Operation Epic Fury

 As soon as I get home from my appointment, I notice that the bottom of my cast is soft and starting to crack and unravel. I don’t worry too much about it until a few days later, when it starts to pour, and continues to do so with no end in sight. I start wrapping my foot in a plastic bag, which looks ridiculous but helps me feel a little more secure. I don’t think getting a little water inside will do any damage at this point, but I’m reluctant to take any chances this close to the finish line. 

As the week progresses, I start to feel buffeted by waves of anxiety, not just about my foot but about this astoundingly stupid war that our astoundingly stupid president has plunged us into.  I try not to get sucked into the vortex of apparently inexhaustible atrocity, but I find myself doomscrolling like everyone else as I try to understand the madness, even though I know that by doing so I become infected by it. Outrage is a potent drug.

In the meantime, we all just continue bumbling along, staring at our phones, working at our jobs, and doing all the dumb everyday things we do to survive, which in my case means leaving work early on Tuesday to hop on the light rail and cross the river to pick up my new diabetic shoes.

The shoe place is in a less-than-scenic area of town, and the closer we get, the more the train fills up with people who are all in decidedly worse shape than I am, even taking into account my cast and scooter and cement block of crippling ennui.

Evergreen Prosthetics and Orthotics is only a block away from the 102nd Avenue light rail stop. On the way I pass the world’s least inviting retirement home, a marijuana shop, a mini-mart, and an abandoned taqueria. Evergreen is the only open business in what was once a medical complex.  People with shopping carts and sleeping bags huddle beneath the overhangs of the empty offices. The parking lot is so cracked I can barely roll across it. It all feels decidedly post-apocalyptic. 

Things aren’t much less grim inside. The tiny waiting room is drab with nothing on the walls but a photograph of Portland’s ubiquitous White Stag sign and a TV showing a plume of smoke rising from a school in Tehran that the US is vehemently denying having bombed. I go up to the window behind which slump two vaguely pyramid-shaped women who seem to be melting into their chairs. Before I even say anything, one of them asks, “Are you Seann?” and immediately informs me that I haven’t met my copay, so my bill will be $280. I take out my debit card but she tells me to pay after my appointment, and hands me a clipboard with a formidable number of questions to fill out. “We just need to update your records,” she says. It’s a good thing I got here early. 

I’ve barely finished updating my records when the man who fitted me for my shoes calls me into one of the back rooms. He looks exactly like a shoe salesman. 

“You’re wearing a cast,” he says. 

“Yeah I obviously can’t wear the shoes yet, but the doctor told me to come pick them up and they’ll have me put them on in the office,” I say. 

“Um, okay,” he says. “I mean, I guess that’ll work.” He doesn’t sound at all sure of this. He leaves and comes back with a large green shoebox. “You can try the right one on, at least,” he says. 

“I may as well,” I say. He opens the lid to reveal the most hideous shoes I’ve ever paid $280 for. I have no one to blame but myself; I picked them out from the catalog he brought when he did the fitting.

I put on the right shoe while he leaves to get a tote for the box. I tell him not to bother but he says, “It’s a really nice tote!” so I relent. The front of the shoe has odd zigzag laces that don’t actually do anything; the shoe is held fast by a Velcro strap. It looks a little like a geriatric bondage device. I hobble around the room. It feels like I might step out of it and that it may also be much too tight. 

When he returns I ask him, “So do these, uh, work pretty well for people?”

“They’re good shoes,” he says. “Real good shoes. Customers have been very satisfied with them.”

“Okay,” I say.

“You know, you’ve got a really good attitude about all this,” he says. 

“Really?” I ask. “Because I’m pretty miserable most of the time.”

“I know that what you’re going through with your is frustrating, I mean, I see it all the time. In fact it’s pretty much all I see. But you’re handling it all really well.”

 He puts the shoebox in the tote and I hang it on my handlebars and roll back out to the counter, where the other melting woman runs my card. In the office behind her is a stack of large boxes marked CHIPOTLE. 

While I’m waiting for the Widder to pick me up, I stare at the TV, where a pundit is explaining to a robotic newscaster why it’s actually a good thing that the price of gas is going up, and why this war –sorry, short-term excursion- is an essential step on the road toward making America great again. It’s funny how crooked that road is turning out to be, and there are an awful lot of potholes. I look down at my shoe. Just like this country, it’s weird, ugly, and expensive, but none of that will matter if it actually allows me to walk. 

