. “Got any heroin? Or maybe a pistol and a bullet that I can bide my time with by playing Russian Roulette with myself, possibly a cyanide capsule I can chew on?” I think out loud to whoever can hear me in this curtained off room I’m sharing with what I can gather are at least three other people, the old man coughing next to me and someone else who I am beginning to suspect is a spy with a typewriter.

When a faceless nurse exits, she doesn’t shut the curtain all the way…again. I’m sick of getting up and doing it myself so I rudely shout at her, “Close the goddamn curtain!” She does but not without giving me a menacing glare first which I am no longer afraid of. It is clear that no one here is looking out for me but myself and as much as I like to be cool to people, it’s time to be assertive. A vision of my teenage years flashes before me and I’m warped once again back to St. Louis where it is warm and green and smells like creek water. My friend Curt appears wearing faded jeans, no shirt with a skull tattoo on his left pec that has a butt chin and steel-toed boots. He shuts the curtain for me and runs after the nurse and I can hear him catch up to her and all I hear is a cracking sound like that of a tree falling over and I see a stream of blood run by the door. He walks back loudly and peeks his bald head through the curtain, looks around and says, “Dude, if you want something broken, you gotta be willing to crack some heads.” then laughs eerily before he disappears.

To be continued…

Featured in the book #DeadFlowers.

Also from Mike Black, the novels #BougBoys and #SamuraiBlues.

Follow on Twitter @mikeblackBB and LIKE on FB at Facebook.com/Mike2left/

 

Last Caress: IV

I can’t even recall my name.

Wednesday July 25, 2012 around 11:00 pm

I see emergency workers wearing masks and dark helmets rushing about acting very professionally, I close my eyes and find it very difficult to open them though I want to desperately because this is the most action I’ve seen all day. This feels like a movie with the lights, the sirens, the sobbing wife who can’t bring herself to make eye contact with her barely conscious, completely vulnerable husband, and the infant crying inconsolably in her arms. The movie continues at the Hospital as the lights on the ceiling rush by as I can see my eyelids shutting and slowly re-opening with masked doctors looking at me with a great sense of urgency.

I try to speak but no words will come out. I want to tell this new doctor, who is a lot hotter than Dr. Feelbad from the last place, that I’m feeling a lot better and try to say something to make the expression on everyone’s face stop screaming at me. Maybe if I could ask her if she’s married, and if yes, does she fool around? If Mama heard me say that she would know that I’m going to be alright and maybe stop weeping the way she is, but I just can’t make any words come out of my mouth. The movie comes to a predictable end when the doctor, another doctor, a dude, not the hot one goes to put the sleeping gas over my face and tells me to count backwards from ten and I can see my eyes shut one last time before I can get to four.

Thursday July 26, around 4:30 am

I wake up and immediately look for my iPhone. I don’t know where I am and there are tubes and wires coming out of me through holes in my arms and stomach, only some of which were there before I went under. All this is doing nothing but slowing the hunt for my phone. I reach with my left hand and an IV that is connected to a metal coat rack looking thing is ripped from my arm causing a stream of hot red blood to seep slowly from my arm. I look at the bags of liquid that are hanging where the coats and hats are supposed to be and I can’t help but wonder if one of those bags isn’t filled with potent pain medication and think I should probably get a nurse to see about that. She may know where my iPhone is too and now there is the small matter of blood draining out of my arm where the IV used to be.

As I’m going over all of this, I notice that I’m thinking in Japanese and then it occurs to me that I’ve been speaking strictly in Japanese since I arrived at the last hospital and everyone except for Dr. Feelbad and his broken English and thick German accent has been speaking to me in Japanese and I haven’t had any trouble understanding anyone. My Japanese is usually better than most, worse than others but for some unexplained reason, this script is only in Japanese.

“Nurse!” I yell though it comes out more like a whispered, “nurse….” and I can see the letters being spelled out by my breath in the frosty air. The abdominal pain that this causes reminds me why I’m here…wait, why am I here? What the hell is this all about anyway? I was sold on the Hernia story yesterday and all I know is, that was wrong… where’s the goddamn nurse!?

