Somatic Adventures #3

Dear Käthe,

You ask how I am. Today I’m grinding my teeth. Here in the City of Love, two blocks from the Haight-Ashbury, a world-class research university embraces a drug policy forged to put down dissent, to protect a lying president, to continue a devastating war in Asia, and to suppress the largest youth movement this country has experienced since its inception.

I’m just, slightly, nauseous. Not really physically nauseous, but psychologically nauseous in a way that a tiny piece of marijuana shake candy would cure right off without even making me high. And they won’t let me do it. And I can’t, either, because if I get caught with dirty urine it’s down to the bottom of the list. It’s like being on parole again: I had to agree to random drug tests.

Yesterday the lead surgeon here strongly encouraged me to find a living donor. She could see by my face that I didn’t want to do that. “Look,” she said, “it comes down to life and death. Could there be anything beyond life?”

I was stunned. “Oh my yes,” I said. I’d just finished a painting of that captured Cuban police chief who was allowed the honor of commanding his own firing squad. And who accepted the honor. If there were nothing beyond death, why do condemned men walk to the gallows? Why did Jan Hus die singing? Who would not, for the sake of legacy, for a chance to raise a light in history, or like that Chinese Zen teacher, shout at the top of his lungs as the bandits cut him in half, who would not give up grubbing around a few extra years in the land of the breathing?

I’m wandering. And, actually, it’s hard to say just who would and who would not. Myself, I am going with the program. So I have let go the last separation between public and private and have, hat in hand, joined the line of emaciated men and women queued up to await death or deliverance.

(Boy, this kind of rhetoric is pretty seductive … maybe I missed my calling not writing vampire novels.)

Still, we are not rational beings. After I sent out my appeal and then began receiving so many beautiful and loving and moving responses, I had a total shame attack. Don’t tell me that it’s not rational—I KNOW that. But there I was on the floor, wishing I could purge into a vomit bowl and have the ultraviolet ones put me inside of a tree, where my veins and the tree’s phloem and the glowing wings of a giant butterfly would give me peace in the land of the screaming insects and waterfalls.

Laura came in. This is all getting fictional. Or was so ever. “What are you doing on the floor? Should I hire some kids to come in and kick you?”

She was laughing, bless her heart.

“Hey darling, let’s go walk in the dust.”

“’Kay.”

But the question was the right one: “Could there be anything beyond life?”

Well, George W. Bush, our former president, when asked about his possible historical legacy, said: “Who cares? We’ll all be dead.”

My own answer, kind of seat of the pants, was “Socrates thought so.”

Then my impish imagination took over again and the Big Committee (everything is decided by committee at UCSF) began discussing my case:

“It’s not clear this guy really has the will to live.”

“Hey, do you know about this guy? I had to read his books as a pre-med student at Cal. They are all about drugs. He’s not even repentant. I’d say he got just what he deserved.”

“And consider all the opportunities he’s been given in life … squandered, squandered.”

My mother gets in on it: “Darling son, I so much wanted you to produce something beautiful, something I could be proud of.”

Once they’ve got you down, the imps will all pile on. It’s like school kids playing “smear-the-queer.”

“Ha ha, we’ve got you now.”

“And maybe we don’t even like you anymore. Maybe we never did. We were just pretending. And we didn’t like your poetry either. In fact, we all laughed at it behind your back. We made those gag-me-with-a spoon moves and giggled like hell.”

“Geez, you are SO clueless.”

An ex-wife strolls through. “Oh, I think it’s nice that you write poetry, but, look at Gary’s poetry, I mean it’s just really good.”

Big brother puts in two cents: “Just keep your place. You can be a nerd but don’t try doing any of the stuff that I do.”

Father has his say: “We’re just so disappointed. I mean, I think you have some integrity, but I did catch you lying to me that time. And there was that time I caught you playing with yourself. Of course that’s not good.”

I can’t even remember where I was. Am I still on the floor? Ex-girl-friends are marching through. A giraffe came by just to stick out his blue tongue. Laura laughed and opened a window. A black-headed grosbeak was singing up a storm. He just went on and on, riff after riff, never repeating. Eric Dolphy would’ve grown wings.

“Darlin,” I said to Laura. “Read these responses with me.”

And she did.

Thank you all.