Falling down the stairs is no joke. The need for a minivan full of pills to numb the nonstop pain is worse. And why are the tablets always made beside nightclubs named “The End” or something? I blame MTV. Anyway, the drugs hardly work and I get more comfort from ensconcing myself in the vast instruction manuals.
I’m looking for a new tablet. I want The One, something to make me soar above the storm clouds into clear skies and drunken panoramas.
Imagine: you’re so used to sleeping around, snorting Coke, eating red velvet, that a spinal injury is like a violent intruder with a hammer and a piece of shit mountain bike lying on the front porch.
Maybe this is karma, a supernatural event meant to guide me to some greater understanding and yet all I have is the stink of dried out skunk weed and sweaty feet.
My friends don’t understand. I don’t let them know how much I suffer but it’s not always possible. Sometimes I fall to my knees, clutch my back and howl and they just stand there stunned, hands clamped over their mouths in shock. They help me up and say, Oh god is there anything we can do to help?
I say, You can stop talking about Tom Cruise and his love life, maybe stand up for something. Vote?
Of course, I don’t really say that. They mean well and I’m just bitter because I have to suffer alone through the hot nights, as the fan spins into madness, and the foxes outside speak to me in braille.
It is clear there is only one solution. I surf the net for suicide sites, learning about nooses, knives and carbon monoxide. But nothing is simple — escape is not guaranteed. Maybe I should load up on beers, swim out to sea, and wrap black seaweed around my feet and neck.
Overnight, however, I find myself in a new room with my wrists in bandages. There is more pain and I sit up in my bed. There are whispering voices and I reach out for my TV remote, my phone.
Someone speaks in French, another in German, another in Cantonese. I’m dizzy, so I scream.
A nurse enters and lays a tray of bubbling fat across my lap.
It hurts, it hurts, I say.
We can help with that, the nurse says. Don’t worry, you just have to wait, but for now talk to your new friends. They can speak English if you ask them nicely.
But I don’t want to talk, I want to feel ice cold oblivion where the pain is draped in cotton and cloth.
But soon enough, as promised, the pain in my spine eases from top to bottom and a light flickers in a darkened corner of the room. More lights glow from lampshades on side tables and the panels behind the headrests. Soft, soft.
Then blasts of phosphorescent light are pumped out of the windows into the night, dipped in glitter. Lightbulbs glow red with heat and threaten to crack. It all seems so natural.
Dawn breaks, the excitement has passed and everyone’s asleep.
The light is vulgar and weak now and the pain returns, pulling me into a brutal dreamscape — contorts me into strange angles. And I know, even if I stretch open the curtains and look directly at the sun to feel its healing rays, it will never be enough. It will only cast more shadows.