I start to press buttons and shout into things hoping to get someone’s attention and it quickly works as a not un-hot nurse rushes in and immediately starts to repair my IV drip. I stop her and ask her where my phone is and she says she doesn’t know. I rephrase the question, only slightly condescending and kindly ask her to help me find it as my range of mobility is currently impaired.

“Perhaps in the pocket of those shorts on the chair there Love, maybe we could start there, No?” I ask in the most polite Japanese I can produce. She finally finds a vein and after jabbing the IV needle back in my arm and taping it up she does a quick once around and finds my phone under a stack of papers on a small table and hands it to me with a sarcastic smirk that I’m in no mood for.

“Thank you.” I say grabbing the phone away from her and finally learning that it is 4:30 on Thursday morning and that I have no new messages. “Excuse me but what exactly happened to me anyway? Am I going to be alright?”

“Your appendix burst in your stomach yesterday.” She explains with such little emotion that I can’t help but question if I’m hearing her correctly. As she is standing over me, the lights from the ceiling create an aura around her head and she’s glowing. “The doctors did an emergency surgery last night. You’ll have to stay here for now.” She says, looking at my phone and then turning around to leave.

“Wait, wait” I say stopping her, “My appendix…burst? Like, inside my stomach…uh, is that what you said?”

“Yes, that is so.” she replies without emotion.

“Well that’s like, pretty bad? No? I mean, I’m going to be alright…?” I say half asking and half confirming.

“The doctors did emergency surgery last night…I said before.” she says strictly, not answering my question and cutting me zero slack on the language thing.

“Well do you know how long I have to stay here?” I ask.

“This is kind of an in-between place.” She says coldly, “How long you have to be here is up to you.”

“Oh, well cool.” I say having no idea what she means by any of that, then, “Uh, can I get some pain killers then? My stomach is really killing me.” I ask politely realizing that I’m being quite literal about the killing me part and hoping that I’m not out of line.

“There is a bag of painkillers connected to your arm, along with liquid food and some antibiotics. You ripped out the connection and I just fixed it so they should start working soon.” She explains before turning to leave again.

“Wait! Just one more thing,” I say as she’s disappearing. “which bag is the pain killers?”

“It’s the one with the X.” she hesitantly replies, “Please don’t touch the medicine.” she adds sternly, “Only doctors touch the medicine.” She says before disappearing into the dark corridor.

I immediately reach for the drip control on the pain-killer bag and realize that it doesn’t require a medical degree to figure out how to make it drip quicker and adjust it accordingly. I send a message on Facebook that I’m in the hospital and that there are tubes coming out of ten different holes in my body. My stomach finally settles, and I am able to nod off in a brief state of semi-comfort when I notice that someone I’m not “Friends” with commented on my Facebook post: “Break the cycle.”

To be continued…

Featured in the book #DeadFlowers.

Also by Mike Black, the novels #BougBoys and #SamuraiBlues

Follow on Twitter @mikeblackBB and LIKE on FB at Facebook.com/MikeBlack2left/

 

Last Caress: III

I can’t even recall my name.

Wednesday, July 25th around 11:30 am

I’m laying on the scorching hot sidewalk outside of the station, somewhere near the clinic when an icy chill runs through me that causes my body to jerk, I’m flat on my back, breathless and grunting uncontrollably when Mama runs up to help me. “Oh my god! Are you OK?” She asks, and though I love her with all my heart, my eyes cannot conceal my disdain for what is becoming the NO SHIT question of the day that I’m tired of hearing and answering, “No” to in Japanese or English. She helps me up effortlessly, her hands are cold and she drags me into the clinic where the smell of old people and death is inescapable. The clinic staff immediately admit me and get to work performing all sorts of tests on me with little regard for my physical pain which isn’t getting any better after all the positions they are forcing me to hold; X rays on cold tables, CAT scans, CT scans with metal pads that feel like icicles on my body as well as drawing blood a few more times than seems necessary before declaring my condition a pulled hernia.

