Shingle me tivers!

I get up finally when The Cat gives up on purring and head bonking and bites the top of my head to wake me up. No coffee. Fasting-since-midnight tests upcoming. I drink three glasses of water, shower, scoop the litter box, feed The Cat, make the bed and get dressed without actually being fully conscious. Weedy picks me up at eight a.m.

Blood tests. Routine yearly blood tests that I regularly go for once every five or six years when the doctor suddenly says, "How long has it been since...?" Take a number. Wait. Maintain dull caffeine-deprived stupor. Try not to look at other number-clutching victims. When number is called, proceed to stall four. Sit down, hold out arm and be recognized by staff vampire who knows me from another lifetime and needs to list all common acquaintances of our youth and ask if I've seen them. Stupor is holding perfectly. Lucky I know my own name. Finally, we reach the grand finale and I pee in a jar.

Then we are directed to the third floor by a nice man who clearly doesn't know if that is where you drink barium. By a stroke of luck, we arrive in the right unit. A sign says "Barium enema, Barium swallows, Upper GI" - very warm and homey. I am "Upper GI" and thanking the gods for it when I consider the alternatives. I take a number. I turn to Weedy and say, "It's your fault I can't read a magazine."
"That's right. Germs." she says without any hint of remorse or apology.

Finally they call my name and we go to waiting room three of the morning and I am issued the standard cotton-tie raglets. Everyone has barium to drink but me, I am wearing only large dust cloths in unflattering colors and my sandals and I consider complaining about the service. Then I look at the faces of the people drinking barium and reconsider. A half hour after my appointment time has come and gone, I am ushered into a room with a slab and given my very own cup of barium. I don't think it tastes half bad and swallow as ordered while a machine studies my inner workings.

By noon, Weedy and I make it to food. We inhale eggs, bacon, toast and potatoes and I steal an extra piece of complimentary fudge for her as we leave.

On to the doctor. Who looks at the big nasty sore red patches blooming on my chest, shoulder and back and decides that I have Shingles. He prescribes large dark blue pills and assures me that they should help. Should? Should? I am running horror stories about people with shingles getting addicted to pain killers and being unable to function for six months. Should??? No way. I am not taking "should" for an answer. This virus WILL die and it will damn well do it fast.

I phone to inform the new boyfriend of my pox-ridden condition. And add, cheerfully, in a later email, "Well, at least it isn't an STD!" I know how to charm a man, by god.

Inside my head, however, a small high-pitched voice is whining, "Why meeeee?!"

And of course, you all know the answer to that one, don't you? Why not me?

Country and Western songs

The phone rings at 8:57 a.m. - but only once. It rings again at 10:00 a.m. and this time he doesn't hang up. By then, I assume, he's taken the requisite number of deep breaths and stiffened his resolve so that, after a long and almost entirely happy relationship of two and a half years, he can announce that we have not been very happy and now it's over.

He phoned it in. That's all I can think about. Two and a half years and he phoned it in.

It is, I think, the second time I have ever let him see me angry. Or more accurately, hear me angry. I don't argue or point out that we have one of these every six months and the rest of the time we are overjoyed to see each other.

"I hoped we could be friends, " he says, "but you don't sound friendly, and I guess that's understandable right now...."

Friends. Does a friend dump you on the phone? Doesn't feel very friendly to me. Feels downright sleazy, in fact.

And now, onward and hopefully upward - pushing off on my three unbalanced wheels, I'll just be continuing with the diagram and directions from hell.

India calling

The Scorpio advises me that my "I'm giving up men" post could be read as judgmental, that I left lots of room to offend. Being a male who was magnanimously excepted by me from the uncouth lot I referred to giving up, according to him, was not reassuring because it was so uncomfortably ambiguous. (I hasten to add that he does not read my blog, but got the idea pretty quickly from a verbal summary.)

Sigh.

I hate when he does that.

