Virginal snow kisses collectively culled from the burgundy coastline of all time...

 

 

Post script

I am wheeled out of the hospital five days later in a wheel chair because it is protocol. There is a certain stillness when I enter wooden frame of the only house I have ever known, as I walk past the piano, past the picture of the wilted flowers hanging like a centerpiece that my grandfather painted a few months before he died, past the French doors, up the stairs, to the bedroom overlooking the corner of cedar and Sherman, he Sweet Gum tree, my copy of Kerouac's on The Road and the notebooks where I have be scribing my poems tucked under my arms, flailing limp as I fall descend on the cusp of me bed in splayed limbed Christ-like fashion.


It feels like eves solitary organ income in my anatomy has been aired out like spring linen. Light dries through my bedroom window in  a coppery spring haze. As if breaking into prayer over a thankgiving dinner I assay my heap of notebooks. In five days I will be leaving Manual forever and somehow I managed to jip the last week of the school I deplored remaining face-up in a hospital bed where I was spoon fed with tubes with a beautiful blonde girl lassoed in the crooked right-angles of my arms.

Sometime later on that night I will realize that the four days I spent in the hospital constitutes the longest duration I have gone sans a cup of coffee since kissing Renae Holiday’s minty lips freshman year. I look at the stapled dossier I was handed upon exiting stating what I am and am not to eat. The diagnoses is still acute pancreatitis followed by professionals who make six-figures a year  prodding and vivisecting the human anatomy doffing their glasses while scratching the top of their heads.

I look at the picture of the little kid bartering a rose that Megan sent me. I look at her handwriting that looks like bubbles fizzling from a non-caffeine carbonated beverage.  Next to my poetry notebook there is a copy of the Journal Star want ads. There is a see-through crimson balloon and the words BARNES ampersand NOBLES and how they will be conducting interviews for the incumbent opening of their Big Hollow store this coming Monday.

I look at Megan's card. It is scribbled in blue ink. It is written in glitter and smiles and pulses and laughter and love. 

The phone in my bedroom reverberates in a purr. I am still thinking about Megan, talking to her on the phone in my bedroom that I  accumulate 100 dollar phone bills talking to her, losing myself in the hyacinth hiccup of her voice, role-playing pretending we are in paris, pretending we are holding hands, pretending that we just can’t stop licking the buffet of the others flesh, laughing, turning the lights off, telling the other  to look at the lunar cue ball of the moon and wish at the same time.

 My sister's alto carols up the stairs informing me that the call is for me. 

It is Jackie.

“Just wanted to call and make sure that you were okay. You know, we were all worried about you.”

 I ask who.

“The Lums Bums.” Jackie says that the waitresses claim that they saved so much coffee the week I was in the hospital that Columbia is calling asking what happened?”

 I smile still holding Megan's card as if it is a wounded gerbil.

"I just wanted to call and inquire if you are still coming?"

I reply to Jackie's voice by saying the word coming stapled in query formation.

"Yeah. The bonfire at my place tomorrow night. I just wanted to know if your were still coming?"

I try to tell her that I have been in the hospital the entire week. Jackie tells me that she already bought the special kind of potato chips that are healthy so I have to come.

"Besides, Nikki really wants to see you."

I say Nikki's name again, followed by a more audible question mark.

"Yeah, I think she likes you." Jackie notes before asking if she can pick me up at 6pm.

"Six is fine." I tell her, knowing that Kitty will be at Sunday mass with her family.

Jackie offers out an  okay then, telling me she will be by at six, conveying to me she is glad I am feeling better, telling me to smile.

 

 

 

A very Antonio Banderas five...

A week later I will learn about a game Jackie and Nikki have been playing. A game that somehow ranks variation of male species in accordance to the midriffs of Antonio Banderas. A game where they correlate his rippled six-pack to male's they would like to bang.

It is mostly voyeurism. Crisp haired lads espied at the mall or a server at One World or Lums. The highest is a six.  Apparently Nathan is the highest in our group with a four, purportedly because Jackie was having sex with him on  the side while he was still having sex with his pregnant ex.