They knock me out and do an unknown procedure and when I wake up I’m alone in a large four man room in a seemingly empty wing of the hospital that is freezing and where it looks like I’ll be staying for a few days. I’m dozing in and out of consciousness and every time I come to and the pain starts to creep back I call out for more medicine and the cycle continues.

I don’t know how many times we’ve cycled around but at one point I reach for my iPhone and notice it’s only 4 o’clock in the afternoon and for some reason that seems unbelievably early for all the shit that has happened since leaving the house this morning at 8:00 am. The cycle continues. I get one more dose of pain medication and when it starts to wear off again and the pain returns, again I call for a faceless nurse…again. She comes a lot slower this time and I sense an attitude maybe I was too doped up before to notice but it’s clear now that she’s getting stingy with the pain medication. It’s around 5:30 and she says she’ll be right back, right back she says she’ll be.

Wednesday July 25th Around 8:ooPM:

“NURSE!! HELP ME!” I shout pathetically, as loudly as my aching abdomen will allow into the nurse call button that I believe with all my heart is acting like a Walky Talky though the conversation is clearly one-sided. I hit the button once, twice then double over in pain on the lone hospital bed that is raised to about a 45 degree angle in a lone hospital room that is at about a 45 meter distance from the nearest intersecting corridor from what I can make of the footsteps that I used to hear come and go, yet haven’t heard come in quite some time. There is absolutely no way to position my body that is not excruciating in its own unique way and this is starting to sound very familiar. If I lay on my left side it feels like the right side of my body will be stretched to the point of tearing apart at the seams. To lay flat on my back means to have my abdominal muscles contract so forcefully that I feel I’m being drawn and quartered and to lay on my right side, where I am currently negotiating with myself the possibility of sustainability, it currently feels like I am laying directly on a dagger that has been having it’s way with me for longer than I care to think about.

But I must think about it…again. How long have they left me here now in utter agony, screaming for help? How many times have I done this? I reach for my iPhone and press around at it until the time comes up: 9:00. 9 o’clock. The last time I saw someone was like…I don’t know, hours ago. I press the nurse call button again and shout into the imaginary microphone, “HEY! This pain isn’t going away by itself you know!!”

Wait a minute. I whisper that last line again to myself “Hey.This pain isn’t going away by itself you know.” I’m hit with a deja-vu that is so vivid that I’m thinking a moment ahead of everything that is going to come next. The thoughts I’m going to think, the words I’m going to say, the things that I see in the room, I see them coming just before they happen. Before I turn my head I can already see my iPhone charger, my pajamas, my toothbrush, Keith’s LIFE autobiography, everything feels like I have just lived it and am reliving it again. The cold hospital room, the reeking odor, all feel like this has just happened to me. Not like it happened a long time ago or in a dream I dreamt, but like this is a movie and the director just asked us to do this scene over again.

At first I let the scene play out again because this is the pleasant part, where the drugs begin to take hold but then Dr. Feelbad with his thin mustache and red scarf bursts in and, right on cue asks me, “How is your pain?” I remember the last time he asked and how long it took to get across just how much pain I was in so instead of going through all of that ball ache again, I motion for him to come closer and when he does I grab him by his red scarf and knee him in the stomach and as he’s crouched over in agony I say, “It’s worse than that.”

He orders the nurse with the blood red lipstick and the jet black hair pulled back in a tight bun to give me more medicine and she helps him limp out of the room but I can’t relax because I know that they’ll be back in 3, 2, 1, enter the doctors. I mouth along with him when he says, “Your pain is not supposed to be getting worse, it’s supposed to be getting better.” As all the nurses pack up my things and then, on cue, Mama’s aunt makes her entrance. The first time this happened, I questioned my sanity, I thought I must be dreaming or hallucinating but now I can accept it for what it is which, in and of itself puts me at ease that I would rate somewhere North of six and a half but less than nine.

He starts to deliver his line about being wrong about the hernia but seems to have forgotten the dialogue so I help him, but not correcting his English. I don’t want to dilute his character as the evil Japanese doctor with the German accent. I belt out my line, “Am I going to die?” much more dramatically this time, gripping his icy cold red scarf and he delivers the, “Japan has good technique.” line perfectly.