And he's right. You have to know me. Anyone who has known me for over five minutes realizes that the idea of me giving up men is a bit like the idea of me giving up breathing or orange lipstick or red hair. Not that I can't carp and whine with the rest of my beleaguered gender, and not that I don't have genuine complaints - but then, so do most of the men I know.

The entry was a little clip of my life. I was amused at how quickly my oldest friend dispatched the idea with the lack of ceremony it deserved. I was amused at KD, sarcastically offering to keep the ying/yang balance straight. But lest I offended more than one male person...

Here is a little background for those of you who have not been following along: Meeting few (as in no) new men (who are age-appropriate and interesting/unattached) in my daily life, and being in the situation of adoring a man who is (as I've delicately put it in the past) "mostly unavailable," I took a shot at the Internet. And it shot right back.

Case in point: Let's call him Dr. G. He is a tall, very good-looking man, 39 years of age. He is of East Indian descent, born in Toronto, and lived for some time in San Diego. His profile is literate, witty and blunt. All the things that appeal to me. I send a wave. He sends one back. We begin to email enthusiastically back and forth. He does volunteer work in India. He's writing a book. I give him my phone number and he calls immediately.

We talk for an easy, lively hour and decide to meet for a drink the next day. He asks if I'll be home for a while because he needs to do something and wants to get back to me. Sure. No problem. At 10:00 o'clock, I email to let him know I'm going to bed and ask that he email or phone the next day to confirm a time and place. So far, so good.

By 3:00 p.m. the following day, he hasn't done either and so, in a fit of pique, I make a disastrous date with the man I end up calling "Fish Stick." This is where some of you came in, I believe. I'd run my profile on the Internet site for a short time and had already managed to figure out that the vast majority of men who were contacting me want to have sex before they knew my name or possibly without ever knowing my name. Even worse, a fair number of them were more interested in just having phone sex. But I've never been a person who's put off by reality, so I persist.

And it isn't that I got to be this age without figuring out that men are interested in sex. Hell, I'm as interested as they are, but I'm damned if the first warm body to arrive on the scene is going to be the one I have it with.

Is it generational? Am I the only person who likes to meet someone before beginning a sexual relationship? Am I the only person who's heard of HIV? And in truth, I was perplexed because the men I know, the ones I value, who are just as interested in sex as any other man, actually prefer to like a woman they're having sex with and even to have a vague notion as to who she is before indulging...

But I digress.

I take the date with Fish Stick Man because I'm at the fuck-you stage with Internet meeting. If you're dealing with a wolf pack, best to be a wolf. Didn't call on time? Next?

Moving ahead a few days, and one very weird but fairly funny (in retrospect) date later - Dr. G. calls back. We have another lively, interesting discussion. Suddenly I hear a sharp tone. The exact tone you hear when you accidentally hit a key on your phone while talking. "Is that your phone?" he asks.
"Nope." We continue for another minute or two. We've been commiserating over the crappy way people act on this Internet site. We're at the point in the conversation where I say, "I'm at the point where I've heard from so many idiots that I'm ready to give up sex entirely..."

And the sharp tone sounds again.
"Is that your phone?" he asks again.
"No."
"Just a minute.....Oh. It's India calling. I'll call you right back, okay?"

And that's the end of Dr. G. Leading me to the conclusion that, in terms of Internet dating, even the smart people are stupid. The most galling part, of course, was that everyone on the planet knows that a call waiting signal creates a second of silence, not a beep.

As it turns out, the galling part, like the bad date, turns out to be the best part of the whole Internet dating experience in the long run. I tell KD about the "call interrupt" and she can't stop laughing. Now, every other phone call we share, one of us will hit a button on the phone and announce that "India is calling" and the two of us nearly pee our pants laughing.

So, my friends...that was basically the origin of the "I'm giving up men" blog entry. Or at least part of it. I yanked the profile. But I burned for a while over the general lack of even common courtesy.

Meanwhile...here's to the men I care about...who are interesting, street-smart, slightly insane, honest, funny, educated and not - but all intelligent, all trying to live consciously...

