My dad, a drunken Confucius at times, would often say to me, you can throw a pebble into water, but you can’t stop the ripples. Your actions, the choices you make, they have real consequences that, once the path is elected, are out of your control forever. Wisdom, however, is the product of one’s folly, and for me the ripple was burgeoning into a tsunami.
* * *
It feels like someone’s clenching a fist around my bladder. The temperature without windchill is about 30 degrees fahrenheit. Snow falls torrentially. The mountains surrounding me stab the clouds with their peaks, and it gives me the feeling of being under a dinner table as a kid. Small coniferous shrubs dot the landscape like pock marks. It’s the type of scene best viewed through a window. There’s a frozen and muddy trail obscured before me and behind me. I think of how tranquil a snow storm can be compared to the rain. It’s a peaceful vista for a feeling of internal reckoning.
My hands feel like prosthetics, and consequently give out on every attempt to undo my pants. I have to bend over now while I walk, the pain in my bladder is folding me over. The contrast between my brain directing my fingers and my fingers lacking the ability to perform frustrates me. I can feel my pelvic floor muscle quiver as I’m beginning to lack the strength to hold my piss. I think negatively, even if I get the first pair unbuttoned I’m still wearing another pair beneath. It’s easy to spit blood when you bite your tongue.
Having been ill prepared for a situation like this I’m forced to wear every piece of clothing I own. I had turned back home in the past because I was too caught up in the weather that I got scared. To circumvent this I neglected the weather reports completely. What fell from the sky or obscured the sun now seemed as religious an experience as any. Now it’s as if a God were deciding my fate, and like Sysyphus I roll my rock anyway.
My upper lip slick with runny snot, I wipe it away bluntly with the back of my wrist only for it to be replaced seconds later. I glance at the crust building on my sleeve. I think how hard it is to accept the consequences of your actions. The last sign I saw down the road says 60 miles to the next town. Or was it 80? I had to brush ice away to make it legible.
I begin to pace, circling my motorcycle like I’m playing a game of duck duck goose. I feel a squirt of urine come out of the tip of my penis. This is quickly becoming involuntary.
I throw my hands at my pants like a feral animal mushing them against my crotch frantically trying to get a grip on my fly, but it felt as if my fingers were made of playdough. I begin to wheeze on my inhales and I whine a little on my exhales. Pain of raw skin being rubbed off of freezing hands at least for a moment relieves me of the pain of having to urinate.
In a last ditch effort I grab one hand with the other using it like an inanimate tool and attempt to force it into my pocket where my knife was, but ultimately it’s in vain, my hands can’t penetrate my tiny tool pockets now synched tightly on my thigh due to the extra clothing beneath.
All dexterity in my fingers had been lost riding in this weather, and It finally dawns on me leaning over like I’d been punched in the gut and whimpering like a dog begging for food: I’m going to piss myself. I’m really going to piss myself. Like, a lot of piss. Then, naturally, because of it, I’ll probably freeze to death.
* * *
My pants are around my ankles, and I’m in the fetal position with my ass out on a hospital bed. Facing the wall makes it impossible to see what’s happening behind me, but the nurse practitioner is walking me through it. The fluorescent lights above me make me feel like a lab rat. The multiple phlebotomies in the past week give me the feeling of standing up too quickly, only the sensation is present constantly. It had been about a week since they told me I had Polycythemia.
The nurse explains the process of applying the local anesthesia. Telling me she’s going to try to numb the skin entirely to the bone, and that it’ill be done in successive injections, each one deeper than the last. Her point of interest in this procedure being my pelvic bone on my low back. It’s the easiest entry point to obtain a sample of bone marrow from the human body. As she continues her explanation she ends by telling me no matter how well we numb the skin that unfortunately there’s no way to numb the pain of the actual extraction.
I hear her ask me if I want to see the drill, like this would make things easier. I acquiesce out of curiosity and look over my shoulder like checking if a lover was still awake in bed behind me. It’s not unlike a typical dewalt power tool you would see at a hardware store. I give her a tight lipped half smile. Nice, I said. I turn back towards the wall. My palms feel clammy as I hold them to my chest, and I start to see why most opt for general anesthesia during a bone marrow biopsy.
My breathing becomes labored as we move on. I try to focus on a spot on the wall that looks like a face. She tells me that if I was ready we could start. The needle supplying the first round of lidocaine is plunged into my skin. It only hurts for a moment before the area is numb. She pokes around with things I can’t see behind my back. Waiting, I try not to let my mind meander into my recent breakup. I feel a hole open in the pit of my stomach. Sadness has gravitational force, it can siphon trauma from the depths of you as your surface wounds try not to fester. Naturally, In situations like this it’s easy to feel bad for yourself.
She asks me if I’m ready for the next injection. I nod and grumble. She slides the second dose deeper into my skin where, again, I feel a shooting pain before it subsides. It’s like she was excavating a mining site—deeper and deeper.
She tells me as I relax for the second time that we have one more to go before we reach the bone. She again rummages around preparing the next needle. I close my eyes. A lump in my throat starts to form. I wish my mom could’ve stayed in the room with me. The embarrassment of needing your mother seems to fade the more uncomfortable life becomes. Again, she forces the needle into my skin this time even deeper than before, numbing all there is left to numb.
