INVASION OF THE BLUETHERS

    

       It used to be understood that anybody walking alone down the street having a conversation with themselves was crazy. That was before Bluetooth complicated the matter. Now when I see someone alone talking and gesturing to themselves, I have to ask myself are they crazy, or just teleconferencing.  Bluetooth users, or 'Bluethers', are triggering my internal radar that lets me know a crazy person is near. I haven't learned to differentiate between the two yet. The last two people I've seen having fits of stomping and yelling at the empty sidewalk in front of them ended up being Bluethers. A Bluether in a bad mood can be scarier than any crazy person. 

     The only way to know for sure if someone is in fact a Bluether, and not a random crazy person talking to themselves, is to look for a Bluetooth headset. It's usually looped over the ear on the right, but if the Bluether is left-handed, it will be in that ear instead. The headsets are being designed smaller and smaller every year making them harder for me to spot. It's almost impossible to see when someones hairstyle is covering their ears. Occasionally, I've had to get dangerously close just for a glance.

     When I look with odd curiosity and confusion at the Bluethers, are they looking back and pitying me for still being shackled with my cellphone to my ear? I have to admit they do look like the superior being, with two hands free instead of only one hand like me. I'm basically an amputee when I'm holding up my phone. I only have one free hand to unload my shopping cart, carry groceries, do  banking, fold laundry, slide money into automatic fare-collectors on Muni, cook dinner, and clean the dishes. Being in the health care field, I also have to admit that a headset makes more sense ergonomically, and it probably won't give me brain cancer as fast as my cellphone is reportedly doing. 

     Seeing people around me enjoying this new freedom of hands-free phone calls is still a bit disconcerting. It's like seeing someone ride a bicycle without holding the handlebars. It's just going to take a little more time until the Bluethers become less unnerving and more immediately recognizable. They are going to become such an ordinary sight that no one talking to themselves will look crazy anymore, not even crazy people. Crazy people will just have to find other ways of looking crazy. Or they could wear a Bluetooth headset too, and look like they're talking to someone else even when they're not. Bluetooth has the unique ability to make sane people look crazy and crazy people look sane. 

   There's no denying that this technology is on its way to becoming the standard way we will all communicate. Eventually everyone who has a cell phone, including me, will be a Bluether. Streets will be filled with people talking to the air in front of them, and we'll all look normal. Bluetooth devices will become so commonplace that holding up a phone to your ear will be as laughable as rotary phones attached to the wall.

    For now, I'm sticking with my cellphone.The tipping point hasn't happened yet. I'll know when it's time, just like I knew when it was time to get a cellphone. That was after bad-mouthing cellphones of course, which I usually do to something before I totally embrace it. 

   A few days ago, I was given a sign from God that He agrees I should wait.

   I was walking home behind Safeway on the side street where homeless men and women line-up a few times a week to cash in bottles and cans at San Francisco Community Recyclers. On the sidewalk right next to me was a stylish guy probably only in his late twenties dressed in a business suit, with great shoulder-length hair half-covering a very small Bluetooth headset he was talking into. I was holding my cellphone up to my ear and having a conversation too. One of the women with an unlit bent cigarette dangling from her gray lower lip stepped out of line and positioned herself on the sidewalk right in between us. As we approached her, she made eye contact with me first, but I quickly pointed to my phone at my ear, letting her clearly see I was busy talking. She immediately turned her attention to the other guy and interrupted him to ask for a light and money.

     "Why are you bothering me? Can't you see I'm on the phone!" the guy barked at her.

     " No I can't. Where is it? Up your ass, asshole!" she yelled back at him. 

  I smirked to myself and walked away pressing the cellphone affectionately against my ear.

TEATH & CRUMPETS

    Two blogs ago I dragged  you on  a journey up my colon from which I trust you all returned unharmed. I must again ask you to join me in a visit to another one of my body cavities. This time it's only my mouth. Specifically, there's a few things about my teeth and gums I would like to discuss.  It's certainly not as offensive as discussing my colonoscopy. (The irony of this is that my mouth and the words which come out of it have been much more offensive to people than anything that has come out of my ass). 

    Please don't think now that I'm 50 these blogs are turning into a medical journal to chronicle my various doctors appointments. It's just coincidence that my dentist appointment was a week after my colonoscopy. I had no idea that as the hygienist was cleaning my teeth a blog would start uncontrollably forming in my head. That's how it seems to happen with me, when suddenly something becomes blog-worthy.
     My dentist's office is in the 450 Sutter Building. If an earthquake knocks it down, half the dentists in San Francisco will be knocked down with it. It would deliver a fatal blow to oral care in the city, leaving us with even less dentists than there are in England. I sat with my legs elevated and my head tilted back in the high-tech automated examination chair that looked like it was designed by NASA. I imagined the earthquake flinging me and the chair out of the big tinted window, and a parachute built into the chair opens to glide me safely down from the 21st floor as all the other patients in cheaper chairs from different offices zoom passed me and crash onto the sidewalk below.
      Everything in Dr. C's office is custom-built and state-of-the-art. The sleek, long-armed  X-ray machine instantaneously develops the images of my teeth onto a flat-screen attached to the wall, and I am given a power-point presentation of my decay. The expensive machine emits much lower doses of radiation than the big old clunky ones, but all the female employees of child-bearing age still run out of the room before the X-rays are taken. Even with the leadspread always covering me, the amount of radiation from all the dental X-rays I've been exposed to in my lifetime must by now equal the amount released by one of the reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant after the tsunami. Luckily my sperm is just for show anyway, so I nonchalantly sit back as the machine zaps me.
     The office has been renovated twice since I started coming here when I first moved to San Francisco 17 years ago. I met Dr. C. on the beach as he was jogging in a Speedo, which is the way all his patients wished they met him. I was even more under-dressed for our introduction, only wearing my headphones. We started talking and I found out he was a dentist and he found out  I needed a dentist, which for both of us immediately cancelled out ever having sex with each other.
    He is Greek and so good-looking that I'm sure at one point he had to decide whether to be a dentist or a movie star. His eyes are the blue that you wish the water in The Bay would be, and his hair is the blackest thing on a sunny beach. And no matter how long you went to him as your dentist your smile would never be as beautiful as his. Some beautiful smiles are merely white blinds that hide what's going on inside, but his smile glows from a genuine warmth and generous spirit. He could be much more intimidating to people if he chose to be, but instead he's made himself as welcoming as possible. After our conversation ended and he jogged away that day on the beach, I watched as he stopped to speak to someone he knew every 50 feet. Each person got the same big hug from him no matter what they looked like. An old man in a thong and a pale obese man in a sarong got the same amount of attention that he had given to a tanned body builder. I remember being impressed by it back then, and I'm still amazed at how effortlessly he can speak to all different kinds of people and make each one feel special. He treats his patients more like guests and his workplace more like home. Understanding this about Dr. C. helps to explain why his is the only dental office in the whole building that serves biscuits, baklava, cookies, and crumpets along with fruit juices,coffee, and tea in the waiting area. Everything else about his office is about the betterment of your teeth except for this last minute sabotaging right before you are seen, which I always fall victim to. 

     Every time I get my teeth cleaned by a different hygienist, I have to sit through her shock when she rolls back my lips and sees my receding gum line. Emily, who I was seeing for the first time, is too young to have any of the teeth problems she sees in patients my age.   " Wow Mr. Glassman. Has anyone spoken with you about your gums? Are they very sensitive?" she asked me with great concern.

