The Serial Killer Incident

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:58:15 -0400

My husband’s friend recently became obsessed with mountain biking, a pastime that involves riding an expensive bicycle aggressively through the woods at literally breakneck speeds. I take it from his descriptions that the object of the game is to fall frequently and hard -- the more bumps and blood, the better. Maybe it’s the feel of the wind in his thinning hair or maybe it’s just the high dopamine-to-contusion ratio, but I just don’t get the appeal.
My sport of choice is set on a similar stage but until one recent day it was much less dramatic. I was about four miles into my daily hike with my dog Arlo in a local, bucolic state park. A large and relatively undiscovered refuge, it’s not unusual to traverse miles without spying another human being. But on this particular excursion, having not seen one person in the hour since crossing the trailhead, I came to the conclusion I was about to be murdered. My perpetrator was a man who’d suddenly appeared ahead of me on the trail. I was sure I’d seen him earlier in the parking lot. Had he followed me?
I decided to let my husband know, via text message, about my imminent demise. I deftly thumb-typed: “Creepy redheaded guy standing in trail. Smoking cig, wearing sandals wth brown socks.”
My husband replied: “K.”
He is a man of few words and I’m a woman of too many -- it’s one of our many complementary personality traits -- but “K?” That’s all he had to say? I added some drama:
“Serial killer!” I wrote.
“Take picture,” he responded.
Insulted, I thumbed back: “Should I tell the killer to smile and say, ‘Forensics!’ before or after he eviscerates me?”
There was a long pause before I received his text.
“Probably before. Bttr safe thn sorry.”
Wishing I had made my husband squirm a little by telling him the guy was wearing a hockey mask and carrying a scythe, I shoved my phone into my pocket and lengthened Arlo’s leash, chirping a pleasant, “Hi!” as we walked past the man. He didn’t respond.
I turned around to apprise myself of his whereabouts but he hadn’t moved. The second time I peeked back he was standing motionless; the third time I (not-so-casually) turned my head he had disappeared. I scanned the woods as far as I could but I only saw more woods, so I picked up the pace and headed back towards the parking lot, which was miles away. I searched around for any witnesses to my murder but no such luck. Then I looked hopefully at my companion: at 77 dog years old, protecting me is not foremost in Arlo’s mind. His preferred activities these days are tail wagging and sniffing for bacon. I wondered if he would remain by my lifeless body until it was discovered by either a lone jogger, a woman on horseback or a group of fifth graders on a science field trip.
About a mile later I was relieved to see a woman and her dog. I nodded towards Arlo: “He’s friendly!” I called out. “He’s not!” said the woman of her mean-faced, pony-sized dog.
Was her dog foaming at the mouth or was I just imagining it? I stopped in my tracks and tried to put some space between her animal and us, snapping in the seventeen-foot retractable leash Arlo uses to walk me. But like a one-lane road, the going was too narrow for either dog/human couple to pass without incident; one of us would have to pull over if we were ever planning on leaving the woods.
I thought she should make the first move -- she was the one walking Cujo -- but she didn’t. She just smiled. That’s when I noticed her dog wasn’t on a leash. I jumped off-trail and bushwhacked a wide berth in order to avoid them. She called to me: “My other dog is very friendly but I can’t walk them both at the same time!” I’m glad you chose to bring your 175-pound werewolf instead, I thought as a low branch whipped my face.
Hiking at a crisp clip, I was still in the belly of the park. Once I was far enough to have forgotten about the killer and the killer dog, I was struck by how empty and quiet the forest was. There was no noise other than an occasional fly buzzing and a breeze exhaling through the leaves. That’s when I saw the mountain lion.
At least I think it was a mountain lion. It was about one hundred feet away and partially obscured by underbrush and saplings but I could tell it definitely wasn’t a deer. Although it had similar buttery coloring, it had a less startled gait. Unbothered by Arlo and me, this animal had to be a large predator.
I glanced at Arlo to see if his spidey sense had kicked in but by the time I turned back, the animal had sauntered away into dense brush. I grabbed my cell phone to call my husband but my battery had died during the serial killer incident.
I remembered reading about people getting mauled by mountain lions -- usually in state parks -- and I wondered about the protocol in the event of an encounter. Should I appear submissive or aggressive? Avert or make contact? Should I wave a stick and yell loudly in German? Wait: maybe those rules were for bear encounters only. I suddenly remembered an episode of The Flintstones, when Fred takes some kids camping at Rock Canyon and is stalked by a bear. In order to avert attack he decides to play dead, but the bear breaks down in tears over Fred’s seemingly lifeless body. Beside itself with grief, the bear holds a proper burial for Fred and salutes somberly as he tosses him off the nearest cliff. I knew there weren’t any cliffs nearby but I didn’t want to take any chances. Once again I found myself hightailing it toward my car.
About an hour later Arlo and I made our way out of the forest and through the long meadow and, finally, back to the parking lot. I was pleased to have averted pastoral disaster, but my relief was short-lived: my serial killer had arrived there before me. Having tracked victims in these woods before, he surely knew a shortcut. Wait a minute: he was waving to a woman in a car that was pulling into a parking space. She apologized for being so late, then jumped out and gave him an enormous hug.
As I retrieved a rag from my car to wipe mud off Arlo’s paws, I saw the woman with the killer dog trudging up an adjacent hill. The poor animal was so arthritic that the woman was practically carrying him. How could I not have noticed? She waved me a friendly hello. I waved back sheepishly.
And on the other side of the lot there was a man handing out fliers for his lost dog -- a “lion-sized” golden retriever named Simba. How sad, I thought, until I realized I might have some helpful information to share with the owner about his mountain lion’s dog’s whereabouts.
Walking in the woods, it seems, has its own perils -- hunger (if you forget a Kashi bar), mosquito bites and bad cell service all come to mind. But unlike mountain biking, I wasn’t in danger of falling onto a protruding root; I was only in jeopardy of falling prey to my own hyperbolic imagination. Next time, I decided, I would take my husband with me.
Bttr safe thn sorry.

