On May 22nd, I will be reading an abbreviated version of my non-fiction piece, "Rewind" at art2art. This will be my first public reading.
Here are a few thoughts about such an auspicious occasion:
I'm a genre fiction writer
Not only am I a genre fiction writer, but I'm damn proud to be one. While I enjoy and have great respect for literary writing, it's not my calling. My stories slither in my head, and refuse to be contained in a real world setting.
However, while the tales I want to tell invoke the supernatural, they're not examples of the bad genre fiction that have trained many literary writers to turn up their noses (at least I hope they're not). To me, genre fiction is a way to write about real people struggling with real problems through the fresh perspective of a fantastical prism.
For example, three short stories I'm working on now deal with, respectively, depression, alcoholism and adultery. Supernatural elements play second fiddle to these central themes, which to me is essential in elevating genre fiction to something more than an easy escape.
I'm not a non-fiction writer
Apart from blogging, I don't write non-fiction pieces. "Rewind" is the one exception, and if you attend art2art and hear me read it (or if you convince me to give you a copy), you'll see that it's more of a documentary of my childhood experiences than a constructed work. Memories flowed to the screen, written in such a way to best express how those memories felt to me.
The response from those who have read the piece has been very positive, and it is so painfully honest that it just makes the most sense to be my first public work. This will be the one chance to see the real me before I hide behind my fictional characters forevermore.
Why I'm scared shitless to read "Rewind" in public
There will be no place to hide when I'm reading about the worst parts of my life. We conceal our pasts carefully, only sharing them reluctantly, and soon I'll be publicly revealing mine to any that will listen.
But, as I explained to someone with whom I shared the piece, "You can’t create art if you hide parts of yourself. The parts you want to hide are where the art resides."
And I just officially quoted myself. About art. Pretty damn pretentious, I must admit.
Why I'm not afraid to fail
I have come to terms with my inner critic.
He's one tough son-of-a-bitch. He hates everything I do, and ridicules it in the meanest way possible. For a long time he kept me from writing, and even after I began, he prevented me from admitting I was a writer.
I've tried my best to kill him off, but that bastard refuses to die. So I've learned to live with him with two simple mantras: "It's impossible to be perfect," and "It's okay to be human."
Keeping this in mind allows me to write without competing with the world. It doesn't matter whether I'm great or terrible. Being great or rich or famous aren't the reasons why I write.
With those heavy burdens discarded, the only way I can fail is if I stop writing.
Why I write
I'm a professional software developer, which is a reasonably lucrative trade that I also happen to enjoy. I have plenty of fulfilling interests and hobbies that keep me busy. So why write, when it's so damn hard and time-consuming and most definitely not lucrative? Any explanation I could give is a poor approximation of what Kurt Vonnegut once said:
"Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."
That is why I write. As simple as that.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
My Favorite Albums
Now that songs are just something you shuffle on your iPod, the age of the album is dead.
I have always been an album guy, and have fought the implications of the mp3 age, but even I find myself often just listening to a song or two instead of an entire album before moving on to another band. There was a time when I'd put a cd on and just listen start to finish. Back when artists had to actually worry about making enough good music to fill an album.
So in a sad celebration of a bygone age, I'd like to tell you about my favorite albums.
These albums are fairly diverse, but share some common traits. Foremost, they all have strong emotion. I react to music where an artist is showing true feelings, whatever they may be.
Emotion by itself is, of course, not enough to elevate an album to greatness. These albums also express those emotions through powerful lyrics and enthralling music. Lyrics are so important to me that I'll share a sample lyrics from each album that resonate with me.
So with no further adieu, in alphabetical order, some of my favorite albums.
Boys for Pele by Tori Amos
I have to admit, Tori Amos has always frightened me a bit, After all, if I'm to believe the album title, she wants to throw me in a volcano (google it). I was also never sure if the references she made to fairies was just being cutesy, or if she really frigging believes in Fairies.
Regardless of this (and some may say irregardless, because they're idiots), this album is phenomenal. The songs feature her on piano or harpsichord (yes!) with minimal accompaniment, and are uniformly haunting and mesmerizing. It's also a break-up album, which loads the album with the emotional outcry I yearn for in music.