    " Physically or emotionally? " I ask back " They're only sensitive when people gasp at them."

      " I didn't mean they're all bad. It's only in some spots," she quickly added, trying to lessen the blow.
     " Don't worry," I've been getting that reaction for years," I smiled up at her.
     " Has anyone ever spoken to you about dental floss?"
      " Is it something new on the market?"
      She looked at me in disbelief for a moment then smiled when she realized I was joking. Poor  Emily. She was new and so enthusiastic. As she gave her flossing speech, I could see her belief in the power of it, and she wanted me to believe in it too. But she had no idea how many hygienists before her had tried for decades to get me to floss. It's like hearing about safe sex. I've already heard all there is to know about floss and condoms, and I've obviously made my decision not to listen. No amount of educating me seems to make a difference. I am thoroughly education-proof on these two subjects. There are the condom wearers and the non-wearers, and there are the flossers and the non-flossers.This is not to say that condoms and floss are that much alike. One could save your life and the other can only save a tooth or two. The one thing they do have in common is their unimportance in my life. To be honest, I can explain why I don't use condoms much more easily than why I don't bother to floss. For some inextricable reason I've not been able to find the two extra minutes a day it would take for the past 30 years.
    To make Emily happy I promised I would try harder. Proud of herself, she moved on to scraping the tartar from what she described as deep pockets, which always makes me think of pants. Along with the tartar she scraped out a remnant of food, which I insisted was baklava. After all the scraping and polishing was finished, Emily went out of the room and  Dr. C came in. He always looks just as good covered up in a shirt and tie as he did in a Speedo.
      I sprang up from the examination chair with my spit bib still on." Hi Honey. Great to see you, " I said as we hugged each other. " Don't be mad at me but I think I frightened Emily with my gums."
   " I wouldn't be surprised if she quits after seeing them, Gary."
   " I'm beginning to question if I even need gums. Look at this gorgeous smile still, " I said pointing with both hands at my mouth as I flashed him a big one." That's without ever flossing."
   " I will never understand why some of my patients refuse to floss."
  " I am not refusing, I'm forgetting." I corrected him.
  " It's the biggest mystery to me how that happens."
  " Well it's the biggest mystery to me why you serve baked goods in a dentist office."
   " Leave my baked goods alone. That's how my mother raised me. When people come over, you give them food."
   " I can't leave them alone. That's the problem. Emily pulled out a chunk of baklava between my teeth. I was going to make her keep it so I could show you."
   He rolled his eyes but couldn't help laughing. " Come on, let's see what's going on in your mouth," he said, motioning for me to sit in the exam chair again.
    He looked at the X-rays then did a few tests in my mouth with a sharp stainless steel pic. Even though I love to see him, having him examine my teeth is when I always get the bad news. It is usually a bad sign when he spends more time on one tooth than on the others, and when he asks for more X-rays it is even a worse sign. And when he says he has to show the X-ray to the periodontist, I know I'm really screwed. Even with the $2000 my dental plan gives me every 12 months, I still usually wind up owing money by the end of the year.
    By some stroke of luck, 10 months have passed already and I only spent $500 so far. I never had so much left so far into the year. I was waiting for him to ask Emily for more X-rays on something but he said that my teeth look fine. 
   " That means I've got $1500 of insurance still left," I  raised my head and excitedly said.
    " That's a good amount for an emergency if one happens in the next 2 months.  You never know, Gary."
    " Screw the emergency! I'm going on a shopping spree!" I swung my legs off the elevated chair and sat facing him. "What can I get for $1500? Tell me, tell me," I said giddily as I quickly tapped my feet and clapped my hands.
     We decided the best idea was to spend it on a new bonding procedure that fills in any gaps where the gum line is too low.  I had until December 31st to spend it, and I was determined to use every dollar I had coming to me. " Try to get it as close to the fifteen hundred as possible. If  it goes over a little I'll take care of it. Just don't let  it go under." The secretary calculated how many appointments I would need and then scheduled them. I usually only take the 8:00 AM ones because of my work schedule but I had to take whatever times were available to squeeze in the number we needed before the end of the year.
    The secretary called out to me just as I was leaving the table with the baked goods and heading for the door. " Gary, we forgot! When do you want your next cleaning appointment!"
    I turned around to face her with a huge slice of baklava in one hand and some crumpets in the other and two almond biscottis in my chest pocket of my scrub top. I looked down at all the sweets I was carrying and then back at her. " Probably in five minutes!"
    

  

  

   

AN ENDING WITH A TWIST

     Every year I receive automatically-generated birthday cards from my dentist's office, from my gym, from my All-State insurance representative,  from my tanning salon offering me one free tan each September, from The Sunglasses Hut offering me a 20% discount,  and from the hospital where I work offering me one free meal in the cafeteria. Because it was my 50th birthday,  I also automatically got  the lovely gift of a colonoscopy from my Health Insurance Plan. It was the most expensive birthday gift I ever received. It touched my heart, and it touched my colon even deeper.

     You have to be crazy to think I wouldn't blog about my first colonoscopy. It's the perfect topic for me not to keep private. I knew I had to write it when the Receptionist at the Registration Counter of The Gastro -Intestinal Surgical Department thought I said  " I'm Gary Assman, here for my colonoscopy. "

     " Assman, Assman.... ," she repeated as she looked through the list of patients on her clipboard. " I don't see Assman here," she said, still searching the list.

     "Glassman ," I laughed. " For Dr. Hobbs."   

       Embarrassed, she apologized and quickly found my name as I continued to laugh about it.

     I was with my ex-boyfriend, Alex, who was going to drive me back to his place once I was finished. He was standing beside me rolling his eyes at the joy the receptionist's mistake was bringing  me. " She saying 'Assman'  just made the whole colonoscopy worth it for you. You just love these ass jokes. I'm sure you're going to make the operating room a real chuckle-fest, Gary."

   "  That's Mr. Assman to you,  my good man." I raised my eyebrows and looked down my nose at him with exaggerated formality.  

    " Oh really? Does Mr. Assman want to take the bus home?' Alex smirked." Mr. Assman better get his Assman over to that nurse who's waiting for you, "  he pointed, giving me a good luck peck on my lips.  

   "Thanks again for taking care of me today, " I said to him in the one moment of seriousness I allowed myself.

    The nurse gave me the same type of gown that I hand to patients at my hospital. Designed to open in the back, it had to have been originally conceived by a proctologist or someone else very interested in asses. It was perfect for the morning's events. I was more than happy to play the patient and be pampered for a change, even if it was for such an unpleasant reason.

    Soon after, I was wheeled into an elevator up to the Surgery Floor.  I held my head up for a better view as my gurney rolled through one set of double-doors and then another, then right into the operating room. Waiting for me was a troupe of strangers dressed in surgical gowns and caps.  I can't remember how many or even who some of  them were. They had introduced themselves, but I lost count at six.  

.    " Is the hospital selling tickets to this?" I joked.

     " If you're at all uncomfortable with us observing, we can leave. It's always the patient's choice. We'll tell Dr. Hobbs as soon as he arrives, " one of the interns immediately offered.

     " Oh no not at all, " I assured the intern. " The more the merrier. Believe me, I have absolutely no modesty or shame. And anyway, I'm in the business too. I do inpatient P.T. and my intern just finished a few weeks ago, so I totally understand and don't mind. I would be an asshole if I didn't let you see my asshole." Everyone laughed, which helped lighten the mood." You really don't have to worry about me getting embarrassed," I reassured them. I imagined how awkward the whole experience would be for someone more shy  than I, especially when one of the nurses gave her lecture on the importance of farting.