© 2009 Julie Curtis. All rights reserved

Failure to Comply

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

“You’re firing me?” I stammered. “But, why? How? It’s so… unexpected.”
The HR lady seemed bored and blinked slowly, like an enormous predator sizing up its inevitable victim. I blathered on.
“It just seems like a bad joke, you know?”
Silence. Apparently, the HR lady did not know.
“You seem surprised,” she said.
I couldn’t respond. I was out of saliva.
This whole thing had to be a mix-up. Maybe she was crazy? But that would imply she wasn’t in her right mind, and HR ladies are always in their right minds; it’s the rest of us who are unhinged.
“But nobody warned me,” I said.
She cocked her head. “Warned you?”
I closed my eyes and willed my tears to back off.
“Have you heard the one about the two brothers and the cat?” I asked a little too loudly.
The HR lady’s eyes widened as she shook her head.
There are these two brothers who live together. One has to go on a business trip and asks the other one to take care of his cat while he’s gone. When he reaches his destination he calls his brother to check up on the cat.
“The cat’s dead,” says the cat-sitting brother.
The HR lady seemed alarmed by the tone the story was taking and sat up even straighter. She had that “maybe I should call security” look in her eyes.
But I was determined for my show to go on:
Well, the traveling brother was devastated by this news and angry with his brother for the way he had conveyed it. He told his brother that he could have at least given him some warning. “For example,” he said, “the first time I called, you could’ve told me ‘the cat’s on the roof and I can’t get her down.’ That way I could’ve anticipated what might happen. The next time I called you could’ve told me she’d fallen off the roof, broken all her legs and was in surgery. And the third time I would’ve been prepared for hearing she was dead.”
I took a moment to compose myself, as I was nearing both the punch line and the raw nerve adjacent to it. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and hit my mark:
The cat-sitting brother understood what his grieving sibling had to say. He apologized for his callousness and they moved on to another topic.
“So anyway, how’s mom?” asked the traveling brother.
His brother answered: “Mom’s on the roof and I can’t get her down.”
The HR lady chuckled and shook her head. Then she thought about it a few more seconds and laughed a little harder. She guffawed and slapped her massive thigh. Still giggling, she shifted her position, unpeeled some post-it notes and scribbled for a while. I peeked: it was my joke. In shorthand.
I glanced at the boilerplate document in my hand, skipping to the line at the bottom I’d been trying not to read since she’d nonchalantly slid it toward me after I’d sat down. I had a feeling something bad was lurking down there. I was right: “Failure to comply with these stipulations has resulted in your termination from the Organization.”
I had worked at the Organization -- a locally based, international nonprofit -- for almost five years, writing fundraising material and obsequious thank you letters to wealthy donors. I had hated my boss, but I didn’t think he hated me back. The HR lady drummed three heavily polished red fingertips on her desk: dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum.
She slid the strategically placed tissue box closer to my side of the table. Then she waded through the slow and inexorable process of firing me.
She glanced at some notes in my thick file and I tried to avert my eyes from the bread loaf-like ankles that were rising from her navy blue pumps.
Wait a second. I had a file? There were notes in it? It was thick?
“Your supervisor’s talked to you many times about your work.”
“Isn’t that what he’s supposed to talk to me about?”
Her eyes narrowed. “He said your product is unsatisfactory.”
“My product? He did?”
I scrambled to make sense of this new version of my history. When did he say my work was ‘unsatisfactory?’ And, why?
My boss had told me a few times that I had to try harder to eliminate careless errors -- what he’d referred to as “type-oes.” (For emphasis he bent two fingers on each hand, claw-like, into quotation marks.) But I’d actively avoided listening to anything he said because I couldn’t stand the nauseating sound of his neurotic hyper-swallowing, which was some kind of alimentary twitch.