*

“Is it still raining out there?” Bridget asks when she opens the door. 

“Cats and dogs,” I say. “And possibly a guinea pig or two. Hey, are you ready to celebrate tonight? After all, it’s..." I count on my fingers, "St. Patrick’s Day Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve!” 

“I’m sick of this rain,” she grumbles. 

“Well at least one of you is ready for the holiday,” I say to Jenny, who is wearing shamrock green scrubs.

“It’s been a weird day,” she says. “And the cats kept me up half the night with their fighting.” 

"It's been a weird week," I say. "Between the rain and this Iran shit, everybody's exhausted. I know I am."

"God it's all so evil," says Jenny. 

Bridget saws off my cast, going over the thick cast along my ankles over and over. When she finally manages to crack it open she shows me that the entire sole is starting to peel off. But there’s no water inside.

She tears off the batting and peels off the bandage and both her and Jenny look horrified and say, “Ohhh.” I can see that there is a spot of drainage on the bandage. I feel my blood pressure leap.

“Oh no. What’s wrong? Is it bad?”

“It looks great,” says Bridget. 

“It’s all closed up,” says Jenny. 

“Then why do you have those looks on your faces? And what's that spot of drainage?” 

“Oh that’s nothing,” says Bridget. “I’m going to get the doctor so she can see.”

"So it didn't open up?"

"Nope," says Jenny. "It's been healed up two weeks in a row now."

“I want to see!” squeals Karen. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen her; she says she was away. 

The doctor comes in, touches my foot, and makes a chef’s kiss gesture. “Outstanding,” she says. I want to ask about the drainage stain but decide not to worry about it. Well, try not to.

She and Jenny leave and Bridget prepares the undercast. She keeps asking me questions about how high up to pull the sock and how much padding to put on top. 

“Did Hawaii just wipe your memory completely?” I ask playfully. 

“I think so. Though it feels like it was a year ago.”

Doctor Thompson comes in and sits on the stool. “Now this is my last one so I expect it to be the best damn cast you’ve ever done,” I say. “No pressure. But I can't accept anything less than magnificence.”

"I always strive for magnificence," she says. "Though I rarely achieve it."

For the last time she uses up the first roll of Fiberglas then looks up at Bridget, who is just standing there. 

“What? Oh. Right,” Bridget finally says, then unwraps another roll and drops it into the water, which for the last time is the perfect temperature. The doctor finishes and once again looks up at Bridget, who once again is just standing there staring off into space. 

“Sorry,” she says, and unwraps another roll. “How long will you be gone again?”

“Two weeks,” says the doctor. 

“So I won’t see you next week,” I say. 

“You won’t.”

“ You finally going on vacation?” I ask. 

There's a pause. “No,” she says. 

She applies the third roll but the Fiberglas keeps bunching up and she stretches it tight to smooth it out. “We’ve known each other for a while, I guess I can tell you that I’m having surgery.” I wait for her to elaborate but she doesn’t. 

“I hope it goes well,” I say. 

“If it doesn’t I’m hosed,” she says. She holds out her hand. “Board.”

Bridget passes her the plastic board and she places my sole flat against to make sure it’s at a ninety-degree angle to my leg. Then she asks for another roll. 

“Another roll?” asks Bridget. 

“You know I always like to do four rolls,” the doctor says. She wraps it and rubs it and rubs it some more and then for the last time it’s finished. 

“That’s it,” she says. “This is the one, I can tell. It’s going to work this time. You’re all done.”

“I hope so,” I say. “No offense but this is getting old.”

“Did you get fitted for shoes?”

“Yes, I picked them up. Should I bring them next week?”

“Yes, bring them. And remember, if you start to see even the slightest bit of redness, take them off immediately and call to have them adjusted.”

She gets up off the stool and pushes the curtain open. 

“Good luck with your surgery,” I say. 

“Thank you,” she says, and disappears. 

“So after next week, am I really done?” I ask Vicki, who is standing there while Bridget gets my scooter. “Or do I have a follow up appointment?”

“They’ll decide after they see you next week,” says Vicki. 

“But Dr. Thompson won’t be here.”

“Oh that’s right. No, you’ll be seeing Lena.” 

“The nurse practitioner?” I ask, trying not to sound too crestfallen. 

“From St. Vincent, yes.”