The one knock I have is that the lyrics can get a bit surrealistic (what's this about the Pope's rubber robe?), but when she plays it straight, they hit like a punch to the stomach:
You say you packed my things
And divided what was mine
You're off to the mountain top
I say her skinny legs could use sun,
But now I'm wishing
For my best impression
Of my best Angie Dickinson
But now I've got to worry
Cause boy you still look pretty
When you're putting the damage on
Funeral by Arcade Fire
An album written in response to a series of funerals band members had to attend, Funeral drips with feeling. I'm a sucker for the moment in the song when the singer's voice breaks with emotion. When Win Butler sings, "Then we think of our parents, well what the hell ever happened to them?!" that's exactly what happens. Considering the inspiration for the album, it's just one powerful moment in an album full of them.
Sample lyrics:
You change all the lead
Sleepin' in my head to gold
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
The song I've been trying to sing
In the Aeroplane by the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Perhaps my favorite album of all time (and "Two Headed Boy" is a contender for my favorite song of all time). It has everything I look for, though the lyrics can lean a bit too surreal, much like Tori. Still, I love to put on my headphones and listen to this start to finish.
Sample lyrics:
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me
P.S. This album also has the two most angst-filled lines in music history, imho:
Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.
P.P.S. Their only other album really sucks. Sigh.
Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit
Depression after a hard breakup seems to be a gold mine of inspiration. That's what this album tells me. It takes some effort to get me to think, Dude, you're more fucked up than even me. You need a hug! but this album pulls it off.
But even as Scott Hutchinson wallows in misery, whether comparing himself to an emotional leper, or beseeching someone to sleep with him even if she doesn't know his name because he needs "human heat," there's the glimpse of hope that for me is the most powerful aspect of melancholy music. If the album was a series of, "Everything sucks and I'm going to kill myself," why would anyone listen to it?
Instead, we have these lyrics:
Am I ready to leap
Is there peace beneath
The roar of the Forth road bridge?
...
These manic gulls scream it's okay
Take your life give it a shake
gather up all your loose change
I think I'll save suicide for another year
O by Damien Rice
A guy with a guitar and minimal accompaniment singing his heart out. What else can I say? Bonus points because he's Irish.
Sample Lyrics:
What I am to you is not real
What I am to you, you do not need
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
You give me miles and miles of mountains
And I'll ask for the sea
Plans by Death Cab for Cutie
I could say a lot about this great album, but it's all trumped by the time in my life when I got to know it. It was as if I was meant to hear this album at that time, to share hard feelings with someone else.
So all I can say is, as my grandmother lay dying in a hospital bed, I heard these words:
'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said, that "Love is watching someone die"
Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol
Interpol is easily my favorite of the rash of "retro" bands that came out a few years ago. They took the Joy Division mantle and ran with it. The album can feel a bit cold and distant, but that can convey as much as a voice cracking with emotion.
Sample Lyrics:
You are the only person
who's completely certain
there's nothing here to be into
Undertow by Tool
I've always been a fan of heavy music, but too often it's generic and juvenile. Variations on either "fuck you" or "I'm an elf prince" set to the same old guitar riffs you've heard for the last 30 years just doesn't cut it.
Back in the early 90s, I caught a video on a late night music show, and I was absolutely stunned. The music was heavy, but unlike anything I'd heard before. The lyrics were personal and introspective. And the video itself... holy shit. A new high-water mark in heavy music had been reached in my view.
It took a while to find the album since they hadn't hit it big yet (but they soon would.) When I finally did find it, the entire album was at the same high level. And more amazing videos would follow.
Sample lyrics:
Why can't we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can't we drink forever?
I just want to start this over
I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
I will only complicate you
Trust in me and fall as well
The Wall by Pink Floyd
If I have to pick the album that has affected me most, this is it. Never is music more powerful than when it shows you that someone else has had similar experiences to you. When I first heard The Wall, I knew that I wasn't the only person that felt the way I did. You learn as you get older that everyone is struggling with demons, but when you're a teenager, everyone else seems to have it together. I knew I didn't. And apparently Roger Waters didn't have it together either.