But he had never mentioned I was doing so badly that I was in jeopardy of losing my job. Who gets fired for “type-oes?” Maybe the guy who writes dictionaries, but I couldn’t.
Could I?
Admittedly I’d been going through a rough patch, which I assumed wasn’t uncommon for an employee of any company. I reminded the HR lady about the Lyme disease from which I’d suffered a few months before. I also mentioned the fact that I had actually marched into her office -- in the one exquisite moment of forethought I’d ever had in my life -- holding the proverbial letter from my doctor, which outlined how the disease had disseminated into my central nervous system. This has an impact on higher level functioning, which, it seems, enables you to remember most of your children’s names some of the time, as well as to remove cups of coffee from the roof of the car before leaving the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. It’s also a necessary attribute for writers, even those prone to too many “type-oes.”
She waived away the Lyme disease with a great sweep of her ursine hand. “We’ll allow you to remain on the Organization’s health plan at our expense until Friday.”
It was Wednesday.
“Oh.” I nodded and counted simultaneously. Well, that’s almost generous, I thought. “Next Friday?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you mean the day after tomorrow?” Not so generous.
“At our expense.” she reaffirmed.
I tried to calculate how much it would cost the Organization to cover my medical expenses for less than 48 hours but I had neither the computing skills nor the words to express anything. I just blinked my eyes harder to suppress a flood of undignified tears.
She removed a page from her neat pile. “Sign at the ‘X’ if you choose to accept your severance package. If you do sign, you waive your right to contest this termination agreement, as well as any grievances you might have toward the Organization, at any point in the future.”
How could it be a termination agreement if I didn’t agree to it? I decided against asking her any rhetorical questions. There was a pen, placed before I’d walked in, lying dangerously close to the document. The staging was straight out of an HR manual: Have a pen at the ready in case the employee is inclined to sign. A severance package… I almost snapped it up; it was tempting to walk out with some cash and never look back at this particular nightmare.
Then I read the dollar amount they were offering.
It was the moment I regretted having never gone to clown school. If I had, and had taken, say, “Clowning 101,” I would’ve known what to do in that once-in-a-lifetime moment when only the perfect reaction is required. I would have casually sipped a mouthful of water at the precise moment I looked at my severance package, and I would have done a spit-take all over her blouse.
But I didn’t do a thing other than look at her to see if she was the one telling the joke.
“So,” she continued almost giddily, “We are obliged to inform you to consult with a lawyer before signing.”
“Thanks for the head’s up.”
She nodded and tapped the document.
Packing the few belongings from my desk, I thought about the fact that I was about to be an unemployed, 40-something, newly divorced mother of two teenaged children. As far as future work prospects were concerned, I thought I’d stay away from the non-profit sector, as it didn’t seem to jibe with my particular skill set. Maybe it was time to consider clown school.
Then it struck me that tomorrow morning I would not have to listen to my boss swallow; I would not I have to churn out another endless stream of creativity-crushing thank you letters. And I had not signed the termination agreement.
As I exited the parking lot I lowered my car window and glanced back at the building. Along with a colleague, the HR Lady pushed open the big glass door to a perfect early May afternoon. It was lunchtime and they headed toward a nearby deli. She was telling her friend a story, the end of which sent both into paroxysms of laughter. I smiled, too, because I knew the story. It had a very good punch line.

