MONDAY MEDS: Shooting Blanks

- the first in a short series chronicling my banged-up body.







There are only two things any living organism HAS to do:

1) keep the Life Game going by reproducing
2) check out when The Game is over…a/k/a ‘dying’.

That’s it. Full stop. Everything else is arbitrary.

There’s also a corollary to these – The Game is bigger than one’s puny opinion or understanding of it. There are always big forces at work/big wheels turning that one can’t see until they choose to make themselves known.

For most of my life, I’ve wrestled with Number 1 = NO BABIES; not for me, doomed genes, no Father Imperative, bad family patterns I didn’t want to perpetuate, life in this shitty world being a horrible thing to inflict on a child, my way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the Universe, hated the little buggers, etc. The corollary kicked in in 1999, when the stork brought a cool little guy into my life (under questionable circumstances…but that’s another story).

And then I find myself not-by-choice suddenly single, and the old defiance kicks back in…and I decide it’s time to get a vasectomy. Dunno…a way to take back control of at least a part of my life? The ultimate expression of my new, seething anger at all women? Whatever…a quick phone call to a Dr. Chin in North Jersey, and I’ve got a date for a neutering.

The first thing you notice about the operating room is that it’s freezing in there. “Helps stop infection and encourages blood to clot,” Dr. Chin sez…tho the procedure is advertised as No Scalpel (a marketing trick…since this sez nothing about surgical scissors). Then there are the restraints (um…restraints?...for an elective operation?), in case I chicken out/start to flop around/something. Finally there’s the radio – loud, distorted, spewing happy disco. ”Celebrate good times, c’mon!” - the hot Latina nurse sings along as she grabs my rig in preparation for…shaving. Her touch is gentle and can’t help but be erotic, and I’m now very grateful that it’s cold in here. Shave, shave, shave…”Smooth” comes on, and the irony makes everyone chuckle. Finally, Dr, Chin makes a grand entrance trailing a clutch of female student doctors (you have gotten the picture that I am restrained and completely exposed…right?).

And so as Madonna coos “Holiday” (snip) (ouch) (sew) I officially become a Non-Breeder.

(to be continued next Monday)

NP: Robert Wyatt/Theatre Royal Drury Lane/Sept. '74

PEEVE DE JOUR: Art Gurls who wiggle their way into your life...then disappear/still ask for favors/never follow thru on anything...then get pissed off when you bug-out about any of this...