The most important aspect to this album to me, however, is that it is a mountain you climb as you progress in your life. At least that's what happened to me. When I was an angry teenager struggling in what felt like a hostile world, the album seemed like a blueprint: If I build a wall around myself, no one can hurt me anymore. I'll be safe.
Then one day, when you're older and have gained more perspective, when you reach the peak of the mountain and see what's on the other side, you realize this is just what the album is cautioning you not to do. Roger Waters had built that wall, and it was a terrible mistake. The day I realized this, my life was changed. And that's why this is such an amazing album.
Sample lyrics:
All alone, or in two's
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall
With All Due Respect by The Young Dubliners
This is an album of classic Irish folk songs (and a couple Pogues songs) done as rock songs. Being Irish, and a lover of Irish music, this one is a slam dunk for me. Especially since Irish music has the emotion I seek in spades.
Sample lyrics:
On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And said let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day
...
Oh I loved too much and by such, by such
Is happiness thrown away
(I have to say I love the repetition of "by such," which implies to me such emotion that the singer is catching his breath and has to start the line over. Of course, it's probably just filling a measure, but I prefer my interpretation.)
The consistent greatness dilemma
Several of my favorite bands are not on this list, and these bands of course have made some of my favorite albums. The problem is, I can't pick one of their albums as a favorite. So instead of listing of several albums by each band, here are a bunch of bands that have too many great albums to list (and some that suck, so be warned):
Eels
The Frames
Hayden
Iron Maiden
Jethro Tull
Okkervil River
Radiohead
Josh Ritter
Bruce Springteen
I have always been an album guy, and have fought the implications of the mp3 age, but even I find myself often just listening to a song or two instead of an entire album before moving on to another band. There was a time when I'd put a cd on and just listen start to finish. Back when artists had to actually worry about making enough good music to fill an album.
So in a sad celebration of a bygone age, I'd like to tell you about my favorite albums.
These albums are fairly diverse, but share some common traits. Foremost, they all have strong emotion. I react to music where an artist is showing true feelings, whatever they may be.
Emotion by itself is, of course, not enough to elevate an album to greatness. These albums also express those emotions through powerful lyrics and enthralling music. Lyrics are so important to me that I'll share a sample lyrics from each album that resonate with me.
So with no further adieu, in alphabetical order, some of my favorite albums.
Boys for Pele by Tori Amos
I have to admit, Tori Amos has always frightened me a bit, After all, if I'm to believe the album title, she wants to throw me in a volcano (google it). I was also never sure if the references she made to fairies was just being cutesy, or if she really frigging believes in Fairies.
Regardless of this (and some may say irregardless, because they're idiots), this album is phenomenal. The songs feature her on piano or harpsichord (yes!) with minimal accompaniment, and are uniformly haunting and mesmerizing. It's also a break-up album, which loads the album with the emotional outcry I yearn for in music.
The one knock I have is that the lyrics can get a bit surrealistic (what's this about the Pope's rubber robe?), but when she plays it straight, they hit like a punch to the stomach:
You say you packed my things
And divided what was mine
You're off to the mountain top
I say her skinny legs could use sun,
But now I'm wishing
For my best impression
Of my best Angie Dickinson
But now I've got to worry
Cause boy you still look pretty
When you're putting the damage on
Funeral by Arcade Fire
An album written in response to a series of funerals band members had to attend, Funeral drips with feeling. I'm a sucker for the moment in the song when the singer's voice breaks with emotion. When Win Butler sings, "Then we think of our parents, well what the hell ever happened to them?!" that's exactly what happens. Considering the inspiration for the album, it's just one powerful moment in an album full of them.
Sample lyrics:
You change all the lead
Sleepin' in my head to gold
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
The song I've been trying to sing
In the Aeroplane by the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Perhaps my favorite album of all time (and "Two Headed Boy" is a contender for my favorite song of all time). It has everything I look for, though the lyrics can lean a bit too surreal, much like Tori. Still, I love to put on my headphones and listen to this start to finish.