I wish Bridget a happy Saint Patrick’s Day and everyone yells goodbye for what feels like the last time, though of course it’s not. As I wait for the elevator, I start to feel peculiar. I feel a lightness in my chest that I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s like the first breath of fresh air you take after lying in bed with the blanket pulled over your head all day. This is my last cast. This time next week, I’ll be free, though who knows for how long. The ulcer will probably open back up immediately, like it always does. Or maybe there will be a new ulcer in some new spot. Or maybe some fresh new medical horror will rear its head and…

No, I can’t let myself think this way. This time I’ll be more cautious. This time I’ll be more patient. This time I’ll take things more slowly. It’s been a long, difficult journey, but after all the mistakes and poor choices, after all the bad timing and hard luck, at long last, things are finally going to start going my way. 

I am going to be healed. And so will this country. Someday. 

In the meantime, it’s still raining like hell, and I have four minutes until the bus comes. Propelling myself uphill, skirting sticks and cracks and countless other obstacles, I make it with a minute to spare. 

Pink Shoelaces

Leaves plastered to the pavement. Rainbow rings of oil in the gutter. Pigeons perched atop a billboard.

 All day I’ve been trying not to get frustrated with people, but when I get on the bus, the front seats are dominated by a healthy-looking couple who refuse to make room for me, or the ancient woman with the groceries, or the woman with the walker, or the man with the white cane. Every time one of these people get on, the couple glances up from their phones, then looks right back down. 

When I reach my stop, the woman with the groceries apologizes and tries to move her stuff out of my way, in the process whacking me in the head with her cane. She apologizes profusely but I just laugh. My frustration is just covering how anxious I feel about what kind of shape my heel will be in when they unwrap it. I feel a pinching panic when I think about it.

Upstairs, Jenny opens the door and very quietly says “Hello.” I ask if everything’s okay, and she says yes, again very softly, that she’s just tired. “Room two,” she murmurs. 

“Good. I’m tired of slumming it,” I whisper.

Bridget is at the computer, and before Jenny can get the saw fired up she asks, “You know how I told you how important St. Patrick’s Day is to me?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, vaguely remembering her saying something last week.

“I mean, for me and my boyfriend, it’s bigger than Christmas. Well my mother calls me the other day and says she’s getting a six hour surgery done and wants me to take her and stay with her the whole time. And guess what day it’s happening on?”

“Big deal you bring a four pack of Guinness and a bottle of Jameson to the hospital, no one will care,” I say. “I mean, is  it a catholic hospital?”

“I told her I couldn’t do it so she’s getting her friend to take her,” she says. 

I laugh. “Your own mother!”

“It’s Sr. Patrick’s Day,” she says.

Jenny fires up the saw. It takes a couple of passes to cut through the extra thick heel. I brace myself, assuming the blister has broken and that I’ll be exposed to a mess of blood and pus. But nothing has seeped into the cast, nor the batting. She finally pulls off the foam pad and shows it to me. It’s completely dry. 

“Holy shit,” I say. 

“It’s still intact. Looks like it got reabsorbed,” she says. She pulls off the foam pad on the wound. I can see that there is a tan spot of drainage on the pad.

“Scant tan,” she says. “But the wound looks all healed up.”

“It sure does,” says Bridget. 

“Let me see,” I say. There is a smooth, pink indentation where there was once a ragged, gaping wound. With some difficulty, I twist my ankle to inspect the heel. There is a red splotch where the blister was.

“I’m so happy!” says Jenny. “We’ve been waiting so long for this!” 

I run my hand over my smooth heel, and Jenny does something she’s never done before; she plucks a tiny piece of skin from the edge of the former wound.

“Now it looks even better.”

“Let me see,” says Doctor Thompson, coming in before Jenny can apply the Lidocaine. “Yep, this is healed.”

“The blister got reabsorbed,” says Jenny.

“I thought it would. It was pretty tight.”

“I was expecting the worst,” I say.

“How does that song go? Hope for the best and expect the worst?” the doctor says. 

Shelley pokes her head in, then slides in to take Bridget’s place at the computer. 

“Did you do something to your hair?” I ask. She points to her new bangs. “They look good,” I say, though to be honest I’m not sure I feel about them.

“Thanks. They itch,” she says. 

“Did your girls ever cut their own hair?” asks Jenny. 

“The younger one did. She had this huge bald patch. I had to try hard not to laugh.”