       " Don't hold back, " she warned me. " Whenever you feel the urge, let it out. We have to pump air inside you to open things up, and the only way to get it back out is by you releasing it the good 'ol natural way. The last thing you want is a lot of  air trapped up there. The more gas you pass during the procedure means the less cramping you'll have after. I highly recommend that you try your best."

   " This is the first time in my life I'm being ordered to fart," I laughed out loud.

   At that moment, my doctor came through the double-doors. " Why is there always laughs coming from the O.R. when it's a colonoscopy? Nobody laughs like this when I'm doing a liver biopsy, " he smiled and said his good mornings to everyone.

    " Doctor Hobbs, I  just want to tell you that I've been ordered to fart as much as I can," I warned him.

    " Did they tell you that? They're all malicious liars," he said with a straight face as the rest of them laughed. He then sat down on his stool and rolled over to the gurney right next to my ass and told me to turn on my side as the anesthesia drip was started." O.K. let's begin," Dr. Hobbs said. 

    That was the last thing I remember. The next sound I heard was Alex's voice in the Recovery Room. I was still groggy and totally confused. I wasn't supposed to fall asleep, I was just supposed to be loopy and awake. Alex stood beside me as I clumsily got dressed. Before we left the office the Receptionist handed me a copy of my colonoscopy results. My stomach was starting to cramp so I didn't stop to read right then, but I looked at it as we walked to Alex's car. 

    The results said very plainly that I had a 'tortuous colon'. I stopped on the sidewalk and made Alex read it.

     " How is my colon tortured? I only thought my childhood was tortured," I asked Alex as he read it to himself.

      He handed it back to me, took out his iPhone and quickly pulled up his dictionary app. "Look," he passed me the phone, " your colon isn't tortured,  It's a completely different word. See, there's no second 'R'. It means 'having excessive twists, bends, or turns'."

     It turns out that a 'tortuous colon' is simply one that is longer than normal with at least one or two extra twists.

   

My dear friend Graham explained it in even more simple terms by comparing my colon to the scariest ride at WaterWorld called 'THE TORNADO '

   When your colon has these extra twists and turns, expelling all the pumped-in air from a colonoscopy is much more difficult and causes extreme cramping. Because I was knocked out and didn't fart enough like the nurse told me to during the colonoscopy, almost all the air was still inside me after it was done. I ended up having terrible cramps for 5 hours, until I was able to start farting. I never thought I would welcome farts so wholeheartedly, and consider each one a kind friend.

"Mommy, Mommy! Timmy is lost inside!"

    If something has to be misshapen about me, at least it's on the inside. The good news is that a tortuous colon is not an indicator or symptom of any serious health concern. I'm happy to report that Dr. Hobbs said I have nothing to worry about. There was no sign of polyps, cancer, or Timmy.

 

REDHEAD ROULETTE

    
       By the time I had written Part 3 of  'KICK, KICK......" my intern had actually finished her rotation with me and had officially graduated. It turned out to be an amazing experience for both us, and finally made me realize all the worrying I have done over my stuttering has been a colossal waste of energy. It's time for me to finally put that worry to rest, but not before one more story. This is the story that takes me back to the beginning.  How my career all began and what I went through on the most nerve-racking day of my life--going on my first job interview as a new graduate at 30 years old.
      It was not only my first job interview in the field of Physical Therapy, it was my first real job interview anywhere. I had worked in my family's second-hand fur store since I was ten years old, and the job interview my grandmother Sally gave me was handing me a list of groceries that I had to bring back from the deli on the corner so she could make tuna fish sandwiches in the back office of the fur store. Luckily, I got the job even though I forgot to bring back the big pickle she asked for. The truth was I  was too scared that I would stutter when I asked the man behind the counter to get one out of the big jar.
      When our fur store went out of business 18 years later, I knew I would be faced with having to find a new career and then having to be hired  by a stranger who would give me a harder interview than Grandma Sally.  I couldn't imagine that anyone who wasn't family would actually hire me with my stutter. That's why I chose Physical Therapy in the first place. I thought it wouldn't involve having to do as much talking as say, a trial lawyer, or, a telemarketer, or even worse, a ventriloquist or worse than that, an air traffic controller.
     From the first day I started college, I was already dreading all the job interviews I would have to go on after the three years it was going to take to finish. As graduation got closer, my dread grew. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, including my boyfriend at the time, Pepe, or even Scott--my first ex and best friend who I told everything to--how overwhelmed I felt about even the thought of job-hunting. It made Graduation Day one of the proudest and one of the scariest days of my life.
    The school was in Miami, and both Pepe and I had had enough of the vapid beach scene and wanted to move back to New York. That meant I couldn't start job hunting until we were back up North, which I was secretly thrilled about. By the time we found a sublet in Chelsea that allowed our two boxers, Bronski and Mack, three months had passed. I still had a little money left from the fur store days but it was quickly running out. Pepe had left his job as an architect at I.M.Pei when we moved down to Florida, but could only find freelance work when we got back. Within another two months, my money was all gone and he was supporting both of us. It was starting to get obvious to him, along with my family and our friends, that I wasn't trying to find a job as enthusiastically as everyone assumed I would be. I started looking in the 'want ads' section of several newspapers and found plenty of jobs for Physical Therapists but only one for what I was, a Physical Therapist Assistant.
                                                 WANTED       
                                    PTA  WITH GOOD HANDS               
                         CAROL GREENBERG PHYSICAL THERAPY
                                      24 EAST 86 TH STREET
                                                885-6638
   It was in the paper for two weeks which meant no one had been hired yet. I was relieved, even though I waited for the third week it was in the paper to call. Well, actually I called and hung up. It was a start. I had to hear what kind of voice would answer. Her name was Robin, and I figured she had to be Carol Greenberg's secretary. She didn't sound rushed or impatient. A good sign.
   I knew I had to call soon, before someone else was hired. Without telling Pepe, on the Friday of the third week I went to a phone booth right near a construction site on 10th Avenue where the sound of bulldozers and jackhammers would help drown out my stuttering and force the conversation to be brief. I took a deep breath, put a quarter in the phone and dialed the number that I had already memorized. The background noise worked perfectly. Robin quickly checked Carol Greenberg's calendar and loudly asked if I cold come in that afternoon. I panicked and said loudly back that I couldn't, and asked if there was a time on Monday. We arranged the interview for Monday morning and I thanked her loudly, and apologized for the noise again before we hung up.
    I was thrilled that I got through the first phone hurdle, and was very proud of myself even though I cheated a little. The interview, being after the weekend, gave me time to practice exactly what I was going to say. Unfortunately, it also gave me two days to totally stress out. I hardly slept on Sunday night, and was up at 5 A.M. ironing dressy pants and a shirt that I had to borrow from Pepe. I never wore ties, so he had to tie it for me before I left.
     Carol Greenberg's office was right around the corner from The Metropolitan Museum in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the whole city.  As I approached the door, a UPS delivery man was leaving the office at the same time and held it open for me, giving me no time to wish myself luck before I stepped inside.   
    Ironically, the one thing I can't remember is what the interview was actually like. At least half of it is a blur. Looking back, I don't know which I did more of, stuttering or sweating. I do remember how my hands were sweating so much when Carol had me massage and stretch her neck that I didn't even need any massage cream. I felt a droplet of sweat slide off my forehead and watched in horror as it splashed onto her pile of flaming red hair, which luckily, she didn't feel. I kept wiping the sweat from my face,  praying she wouldn't open her eyes as she laid face up on a treatment table in one of the four small rooms she had for patients to be treated privately in.  She didn't say anything but was sighing pleasurably when I rotated her head and stretched her trapezius in my palms.
     "Madeline's on the phone. She says it's important," Robin knocked on the door.
  Carol's eyes popped open and she sprang off the table. " Don't let her hang up!" Carol yelled to Robin  as she grabbed her earrings and white lab coat.  She moved with great comic craziness that made me smile as she struggled to get an earring on with one arm in the coat and the other sleeve still hanging.  "You're hired. You better do the same thing  to my patients that you just did to me," she warned me with a very serious face as she stuck the other arm in her coat and pointed at the table and then at me. "Except for all the schwitzing. The patients I get around here don't like to be dripped on. If ties make you sweat that much, don't wear one. A lab coat or jacket like mine is fine. OK?"
      I nodded, too shocked to speak.
      "Carol, Madeline says she's hanging up!" Robin called out from the front desk.
      "I'm coming, I'm coming!"  Carol yelled back, moving as fast and frantic as Bozo The Clown running from a room on fire.
        I soon learned that the Madeline was no other than Madeline Kahn, Carol's best friend. That's how funny and crazy and cool Carol is. She is  Jewish, of course, and divorced, of course, and was able to start her own private practice, buy her expensive office space, and support her son from childhood without any financial help from her ex-husband back in the early 70's. This was a time when none of the women she knew had her courage or self-reliance. The mortgage was huge and her office maintenance charges were high so she worked as hard as a yak plowing a potato field. Her entire livelihood depended on her P.T. business, which was also the only source of income she had to take care of her son. By hiring me as her only assistant and her only other employee, besides Robin, she was essentially gambling her entire economic future. My stuttering could have very likely made  patients uncomfortable enough to stop coming, and turned her business into a morgue. Carol was putting everything on the Roulette Wheel and letting me spin it for her. 

        Luckily for both of us, her gamble paid off. The society matrons and other wealthy Upper East-Siders, who Carol treated, loved being gently manhandled by me, and I was constantly studying and developing treatment protocols for each patient's injury. Carol loved that I was taking care of the tedious specifics, which she herself couldn't be bothered with as she went from patient to patient hugging and kissing and taking them into the private treatment rooms where they told her things that they usually only told to their shrinks. We were the perfect team, and we laughed everyday for three years.    
      

                                       One of our favorite patients, Mrs. B. She was so proud of her hamstring stretch that she insisted we take a picture. I think she used it for her Christmas Card photo that year
                                           



      Then one day I had to tell Carol I was moving to California. Pepe had broken my heart and I had to leave. Scott was waiting for me and Bronski and Mack in San Fransisco, where he and his boyfriend, Jason, were going to give me and the dogs a place to live until I found another job. Carol and I hugged each other and cried.
      "What am I going to do without you, my darling? Who's going to make me laugh?" she sobbed.
      "You'll never know how much you've given me. I would never have the confidence to make this move if it wasn't for you.  You showed me how good I was. You believed in me from the start."
       "I remember the first day you came in for your interview," she shook her head in disbelief and dried her eyes. "It seems so long ago."
       I dried my eyes and took hold of her hands. "I've been wanting to ask you something all this time. Why did you ever chance hiring me with my stutter?"
       She took a deep breath and  looked me straight in the eyes. "Darling, when you walked in here and started with the stuttering, I was sitting there thinking to myself  'You gotta' be kidding. Not in a million years',  but then you smiled that smile of yours and made me laugh about who knows what, and suddenly the stutter didn't matter to me. I don't know how you did. You cast a spell on me" she grinned, putting her hand on my cheek. "And when you rolled up your sleeves to give me that neck massage and I saw those big hairy forearms and felt your strong hands, I knew my patients would love you too."
     "You gambled on me, Carol. And I'll never forget it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart," I said as I started to cry again.
      "All anyone ever has to do is look beyond your stutter and it's no gamble at all," she cupped my hands in her hands and raised them to her lips for one last kiss. 

Carol and I on the day before I left for San Francisco , May 1995

                           

KICK, KICK, STOMP, STOMP, ONE and TWO and CHA CHA CHA part 3

    As my intern and I shook hands for the first time, I wondered how soon she would realize I had a speech problem. I certainly didn't want to start off with a major stutter that would take a stomp, kick, or a thigh punch to get the word out. I made a promise to myself not to do any self-flagellation that would shock her too much.
    Even though I knew how absurd being so nervous was, I couldn't help feeling like I was showing up for a job interview that was going to be two months long. I tried to remind myself that I was the one in-charge and what she thought of me didn't even matter, but as soon as we met I was doing my best to entertain and impress her. 
   Her name, which I can't say, does not start with an m,p,l,d,b,t,f, or any other of the letters I have most trouble saying, so I said it with ease when we met. Let's just call her Val. From the personal information facts sheet she had mailed me, I envisioned Val as a tom-boy blond in gym shorts and cleats ready to throw a ball at me. Luckily I was wrong, which I usually am when imagining a situation that hasn't taken place yet. Val hid her jock tendencies well, and at first glance you would think she would be the one who couldn't catch a ball, not me.   
   Her first morning was spent filling out paperwork for the P. T. Department. Then, after lunch she was scheduled to just follow and observe me as I treated my four afternoon patients. Essentially, this meant she was going to be my portable audience, watching every movement I make and listening to every word I say in front of patients and in between treatments. It was my own reality show that I didn't want to be on. I love attention, but only if I'm in control of when it starts and when it stops. Being observed is the worst form of attention. It usually happens to you from behind and you can't tell what the observer is thinking, like being watched from a 2-way mirror. Having an intern is like being watched through a 2-way mirror, only the mirror is gone and you knows she's there. It just adds to my performance anxiety, which as a stutterer has always been at such a high level that only stutterers are able to manage it without exploding.
     I was ready for the worst, but treatment after treatment went flawlessly. Val watched as I sat on a rolling stool inside the parallel bars helping a patient walk 10 feet after she hadn't taken a step in over two months, as other therapists cheered and the patient's sister cried with joy. Then Val watched as I transferred a quadriplegic patient, who's neck was hurting and still in a hard collar, using a squat-pivot technique safely and painlessly from her power wheelchair onto a therapy mat. I made it look as smooth and effortless as Michelle Kwan doing a Triple Axel. The patient and her husband were thrilled that I did it without causing her any neck pain and wanted it videoed for everyone to see. I could see the awe in Val's eyes. My speech was almost flawless too. I had worked with both patients before so I didn't have to deal with introducing myself, and saying Val's name seemed to be easy enough for me. I did have a few small stutters during the treatments but I was pretty sure I was able to hide them in the movements I made to help the patients. The third patient was an eighty-year old man with a broken leg who I had been working with also. I helped him get up and down a flight of stairs for the first time using both hands on one rail and only bearing weight on his good leg. Miracle after miracle was happening. I felt like Jesus on one of His better days. 
     The last patient was one I didn't know yet but I was so pumped with confidence that I didn't even care. We reviewed the chart, and went over the patient's history, the diagnosis, and the precautions. The patient had Parkinson's Disease, had a urinary tract infection which was causing altered mental status, was hard of hearing and blind in one eye, and had gotten a bed sore at home from not moving in bed enough so he was on a special inflatable air mattress to prevent any further skin breakdown. 
     " This is a good example of a basic treatment. Nothing fancy like the last three. We'll just help him learn how to roll and come up and down on the edge of the bed," I explained, avoiding the words 'move' and  'sit' which are guaranteed  stutters for me.     
       I knocked on the patient's door and walked right in. " Hi, I'm Gary from P.T. and this is Val my student," I said quickly without giving myself a moment to pause and possibly stutter.
      " What? " the patient said, squinting at me. 
      "Gary from P.T.," I said with a louder voice.
      "What's P.T.? "
      " Fffffff." My throat closed on the 'ph' of physical and I couldn't get any sound out. I tried to start over three times but the only thing coming out sounded like a tire that was leaking. It was such a long stutter that I actually felt like I has having an out of body experience as I floated above watching myself struggling to get the word out.
      " I can't hear you!" the patient complained. " Speak up!"
      "Ffffff.." I got so desperate with my speech that I gave a stomp and a kick, and my foot accidentally hit the CPR EMERGENCY RELEASE button sticking out from the bed frame. With a loud, quick puff the big air mattress instantaneously deflated and the patient sunk down into the folds. I quickly hit the RE-SET button and the mattress re-inflated almost as quickly as it deflated. 
     "What just happened?" the patient asked, very confused. 
     " I fixed your bed. It was broken, " I said, not knowing what else to say.
     " Oh, well that's a good thing then. Glad you did. But you still didn't tell me who you are."
     " We're from Physical Therapy and we're here to help you," Val stepped forward.
     " Oh good. I like you people," the patient smiled and clapped his hands.
     Val turned to me and gave me a quick wink and smiled. " This is going to be the best six weeks."
     Usually I don't like to be rescued from a stutter, but I allowed Val to throw me a life-preserver this one time and one time only. I smiled back at her, more appreciative than embarrassed. I agreed with her that the next six weeks was going to be a great experience for both of us.




