It Won’t Kill You

An old one…

The remake of King Kong opened this weekend.
Millions of Americans stuffed themselves into theaters to see it
and my wife wants to see it.
And she wants me to go with her.

Me?!

I told her, “baby, if I go in there
I won’t come out alive.”
The sound of all that breathing.
The conversations you overhear on the way out.
The way people so easily turn off their minds
and laugh, and cry, and shout out in fear.
“Please, baby, anything but that.”

She turned her head, shook it. “You never want
to go out anymore… it’s a chore just to get
you out of your damn chair.”

She doesn’t understand,
movie theaters scare me.
The crush of humanity.
The deadening of souls.
The iron fist of capitalism pounding on your brain…
Singing licorice.
Dancing Popcorn.

“Don’t make me do it.”

The look on my face made her laugh,
but her laugh was one of righteous repose.
Under the scathing kitchen light I shriveled up,
thinking that maybe it was me;
Me against the world
and King Kong
and my wife,
and everybody else is right,
everybody else is normal.

“Will it really make you happy?” I asked.
She pretended to have no stake in the answer,
as if her happiness was inconsequential.

Most men’s wars are their women’s burden.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Do what you want.”
She pulled open the refrigerator door and looked inside.
There was half a gallon of milk, a bottle of pasta sauce,
and some leftover Chinese food.

“I’ll go, ” I said. “How bad can it be?”

She picked up the Chinese food, looked inside,
and then set it down. “It’s just a move,” she said.
“It won’t kill you.”

Numb and Dumber

I had a dentist appointment today. Lots of fun. A deep cleaning. Yay.

I don’t mind too much. I fancy myself a pretty tough customer and can take needles and pain, at least, I act tough in front of doctors. I don’t like needles either, but I ain’t going to squirm or flinch, at least not too much. I had a deviated septum once and the doctor had to fix it by basically hammering on the bone in my nose. I could hear the chiseling and feel tiny vibrations while the doctor sat over me pounding away. Pretty weird feeling. Someone banging on your nose while you lay in a drug induced haze.

Anyway, I get there and the assistant sits me down and asks if I wanted to watch some TV. This dentist has a monitor over the chair where you could view X-rays of your teeth, or else, while you wait, watch TV. She asked if I liked Friends. As I doubted there was anything worthy of watching in their collection I said yes but then changed my mind. “Actually, can I get the magazine I was reading out there?” The assistant said sure and I grabbed an old issue of Time. I had started an article on young authors and looked forward to finishing it while I waited.

The point of the article was that there isn’t currently a voice of our generation, like Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Coupland were in their decades. That kinda bummed me out but at the same time pleased me. Let everyone speak for themselves, I thought. Blog on!

Then a different assistant came into the room and proceded to turn on the Friends epsiode that I had told the other lady I wasn’t interested in. My mouth was already numbed by this point so I didn’t say anything, I just let her set up the DVD. I was reading the article when I felt a heavy pair of headphones being placed over my ears. I wondered how many patients choose Time over Friends, as she obviously didn’t pick up on the fact that I prefered to read?

I noticed though, as the novocaine started to take effect, I was lulled into the episode. Racheal realized, finally, that she was in love with Ross, but Ross had met and fallen in love with someone else while in China. It wasn’t a very good episode but sitting in the dentist chair with my mouth all numb I figured I could tolerate it. I mean, I wasn’t going anywhere and they almost seemed to insist on it.

The funny thing about the experience though, is that I actually enjoyed the deep cleaning more than Friends. The doctor was scraping away, water filling my mouth, I almost choked a couple of times, when I’d rinse water and spit would drip out on it’s own because my lips were so numbed I couldn’t keep my mouth closed; but at least it was real. Sitting there watching Friends just made me numb, on the inside. Made me fear for the future. I don’t know why, it’s just a sitcom. But then a terrifying thought popped into my head. “All that bumbling insecurity. That childlike whining. Oh my God! Ross is the Voice of our generation.”

Yep, it was the drugs.