“My daughter only did once. She was so proud of herself. She was usually so good but she could be sneaky. She never scribbled on the walls like some kids do, but when we moved, in the back of her closet we found a whole mural of crayon drawings. I have to admit it looked pretty cool. ”

 She washes and wraps my foot and says, “I’m giving you extra padding on the heel again, just to be safe. After this you get two more weeks of casts, and then you should make an appointment to get fitted for shoes.” I tell her I ordered shes already and that they’ve been ready for months. “Well go pick them up and bring them here. We’ll fit them here when the last cast comes off.”

“They won’t just bring them here? They came during my appointment to take my measurements,” I grumble. The shoe place doesn’t have weekend hours so I’ll have to take yet another afternoon off of work, and take the light rail clear across town.  

While she works we complain about the new war with Iran. I think of all the hospitals that have been bombed anin the past few days. And here I’ve been anxious all day worrying about a blister on my heel.

She prepares the bucket of water and the stool and lays down the blue gauze, but she does it all in front of the chair instead of to the side. I almost say something but I don’t want to tell her how to do her job. The moment Thompson comes in she asks, “What is this? You know I like to work from the side.”

 “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I guess I was thinking of Taggert,” says Jenny. 

Once Janet has scrambled to put everything in its proper place, the doctor fusses for a long time with the height of my chair, then squats on the stool. She lays an extra sheet of gauze over her sneakers and says, “Need to protect my new pink shoelaces. I don’t usually care about such things but for some reason this time I do.” Are shoelaces particularly sensitive to moisture?

She finishes my penultimate cast, then tears off her paper gown. “Wait, what am I doing, I have one more cast to do,” she says. 

“Hey, doctor?” I say. She stops and turns. “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” she says, then pushes out through the curtain. 

“Code gray in the lobby of the cancer center,” says the intercom.

I miss the bus by about a minute, and sit in the lobby to wait. I feel even more anxious than I did before. I’m so afraid the shoes won’t help, that I’ll end up right back here within a few weeks of having the cast off. The cast is a nuisance but I feel safer with it on, protected by its rigid shell. I know that once it’s off I’ll need to keep using the scooter for weeks, maybe months, not really allow myself to walk around, even though everything looks and feels fine. I need to keep playing the cripple for a while longer. Maybe by summer I can start taking more chances, but until then I need to be very, very cautious. 

I am so fucking tired of being cautious. 

When I get off the bus, the billboard is clear of pigeons and the rainbows in the gutters have dissipated. But the leaves are still glued to the wet sidewalks, and through the chain link fence beside my building, constellations of daffodils bend in the breeze. 

Axolotl

Over the weekend, my stepmother calls to tell me that my father is back in the hospital again. A few days after I saw him last October, he fell and fractured a few vertebrae in his neck. They sent him home in a neck brace and last week he fell again. When he got to the hospital they found that there was a wound on his heel that had gotten infected. 

None of this is surprising; it doesn’t sound like he takes any sort of meaningful care of his diabetes, constantly snacking and sometimes going days without taking his insulin. Aside from the occasional medical appointment, he never leaves the apartment. It seems like he’s slowly committing suicide.

“Room three. Back in the corner,” commands Shelley. She follows me back, chattering happily the whole time.

“You’re in a good mood,” I say. She just shrugs.

It has been exactly one year since the nurses’ strike ended, one year since my last ulcer finally closed up. 

I sit in the chair and she raises it up and says, “Oh my god, I can see your heel.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can see your heel. There’s a giant hole in your cast.”

She saws off the cast and shows me the bottom half. It looks like a large hole the shape of a crescent moon has been cleanly cut out of the heel. 

“What the hell,” I laugh. 

“Did something happen?”

“Obviously. But I don’t know what. I did notice that it felt it was pinching a bit, but I can’t really see down there.”

 She sets the cast on the biohazard bin to show the doctor, then unwraps the dressings. “Not much seeping through... oh wow! I can’t believe how good this looks!" It's good news but she sounds positively ecstatic. "Another week and this will be closed over and then two more weeks of the cast and you'll be free of us. And the heel doesn't look too... oh, wait.” 

There is a blood blister on my heel, the exact size of the hole. 

“It’s always something with me, isn’t it?” I say. I’m not overly upset, just kind of irritated, and embarrassed that I didn’t notice such a huge gash. But it's true, with my cast on I really can't see down there without a mirror.