       

 
 

KICK, KICK, STOMP, STOMP, ONE and TWO and CHA CHA CHA - PART 2

   I didn't know if I should e-mail my intern before she arrived to warn her about my stutter. At least to explain about any kicking, stomping, or thigh punching that may occur. What if she was warned already? Maybe the woman in-charge of my hospital's intern program phoned the school to prepare them for the surprise. Imagine if my intern isn't even the one first assigned to me.What if none of the other Physical Therapy Assistant interns wanted a stuttering Clinical Instructor, and the intern I'm getting is being forced to come after drawing the shortest straw? Or maybe she's volunteering to be with me for extra credit, like I'm some kind of special project.
   The only things I know about this intern are what's on the personal facts sheet she filled out about herself-- how she spends time outside of school, her involvement in extra curricular activities, how she sees herself as a student, and what area of P.T. is of particular interest to her. For starters, she's 20 and I'll be 50 in 3 days. That means she could be my daughter, but only if I had waited until I reached 30. If I fathered her when I was 20 , she would be 30 now. That's how much older I am. She might even know a grandfather my age. The facts sheet also says she loves sports, nature, and family, which happens to be the three things in this world I like least. One of the more personal things she admits to is that she can't help being a perfectionist. I'm going to have to admit to her I can't help not being one.  And, as far as her particular interest goes, she wants to treat young amputee soldiers from the Middle East wars. I'm personally not a fan of soldiers, nor am I as skilled at treating amputations as I am with strokes, and the closest I've come to helping a Middle East casualty was once treating an Iraqi cab driver who lost 2 toes trying to stomp out fireworks on his front porch somewhere in South San Francisco where he lived. As far as I can tell, my intern and I have absolutely nothing in common. We definitely wouldn't be a match on E-Harmony.
   I decided it was a good idea to send the e-mail just to break the ice before she arrived, and joke about my stutter a little and how she and I are complete opposites. My co-worker and dear friend, Ali, was totally against the idea and was determined to stop me.
  "  It's just going to be something simple and funny. I know what I'm doing, don't worry," I assured her.
  " You saying don't worry always makes me worry, Gary. You forget that what's 'simple and funny' to you is usually shocking to other people, especially to a 20 year-old girl who doesn't even know you. I've had students before, you haven't. I've never contacted any of them in advance. You can't be like you are with me, or like you are with the women here. You'll write something that this girl will take the wrong way and tomorrow you'll be getting a phone call from her Supervising Professor, and the whole thing is going to blow up in your face. I'm telling you, Gary. Please listen to me. Do not email this girl. Trust me, I'm right about this."  
   " What makes you so right about this?"'
   She sighed and looked at me like it was the most obvious answer in the world. " Because I am always right, and you are always wrong."
     I paused and thought about it. " Hmm, good point," I agreed, having to admit that Ali does happen to be right quite a bit of the time. Her husband can attest to this.
    " Don't worry so much, Gary. She'll love you after she meets you, like everybody in this whole hospital does. You're going to be a great Instructor. You love being the center of attention anyway, even with your stutter. This is your big chance."
    A few of the other women I work with came into the back office after eating lunch and got in on the conversation to tell me how ridiculous I was being for worrying about my speech.    

"Your speech will putter, not a sound you will mutter, for a week you will stutter"

   " Oh really? Try stuttering for a week and get back to me. Then we'll see how you feel," I told them. If only I was Endora from Bewitched I would have swung my arms up and turned them into stutterers just so they could experience what I've had to go through.
    " All of you think it's easy because I make it look so easy. But believe me, it's not. I've been stuttering since I was six, so that's 44 years worth of stuttering. I must have stuttered on at least a million words. And I still have 20-30 years of stuttering left. That could be another million stutters!" I calculated, even shocking myself with the amount. "Just imagine how many patients I've had to stutter in front of. Thousands!"
  "But they all love you too, just like we do," Ali reassured me. Each of the other women named a different room of a patient who loved working with me.  
   "I know, I know. Of course the patients love me. If I wasn't as lovable, everyone would see how much more annoying my stutter would be. That's the bottom line," I explained. " I have to make everybody I speak to love me, which is almost more exhausting to do than stuttering." I happened to stutter especially long on the m of 'make' and 'more' which helped to drive home my point " You see how much worse my speech is getting by the minute? I can't say  'm's' now! Thank God my intern isn't named Maureen MacMannis from Marymount College." Everyone laughed as we left the office, which made stuttering on the added m's worth it. In the elevator up to see all our patients, Ali looked me in the eye. " No sending that e-mail, right?' she asked just to make sure.
   " Yes, I promise I will wait until I stutter in her face in person."
                                         
                                        *
                                               Part 3 on the way
 

KICK,KICK,STOMP,STOMP, ONE,TWO, CHA,CHA CHA. PART 1

 I hate being watched when I'm stuttering. How a stutter looks is even worse than how it sounds. It's far more of an assault on the eyes than it is on the ears. Stuttering is not that cute little thing Porky Pig does. That's called stammering, which is a playful, bouncy way of repeating a sound over and over again like, " f-f-f-fuck you P-P-Porky P-P-Pig ". Stuttering is the quiet, ugly sibling of stammering. The words get stuck in the vice grip of the muscular folds in my voice-box. To help get a word out, I sometimes have to throw my whole body into it. Heel stomping, chair kicking, thigh punching, table tapping, head bobbing, eye twitching, neck whipping, shoulder jerking, whatever it takes. For a few really bad stutters, I've had to bounce up and down like I was on an invisible pogo stick. It's Modern Dance at it's most primal with choreography that even Martha Graham couldn't follow. 
    I only allow myself the luxury of punching, kicking and bouncing if I'm alone on the phone when no one can see how gymnastic a stutterer can get. I actually have to be careful not to injure myself by kicking something too hard or bruising a limb. The worst is when I whip my head back and forth too quickly and a contact lenses flies out. It doesn't get more humiliating than that, especially when I had to ask for help to find it. Only my family and my boyfriends have witnessed my stutter in full throttle. It is something I hope they've blocked out of their minds, like they would do if they had seen their grandparents having sex, or another vision equally as disturbing. Being caught in the throws of a major stutter is probably the only thing that can still embarrass me. It has the power to immediately make me feel like I'm six years old again.  
    I tell you this because I am facing a great challenge right now. For 20 years I have loved working in Physical Therapy. I've helped thousands of people learn to stand and walk again, straightening out God's spitefulness one patient at a time. I couldn't think of a better job in the world for me. Except for one thing. Part of my job is to be a Clinical Instructor for an intern from a Physical Therapy Assistant college. In simple terms, this means someone who will watch me stutter eight hours a day for two months. It's what I've been dreading all these years, what I've finagled my way out of for two decades,and what has now finally caught up with me. For my own good, my Supervisor is taking a stand and won't let me weasel out of it this year. ( Remind me to sue her for making me do this as soon as I have time to find the clause in The Handicap Rights Act pertaining to cruel and unusual punishment, or was that The Constitution?)
    I've learned to use my stutter around the patients as positively as I can. I hold it up as my way of being ' perfectly imperfect ', and use myself as an example of having a great life even with a speech problem when my patients  are emotionally struggling over not walking or talking as good as they used to. Luckily, some of the patients who can't see or hear too well along with some of the ones who have brain injuries don't even realize I am stuttering. It also helps when the patients are still in bed, where they can't see how  I sometimes stomp on my own foot or kick myself in the shin to help get a stutter out.
   I'm not going to be able to get away with any of my stuttering strategies  when the intern is watching me, hanging on my every word. It's bad enough having the patients see my eyelids fluttering, jaw jutting and head bobbing when I'm stuck on a sound. Now I'm going to have a third party watching it all! I can only imagine how horrified the intern is going to be. I just hope I don't stomp on her foot instead of mine while I'm trying to say something to her.
                         
                            

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DONNER

        Last summer, I became increasingly aware of a man wearing high soccer socks in the gym whenever I worked out early in the morning. He was obviously Irish, as the Irish usually are, with his golden hair, fair skin, ruddy cheeks and blue eyes. He wore soccer shorts too, but it was the socks that got me. I'm a sucker for high socks, even at 6:00 A.M. He had great legs with huge calves that looked even bigger with the socks tightly covering them. I couldn't help looking at him and soon he couldn't help looking back. Actively cruising someone so early in the morning felt a little strange, especially if I hadn't stayed up the whole night before, but it was the only time we ever saw each other. After a few weeks of nods and smiles, it was clear he was waiting for me to make the first move.

        " High Socks," I offered a handshake and smiled. " That's what I've named you. I'm Gary."

        " So is it a good thing or a bad thing that you call me High Socks? " he looked up from the seated fly machine without revealing anything in his expression until he was sure he wasn't being made fun of.

        "Oh it's a very good thing, believe me "

        " That's what I was hoping to hear," he smiled, allowing his face to show a little excitement.

     . ."  I love them on you. I think they're very sexy."

        " I wasn't sure how they looked," he shrugged his shoulders with false modesty, looking down at his socks and calves as if he never noticed them before.

        " Oh come on, I can't be the first one to compliment you."

        " I've gotten a few comments," he said nonchalantly  as he lifted each leg closer up to pull the socks up higher, knowing very well how sexy a move it was.

        " How many pairs do you have?"

        " More than anyone should have. I don't even know anymore," he shrugged his shoulders again.

        " I'll have to help you count."

        " The only way to do that is to open my drawers," he said as he started his next set of flies, squeezing the two cushions in front of his chest with his forearms, blocking his face for a moment and then releasing them. " And  I couldn't let you do that. I'm very private," he said, doing another fly.

         " I will respect your drawers," I smiled with a polite bow.

         " I would hope so," he said as he did the third fly, perfectly timed with his response. He didn't say anything else and continued to do his set. He did 20 instead of ten just to test if I would stand there and wait until he was finished, which I did.

         " Did you want this now. I'm done," he said , getting up from the machine and walking away. 

         "Hey wait!" I called out. "I never got your name."

           He turned around but didn't stop moving towards the staircase." It's in the phone book under Mr. H. Socks!" he called back to me then promptly turned around again and vanished down the stairs.

           He thought he was being coy but I could see right through him. By the end of the week  Mr. H. Socks and I were dating, and I got into his drawers after all. I made him wear different  high socks each time I came over to his apartment. He had so many pairs that by the time we stopped dating he still hadn't tried them all on for me.

     Why we broke-up  is not as vital to this story as what I discovered after. High Socks, or Darrell, and I remained on very good terms, and a few weeks later he had me over to his place for dinner. I also was getting back a copy of a manuscript I had written which he had read.  It had already been absorbed into his decor which included a wall of shelving he handmade, packed with all the books on design and antiques he collected. When I pulled my manuscript out the book beside it came out too. It  had a paper front and back and looked like it was bound at Kinko's and was titled Hutchison History.

     I held it up and Darrell told me it was about his family's history in California." We go way back," he said without any significance.

     I started at the end and turned the pages towards the beginning, and stopped at a page that caught my eye. DONNER PASS. ( For those of you who aren't familiar with this infamous event, in 1847, a California bound wagon-train led by the Donner Family along with the Breens was snowbound for the entire winter in the Sierra Nevada. Almost half of the 87 people in the group died, including almost all of the Donners,from either illness or starvation.The survivors, which included almost all of the Breens, had to eat the frozen bodies of the Donners to stay alive). I read the entire page and looked up.

       "Darrell, who was Patrick Breen?"

       "He was my great, great, great or great, great, great, great grandfather or someone like that," he said, continuing to cook a stew.

    I walked over to the kitchen with one hand holding the book and one hand on my hip. " I was dating the descendant of the family who ate the Donners and you didn't tell me!?"

      " Nobody cares about something that happened over 150 years ago," Darrell shrugged his shoulders the same way he did over his socks and calves when I first met him at the gym.

      " Are you kidding me!? Do you realize all the jokes I missed out on? 'Darell is having me for dinner' takes on a whole new meaning now."

      " You can still make all the cheap jokes.What are you so disappointed about?"

     " It's not the same. Saying I dated a man who's ancestors ate the Donners is not the same thing as I'm dating a man who's ancestors ate the Donners."

     " Gary, it's nothing to brag about. If it was your family who ate people it wouldn't be as funny to you. It's not like my family sits around and talks about it at holiday meals."

     " Well I should hope not. ' Please pass the Donner, oh, and the mash potatoes too '. "

     " You're making a big deal out of something that is so in the past that no one even knows what it is anymore."

     " The Donner Party is one of California's most famous stories. It's almost as big as The Gold Rush and The 1906 Earthquake. You're California royalty."

     "  I look more like a kitchen maid than royalty, " Darrell said, holding up the big wooden spoon he was stirring with. " I've never met anyone else who was as excited as you are over this."