Sample lyrics:
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me
P.S. This album also has the two most angst-filled lines in music history, imho:
Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.
P.P.S. Their only other album really sucks. Sigh.
Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit
Depression after a hard breakup seems to be a gold mine of inspiration. That's what this album tells me. It takes some effort to get me to think, Dude, you're more fucked up than even me. You need a hug! but this album pulls it off.
But even as Scott Hutchinson wallows in misery, whether comparing himself to an emotional leper, or beseeching someone to sleep with him even if she doesn't know his name because he needs "human heat," there's the glimpse of hope that for me is the most powerful aspect of melancholy music. If the album was a series of, "Everything sucks and I'm going to kill myself," why would anyone listen to it?
Instead, we have these lyrics:
Am I ready to leap
Is there peace beneath
The roar of the Forth road bridge?
...
These manic gulls scream it's okay
Take your life give it a shake
gather up all your loose change
I think I'll save suicide for another year
O by Damien Rice
A guy with a guitar and minimal accompaniment singing his heart out. What else can I say? Bonus points because he's Irish.
Sample Lyrics:
What I am to you is not real
What I am to you, you do not need
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
You give me miles and miles of mountains
And I'll ask for the sea
Plans by Death Cab for Cutie
I could say a lot about this great album, but it's all trumped by the time in my life when I got to know it. It was as if I was meant to hear this album at that time, to share hard feelings with someone else.
So all I can say is, as my grandmother lay dying in a hospital bed, I heard these words:
'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said, that "Love is watching someone die"
Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol
Interpol is easily my favorite of the rash of "retro" bands that came out a few years ago. They took the Joy Division mantle and ran with it. The album can feel a bit cold and distant, but that can convey as much as a voice cracking with emotion.
Sample Lyrics:
You are the only person
who's completely certain
there's nothing here to be into
Undertow by Tool
I've always been a fan of heavy music, but too often it's generic and juvenile. Variations on either "fuck you" or "I'm an elf prince" set to the same old guitar riffs you've heard for the last 30 years just doesn't cut it.
Back in the early 90s, I caught a video on a late night music show, and I was absolutely stunned. The music was heavy, but unlike anything I'd heard before. The lyrics were personal and introspective. And the video itself... holy shit. A new high-water mark in heavy music had been reached in my view.
It took a while to find the album since they hadn't hit it big yet (but they soon would.) When I finally did find it, the entire album was at the same high level. And more amazing videos would follow.
Sample lyrics:
Why can't we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can't we drink forever?
I just want to start this over
I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
I will only complicate you
Trust in me and fall as well
The Wall by Pink Floyd
If I have to pick the album that has affected me most, this is it. Never is music more powerful than when it shows you that someone else has had similar experiences to you. When I first heard The Wall, I knew that I wasn't the only person that felt the way I did. You learn as you get older that everyone is struggling with demons, but when you're a teenager, everyone else seems to have it together. I knew I didn't. And apparently Roger Waters didn't have it together either.
The most important aspect to this album to me, however, is that it is a mountain you climb as you progress in your life. At least that's what happened to me. When I was an angry teenager struggling in what felt like a hostile world, the album seemed like a blueprint: If I build a wall around myself, no one can hurt me anymore. I'll be safe.
Then one day, when you're older and have gained more perspective, when you reach the peak of the mountain and see what's on the other side, you realize this is just what the album is cautioning you not to do. Roger Waters had built that wall, and it was a terrible mistake. The day I realized this, my life was changed. And that's why this is such an amazing album.
Sample lyrics:
All alone, or in two's
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall
With All Due Respect by The Young Dubliners
This is an album of classic Irish folk songs (and a couple Pogues songs) done as rock songs. Being Irish, and a lover of Irish music, this one is a slam dunk for me. Especially since Irish music has the emotion I seek in spades.
Sample lyrics:
On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And said let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day
...
Oh I loved too much and by such, by such
Is happiness thrown away
(I have to say I love the repetition of "by such," which implies to me such emotion that the singer is catching his breath and has to start the line over. Of course, it's probably just filling a measure, but I prefer my interpretation.)