 “Well it's intact, so that's good. And I seriously can’t get over how great the wound looks,” she says. I grab my foot and twist it up so I can see. It actually does look really good, just a shallow indentation with the tiniest of slits in the middle. 

The doctor comes in, followed by a woman I’ve never seen before. She’s short and blonde and wearing an enormous diamond ring. Dr. Thompson doesn’t introduce her, just plucks the piece of gauze off my wound and says, “Looks like I’m going to have to find someone else to torture pretty soon.” The blonde woman takes a sealed scalpel and peels back the plastic, then remembers that she’s not wearing gloves and just holds it there. The doctor takes it and says, “Unfortunately there’s not much for me to show you here. No undermining. A little spongy. I’ll just…” She makes a single slice. “There, it really doesn’t need anything else. This is wonderful.” 

“Take a look at this,” says Shelley, showing her the cast. She looks baffled.

“I have never seen that happen before.” She looks at me. I shrug. Shelley points to the blood blister. “Oh that’s not bad at all.” She presses it gently with her palm. “Very shallow. Three millimeters, maybe two. Just put a lot of extra padding on that and we’ll keep an eye on it.” 

Vicki slips in to get a peek while the wound is still exposed, then I’m alone with Shelley again. She wraps my foot back up and fills me in on all the news from home. The youngest is in trouble at preschool because she refuses to help clean up. (Shelley thinks she's fallen under the influence of one of the boys, a litlte troublemaker named Finn. "Like Huckleberry," she sys.) The car is still in the shop after six weeks and two days. The bill comes to over ten thousand dollars. Insurance is covering it. She has expanded her microwaved noodle repertoire to include ramen and mac and cheese. 

She stops talking for a while because she’s being drowned out by the loud voice of the patient in the next room, who put his blue post-op shoe on the kitchen floor next to the garbage, and of course it got carried out to the curb and now it's gone. He laughs heartily at his own story, which is long and involved and without much of a payoff. The nurse laughs politely and says it's time to take his vitals.

"But you just took them," the man says. 

"We have to take them twice now, once at the beginning and once at the end. It's a new policy."

“Oh and my oldest doesn’t like raccoons anymore,” Shelley suddenly says. “I’m actually kind of sad about it.”

“Has she moved on to a new obsession?” I ask. 

“Yeah now she wants an axolotl.” 

"You should get her one, they're cool." She makes a face.

She wraps a lot of extra padding around my heel, after covering it with a large foam bandage. “I’m not entering it as a wound because it’s not open. I’ll just make a note in your chart. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned.” 

Dr. Thompson and her charge return. She wraps the cast and starts talking about the fancy new teapot she bought. “It’s not as fancy as yours,” she says to Shelley. 

“Oh, what brand did you get?” Shelley asks, excitedly. Apparently she is a tea enthusiast.

“Chef something. If you look up chef something teapot it’ll come up.” Shelley turns the monitor so she can see, and does a search. The doctor keeps her eyes on the screen but doesn’t stop wrapping the cast. “Chefman, that’s the one. It wasn’t three hundred dollars like yours. But then again, I don’t make as much as you do. I need another roll.” 

"Mine has it so you can set it up the night before and have it waiting for..."

“I said I need another roll,” Thompson says.

“Oh sorry,” Shelley says, and unwraps another roll of casting. Shelley pulls up her teapot on the computer to show off some of the many featrues. The doctor keeps her eye on the monitor the whole time, then again says, “ I need another roll.” Shelley is wrapped up in her search so once again she repeats it and once again Shelley apologizes. She puts an extra roll on to make sure I don’t have another mishap. “That was probably my fault,” she says. The assistant helps her smooth out the cast, her hands mostly getting in the way. 

“That’s really wet, better let it sit awhile,” she finally says. She looks me in the eye. “With that blister, take it easy this weekend.” 

Shelley empties the bucket and wipes the water from the floor and Jenny and Vicki come to chat while the cast is drying. I ask Jenny what’s new. “Nothing. My life is boring.” I ask if she got Springsteen tickets and she says no. “We got online the instant they went on sale but there were literally 45,000 people ahead of us so we waited a couple of hours then gave up.”

Shelley says she needs to take my fitals again, and I ask her why the policy changed. "The cast is considered a procedure and after every procedure we need to check your blood pressure to to make sure we're not torturing you," she says. I laugh but she says, "No, that's actually what it's for. If it's too high at the end, we can be accused of torture." 

