HUMAN WRECKAGE
Bite Your Tongue!
My mouth is full of scar tissue. It was
crammed with sharp metal braces during the 70s. I’ve received blows to the head
while playing sports and drinking at university beer bashes. I’ve escaped
screaming nightmares by biting myself awake. Sometimes the simple reflexive
action of chewing food gets complicated. Worse, I’ve eaten my words many times
and serif fonts tend to go down like glass shards and razors.
Late last month I turned up at my dentist’s
office one morning for my regularly scheduled scaling and cleaning. I was no
sooner reclined in the chair with my back already becoming sore and my jaw unhooked
like a snake who’s about to swallow a rodent when the hygienist said, “Oh.”
I said, “Umgh?”
“I’m going to take a picture for Doctor to
get a second opinion but I think you’ll have to see a pathologist. You appear
to have a pre-cancerous lesion on the floor of your mouth.”
I thought: Swell. And wasn’t the graphic
warning on the packet of cigarettes in the pocket of my leather jacket the oral
cancer one. Was this irony or mere pathetic fallacy? Coincidence and
probability more likely, a random carton of Player’s from a random convenience
store.
“Have you eaten any sharp foods lately?
Potato chips?”
“Umgh.”
Meanwhile, would I like to watch the skinny
television mounted on the ceiling? No. No, thanks. I’ll just stare at the
Philips Econ-o-watt logo on the fluorescent light tubes and count the baffling
number of holes punched through the t-bar ceiling panels. “We’ll just continue
with your appointment.” And I’ll just live with the stuff you’ve sent reverberating
through my head, listen to the noise of your tools and my silent voice. Fair
enough?
So, I had 30 or 40 uncomfortable minutes to
endure in a place I hate to contemplate cancer. The disease is slowly killing
my mother. It killed my big brother. I believe cancer killed my father too in a
way: Dad, a Second World War air force veteran, had his own health issues but
to live longer than his first born child even as he himself was nearing the end
of his life was just a little too much more to bear.
I thought: This could be bad, some sort of
head cancer or something. The doctors will have to saw off my jawbone, remove
my neck, cut out my tongue and extract my esophagus. They don’t do skull
transplants. Maybe the cancer has already metastasized into my lungs and brain?
And probably some organ around my stomach that I’ve taken for granted. What
does a pancreas do, anyway? Fuckit, they wouldn’t even operate because some
medical bureaucrat would sniff that I was a poor patient: “He smokes, he drinks
and he likes deli food, pizza and hot dogs. He’s not proactive about wellness.
Never ate kale. Can you imagine? Sad bastard deserves everything that’s coming
to him and I hope it hurts.”
Scrape. Scrape.
I thought: Everything’s fine until it’s
not. I just wanted the black coffee stains on my teeth polished away. As for
dying, a cardiac keel-over shoveling snow would be a blessing, no disfigurement
and minimal pain. Death itself isn’t scary but the Reaper’s method can be
terrifying, torture, drawn out.
Scrape. Scrape.
I thought: This is just great, me dying of
cancer in the dentist’s office. If Mom has to bury both of her sons that would
reduce the family to just our sister and Mom, and they’ve been butting heads
since 1954. Don’t want to leave a legacy of conflict. All right, at least my
will is up to date and The Great Big Book
of Very Important Documents, housing certificates of baptism and birth (in
that order), insurance policies, copyrights, computer passwords, investments
and other notarized documentation detailing my time on Earth is on the floor of
the closet in the spare room. The paperwork is done except for my certificate
of death. It’s all good.
Scrape. Scrape.
I thought: Stick with the original cremation
plan because who wants to view a decapitated cancerous head in a very small
open casket or an Amazon shipping box? Organ donation for sure, but my lungs and
liver have been heavily used, not my call. I offered my brother a kidney toward
the end of his life, but he already had two and they seemed to be working okay.
Other internal bits and parts had failed him before their warranties were due
to expire. I would have exchanged my existence for his but that’s an impossible
deal to broker with another’s indifferent malignant disease.
Scrape. Scrape.
I thought: My death will be a hassle for
Ann. She’ll have a lot on her plate following my departure. I know she loves me
and will miss me but she’ll have to get on with things. I better formulate a
play list; help her out with some details for the biggest day of my life, my
end of life celebration which I don’t believe I’ll be able to attend. Ding dong! Geoff is dead! “Pow! Right
between the eyes/Oh, how nature loves her little surprises.” Joe Walsh’s Life of Illusion, good one, “Wow! It all
seems so logical now.” Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury
Hill: “Son, he said, grab your things I’ve come to take you home.” The
wistful wisdom of the Faces’ lovely Ooh
La La will be apropos if a little late: “I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was younger.” Oh, and Springsteen’s Better
Days, this one’s going out to you, my darling Ann.
Scrape. Scrape.
I thought: Since I won’t be able to talk I
must write it down for Ann: don’t forget that fabulous Rolling Stones boot of
Dobie Gray’s Drift Away on YouTube.
“Give me the beat boys and free my soul/I want to get lost in your rock ‘n’
roll and drift away… Thanks for the joy you’ve given me…” A good note to go out
on minus my head and sundry organs, says it all about everyone and everything
in my life, really.
“Okay, we’re done. Doctor’s just going to
examine your lesion.”
“Umgh.”
“Geoff! Nice to see you! How’s Ann? I’m
just going to have a look.” He got his fingers, his instruments and a bit of
cotton into my mouth, manipulated my tongue, peered around, checked his
computer screen. “Yes, yes… No, nothing’s changed since you started coming to
see us five years ago. I’ve been monitoring it. There’s some scar tissue but
your gums are pink and healthy and your teeth are strong. You have good genes!
Have a great day!”
“Umgh.”
I thought: Well, it’s off to a great
fucking start. Here it is, not even noon and I’ve already died and risen.
Thanks for that. Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment