A Momentary Escape

Looks like I might be writing here a bit longer.  My blood and urine work (now there's a hell of a phrase) came back normal.  Clean as a bean straight down the line.  And they checked everything--three pages of stuff listed in small print.  Normal, normal, normal.  BP still high, so the doc changed my meds on that one.  Fingers crossed.  I have to admit, though, that Dr. Doom seemed a bit disappointed.  No new scripts to write.  Of course I was lying in response to her every question.  

"Top hole."

"Never better."

"Fit as a fucking fiddle."

Most of those were in response to questions about my mental health.  And I have to admit my blood was drawn on the last day of my extended Dry January.  I was just excited to get out of her office alive.  Hell. . . they even checked my testosterone levels.  

"How are they, doc?"

"They're fine."

"Fine for a man my age or fine in general?"

"They're fine for anyone."

When I got back to the car and put on my glasses to read the report, I saw my T levels were at the high end of the scale.  

Sorry.  I don't mean to be so binary, but maybe it is chemical.  It is a wonder, I think, that I still have a full head of hair.  

After the doctor's office,  I stopped by my mother's house.  I was manic at this point, ecstatic.  I have been down for a month just thinking about the appointment.  I was ready for home care or a facility of some sort.  My energy was low.  I was depressed.  The release from this was like taking a zip line ride over Angel Falls.  I mean. . . man, I was high.  

I had my mother and cousin in stitches.  

"She did the usual.  Put me in a gown naked, then started poking and bending me so she could look at my balls.  I think she was trying to see my butthole.  'It ain't a party 'til you see the butthole, is it doc?'"

In truth, this was the first time she didn't have other people in the room.  Usually she brings in two or three nursing trainees and maybe some others.  

I left my mother's and went to the gym.  It was almost three.  I didn't expect to see any of my crowd there.  I was wrong.  Car guy was there with his son.  They had just come back from staying at their beach condo.  The airline stewardess was there, too.  

"Yea. . . and my testosterone levels are awesome. . . . "

"That explains a lot.  Another piece of the puzzle."

I was still manic when I got home.  It was cocktail hour.  A quick rinse and I was on the deck with cat and cocktail.  My levels are good, I think, because my diet is.  I eat healthier than anyone I know.  I cook more than anyone I know.  So. . . tonight would be boiled cod, brown jasmine rice, and Brussels sprouts.  Why?  Because I didn't want to go to the store.  Because that is what I had.  

And it was good.

I put on a half hour concert studio show from some station in Oregon of an alt.whatever trio, a female singer/guitar player, a mandolin player, and an upright bass player.  Good harmonies.  One mic.  I'm always fascinated by that.  But the mania and the cocktail and the food. . . I crashed.  Passed out sitting up.  It was not dark yet, but I felt like I could go to bed.  

Rather, I cleaned the kitchen and got some camera gear ready.  I was going out for a sunset into dark shoot.  Experimental.  Just to see.  So I packed up my car and drove to the Boulevard.  Nobody was around on a Monday night, so I was unbothered as I set up my tripod, put on the camera. . . . 

Done there, I drove toward Gotham.  A few stops along the way.  Then to Gotham itself.  What I thought I wanted to photograph, though, didn't look interesting.  

Home by nine.  I've been told over and over to watch the "Fargo" t.v. series.  It has never interested me, but I put on the first episode.  Oh. . . Billy Bob Thornton.  I was in from the start.  Pretty good. 

In bed by eleven.  

That's a report.  With some color.  Probably not the "color" you desired, though.  I should delete "balls" and "butthole" for the sake of. . . .  I don't know.  They just seem prurient somehow.  Maybe "salacious" would be a better term.  But I don't think anybody reads this anymore anyway, so it has become something of a journal.  Diary if you must.  But I have promised myself to do more.  I am going to begin taking some things more seriously and working at them as if I were getting paid.  That's a promise to myself, though, not to you.  I don't want to break any promises I make to you. . . if you are still here.  I'm probably, though, delivering a monologue to an empty theater.  

I chose today's photo because I wanted something upbeat, sunshine and blue skies, to go with my tale.  I've thought for awhile now that my mother will outlive me.  I'm tough, I think, but she is tougher.  

This is the group I fell asleep listening to last night.  I think.  I'm pretty sure.  Maybe.  Seems like it.  Probably not, though, as the singer was a woman.  But whatever.  Same genre.  Stuff of my big ole swollen melancholy heart.  Alt.something.  Country, I guess.  Folk.  Some fluid genre bending stuff.  

Did I ever tell you I was a musician, too.  Was.  Can't play shit anymore.  Can't sing, either, but I really never could.  

Did I mention my. . . oh, never mind.  

"Vanity, vanity. . . all is vanity and chasing after the wind."