    "I assume this is in reaction to some some big lawsuit?" It can't be a coincidence that she is the second person to use the word torture today. She wraps the cuff around my arm without answering. The machine beeps.

    "That is way too high. Probably because I've been torturing you with my woes. How about we sit for a wee bit," she suggests. I close my eyes and breathe deeply for a few minutes and my blood pressue drops forty points.

I go downstairs to wait for my ride; the Widder is coming to drive me home and drop off some groceries. It’s nice not having to catch the bus, and my usual hour-long journey is cut down to twenty minutes. 

At home, the elevator doesn’t respond. This is the third time this has happened this week; every time has been because someone hasn’t closed the grate all the way. Leaving my scooter in the lobby, laden with grocery sacks, I slowly clomp up the stairs, stopping on each floor to see if the car there. The new cast is extremely bulky, and I'm sure this doesn't count as "taking it easy." I find the elevator on the top floor and ride it down to collect my trusty steed. 

Once I’m in the apartment I lie down and think of the blister. It's wild that I would get one so soon after my father did, and in the same exact place. Is it a sympathy blister? Is this some supernatural bond between father and son as one struggles to live a better life while the other embraces death? 

I go to bed early, and in the midle of the night I bolt awake in panic at my own fragility. I lie in bed and stare out the window at the lights scattered like stars across the dark hills. My heart is still pumping blood and my air is still being sucked into my lungs, while down below the blister waits quietly, swaddled in layers of foam and batting and Fiberglas; a quivering yolk, a bubble of skin swollen with blood and pus. I try to quiet my firing neurons but I can't seem to stop thinking about how maddening this is to have this happen now that I’m so close to being healed. Is this my treasonous body’s attempt at sabotage, now that I’m doing so much better, now that I’m taking care of my health and watching my sugars? Of course, I didn’t even notice that I had a huge chunk torn from my cast, so I shouldn't get too self-congratulatory. No; rather than enacting revenge, perhaps this is my body's way of reminding me that I’m still not paying close enough attention to it. It’s easy to be frustrated with how poorly my father is managing his disease, but to be honest, I’m only doing marginally better with my own. I drink too much and cheat on my diet and hobble around at work instead of using a wheelchair. Maybe this blister is a manifestation of my hypocrisy, a throbbing organ eager to burst and get infected and start this wretched cycle all over again, spin that wheel of samsara in the hope that this time around I start acting responsibly, that after all these years of slowly killing myself I finally decide to live.

Don't Chase

 I spend July 4th in the apartment, alternating between cleaning and sleeping. I didn’t have too much to drink at the barbecue but I still feel sluggish and worn out. I have a pretty pleasant day regardless, and by evening feel perky enough to head down to the Goose for supper. 

There are Lost Dog posters plastered all over the neighborhood, showing a moppy little mutt with the typical admonition “Dont chase will run.” The Goose is busier than I thought but most of the crowd is settling their bills and heading out to watch the fireworks, leaving only a few of us. 

As usual, nearly everyone on the deck is coupled up, but when I walk over to the water cooler I see an attractive woman sitting by herself. I smile and she gives me a big, warm smile back. Well that’s nice, I think, but she’s probably waiting for someone. But when I go to sit down with my drink, I see her start to talk to a guy sitting by himself a few tables away from her. He has a full beard and a baseball cap. He also has a dog. 

By the time my food comes they are laughing and chatting like old friends. His dog barks wildly at every other dog that approaches the deck. “She’s just saying hello,” the man says every time. I can’t make out much of their conversation but I hear him say that he’s in real estate. She’s new to the neighborhood, and fairly new to Portland. I hear them talk about paddle boarding. They look like a good match. Even if I had a dog, I can’t compete with real estate and paddle boarding, not to mention that beard, which is full and lustrous. I can only hope that the cap is hiding a case of male pattern baldness, though I know that wouldn’t make a difference at this point. 

I take my trusty sketchbook out for company but my heart’s not in it. I tell myself this is a good opportunity to practice not spiraling down into self-hatred and misery about how alone I am, how long I’ve been alone, how the older I get the chances of this changing grow ever slimmer. It’s so easy to chastise myself for my cowardice. I should have gone right up to her when I got my drink, talk to her before that irresistible canine spell could take hold. But I couldn’t do it. I am convinced that no woman wants anything to do with me. While this might not be true, it has been many years since I’ve seen any evidence to the contrary.