The consistent greatness dilemma
Several of my favorite bands are not on this list, and these bands of course have made some of my favorite albums. The problem is, I can't pick one of their albums as a favorite. So instead of listing of several albums by each band, here are a bunch of bands that have too many great albums to list (and some that suck, so be warned):
Eels
The Frames
Hayden
Iron Maiden
Jethro Tull
Okkervil River
Radiohead
Josh Ritter
Bruce Springteen
Monday, April 5, 2010
Tough Love for My Testicles
It was an event that has to happen every so often. Considering it's been eight years since the last time, it was overdue.
I had a physical.
Now, I have a queue of excellent excuses for why it's taken so long to get back to a doctor's office.
There was how my previous doctor canceled an appointment, leading to me procrastinating before making a new one. After all, I thought we had a special connection, and he went and just canceled. Was I supposed to go running back to his arms without letting him feel a slight chill from my cold shoulder?
Of course, he decided to join Doctors Without Borders (or something similar, hell if I can remember) before I could go crawling back, so that ended that relationship.
A replacement doctor took his place, so I was all set. Almost. Turns out, Dr. I-Can't-Remember-Her-Name-Because-She-Never-Saw-Me wasn't setup with my insurance yet, so I'd have to wait until her paperwork went through for another physical.
Then she left the hospital, and I was a man without a doctor.
Most people would rectify the situation, especially after the nagging letters started coming from the insurance company about needing a new PCP. But I had been burned twice, and my heart was still tender. I was in no rush to race back to a medical relationship that would leave me feeling so ignored and, yes, unloved.
Add on to this the fact that the worst news of my life is most likely to come in a doctor's office, and my subconscious mind had no problem whispering thoughts of procrastination into my hospital-phobic head.
So eight years passed.
Now, when it comes to medical mentality, my wife and I are polar opposites. When she gets a splinter, she wants to run to the hospital to make sure it won't make its way to her heart and kill her in her sleep. And if I were to cut off a hand, I would most likely explain to her, "If I just rinse it with water, it should be fine."
(This showed itself in one of the more horrific events of my college years. I managed to put a gash in head by being a total jackass. It involved a high jump down a flight of stairs with a low overhang. As I sat with blood literally gushing down my face, the EMT tried to take me to the hospital. When I attempted to talk my way out of going, he simply stated, "Do what you want, but you'll have to sign a waiver." Only the threat of Northeastern being free and clear of the lawsuit I had in the back of my mind made me agree to going to the Emergency Room. That low overhang was their fault, damn it, not my idiocy and deciding to jump down flights of stairs.)
My wife goes to a women's clinic, and is quite fond of her doctor. She's also sick of me blowing off routine medical checkups. This led to her making me an appointment.
So I went, and here's what happened.
I arrived at the clinic feeling a bit awkward. After all, it's a practice for women. Cathy had assured me that husbands are welcome, but when I arrived, the place was, as they say in French, sans sausage. I felt like the creepy guy in a movie that's trying to find his wife in a woman's shelter who had run away after years of abuse.
Pushing that feeling aside, the signing-in/waiting room process was quite nice, actually. Then a friendly medical assistant took me to the "pod" and did the whole height/weight measurement.
(I was pretty happy at this point, since Dr. "I'm going to go save the world" had basically called me a tubby son-of-a-bitch when we last met, and now I was 40 lbs lighter. This was also my first line of defense when this doctor made the old BMI reference and alluded to the fact I was still a tubby son-of-a-bitch. The "I just lost a lot of weight," angle was a sure-fire way out of the healthy living speech I'd heard way too many times already.)
So Dr. Y arrived after a long wait, and things went well. She did the usual interview. Family medical history, current medical issues, etc. We discussed my least favorite health topic, the numerous lipomas that dot my torso and arms, a chronic source of minor pain. She gave me the same advice I'd heard before: they were so small and numerous as to no merit removal unless they grew bigger or hurt more. No surprises there.