     "You act so nonchalant just to bother me."

     " I know chalant is not a word, but whatever the opposite of nonchalant is, that's what you are, Gary."

       I dramatically collapsed onto a chair at the kitchen table and dropped my head onto my stretched out arm. "All the one-liners," I picked my head up and bemoaned. " I've got a Donnerdate with my boyfriend....We made Donnerplans....Waitress, I'll have the Donner special."  I sat back up and looked at Darrell. "Think of all the possibilities.... I'm stuffed, I can't eat another Donner.... I'm as scared as a Donner at a Breen family picnic.... I'm as unlucky as a Donner in December.... I'm as hungry as a Breen in a snowstorm. Or the businesses they should have started.-- Breen Wilderness Tours, Breen Ski Lodge, Breen's All-Spice , Breen's Cutlery, and Breen's Preserves." I raised my hands and imagined a huge billboard sign that read:

" DONNOR PARTY PLANNERS for all your catering and entertainment needs."

    "Hope my invitations gets lost for any of those parties," Darrell stirred the stew.

    " Don't worry. You're on their DO NOT INVITE list," I told him.

    " Oh really?" Darrell smirked, pointing the spoon at me. "Come over here. I need you to taste this." He dipped the  big spoon into the pot and then held it up for me to taste. " Tell me what you think. It's just doesn't taste complete."

    " Maybe some salt," I guessed

   Darrell took a sip from the spoon too and thought for a moment as he licked his lips. " Of course! How could I be so stupid," he shook his head and turned to look right into my eyes with his beautiful ice blue eyes narrowed into steely slits to look especially sinister. " I didn't put in the most important ingredient--YOU. "         

  

SPOT me coming

     As soon as I heard the news that Logan Airport is starting a new one billion dollar program based on the highly successful airport interrogations of travelers done by Israelis, I knew us stutterers were screwed. The program is called Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, which will identify potential terrorists just by the way they act, speak and breath during questioning. SPOT also stands for Stutterers Prepare to Open Trousers. I might as well just go to the airport naked and save the time it will take to strip down for the cavity search I'll surely be getting. The interrogators will be looking for increased heart rate, any breathing irregularities, shifting pupils, skin color changes, sweating , Adam's apple movement, and any obvious or subtle body shifts or tics. Essentially, everything that happens to stutterers anytime we say anything. We're going to end up on more No Fly Lists than Islamic clerics from Yemen. 
   There is no one more suspicious-acting than a stutterer waiting in a line to be interviewed. We actually radiate heat depending on how nervous we are. The man wearing a suicide vest isn't as anxious. To help us navigate through this insensitive process with less stress, we should be issued ID cards from a National Data Base of Stutterers funded by the government if we are now going to go through this every time we travel. I can just imagine what a hard time innocent Arab stutterers will have. They'll wind up being water-boarded by the time they're able to say their name, address, phone number, and reason for traveling.
       On the other hand, what happens if radical Islamists start recruiting stuttering Muslims to intentionally throw off the interrogators and ease their suspicions enough to get a stuttering terrorist on board a flight. Hopefully, he'll be too worried about stuttering to announce out loud that the plane is being hijacked, and he'll watch a movie instead.   

I'M AN EX-PERT AT THIS

      Alex has been a big part of the blogs, both in the stories and behind the scenes. He helped me to set-up the blog (which means he did it completely for me) and watched as I hit 'POST' for the first time. He made the TRAVEL BLOGS possible with his amazing generosity and his great companionship. He's a real smartypants and a great counterbalance for my lowbrow behavior where ever we go. Including him in the blogs has been so much fun, and I still plan on him being in many future ones.
     Have you figured out where this is going? Yes, he has entered the realm of my ex-boyfriends. It's a very special place to be, my personal  variation of the Promised Land. No matter how I am as a boyfriend, it's guaranteed that I'll be better as an ex-boyfriend. It's actually the thing I do best. Let other guys try to strive to be the best boyfriends they can be. I'll just wait until it's over to really shine. 
    Over the years, it's been no small feat making sure everything stayed copacetic between me and my ex's. Some took longer than others. Adding Alex brought the number to three who live locally, and the other two, who live out of state, are just a phone call away. Back when it was four ex's and I spoke with all of them on the same day, I called it a 'Four Of A Kind'. Now it's a 'Full House' when I speak with all five on the same day. There's a magic about it, like a potion or a spell that needs the combination of their different voices to work. A room full of money couldn't make me feel as rich as I do on those days.
     I actually have 6 official ex-boyfriends but number 5 made himself disappear. His name is Scott, which is also the name of my first boyfriend. To avoid confusion, the first Scott, The Good Witch, is known as Scott 1 and the fifth Scott, The Bad Witch, is Scott 5. Like most Bad Witches, Scott 5 is vindictive,calculating and extremely smart. He figured out the only real way he could hurt me would be to deny me a relationship with him as an ex-boyfriend if I ended our relationship.
    "If you think I'm handing you my friendship on a silver platter like your other boyfriends you're in for a big surprise, Mister, " he sneered at me with his sleeves rolled up like a guy ready for an old-fashioned boxing match, but instead of his hands in the air ready to punch, they were on his hips, like Bette Davis.
    " It's impossible, Scott. It's a small town and I won't give up until we're friends"
    " I'm telling you, Gary.You break up with me and you won't exist in my life and I guarantee you I won't exist in yours. It's the easiest thing in the world for me to do. I did it to Patrick, and I'll do it to you."
    " I'm not like Patrick. We can still be great friends Scott. I'll show you how easy it is."
    " Don't waste your breath, you dumb ape. I don't need you as a friend. I have enough friends already."
    " What are you talking about? You don't even have any friends."
    " That's what 'enough' is to me. None. Some people don't need friends like you do,you stupid Prom Queen!"
   Sure enough, he did what he said he would do. We both lived around The Castro, but we never spoke or even saw each other again. I'll never figure out how he possibly avoided me so well. How dare he, that Bitch!
   Alex might think I'm an ape, but he certainly doesn't think I'm dumb. And our break-up was so mutual that we each said the words to each other at the same time, like a duet singing harmony. We both jumped off the ride at the same time so no one felt like he was left riding alone. For this and many other reasons, I know that Alex will not be like Scott 5, and we will be a special part of each others lives. And I will keep my promise not to write certain private things about him in any blog. Even though I would LOVE to!








.

' DRILL, BABY, DRILL '

     I'm almost 50 and don't know what a vagina actually looks like. My experience is limited to exiting but never entering one.  I couldn't draw the shape of it to save my life. The vagina I just quickly sketched on a  pad next to my computer as I'm writing this looks like the bottom half of the mask the killer wore in 'Scream'.  It shows how amazingly little I, being a childless, gay, male, know about a woman's body. I'm realizing this now because so many of my female co-workers who I'm close with at the hospital are having babies, and I've been shocked to find out things that happen to their bodies that make being new mothers even more difficult than I thought.

   I used to be jealous of all the women taking maternity leave. It sounded like they were going on a half- year long "Spring Break" of leisure time and long lunches with friends. As a gay man it wasn't fair. I didn't get one day off when I got my first dog Bronski as a puppy or when his son Mack was born. I thought I was missing out on all the fun, stuck at work while each one of them took their " leave". Now that I have heard the truth I want to personally apologize to all of them, and I want to Thank God for not giving me a vagina and breasts.