“I need to get a dog,” the server says to me.

“Same here,” I say. “But I like cats better.”

“Me too,” he says. “But, you know.”

The new friends order another drink and I finish mine and head back up the hill. In an empty parking lot, a gorgeous young woman and a man who looks like her father are fiddling with an automatic ball-throwing machine that their dog is nosing warily. The girl is twitchy and holding her limbs at odd angles, like she’s on something. Dog toys and balls and various bits of throwing apparatus lie scattered across the parking lot. 

At the top of the hill, the lost dog signs grow more desperate, hanging from every telephone pole. The sky is nearly dark. Soon the fireworks will start and all the dogs I saw tonight will be whimpering under their owners’ beds. I wonder where the lost dog will hide, who will comfort him as the world around him explodes.

Clean Towels

        It’s the day before Independence Day and the second Revolutionary War has been won. After decades of fighting, the noble rich have finally thrown off the shackles placed on them by the filthy poor. For us huddled masses, it’s all pretty disheartening, but I have the day off tomorrow and am on my way to a backyard barbecue. As I sit on the bench at the bus stop, I look at the arrival time on my phone. It keeps leaping around, getting longer and shorter as some unseen force impedes the vehicle’s progress. A man on the corner shows a cardboard sign to the traffic. I don’t bother to read it. I used to be interested in these signs, in all the different ways people ask for help, the various kinds of lettering they use, but I can’t look anymore. 

        A teenage girl sits next to me, thumbs skipping across the screen of her phone. There is suddenly an explosion behind us, followed by another, and another. It seems early for fireworks –the sun is still high in the sky. I turn around to look and see puffs of smoke in the air above the bridge. The booms go on for a few minutes. 

        “What was that?” the girl asks uncertainly. She doesn’t have an accent I would guess she’s Pakistani.

        “Oh, somebody getting ready for the fourth,” I say.

        “But that’s not until tomorrow,” she says, sounding confused.

        Just then there is a crash right in front of us. An old hatchback truck crammed with junk has spilled a pile of metal shelves out of its open hatch. The truck speeds through the intersection then pulls over. Fortunately, the car behind it brakes before it hits the shelves, and I walk out in front of it, holding up my hand up. The girl runs out after me and we both gather up  the shelves. The words CLEAN TOWELS are written on a piece of masking tape on one of them. We carry them to the sidewalk and the driver of the truck comes and grabs them without a word. 

        

        The girl and I sit back on the bench. 

        “Lucky that didn’t go through somebody’s windshield,” I say. 

        “Yeah. Pretty scary,” she says. The bus comes and I gesture for her to get on first then she does the same to me and I insist and she says no then we both try to step on at the same time and laugh. As we drive off I look at the guy on the corner and finally decide to read his sign. He’s crayoned an American flag next to the words WAR VETERAN ANYTHING HELPS. I wonder if he knows that the real war is just beginning. 

The Lew Welch Memorial Expressway

I wake up beside the highway. Above it, rather. Over the past year I’ve learned the rhythms of its traffic the way someone living beside the sea learns the patterns of the tide. The traffic never stops on the 405 and its many arteries, though it does slow down at night. The poet Lew Welch ranted about the insidiousness of highways in a letter he mailed from a house one block from here that a few years later was razed to build this very road. If it was still there, I would be able to see the roof from my bedroom window. Despite all the changes to the city, I like knowing that many of the buildings he would have walked by are still standing, including this one. 

The sun has not yet crept around the corner of the building so I’m a little chilly as I sit on the balcony with my coffee. The sparrows vanished last week; I miss their frantic chirping, though I never caught more than glimpses of their beaks. I do my puzzles and read the news, even though I know I shouldn’t. I should be protecting myself from the constant barrage of horrifying updates to the story of our country’s plummet into madness. It’s  rush hour and the traffic light on the ramp is helping to stagger the traffic speeding toward the tunnel that cuts through the hills. 

Last week my mother and I drove through that tunnel on the way to the zoo. She was in town to visit and she said the two things she wanted to see were my new (to her) apartment and the baby elephant. Tula-Tu is four months old; I’d never seen an elephant so young, and while it’s always depressing to see animals in cages, my mother and I were both captivated. It’s a strange experience to stand next to the woman who gave birth to you and watch a baby elephant tuck her trunk into her own mother’s armpit to suckle. 