© 2009 Julie Curtis. All rights reserved

Bad Space (a short story)

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:51:31 -0400

Maya slipped the DVDs through the “deposit here” slot in the video store’s glass entrance. One chore down, she thought. Shivering and slightly underdressed for the chilly November morning, she headed quickly to the new hardware store next door to buy a power tool part for her husband. He had written its name neatly in all-caps (FIFTY-GRIT SANDING DISKS) on a yellow sticky note so she wouldn’t buy the wrong one. Again.
Afterwards -- in celebration of successfully completing two tasks in one stop -- Maya decided to buy a nice bottle of wine to accompany dinner. Bracing herself against the knifing wind, she briskly walked the length of the strip mall to the liquor store, all the way at the other end. She was delighted with her imminent three-stores-in-one-stop trifecta: sometimes life’s insignificant triumphs made up for a dearth of greater ones.
It was hot-toddy warm inside and smelled the way all liquor stores do; like damp cardboard and old beer. It struck Maya that the hardware store had smelled exactly the way all hardware stores do as well; like turpentine or linseed oil. She wondered if there was a particular smell at the video store other than that of the surly owner’s unwashed scalp.
Lost in thought while turning her small cart into the narrow Chilean wine aisle, she accidentally nicked the side of a cardboard display and sent several bottles of Shiraz crashing to the floor. She flailed her arms into the glass avalanche to no avail. Mortified, Maya stared at the shards embedded in a red river of wine, now seeping into the carpet. She tried to help the guys clean up but she was told not to worry about it, please. She sensed they wanted her to just leave.
Maya hastily completed the purchase and was relieved she wasn’t charged for the fallen wine. She headed toward the door feeling a distinctly wet-ish cold in her feet and looked down to see bright red sneakers where her dirty white ones used to be. Wiggling her toes as she walked out the door, Maya saw a line of pink bubbles foaming in the creases.
She didn’t immediately see the woman who was squeezing out her car door. She had parked in a tiny wedge of a parking space right next to Maya’s car, and now Maya’s car was in imminent danger of getting dented. It was all she needed.
She headed to her car’s rescue, her burgundy sneakers squishing and sloshing beneath her. Nearing the scene she decided that the extremely overweight woman had parked there just because it was the space closest to all the stores. Maya didn’t care that the woman was somewhat elderly and possibly infirm. She did care that her own toes were beginning to freeze. But Maya slowed when she saw the woman had finally emerged from her vehicle without needing the Jaws of Life. Wearing a threadbare, salmon-colored muumuu without socks or a sweater, the woman heaved herself around the back of the car -- an old, oddly familiar sky-blue Impala -- to the passenger side and opened the door. By then Maya was close enough to see more than she wanted of the woman’s legs, which were amorphous and embroidered with a network of blue, yellow and purple veins.
The woman barked into the passenger-side window: “Ma, I told you not to take off your oxygen mask yet! I gotta unfold it first!” and lit a cigarette with an expert flick of a hot pink disposable lighter. A gray ribbon of smoke curled out her nose and settled around her head. She grumbled under her breath and opened the back door, making short work of unfurling a walker with yellow tennis ball shoes affixed to the bottom of each aluminum leg.
Indignation seized Maya and then in an instant disappeared when she realized she, Maya, had parked in a “Handicapped Parking Only” space. How could she possibly have done that? The lot must have been completely rearranged, maybe after the hardware store opened? Oblivious to the new retina burning neon yellow lines and enormous blue and white signage when she drove in, she had parked in the “Handicapped Parking Only” space right next to the regular spaces.
The woman gave Maya’s Honda a rough smack with her doughy hand and hissed, “Asshole” as she passed its front grille.