I lay back on my pillow which is so cold that it crunches beneath my head and close my eyes, waiting to hear the sirens and when they come, the nurse says, right on cue, “The ambulance come now.”

To be continued…

The Last Caress series is featured in the book #DeadFlowers.

Also by Mike Black, the novels #BougBoys and #SamuraiBlues.

Follow on Twitter @mikeblackBB and LIKE on FB at Facebook.com/MikeBlack2left/

 

Last Caress: II

I can’t even recall my name.

Last Caress: II

Wednesday, July 25th 2012 8:00am

I get my thoughts together and after no small pep talk to myself, I muster up the energy to roll out of bed, convinced that a shower will cure-all of my woes. As I sit on the edge of the tub I let the water flow over my head and onto the rest of my body as I sit hugging my knees for what could be minutes but feels like much less. I step out of the shower and am already sweating. I slowly get ready and head out the door into the sauna that is summer in Japan, telling myself that this pain in my stomach is no big deal and that as soon as I can relieve myself, this will surely be over though the thought that this is somehow more than that can’t help but weasel it’s way into my head and I wonder if somehow I’ve overdone it this time, gone too far with the booze or something. This kind of pain is surely punishment for something.

I decided yesterday that the 20 minute walk to Tsurumai Station would be quicker than the 7 minute walk to Higashi-betsuin where I would have to change trains just to end up in Tsurumai no sooner than I could make the walk. Today may not be the best day to try this new route but hey, a plan is a plan. I walk all the way to Tsurumai Station and by the time I sit down on the train the soles of my shoes have melted off and I am panting heavily and grasping my stomach for some stability. I’m going over in my head what I’m going to say to the boss lady at this two week long summer school gig that I’m only 3 days into.

When I reach Ueda Station I slowly exit the train and use the hand rails all the way to the front exit. It’s only 8:45 in the morning but the heat is already oppressive. Each step seems to be more difficult than the last and when I make it into the school, everyone stops what they are doing and stares at me as I drag myself through the front door. Instead of my prepared speech to the boss lady, I decide to just tell everyone in the office the story.

“Daijyoubu? (Are you alright?)” everyone’s face is asking me and I do my best to plead my case, saying, “Hey, look I…I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’m not sure what’s wrong but I have a terrible stomach ache and I’m not sure why. I’m going to try to do my best today but…I need to go to the bathroom first.” I say turning around and walking out the door and into the lobby toward the bathroom.

From the toilet, after God knows how long has passed, someone comes in and asks if they should call someone else in for today and I say that I maybe just need a few minutes but if someone else could kind of start the class for today, that would be helpful. There is no circulation in the bathroom and I’m sweating so profusely that there is a puddle forming on the floor. I don’t know how much time passes sitting there in the lobby bathroom but I’m starting to wrap my mind around the fact that this bathroom thing is turning into a catch 22; as long as I sit here, nothing will happen, but if I stand up and leave, things could get ugly. I sit and contemplate this for what I believe are minutes but by the pitter patter of small feet I can tell that it must be time for the first bathroom break of the day. I hear the guy that must have taken on my class as well as his own class and I call out to him, “Hey man! This isn’t working out, can you tell the boss lady to phone in whomever she has available to phone in. I’m…I’m not gonna make it.”

“OK man, will do.” he says and when I hear everyone leave I realize that this bathroom thing is not going to happen and I decide to take it out to the real world. The office ladies assure me that someone else is coming to take my place and that I can lay down in the back room if I need to. I go to the back room but quickly realize that this is not a matter that resting for any amount of time will solve as, again I configure myself in all sorts of positions, none of which do anything to ease the burden in my ailing stomach.

I walk out of the back room and limp my way into the office where the ladies working have prepared a plan of action on my behalf. They ask me if I want to go to a hospital and I quickly say, “Yes.” realizing by now that this, whatever this is, is bad and needs professional attention. They tell me there is a clinic just down the road and one of the ladies offers to walk me there.