We had a nice week together. Growing old has not made her bitter and crabby like it did to her own mother, who never was all that nurturing to begin with. I didn’t plan a lot but we managed to pack in a lot. I dragged her along to a program dedicated to the work of a local video artist, which wasn’t great, and a production of Assassins, which was. Assassins is a Stephen Sondheim musical about the people who killed or tried to kill the president. It’s hard to believe there has only been a single botched attempt at eliminating our current president, but the show repeatedly urges us to follow our dreams.

The production was put on by a small local troupe of self-proclaimed marginalized  individuals, all of whom were terrific. They performed in the black box theater at Reed College. Lew Welch went to Reed, along with his friends and fellow Beat poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. I wonder what they would have thought of the play, its usual carnival barker narrator replaced by an imposing drag queen Lady Liberty. 

We spent a few days at the coast, staying in a motel in the sleepy town of Rockaway Beach. It was shabby, but it was clean, and it was right on the beach. We had lunch in Manzanita, which is a bustling metropolis by comparison, then went to my favorite spot on the entire coast, Short Sand. I don’t get there often because you need a car. From the parking lot you follow a creek for a mile through old growth forest, where trees sprout from other trees, their roots forming twisted structures that look like portals to the faerie kingdom. It all looks otherworldly. The path ends at a gorgeous cove rimmed with pines and beloved by surfers. 

Welch famously disappeared into the California wilderness with a rifle when he was 44, leaving behind a note.

 

I never could make anything work out right and now I’m betraying my friends. I can’t make anything out of it – never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It’s all gone.

 As I sat next to my aging mother, looking out over the Pacific, I felt grateful that she was still in good enough shape to visit me, to drive to the beach, to walk through the woods to get to this beautiful spot. It has been a hard year, as was last year, as was the year before, as was... The losses keep building up and the planet seems to be spinning faster and faster toward apocalypse. My foot is still fucked up, and as usual I’m aching with loneliness. To cope with it all I’m drinking too much, which, oddly, does not seem to be helping. I’m not ready to give up on this world yet, but if I was, this would be a good place to do so. To let go of this world with the protective arms of the cove encircling us. Juncos twittering in the branches. The sun sparkling on the water. The waves crashing against the sand like the sound of rushing traffic on the freeway. 

For the Cause

It has to be done, I know that,

but God is it boring. Unsavory, of course,

but it’s the boredom that eats away at me.

I stare out at the flies crazing

beneath the ceiling fan, feel like my eyes 

are going to start circling and looping like them 

if he doesn’t finish soon. I’m jerking as hard as I dare;

too fast or too slow and he’ll gripe.

It’s small and flaccid, but I do my best  with the material

as I wait for that final spasm so I can finally 

get some work done. In the meantime, 

I stare at the flies and think about the diagrams,

the lists, the maps, all the scraps of folded paper 

outlining the plan to bring down this gang of rejects

from Monster Island. Some of the information 

is vital –lists of potential allies,

the heights of buildings along various routes,

seating arrangements in the chambers and halls. 

Some of it is more esoteric. Secret sauce recipes

for various fast food items. Sources for exploding

seat cushions. Theories on how to keep a head alive 

once it’s been separated from the body 

so it can still watch and feel as a razor-sharp, 

many-pronged dildo is rammed repeatedly 

into the rectum. Is that really a necessary part 

of the overall scheme? 

There are various schools of thought on this. 

Some fear we will lose focus, as I am right now, 

letting my weary mind daydream about a day 

when a never-ending series of handjobs 

and blowjobs won’t be necessary 

to appease and distract these slobs. 

That day seems so distant, 

but at least this current state of semi-hardship 

is close to coming an end, his cheeks having gone 

from orange to cherry to grape 

as he puffs and groans, sweat matting 

linty cobwebs of hair against his brow. 

Finally, with a little squeak 

his whole body shudders 

and a greasy comet of spunk 

streaks across the room

to splat against the portrait of his daughter 

eying us from the end table. 

Milky tears run down her face 

as he struggles to extract his ass 

from the deep plush. 

It won’t be long now, I want to tell her.

He totters and tugs on his trousers 

and flicks a few bills at me.  

As they flutter to the carpet, 

I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. 

One of the flies follows

and I snatch it from the air with a soapy fist 

and drop it into the sink

where it swirls and swirls before 

being sucked down into the darkness.