Maya wanted to turn around and duck back into the liquor store and hide but she froze, unwilling to revisit that particular humiliation. Barely breathing, she stood motionless until mother and daughter trudged away from the car.
The Impala was just like the one Maya’s father’s late cousin Shirley used to drive thirty years ago. Shirley was also enormously fat; so fat she carried her own outsized blood pressure cuff to doctors’ offices because the standard ones didn’t fit her. It was Shirley’s right and privilege, she believed, to park as close as possible to any store since the prospect of walking more than twenty feet might cause her to have a heart attack/stroke or seizure and die. Unfortunately her girth alone didn’t qualify her for the coveted little blue and white tag to hang on her rearview mirror, so she parked illegally, risking being ticketed or worse, towed.
Shirley remained undeterred by those pesky parking signs, which became ubiquitous toward the end of her life. Defiantly, she continued to park wherever the hell she wanted to. And she never got a ticket. Not one. It had been something of a family mystery.
Shirley was always the steadfast passenger in the sky blue Impala; Milton, her reticent and long-suffering husband of 50 years did the driving. Thinking back, Maya couldn’t remember him ever uttering a single word -- maybe he wasn’t allowed. Shirley and Milton lived in Brooklyn but often visited the rest of the family, which was scattered around New York City and its environs.
One day when Maya was in ninth grade, Shirley and Milton were visiting Maya’s Aunt Lenore (who lived nearby) and Maya saw the Impala swing into the parking lot of a Genovese Drug Store. Standing in line with a group of friends at an adjacent movie theater, she wasn’t eager to catch Shirley’s eye; that two hundred and eighty-pound Jean Naté hug was something she went out of her way to avoid under any circumstance, especially with an audience of her fifteen year-old peers. Maya reached the ticket booth and bought a matinee seat for “Billy Jack.” She turned and snuck a peek at Shirley and Milton leaving their car, predictably parked in a “Handicapped Parking Only” space. They moved together lava-like toward the store’s entrance.
That’s when she noticed a police cruiser nosing its way into the row where the Impala was parked. It was finally over for poor Shirley and Milton. Feeling a guilty tug of family loyalty, Maya considered throwing herself, Secret Service-like, in between the police car and the old couple. Thankfully she didn’t need to: Shirley’s swift action belied her size.
“Milton,” she growled without looking at the police car inching toward them, “Schlep your leg.”
On cue and without missing a beat, Milton contorted his expression from that of chronic compliance to one of exquisite pain as he dragged his leg, now lifeless from the sudden-onset limp he’d acquired. Shirley wedged her big hand beneath his armpit in an act of spousal support. She gave the cop a dismissive wave and he drove on. Together Shirley and Milton schlepped into the Genovese drug store like two practiced Vaudevillians, having artfully dodged another parking bullet.
Mystery solved.
Maya’s attention snapped back to the woman in the Muumuu, who flat out glared at her as she flicked her cigarette to the curb. Maya didn’t know how the woman knew, but she did. She could see it in her eyes.
So Maya did what anyone in that situation would do: she schlepped her leg.
Forgetting which leg she had designated as the gimpy one, she performed what must have looked like a spastic one-woman parking lot polka. But Maya wasn’t nearly as good as Milton, for whom she had newfound respect.
By the time Maya reached her car, mother and daughter were entering “Wheelchair Getaways,” a hospital supply store sporting bed pans, canes, walkers and portable oxygen tanks in its dust-covered display window. Before letting the door close behind her, the woman turned around and squinted at Maya, who finally met her gaze. The woman extended her middle finger skyward and mouthed, “Bitch” before disappearing into the depths of the store.
Maya folded herself into the car. She turned the ignition and twisted the heat to “High,” directing the flow of hot air to her feet. She inhaled the sharp smell of Shiraz as she put the Honda in reverse and negotiated it out of the small parking space.
© 2009 Julie Curtis. All rights reserved