We moved on to the disrobing part of the festivities. There's a certain ritual to this process, one I almost disrupted by being ready to simply get naked as soon as she told me I'd need to put on a johnny. (When a woman tells me to get naked, I don't dilly-dally.) Then the voice of reason in my head reminded me that is was not appropriate to remove clothes yet, and waited for her to leave before I switched attire.
When she returned after what I have to assume to be another patient visit (it took a while), the typical poking and prodding ensued. Then she started talking about my testicles, and things went downhill fast.
My testicles are, by and large, my good buddies. Now Dr Y was telling me about all the horrible things that could happen to them, with cancer being at the top of the list. This kind of information makes me giggle nervously. (That's right, I literally start giggling. Sigh.)
She then informed me she was going to teach me how to give myself a testicle examination. I had heard tips in the past about this process, but this was going to be a show-and-tell.
It started innocuously enough, with her feeling the lymph nodes in the crooks between my legs and crotch, having me feel them as well. Then she proceeded to the Boys.
In my memory, I swear she said, "You really have to roll them around." She might have used a different wording than that, but she proceeded to treat them like a pair of marbles free to roll around in sack. My giggling really kicked in now, and I fought the urge to scream, "THEY'RE ATTACHED IN THERE!!!"
Now, one question I've been asked a couple times by women is, is there a risk of getting... "excited" by this attention? For me, the answer is no for two simple reasons:
(And also, I know every women reading my bitching is thinking, "At least you don't need an exam that involves a speculum!" I do not, and I'm very grateful about this. And I'm sorry you do.)
So anyway, back to my testicles getting worked over. The process was so uncomfortable for me that after she was finished, it took me a minute to realize that she had not proclaimed the Boys riddled with malignancy. Hurray, little buddies! You're not (currently) trying to kill me.
This brought us to the end of our little adventure. She told me to get dressed and head to the lab area to get blood drawn and a tetanus and pertussis shot. The lab tech proceeded to draw the blood and was ready to send me packing before I pointed out that the tetanus shot was checked off as well. (Gotta be on your toes at a hospital.)
Then I was off to the rest of my day, a bit sore, but otherwise in good health.
I may even do it again before eight years pass.
PS: That tetanus shot is hurting like a mother fucker right now...
I had a physical.
Now, I have a queue of excellent excuses for why it's taken so long to get back to a doctor's office.
There was how my previous doctor canceled an appointment, leading to me procrastinating before making a new one. After all, I thought we had a special connection, and he went and just canceled. Was I supposed to go running back to his arms without letting him feel a slight chill from my cold shoulder?
Of course, he decided to join Doctors Without Borders (or something similar, hell if I can remember) before I could go crawling back, so that ended that relationship.
A replacement doctor took his place, so I was all set. Almost. Turns out, Dr. I-Can't-Remember-Her-Name-Because-She-Never-Saw-Me wasn't setup with my insurance yet, so I'd have to wait until her paperwork went through for another physical.
Then she left the hospital, and I was a man without a doctor.
Most people would rectify the situation, especially after the nagging letters started coming from the insurance company about needing a new PCP. But I had been burned twice, and my heart was still tender. I was in no rush to race back to a medical relationship that would leave me feeling so ignored and, yes, unloved.
Add on to this the fact that the worst news of my life is most likely to come in a doctor's office, and my subconscious mind had no problem whispering thoughts of procrastination into my hospital-phobic head.
So eight years passed.
Now, when it comes to medical mentality, my wife and I are polar opposites. When she gets a splinter, she wants to run to the hospital to make sure it won't make its way to her heart and kill her in her sleep. And if I were to cut off a hand, I would most likely explain to her, "If I just rinse it with water, it should be fine."
(This showed itself in one of the more horrific events of my college years. I managed to put a gash in head by being a total jackass. It involved a high jump down a flight of stairs with a low overhang. As I sat with blood literally gushing down my face, the EMT tried to take me to the hospital. When I attempted to talk my way out of going, he simply stated, "Do what you want, but you'll have to sign a waiver." Only the threat of Northeastern being free and clear of the lawsuit I had in the back of my mind made me agree to going to the Emergency Room. That low overhang was their fault, damn it, not my idiocy and deciding to jump down flights of stairs.)