I hear things rattling behind me and bags being torn open and other miscellaneous medical sounds forming an orchestra for the anxious. The nurse whistles a familiar tune that I can’t pin down. I hear various clicks and clacks of medicinal tools being fitted together. I’ve seen the videos, I know what’s next.
I feel her hand on my side as she asks me if I’m ready for the actual procedure. I nod again as hot tears start streaming down my face hidden from view. I hear the grinding of machinery as she tests the drill. She tells me it’s very important that I stay still.
Tightening my core like I’m going to do a plank I accept my fate. I sniffle a little, and I feel her grasp my oblique. My anxiety sweats build in intensity. I feel the drillbit against my skin mutedly teasing the flesh.
Her grip tightens on the trigger as the device begins to dig its way through my skin, and a strange sensation fills my body. After a moment she relays to me that we’re to the bone. I clench my fists, whitening my knuckles as I feel her take her hand off of my oblique to use for extra forward pressure on the drill. I shut my eyes tight and wait.
I can feel her breath on my hips as she wields the drill in both hands. I hear the high rpms sounding brittle in the reflective room. I wheezed a little on my inhale and I whined some on my exhale.
Three. She reminds me yet again to stay as still as possible. Two. She tells me it’s going to be a bit painful and to just try my best. One. I feel detached, completely without control anymore. The face on the wall seems to be frowning at me.
She pushes against me with what seems to be her full weight. I feel the drill hesitate for a moment and then penetrate my bone as I release a gargantuan fart directly into her unsuspecting face as the pain radiates up my spine to the base of my skull.
* * *
Breathing manually on the floor, my fingers and appendages feel like they’re getting compartmental syndrome. Tingling like television static. Im gripping the carpet beneath me trying not to fall off of the face of the Earth. The air I breathe is taxed by my thoughts, sapping me of proper oxygenation. I wheeze a bit on my inhales and whine a bit on my exhales. It had been a few days since I had first seen my oncologist.
Kristi, my recent ex-girlfriend, was home on her lunch break from work. In the kitchen her dress hovered over the floor as I looked upside down into the kitchen. It disturbs some dog hair on the linoleum as she swooshes back and forth. Placing something in the microwave she gives me a vague look. When she wears thick framed glasses it’s hard to read her eyes.
Behind her, rain gathers on the window in front of a flat gray sky. Above me the fan rocks and makes a syncopated rhythm. The sound of our dog snoring on the couch keeps me planted for now.
I’m making panic sounds on the floor when I hear my phone ring. Kristi’s in the kitchen talking about a coworker having lost her father. Her voice has that metallic quality to it of speaking in a highly reflective room. I slowly stand and look at my phone that’s lying on the couch. She tells me her coworker was pretty young when it happened.
The number isn’t recognizable. I don’t typically answer these, but maybe it was my mental state, I decided to pick up. I say hello and there’s a woman crying on the other line and a heavy unspeaking silence.
After asking who it was and not getting a response besides sobs I was about to hang up when she answered shakily “Jess… This is Beth, your dad’s girlfriend.”
Sniffling I can envision her wiping her nose with her sleeve or a tissue or something like this, “well.. oh, god,” she says, tension rising. I overheard Kristi say how sad that was that that could happen.
”I… I… came home from work and… and…Your dad.. He’s dead.” I’m going to need to call you back, I say as I resume my position on the floor.
* * *
My knees were starting to hurt as I tried to gather up her hands sitting in her lap, but each time I tried they slipped away from me. I had fallen there at her feet because the weight of my mortality in the face of my diagnosis, a real vile thing, had jumped onto my shoulders and I didn’t think I could bear the weight alone.
I was crying an ugly cry both red faced and snotty. Looking up into her eyes, the same ones I fell in love with every day for the past five years, for the first time I felt my heart was a currency no longer accepted here. I pleaded, I mean I really pleaded with her to stay. I would change my habits, I would find a steady career—anything she wanted, I said.
We were in the kitchen and it was getting late. She was still dressed for work and I was in sweatpants. The streetlight through the window matched the orange of the sky and illuminated the wall behind her head casting strange shadows on her face..
Her position, a difficult one indeed, promised heartache either way, a choose your own adventure game for sadists. It wasn’t her fault that this happened when it did. For the past two years she had dealt with me being a less than adequate partner.
Often I would criticize her in condescension as she began to find her footing in the adult world and like Peter Pan I scolded her for growing up. At my worst I would call her unfunny, and to someone, who was at the time struggling with self image, there could be no words colder. Especially from someone who refused to verbalize his love in general, but found it easy to spew his hate. Could you believe, I only called her beautiful a handful of times?
I hid behind a facade of playing music and smoking weed thinking I was smarter than everyone, when the true face of things was a grimace of someone who was envious of her foothold and angry at the life that was passing him by, thus bitterly insecure. I had become quite a loser right before my very eyes—paralyzed by angst.