Tubular Hell

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 14:49:38 -0400

So averse is the human body to the specter of physical pain, it will rewrite its own history to erase any memory of the experience. Any woman who’s labored through childbirth (more than one time) is a testament to this assertion.
My body and I are no strangers to pain. But having survived (and forgotten) the pain of two childbirths and some emergency surgeries over the years, I was surprised one recent evening -- as I was sautéing spinach -- when it struck again.
I tried to ignore the ache in my abdomen but it distracted me to the point of ruining the spinach. I went upstairs to change into something more comfortable -- clearly too-tight jeans were the cause of my discomfort. With the headline, “She’s Really Let Herself Go” flashing through my mind, I stepped into my elastic-waist pajamas and returned to the kitchen.
But my sartorial deflection didn’t help: by the time I excused myself from the dinner table and headed for the living room, the pain was intermittently intense and then vanishing. Nineteen years after my younger child’s birth I was using Lamaze breathing to control the pain -- and it still didn’t work.
I writhed on the couch futilely trying to find a comfortable position, then my husband walked in.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing at all!” I told him. Grabbing an L.L. Bean catalogue, I added casually: “I’m in the middle of this article and I’m dying to finish.” If he noticed I was holding it upside down, he didn’t say a word.
I’m fairly stubborn and it’s not Keith’s style to badger me with questions he knows I won’t answer. His eyes narrowed Clint Eastwood-like, which I found truly adorable even in the midst of my spasms. We smiled at each other; he shook his head and returned to the kitchen. I pressed my face into the couch cushion and screamed.
A few hours later I determined my clothing was not the culprit. It could only be one thing: Very Bad Gas.
I imagined an emergency room scenario:
“What seems to be the trouble, young lady?” asks the handsome, straight-from-“ER”-doctor in his crisp white short-sleeved doctor-y shirt. His name is sewn in perfect cursive above his breast pocket.
“The pain is terrible,” I moan. “There must be an animal inside my abdomen trying to chew its way out.” The smiling nurse administers liquid beads of painkillers that bubble and drip into the IV. George Clooney smiles sympathetically and pats my head like I’m an old Collie.
He folds his arms and cocks his head. “When was the last time you had a BM?”
I find the line of questioning embarrassing: it wasn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned my first conversation with George Clooney. But in the interest of not dying I answer accurately: “Oh, I don’t know… Three days ago?”
George Clooney’s expression darkens as he morphs into Charlton Heston-as-Moses. He majestically points toward the exit, his voice booming loudly for everyone to hear. “Go forth from here. There is room not for trifling in this Place of Medicine. Findeth thou a potty and never return to my emergency room!”
I shuddered with the memory of an actual visit to the emergency room I’d made seven years before, for similar symptoms, that ended with two life-threatening abdominal surgeries and a month-long hospital stay. It couldn’t possibly be happening again. Nope, I decided. The emergency room was out of the question.
I tried to meditate. Closing my eyes I inhaled deeply, imagining myself on the summit of my favorite Adirondack mountain on a clear summer day. I could hear leaves shimmying in the breeze and smelled fragrant pine…
The pain seemed to be easing. I continued the bucolic reverie a while longer just to make sure, then opened my eyes and remained motionless for a few minutes, waiting. Yes, it had stopped -- gone as quickly and mysteriously as it had appeared a few hours before.
“Are you sure we don’t need to go to the ER?” my husband asked me one more time as we climbed the stairs to our bedroom.
“Of course not! I’m all better,” I told him, shakily but truthfully.