I make it to the clinic after a great deal of difficulty walking, each step is a struggle verbalized by a heavy, deep grunt preceding each painful breath. The office lady walks me inside and explains my dire situation to the clinic staff. They sit me down, have me fill out a few forms that are all in Japanese, and then move me onto a sofa to wait for the doctor. I lay on my right side and heave heavy grunts with each excruciating breath.

Once the doctor sees me he takes X-rays and asks a lot of questions about what I ate recently and my thoughts keep going back to those St. Louis Cardinal cookies that Aunt Stephannie sent me. Could those bland wafers be causing all this belly aching? They ask me for Mama’s phone number and call her to arrange for me to go, on my own, to another clinic that specializes in stomach matters…in Tsurumai…where I started the day in the first place.

I’m not thinking very clearly but I can’t help but feel a little uneasy just taking this “Doctors” referral to some new clinic and just walking, if you can call it walking, out the door. If whatever I have is more than they can, as a medical clinic, deal with, should they really just let me limp out the door? It seems unethical and negligent at best.

Wednesday, July 25th around 10:00am

The walk from the clinic to Ueda Station is excruciating. Each step a bit closer to death than the last. The bag I’m carrying is growing heavier and heavier and I’m considering what is expendable from it in order to lighten the load. I take the plastic tea bottle out and jettison it on the road. Books, flashcards, textbooks, all discarded along the hot sidewalk, catching fire as they hit the pavement, leaving a trail of smoke and ashes in my wake. I finally make it down the stairs of Ueda Station and make it on a train. People clear the seats, making way for the gimpy gaijin to sit down and I spend the entire duration of the train ride from Ueda to Tsurumai trying to catch my breath.

It occurs to me on the train that I have absolutely zero concern as to my personal appearance. I haven’t seen my hair since I left the house and I’m fairly confident that my outfit looks like I just left the gym after a long shvitz. I realize that I am not wearing my skull ring, my wedding ring or any other accessories and I can’t bring myself to care, I simply do not have the energy to look for them or put them on. The naked feeling that would normally associate itself with this set of circumstances is completely non-existent to the point that I don’t even check my iPhone. All the energy I am able to put into my appearance is simply confirming that my iPhone is in fact in my pocket and that it hasn’t burnt up yet from the heat.

I get off at Tsurumai station and am in a great deal of pain…a very great deal of pain. An excruciating level of pain I have never endured in all my life. Each and every step is flirting with death. I can barely walk and every five or so steps I take I have to stop to catch my breath with deeply troubling heaves, the likes of which I have never experienced nor have I heard of in this movie or any other movie I’ve seen. I take the elevator from the platform to the next level and while I’m waiting for it to come I crouch over in pain which puts me in the direct line of sight to a map of the station and I am reminded of what a massive station this is. It has connections to both the Tsurumai subway line and the Sakura Dori subway line and spans all the way from Tsuruma Park halfway to my house in Higashi-betsuin. An elderly couple queue up behind me for the elevator but after hearing my moans they quickly decide to take the stairs. The doors open on the basement level and from there I look for the next elevator symbol that will take me to the ground level and with any luck, out the correct exit closest to this new clinic that I’ve never heard of. I see the elevator symbol and follow the arrow but the corridor looks really long and deserted.

There is a message from Mama saying that she is just now leaving the house which is more than a little disappointing because I was hoping she could just tell me the exit number instead of leaving things to chance which has been no friend to me so far today. I follow the arrow towards the elevator that will finally lead me to the ground floor. I have to grasp the hand-rail with both hands the whole way to the next arrow leading to the next lift and it’s so hot that it blisters my hand. When I finally, after what seems like miles of hallway, reach the next sign telling me to turn here for the elevator and on what I truly believe to be my final breath I turn the corner only instead of an elevator door I am devastated to find that the arrow simply points down another hallway to an elevator that I can’t even see from where I stand, crouched over and gurgling for breath. Tsurumai Station can be impossible to navigate on a good day but this just may be the end of me.