I passed on paying rent, neglected to love properly, and became increasingly distant to the girl I claimed I cared about most. On top of this I spun fantastical dreams in her face about adventure in distant lands that would promise better things than could be found here.
I didn’t even have to tell her I’d like to be far away from this place. It was apparent in the way I acted. I told her two years before that it was almost inevitable that we were going to break up because of the things that I wanted in life.
Our love had become an old layer of lead based paint flaking off into ugliness. We had been dragging our feet over cutting the chord for months. Still hanging out and still having sex and still acting like we were together. We hadn’t really fought in our entire five year relationship, and suddenly during this act of the play, we had found ourselves in a minefield of arguments.
So, really, it was my fault that the multi car pile up of problems I was experiencing also included this. It wasn’t great timing but I had thrown a rock into water, I had robbed the grave of love expecting not to get haunted.
And here she was with the ghost of someone she loved at her feet, begging for a second chance that would never exist, that truthfully wasn’t deserved. My shock at what I had experienced was talking for me, possessed by the demon of isolation, selfishly I tried to make her pity me as I knelt before her groping at her legs pathetically trying to somehow win her back.
Ultimately she made the decision I wasn’t man enough to make: she wouldn’t take me back, and because of this I had to leave, cancer or not, dead father or not. We weren’t together after all, and that’s exactly what we both needed. What mental fortitude it must have taken to do what’s right in a situation that to the eyes of a surrounding world would paint her black.
I was a broken individual mourning the death of who I was a week before, but I had still been an asshole, and pity is no reason to continue dragging something through the mud. She loved me, but she wasn’t in love with me. Oh, the fangs of that sentiment. Possibly worse than that was realizing that I’d seen this coming, even predicted it, but the wave was but a ripple back then. How could I have known? So I packed the rest of my things and left.
* * *
Telling yourself to think when you can’t is akin to telling a depressive to just be happy. The problem with having to pee this bad is your head also feels full of urine. I have maybe a minute, I think to myself, before I drain the contents of my bladder into my pants. The only way to get my pants undone is to slice open the buttons, and the only way to cut my pants is to get to my knife that my fingers can’t reach.
My plan is simple, to wit: I figure I can connect my tool pocket to my footpeg, build the revs against it before dumping the clutch, hypothesizing that the forward force of the bike will tear the seams freeing my knife for use.
Approaching my bike on the right side I grip the key and turn it. The wind churns up snow dust swirling beautifully around me. I press the starter and the motor comes to life. The cold doesn’t feel so cold when you’re numb.
I pull in the clutch and reach over the saddle with my arm to press the shifter down into first gear. Sitting into the muddy slush beneath me, hanging like a monkey on my handlebars I hitch my pocket to the jagged edges of my motorcycle’s footpeg.
Nobody around for hours I take a passing glance around me to see if a hero would come and save this damsel in distress—to no avail. Most times, I’ve come to find, you have to be willing to save yourself from your own folly.
I shake some sleety snow from my head as I begin to roll the throttle. I think passively that maybe if I practiced kegels I’d be a bit better off right now. Clenching my pelvic floor muscles, anus puckered, and heels dug heavily into the mud the engine climbs its revs far past redline. As I let the clutch go I wait for the friction point to tug at the opening of my pocket.
I dump the clutch with the throttle pinned and lean back like I’m rowing a boat. My heels slip forward a few feet before catching in the terrain. I’m being pulled up by the bike when I fall back with my full weight. The front wheel comes off the ground. I don’t feel pressure on my thigh and I think my pocket has come off its hitch. I feel my motorcycle leave the grip of my weak fingers before falling over my foot. My ankle stuck, there’s steam rising from where the motor meets the snow. I grip at the snow to keep myself grounded. I plead pathetically to no one for something to go right for once.
And I glance down at my leg. To my relief, the pocket is torn, the knife lying on the ground, a beacon of hope. It fell just out of reach, but upon visual of my betrothed multitool I yank at my foot pinned beneath my bike like pulling plastic chairs stuck together. A slow agonizing freedom is wrought by the tugging. As soon as it’s free I lunge at the knife in the snow like a predator pouncing. Taking it in my hands I use my teeth to flip out the blade.
Frantically, I saw at the fibers attaching my buttons to my pants. The first pair flaps open, then the second and third as I work on. Freeing my crotch for use I feel a bitter wind bite at my testicles. I take my shriveled weiner into my near frozen hands as a stream like a fire hose bursts from my urethra.
My head rolls back resting on my shoulders, my eyes close, snow collects on my eyelashes. I groan into the sky. An overwhelming sense of ecstasy washes over me in an awesome wave, the relief so good it makes me laugh.
Just when you think hope is lost it’s necessary to maintain composure. When it’s easier to just piss your pants and give in to the discomfort, it pays dividends to remember the importance of keeping yourself dry when it’s cold.
As for the waves breaking over me, pinning me to the ocean floor, I learn to hold my breath, and to read the swells, and maybe sometimes even ride them to shore.
I collect my buttons from the snow to sew on later. I deadlift my bike to a standing position and throw a leg over into the saddle. I continue on. What other choice do I have?