The pain disappeared most of the night. I managed to get some sleep before it started again early the following morning. And it had become much worse, now accompanied by nausea and vomiting. Not wanting to worry him any more than I already had, I didn’t mention it to Keith, who went to work after breakfast. I drove myself to the emergency room with a metal bowl on my lap.
Shivering in a sterile cubicle after a mere nine-hour wait, I received the diagnosis: a lower intestinal obstruction. After delivering the news, a young female doctor (perhaps age 15) who said the word “like” -- like, a lot -- was poised to thread a naso-gastric (NG) tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach.
Keith had joined me in the ER soon after my arrival and stayed close, stroking my hair. He looked queasy and asked if I needed him to stay for the upcoming procedure. I shook my head and he bolted from the room.
Dr. Hannah Montana: “’Kay, first off?” she asked me. I nodded, wincing at the sound of her squeaky voice. “I need you to totally relax?” she said, dangling the clear plastic snake a few inches from my face. I am not a fan of up-talking: was she telling me or asking me? I was in mortal pain yet I still managed to be linguistically critical. She continued, “Can you, like, take a few deep breaths and calm down for me?”
I stared at her, simply unable to speak.
“Try and touch your chin to your chest for me.” she sang. “That’ll open up the passage so the tube goes down easily?” I didn’t move. She put her teeny hand on my arm, leaned in close and added conspiratorially, “In medical school? We had to pair up and insert NG tubes into each other’s noses. I was awesome at it. Everyone wanted to be my partner. Okay?”
Well, okay. Pain seized me and I finally gave in, lowering my chin to my chest. A male nurse standing on my other side handed me a Styrofoam cup with a bendy straw poking out. “Take small sips of water and keep swallowing as you feel the tube going down,” he told me.
“Wait, wait,” I stalled, pushing all the hands away from my face. “Is this torture really necessary? Why can’t you guys just load me with more painkillers until I’m better? It’s working, right?” Dr. Montana answered: “Frequent infusions of Dilauded notwithstanding, the NG tube will, like, reduce the pressure on your intestines and stop the pain and vomiting.” I was glad she didn’t miss that day of school.
“Grey Goose or Belvedere?” I asked the nurse as I took the cup. “Because I’m more of a Grey Goose girl.” He smiled but didn’t answer. Dr. Montana, fingers perilously close to my nose, chimed in. “I know, right? Totally!”
I closed my eyes and sipped while she lubricated the tip of the tube and began threading it into my nostril. I managed to “calm down,” having no interest in prolonging or repeating the moment. With each swallow I could feel the end of the tube snaking its way through my nose and down my throat. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but was profoundly uncomfortable.
Once inserted the tube felt like a little piece of hard candy that needs an extra push down. I swallowed madly but it didn’t move. The nurse had secured the extruding end to my nose with (thoughtfully, flesh-colored) tape, attaching it to a clear container on the wall behind me. He turned the knob above and the suction began with a whoosh. I could see the tube come to life from the corner of my eye and feel it from the depths of my stomach.
Dr. Montana asked me to, like, “rate” my pain on a scale of one to 10. I’d gotten used to answering this question, an apparent emergency room favorite, and had been accurately responding in the range of 11-to-25. I suddenly realized the pain had all but subsided. It was already becoming a shadowy dream.
“Um. Like, two?” I told her.
“Cool!” she answered.
“Totally,” I said.
If the tube worked so well, I wondered, couldn’t they just leave it in indefinitely? Then again, I decided as I saw my husband’s expression upon returning to the room, maybe not.
But just seeing his face made me happy, and I forgot all about the pain. Again.