After what feels like a lifetime of walking like someone who has been violently stabbed in the gut with a rusty screwdriver that is now rubbing itself against all the organs in my stomach, finally I reach the ground floor. After a terribly confusing conversation with a construction worker resting idly on his shovel, I start off on the last leg of this goose hunt, up another elevator, across the overhead bridge under the smoldering sun, down another heated elevator and onto the street where finally, after all this travel, hardship, disappointment and pain I finally see where the clinic is not….I am defeated.

Wednesday, July 25th around 11:00 am

I collapse on the steamy sidewalk and search around for my iPhone. When I finally get a firm grip of it in my trembling hands I bring it to my lips, press the button and tell Siri to, “Call Mama.” Luckily my voice is still strong enough for Siri to recognize it and the command is activated. “Moshi Moshi…(Hello)…Moshi Moshi?” Mama says into her phone.

I cough weakly then manage, “Baby…I’m…not going…to make it.”

To be continued….

Featured in the book #DeadFlowers.

Also from Mike Black, the novels #BougBoys and #SamuraiBlues.

Follow on Twitter @mikeblackBB and LIKE on FB at facebook.com/MikeBlack2left/

 

Brush with The Greatest

 

The date was November 13th, 1992 when a 14 year old me and my friend Mike Tamm went to Ozzy Smith’s sports bar in St. Louis, MO to watch the Evander Holyfield vs. Riddick Bowe fight. The place was packed with people of all kinds, even some local celebrities. Ozzy Smith himself said, “Hi” to us when he walked by our table, we saw Bob Costas walking around looking very shiny and much shorter than he appears on television. Mike Bush, the local sports caster walked by and Mike and I both said, “Hey, it’s Mike Bush, hey Mike Bush!” but he just smirked, almost cracking the layers of foundation he was wearing and walked past us.

“What a dick!” My friend Mike said to me after getting blown off, “Lets go walk around.”

We walked around the crowded bar for a while and, being the only people clearly under 21 there, a lot of people noticed us and either smiled or said, “Hello.” to us. We walked by one table near the back restrooms and an older guy called us over to his table and asked us our names, where we went to school and what we were into. Just as we were about to yell, “Pervert, help!!” he asked if we knew who he was.

“No, who are you?” We asked uncharacteristically polite, giving him a chance to un-perv himself.

“I’m Ernie Banks.” He said with a kind smile.

“No shit, Ernie Banks. I’ve heard of you, you played for the Cardinals back in the day right?” Mike said enthusiastically.

“That’s right.” He said, relieved to know that his name wasn’t completely lost on this young generation of spoileds.

After a few more minutes of chit-chat with Ernie Banks he asked us, “Hey, do you kids wanna meet The Champ?”

“Yeah, sure.” We both said wondering who this champ was.

So he got up from the table and walked us over to an out-of-the-way, inconspicuous door that didn’t say anything on it. When he opened the door, it was like he opened the doors of Narnia or something. There was a whole other bar past that door that looked more like a bar from the Titanic before it sank, all nice tables and fancy chandeliers, people dressed in expensive suits drinking champagne out of crystal glasses. It was the V.I.P. room of V.I.P. rooms with people so famous, we didn’t even recognize them. The people behind the people kind of people.

So Ernie, we were on a first name basis at this point, walked us up to a table with three couples and sitting there with his wife and four other people was Muhammad Ali, The Champ, The Greatest. His head was the size of a medicine ball and when he shook my hand I felt like I was shaking a catcher’s mitt. He was shaky and didn’t say a whole lot, just, “Stay in school.” and, “Be good.” but we stood there with him and his entourage for a solid 15 minutes. He gave us some signed cards and shared his french fries with us and at one point we exchanged playful blows with each other.

After a while, we thanked him and Ernie as well as the rest of his party for everything and just as we were about to say goodbye, Mike Bush walked by us again but this time, he wasn’t so smug. This time he said, “Hey kids, how you doing?” but now the tables had turned and we just looked at him and said, “Yeah, Eff you Mike Bush.”

True story.