My wife goes to a women's clinic, and is quite fond of her doctor. She's also sick of me blowing off routine medical checkups. This led to her making me an appointment.
So I went, and here's what happened.
I arrived at the clinic feeling a bit awkward. After all, it's a practice for women. Cathy had assured me that husbands are welcome, but when I arrived, the place was, as they say in French, sans sausage. I felt like the creepy guy in a movie that's trying to find his wife in a woman's shelter who had run away after years of abuse.
Pushing that feeling aside, the signing-in/waiting room process was quite nice, actually. Then a friendly medical assistant took me to the "pod" and did the whole height/weight measurement.
(I was pretty happy at this point, since Dr. "I'm going to go save the world" had basically called me a tubby son-of-a-bitch when we last met, and now I was 40 lbs lighter. This was also my first line of defense when this doctor made the old BMI reference and alluded to the fact I was still a tubby son-of-a-bitch. The "I just lost a lot of weight," angle was a sure-fire way out of the healthy living speech I'd heard way too many times already.)
So Dr. Y arrived after a long wait, and things went well. She did the usual interview. Family medical history, current medical issues, etc. We discussed my least favorite health topic, the numerous lipomas that dot my torso and arms, a chronic source of minor pain. She gave me the same advice I'd heard before: they were so small and numerous as to no merit removal unless they grew bigger or hurt more. No surprises there.
We moved on to the disrobing part of the festivities. There's a certain ritual to this process, one I almost disrupted by being ready to simply get naked as soon as she told me I'd need to put on a johnny. (When a woman tells me to get naked, I don't dilly-dally.) Then the voice of reason in my head reminded me that is was not appropriate to remove clothes yet, and waited for her to leave before I switched attire.
When she returned after what I have to assume to be another patient visit (it took a while), the typical poking and prodding ensued. Then she started talking about my testicles, and things went downhill fast.
My testicles are, by and large, my good buddies. Now Dr Y was telling me about all the horrible things that could happen to them, with cancer being at the top of the list. This kind of information makes me giggle nervously. (That's right, I literally start giggling. Sigh.)
She then informed me she was going to teach me how to give myself a testicle examination. I had heard tips in the past about this process, but this was going to be a show-and-tell.
It started innocuously enough, with her feeling the lymph nodes in the crooks between my legs and crotch, having me feel them as well. Then she proceeded to the Boys.
In my memory, I swear she said, "You really have to roll them around." She might have used a different wording than that, but she proceeded to treat them like a pair of marbles free to roll around in sack. My giggling really kicked in now, and I fought the urge to scream, "THEY'RE ATTACHED IN THERE!!!"
Now, one question I've been asked a couple times by women is, is there a risk of getting... "excited" by this attention? For me, the answer is no for two simple reasons:
- There is nothing sexy about a doctor's office and a cancer exam. I don't care if a naked super model was giving the Boys a look-over, Mr. Happy is not going to salute.
- While some guys may dig ball abuse (and some go as far as to pay for the service, I've heard), my little buddies do not like being worked over. It only makes me giggle nervously.
(And also, I know every women reading my bitching is thinking, "At least you don't need an exam that involves a speculum!" I do not, and I'm very grateful about this. And I'm sorry you do.)
So anyway, back to my testicles getting worked over. The process was so uncomfortable for me that after she was finished, it took me a minute to realize that she had not proclaimed the Boys riddled with malignancy. Hurray, little buddies! You're not (currently) trying to kill me.
This brought us to the end of our little adventure. She told me to get dressed and head to the lab area to get blood drawn and a tetanus and pertussis shot. The lab tech proceeded to draw the blood and was ready to send me packing before I pointed out that the tetanus shot was checked off as well. (Gotta be on your toes at a hospital.)
Then I was off to the rest of my day, a bit sore, but otherwise in good health.
I may even do it again before eight years pass.
PS: That tetanus shot is hurting like a mother fucker right now...
Posts