© 2009 Julie Curtis. All rights reserved

Aging Face Faces Aging

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:34:56 -0400

My daughter and I have a secret codeword acronym: SHMIF, which stands for “Shoot me if…” We created it few summers ago while killing time on a long Adirondack mountain hike. Bored with the old dumb games and songs -- Geography, Ghost, “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” -- SHMIF was born. The command could end in varying forms: anything from “Shoot me if… my body weight ever exceeds that of the maximum load for a freight elevator,” or “Shoot me if… I ever walk down the street with my skirt tucked into the back of my underwear.”
Years later we still activate the code when we spot people who shouldn’t be wearing leggings in public (leggings are a privilege, not a right, after all). We also take note of those who’ve undergone extensive and obvious facial cosmetic “procedures.” Walking down the street, one of us might sound the alarm. “SHMIF!” my daughter alerts me: “Serious rhinoplasty on your left.” (She is prodigiously knowledgeable about such medical terminology since most of her friends have had nose jobs.)
“Noted,” I murmur without moving my lips, catching a brand new proboscis in my peripheral vision.
But one day while we were trapped in a long checkout line at Target we spotted a woman so disfigured by surgical “enhancement” that she sucked all the fun out of our mean-spirited game. Judging by her posture and her shoes she couldn’t have been much older than me, but it was impossible and almost irrelevant to gauge. Her face was held up tightly at either side by what I assume could only be carpet tacks and/or Gorilla Glue. Her cheekbones, artificially plumped like Butterball turkey breasts, were so high and puffy they were in danger of obscuring her vision; her lips reminded me of the grotesquely oversized wax ones found around Halloween. She was frightening.
“Please, oh please…” I begged my daughter after we burst out of the automatic exit doors. But she didn’t let me finish.
“I will shoot you, Mom. I promise.”
“Thank you,” I said. We both nodded soberly.
I have no interest in being politically correct but my aim isn’t to offend anyone who’s undergone “anti-aging” procedures; I just don’t ever want to do it. Moreover, I don’t want to want to do it.
The topic of aging seems to come up a lot when you’re actively engaged in doing so. In fact, I’ve found the formative stages of getting older can really catch you off-guard. Where I used to work, for example, there was a small, dark office that had been altered to feature a couple of comfortable chairs and a cot. It was called the New Mothers room (lettered in pink) and it was designated for pregnant or nursing women. Some “new mothers” napped and some pumped milk; some took a break from the rigors of combining office and nature’s work.
Having teen-agers when I was employed there, I never had an opportunity to take advantage of the respite the room offered. But every time I walked past the always-closed door it made me wonder about the line separating “new” from “old” mothers. It implied, to me at least, that “old” mothers weren’t that important, certainly not worthy of a room of their own.
A few years ago, I jogged in a reasonably short road race. Since I’m neither in contention for a Mercedes Benz grand prize nor a slot in the next Olympics, I wasn’t actually competing: it was really all about the free t-shirts and Kashi bars. That being said, I ran at a leisurely pace more or less ensuring I wouldn’t be the last one crossing the finish line. And that’s not because I can’t stand being last but because they usually run out of popsicles a few hours after the frontrunners have gone home and showered.
Something caught my eye about a mile from the finish line, a welcomed distraction from the myriad symptoms of cardiac arrest I could swear I was experiencing. I had caught up with a woman wearing a T-shirt, the back of which exclaimed: “Cut me a break. I JUST had a Baby!!!” Her unhurried pace being compatible with mine, I found myself in the unfortunate position of running right behind her for those painful last minutes. And the more I stared at her t-shirt the more it puzzled me. I tried to figure out what she, by way of her sartorial billboard, was advertising to the spectators -- and to the other runners.
If she was expressing exuberance about joining the League of Motherhood, then I thought it was a grand declaration of her achievement; but it struck me as something altogether different. I had the impression she was excusing herself because she was running just a little more slowly than she used to before she’d had a baby. Maybe she was publicly reconciling her extra layer of subcutaneous maternal thickness.
I wondered if I could get away with wearing a T -shirt expressing a similar sentiment, if not somewhat farther down the chronological road: “Cut me a break. I STILL have teen-agers!!!” Maybe it would earn me a special concession trophy, for no other reason than people would feel really sorry for me.
Now that I’m in my mid-late-to-very late 40s (which means you can’t get much closer to 50), I’ve taken a new tack in my steady sail toward the horizon: when someone asks me how old I am -- and, mercifully, I find the older I get the more people are averse to asking -- I age up. It’s easier that way. Everyone knows when you lie about your age (and I’m not referring cutting off a mere 368-or so days from your actual birth date). Plastic surgery does nothing to dispel that truth, no matter how tightly your jaw is wrapped around your ears.
Some landmarks in life present themselves like forks on a mountain trail, and sometimes it’s prudent to stand there for a few moments, catch your breath and contemplate your choices. Both trails lead to the same summit but there’s one path that’s well marked and nicely groomed. It’s the SHMIF trail. Alluring as it may seem, it can be treacherous and requires an enormous amount of physical maintenance. Additionally, it’s rigged against you because once you start, you can never seem to complete it; there’s always one more “necessary” procedure lurking in the future.
That other trail involves its own amount of work. It’s not always scenic. It’s rocky, uneven and terribly marked -- in fact some might say it’s downhill all the way. Which trail better suits you? Do you pad along the easier one that offers facelift rest stops and Restalyn rope tows, or do you take the steep, messy and sometimes scary one?
For me, the choice is clear. I’m not taking the trail marked “SHMIF.” I don’t ever plan to have plastic surgery but mostly, I don’t want to walk down the street with my skirt tucked into the back of my underwear.
© 2009 Julie Curtis. All rights reserved