To: the Scorpio, to Mark, Coyo, James C., Doc, Minor Diety and the gentlemen of my acquaintance from the blogsphere - I send you a curtsy. And apologies if they are in order.

Double hump

I can be forgiven for my silence, perhaps even thanked, but that aside...

It is Wednesday. Hump day, as they say, meaning it in a good way but not that good way. As it turns out I am humped. Twice. The other way. And the day, considering it starts out at a balmy -18C, starts well enough.

I make it out of bed and do not greet the wall with my lips (steps 9-12). I shower without slipping on the wet porcelain and suffering a concussion. I make coffee without pouring boiling water on my hand. All of this before I am actually conscious. Semi-conscious a short while later, albeit unwillingly, I make it to the bus stop on time, to work on time, all this without freezing to death.

Did you know that there is a very, very narrow range of temperatures in which the human brain can function properly? They say so. And we all know, they are experts.

"As a person's body temperature falls, brain activity decreases-a serious problem when body temperature falls below 95^o. A person's ability to reason and make logical decisions becomes seriously impaired. For every drop of one degree in Fahrenheit temperature, cerebral metabolism decreases by about 3.5%. Individuals suffering from hypothermia often appear to be drunk. They may be incoherent..."

Imagine then, how my ability to make logical decisions is impaired at -18. And so, I leave the relative warmth of the office to run an errand at the drugstore and a woman steps into my path, blocking it. Her age is hard to determine...40? 50?...She is wearing a thin beige ski jacket and jeans and looks to weigh about 60 pounds. The bones of her face stand out in relief like a death's head and she's shaking from the cold.
"Are you from here?" My brain numbs as I pause in the wind.
"Yes."
And she launches into her story.
"I hitch-hiked here I never hitch-hike but he, my boyfriend, beat me up so bad and he broke my fingers..." she holds her bent, battered fingers up. She isn't wearing gloves and the skin is blue where there aren't bloody scabs." The monologue proceeds. None of the shelters have a place open for her, none except Byrony House and then not until three in the afternoon. She has her period she says, and no Tampax and had to throw her underwear away in a public bathroom and now she has to be careful how she sits and who would expect that after 14 years and...

I'm leading her back to the library and she's talking without pause. I can't stand the cold another second and I can't leave her there. As we walk, I pry twenty bucks out of my wallet and hand it over. I get her inside and tell her not to wander in the cold and to get some food after she's warm. I show her where she can use a free phone. And then I return to my errand at the drugstore, only now I'm picking up Tampax too.

Hurrying back, I trip over nothing. "Individuals suffering hypothermia may appear to be drunk." I crash forward, cleverly breaking my fall with kneecaps and the heels of my hands. One of my ankles decides it's not joining the rest of me and I sprawl on the sidewalk, dazed. A man passing by asks me if I'm ok and I give my habitual answer as I turn very slowly to a sitting position - "I'm not exactly sure yet. I think so." But the brain (poor drunk thing) cannot transmit to my body and I remain seated. He approaches cautiously, as if I might bite, and extends a hand. I take the hand, because I realize I can't get up without help, and I manage after teetering for a moment, to limp inside.

She's gone, of course. She's a junkie. At even -3C I would have known it instantly. Would have said "Sorry" with my face a neutral mask, would have swerved and kept walking. "She went to the drugstore," my student assistant says. Yep. Yep. Bet she did.

The knee of my favorite pair of jeans is ripped and underneath, there is a cut and a large, circular red scrape which is swelling. A bruise is beginning to bloom blue on the heel of my left hand and my ankle, the one I've sprained umpteen times before, is throbbing.

I sew the rip in my jeans up. Neat, even stitches with the frayed threads folded inwards. I sit at my desk doing this as if it was important to get it right. A little later, in the warm office, I'm starting to shiver and so I go home and throw the deadbolt of my apartment into locked position. As if the lock would hold.