 

Samurai Blues: Opening Scene

 

 

Samurai Blues

 

“Why you kill Oba san?” The good cop asks me for the millionth time.

“I told you before, I didn`t kill the Old Lady.” I say as simply as possible.

“We know you there. We have evidence.” The bad cop says throwing a file full of photos in front of me. “Yes, we show you evidence, we know you at Oba san`s house.”

I open the file and look at the pictures. It was old lady`s house alright. Yes, this was Oba san`s house and yes, my stuff was there and yes, it was burnt the hell up.

“Is that your owning things?” The bad cop asks.

“Yeah, It`s my owning things,” I sigh wearily. “It’s my stuff.”

“Then you say freely you at Oba san`s house, yes?”

“Yeah, I was there.” I admit, adding, “I never said I wasn`t there.”

“Then, Mr. Sinner san, why you there at old lady`s house then?” He asks very pleased with himself.

Why was I there? How did I get there, how did I get here? How in the hell did things get so screwed up…again? These are the exact question I`ve been asking myself for the last 15 days. I`ve been locked up in this shit-hole for over two weeks without being charged with anything, without being able to talk to anyone on the outside, eating this crappy food and hoping that the relationship with my cell-mate, Ma kun remains platonic.

What the hell was I doing in Japan anyway? Why was I at some old lady`s house, and on the night she died no less. Now that I`ve got nothing but time to reflect on these things and because this isn`t the first time I`ve sat in a jail cell wondering how the hell I got here, I thought I`d go through and try to see if I can`t make some sense out of it all.

I`m going to have Ma kun write while I talk. Ma kun is a product of the Japanese school system which means he can understand English well enough, he can read and write in English pretty fluently but when it comes to actually speaking English…not a word. So I`ll try to speak clearly and directly. Ma kun, are you getting all of this?

“Hai.”

So far so good, so I guess I`ll start with the basics, “Ma kun, what are you in for?”

“Setsujin desu.”

OK, not sure what that means but let`s hope it isn`t anything too serious. Ma kun looks like a nice kid. He`s younger than me anyway, that`s why he gets the kun suffix as opposed to san. Anyway, he`s got a mischievous smile that he flashes me from time to time but I haven`t caught him sniffing around my whitey-tighties or anything, so I`ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Well back to me, my name is Keith Sinner. I`m an American, born and raised in a suburb of St. Louis called St. Charles. I didn`t know anything about Japan before I got here, really, nothing. I hadn`t even seen Lost in Translation, but now I`ve been here for a few years and there have definitely been some ups and downs. I guess I should start from the beginning, “Ma kun, you just keep writing, alright?”

“Hai.”

Jesus this cell stinks. The roof fan is heavily covered in closely knit thick metal bars and is as useless as that green plastic grass they use to separate sushi. Ma kun is looking at me eagerly, pen in hand and one of those strange smiles on his face. I hope that doesn`t mean he shit himself.

So…here`s the thing, you know how you watch the news and you see a story, any story, maybe a revolution is starting in some country that you`ve never heard of. Maybe there`s some big trial that the media has latched onto and captured everyone’s attention. You, your friends and co-workers all follow the events as they unfold every day and talk about how screwed up it is around the water cooler. You assume that you`re being told the truth and are getting all the facts exactly how they are going down. You`re just sure, based on the facts, that you know exactly what happened.

Sure, we`ve all been there, but then have you ever been personally involved in a news story in any way? Maybe your cousin`s store got robbed, maybe your sister`s house burnt down, maybe the neighbor`s kid got his dork stuck in a tree. The point is, you were there and all the local networks and newspapers reported on it so there it is on TV. But did you notice how it wasn`t quite right? Maybe they got a name wrong, maybe the chain of events was a little off or maybe they added a `Police haven`t ruled out foul play just yet…` and you think, `Wow, hang on, what the hell just happened, that`s not how it went down.’ Then you try to tell Jane from work about it the next day at the water cooler, only she kind of doesn`t believe you. `OK Sweety, someone you know got their picture on the news and all the sudden you`re telling them how to do their jobs, what are you, some kind of Oliver Stone or something?’