   First of all, the word "leave" is totally misleading. A new mother is not 'leaving' work, she's 'arriving' at her new job in a brutal sweatshop that only allows her a few hours of sleep a day with a new cranky, demanding boss who is yelling at her the entire time no matter how hard she's working, and who takes too many bathroom breaks but allows her hardly any. The boss and she speak different languages and she desperately tries to learn how to understand the boss so she won't be screamed at as much for not knowing what the boss wants of her. She feels abused but there's no HR office to complain to. There is way too much focus on her breasts by the boss who is truly obsessed with them and won't let her keep her shirt or bra on for a good part of the day. If that's not bad enough, this new boss has sole rights to her breasts and feasts at will, clamping down then latching on and gnawing her nipples multiple times a day as mercilessly and as greedily as Exxon, sucking as much as possible out of her. She has to allow this though, or else her bloated breasts are going to blow like oil rigs at critical mass.
    One of my favorite people in the world, Ali, is the latest co-worker to give birth. She said that when she came home from the hospital her boobs were as hard as marble. The only thing that helped with the swelling and pain was putting frozen cabbage leaves on them. None of her bras were big enough or strong enough so she had to walk around her apartment holding up her boobs topped with cabbage using her hands as platters underneath, looking like a waitress carrying two huge hors d'oeuvres. Luckily, the really bad swelling only lasted a few days and she was able to stop using the cabbage, which was starting to make her smell like compost. Another co-worker who chooses to remain anonymous helped decrease her swelling by bobbing her boobs in ice cold water using the same big tin basin she used on Halloween to bob for apples.
   After hearing so many stories about the Purgatory of breast feeding, I started to wonder if my mother had gone through the same thing. There was no way she did. I know this for the simple fact that if my mother had gone through all that pain and effort, she would have certainly thrown it in my face and used it against me, like she's told me for the past 40 years about how she slept over in my hospital room the night I had an eye operation when I was 9 years old. 
     My mother, Priscilla, a woman who couldn't learn to sew a button or remember how to tie my shoelaces in a double- knot, was so inept her entire adult life that she couldn't possibly have mastered the simple art of breastfeeding. She did what all the other modern mothers did --went to the obstetrician's office for the hormone injection then went to the Supermarket for Baby Formula. It was a big enough challenge for my mother to heat up my bottle without scalding me. She needed everything spelled out as easy as possible for her not to do it wrong.

   My mother didn't have the self-confidence or the determination of the 30 women I work with now in the Rehab department. These women are the sharpest, most dedicated, hard-working, in-control people I know. They are all younger than me but I will never be as mature as anyone of them. Not only do these women give people back their lives after having strokes, brain injuries, amputations, and spinal surgeries, most of them either run marathons, swim in the Bay, rock climb, bungee jump, mountain bike, ride horses, dive out of planes, kayak, go white water rafting , kick box, walk miles for breast cancer, hike in the forest, or camp near bears. Anything they do, they do perfectly, which is what happens when you're born on the island Wonder Woman came from. ( By the way, Alex told me that the Island was named Themascara, which if he is right, makes him the gayest person in the world).

  The new modern mother, who is the opposite of the old modern mother, has gone back to breast-feeding. The new mothers at work think Baby Formula is as good for an infant as Asbestos. You might as well give your baby thumbtacks to play with and breathe smoke in it's face.
   Dolores, who is another one of my favorite co-workers, is on the small side and was the only new mother who couldn't produce enough milk by feeding or pumping. She felt terrible and cried more than a few times over it, but after going to several lactation consultants, she still ended up having to use Formula for her baby girl. It isn't free like breast milk, but at least she saved a few hundred dollars on the breast pump equipment all the other new mothers had to buy.
   The whole subject of the breast-pump is fascinating and mysterious to me. I had no idea that a new mother MUST pump her breasts on a timed schedule, even if she isn't around her baby. For those of you who don't know this, if she doesn't get 'milked' by a baby or a machine, besides the pain that comes from being so engorged, her breasts will actually stop producing milk, shutting down the farm for good. This could be a disaster for a mother who wants her baby to be raised only on breast milk for the first year. That's why women go to extraordinary lengths to pump no matter where they are. 
    If you ask, almost every mother who has breastfed will tell you a crazy pumping story. The best 'emergency pumping' stories I've recently heard have happened in a stuck elevator during a blackout, on the 'It's A Small World After All' ride at Disneyland with a woman using Musketeer hats to cover her boobs, standing in line for Sheryl Crow tickets, and to a woman who had a Sky Marshall pull a gun on her after she came out of an airplane bathroom because some passengers thought her pump was a bomb.
    Whenever a mother returns to our department from maternity leave, she arrives with an extra satchel or knapsack that she didn't have six months earlier. Inside is her trusty pump which is more important to remember than even her wallet or keys. Being in a profession dominated by women, there is a shared understanding of the importance of breast pumping and a lot of leeway is given to the new 'pumpers'. Pumping time is scheduled into patient care hours and the 'pumping room' is reserved for them in advance. It has turned into kind of a rite of passage in our department. The 'pumping room' is just an ordinary treatment room with a lock on the door, but when it is being used for breast pumping, it becomes a mysterious sanctuary. No one would show me how the pump worked on them, or what they looked like with it attached. Even my Gay Card didn't get me inside. 
    I ended up having to go on-line to watch a headless stranger breast pump, just so I could finally understand how it worked. It was certainly not as glamorous as one would hope. As a matter of fact, it must have been designed to be especially not sexy. The 'bra' was a matronly, medical-looking, elastic beige breast harness. The suction cones looked like small versions of oxygen masks that jet fighter pilots wear, and clipped onto them were mini plastic milk bottles that could have come from a PLAYSKOOL kitchen set. 
    Ali came back to work this weekend armed with her pump, ready to enter the magical world of the 'pumping room'. Just as she was about to close the door I came up to her and demanded that as her daughter's unofficial uncle I be allowed to see her pump her breasts. " Just at least one time. Just one pump," I begged.
 She rolled her eyes and closed the door in my face, and made sure it was locked after.
  " I'll give you a hundred dollars!,"I called through the door. " How about 150?!"
  She ignored me of course, but I will not give up that easily. Plan B will be to  hire a locksmith and make a copy of the key, or Plan C  which is to install a two-way mirror in the room. I even have a Plan D, which is just to pull the fire alarm while she's in there so she'll have to run out with the pump still attached.     

  What is my obsession, you ask? I just hate not being part of something that everyone around me is doing, especially when Ali is doing it too. It made me wonder how Dolores was dealing with seeing all the pumpers on parade as they came in and out of the  pumping room.
  " Does it still make you feel bad?"  I asked Dolores as, Juliet,  another freshly pumped co-worker, came out of the room and headed to the employee refrigerator where they all stored the mini-milk bottles until the end of the day. 
  She shook her head and looked down to hide her smile. " I'm so glad I don't have to go through all of this. All that pain and all that pumping must suck. I know everyone felt so bad for me, and how bad I felt about it too, but after seeing what they all have to go through, I feel like I'm the lucky one. I feel guilty how much easier The Baby Formula makes everything. I love using it now. Everyone warned me that it wasn't good and the baby wouldn't be as healthy and adjusted but she's fine. It really didn't make a big difference. She acts like all the other babies who are breastfeeding. There's nothing different about her. If the Formula wasn't good for her, I would know already."
  " You're absolutely right. Look at me. I'm living proof. I grew up on Formula and see how I turned out."
          All of the sudden she stopped smiling and started to cry.