Anyone who`s ever had anything written about them knows how bad the media can screw up a story and when it`s about you, you start to see how they work; they craft a juicy little narrative that the public can easily sink their teeth into, they assign a victim, a bad guy and possibly a hero and anything else they can use to sex it up, then it`s case closed. Well that sticks with you, you never don`t see it after that. I should know they screwed up almost everything they ever said about me.

Back in America when my trial was the talk of the town; The Sinner of St. Charles (clever), and The Lindenwood Strangler is what the headlines called me, and those were the nice ones, so much for innocent until proven guilty. I sat in a cell for six months and you know how many times anyone from the media asked to talk to me personally? Zero. But every day they said I declined to comment.

Well, that`s sort of how it is with Japan. Everything you`ve ever heard about the food, the people or the culture is, not an outright lie, just skewed enough to where if you were to have firsthand knowledge of it, you would know that it`s not quite the whole story. I lived in a small town in Yamaguchi called Houfu for the first year I was here and that was absolutely brilliant, it was the time of my life. Then I moved to a big city called Nagoya, and that`s when things started to get a little more complicated. I might go back and forth between the two a bit so try to keep up.

Yamaguchi, March 2008
I took the Bullet Train from the airport in Osaka to Yamaguchi. Okay, see here`s the thing about the bullet trains in Japan….

 

 

From the novel Samurai Blues now available on Amazon.

Also by Mike Black; the novels Boug Boys and Dead Flowers.

Follow on Twitter @mikeblackBB and LIKE on Facebook at Facebook.com/MikeBlack2left/

 

 

Boug Boys: Cardinals vs. Red Sox

An excerpt from the novel Boug Boys available on amazon:

…Dick is sitting on the chair on the porch drinking a Budweiser bottle wearing a backward Boston Red Sox hat and big mirror sunglasses.

`What`s up wicha Schultzy! ` He says cheerfully, looking in my direction, ‘You got a guitar in there?`

`I think so,` I say, wiggling my tooth, looking at his almost empty 12 pack, `What time is it?`

`What`d you guys do last night? ` He asks, not answering my question. `Get moin? ` He says not hesitating to answer his own.

`What`d you do? ` I ask scratching my balls, realizing that I am giggly stoned.

`Me and Speak and Doug went to the Cardinal game and got fuckin` hammered. ` He says emphasizing the hammered.

`Who won? ` I ask `The Red Sox? ` Taking a stab at the whole answering your own question style of conversation.

`Huh? `

Goddamnit, I knew I didn`t do it right, ‘Did uh, the Cardinals win or uh…the uh, the other, the uh, Red, er…Sox, (Socks?)…win? ` I ask wondering what the secret to this style of conversation is and how to obtain it.

`Dude, the Cards don`t play the Sox. ` He explains, `They`re in fuckin` different leagues dude. `

`Oh, right…` I say, thinking that I`ve learned a thing or two about being out of my league, ` I just thought…you know, cause of the hat…you know, and all…`

`Oh, this hat!` he says twisting the top off a brew and handing it to me, `No dude, the Sox are major league, they`re just in a different league as the Red Birds, so they don`t play each other… until the World Series.` He explains.

`So it`s cool to wear a Red Sox hat around St. Louis and even as far as a Cardinal game,` I ask wondering what league he`s in, `but what if they play each other in the World Series?` I finish, wondering what league that puts me in.

`They`ll never play in the World Series together, ` He says confidently, adding, `They`re fuckin` cursed, so it`s cool to wear their cap. `

An unknown terror seems to be trying to weasel its way into my fore thoughts. The weed seems to want to give it center stage but the beer is booing from the bleachers and I just can`t help but think that, being that I`m haunted by that ghost, does that make me cursed? Is the only reason I`m still hanging in the big leagues because I`m cursed and it`s cool to wear my cap…

This train of thought is quickly swept under the rug when a loud and disturbing shatter comes from inside and we both try to stand up, then balk, then get up for real and go inside.

Boug Boys is available on Amazon. Also by Mike Black the novel Samurai Blues.