A week later, before I am to graduate from the institution I felt hostaged and intellectually mortgaged inside of for the past four years I will learn about what Nikki said after she left the hospital room that spring day:

"Jackie he's a five. And the only reason he's not a six is because he has a girl in his arms."


                                                

"Get well soon dave...Happy City of Orgies!!!"

 

It is the third day I am in the hospital. The pain has drastically subsided but they are still running a bevy of tests to discern what spawned the abdominal flare up.  Kristina has come in everyday after class, seated on the side of my bed, buckled in the fleshy loops of my arms. Patrick comes in at odd times, often when I am asleep, standing in the corner scrutinizing the reflection of himself in the window, lost, looking at the albino silhouette of his body accompanied by the swill and hush of traffic below.
 
 There is a clack at the door. Jackie marches in saying my name as if she has just accidentally run over a pet.  In her hand she is holding a get-well carnation like a baton. Next to her is a girl with short black hair and semi-tanned skin I have never seen before.
 
Kitty smiles and waves. The girl with the short black hair looks down, offering a shy smile into the bleached linoleum of the hospital floors. As if rehearsed Jackie begins a string of oh-my-gods-I-can't believe-you-are-in-the-hospital-what-happen-are-you-alright's before handing me the white carnation. Employing the same solicitous run-on sentence before telling me to read the tag attached to the stem of the botanical limb.
 
 It is written in  cursive. I read it aloud:
 
"Get well soon Dave--Happy City of Orgies!!!"
 
Kitty blushes and looks down in the same direction as Jackie's friend. Jackie says it is from that Walt Whitman poem that I am always quoting over cigarettes and 99cent incessant refills at Lums.  At the word 'Orgy' Patrick offers out an almost David Hale-like whoo-hoo, before adding a can you imagine a big metropolitan city like New York or something where everyone is always inside each other while riding the subway to work and shit, immediately apologizing when he realizes that Kitty is shooting his a 'this-is-uncouth-hospital conversation' scowl.
 
Jackie places her hand down on the cap of my knee. She then says the fourth vowel oh and points like a game show hostess to the black haired creature standing next to her.
 
"By the way, this is Nikki."
 
 She looks up for a second. I reach up my had and tell her it is a pleasure to meet her.
 
She smiles in my direction again. Patrick says something about maybe going outside real quick for a cigarette the girls follow. Jackie gives me a hug while simultaneously completely ignoring Kitty.
 
The trio leaves. Kitty turns into my direction and squeezes me tight.
 
"I think she's still upset with me?"
 
I ask why.
 
"The day after prom while we were at Hale's and I made you leave because everyone was underage and drinking. I think she thinks I am just up tight."
 
"You are not uptight." I tell Kitty Pekowski, reeling her in closer, kissing the back of her neck, telling her that even though I've been subjected to so much pain this week and I have more antibiotics flooded into my system than a pharmacy, it has simply, somehow, been one of the greatest weeks of my life.

"I mean, every day someone comes in and sees me. Every day you sit on the bed next to me. It makes me feel so special. I felt like shit all senior year. I've been fucked up, practically suicidal, did not think I would ever make it through the tempest to the port so to speak and here I am surrounded by everyone I love. It just makes me feel...."

I grope Kitty's waistline even tighter. I feel her smile. When I look up I see she is looking at the tag on the flower Jackie gave me. Perhaps she is wondering what the word orgy even means.




 

For Vernoica, the piano teacher's daughter, who is three years my senior...

 

Veronica keeps her bra’s in a plastic garbage can inside her closet. Lying on her bed after my piano lesson, I inquire what the plastic receptacle is used for. Quickly she tugs it out of my hands and conceals both of her limbs around it, as if tucking a football into her chest.

 

            “Veronica, no I’m serious. What’s in this?” I inquire.

 

            “No!!” She says again, almost laughing. “There is nothing of your concern. I tackle her. I tickle her. The sibling rivalry that has always existed between us manifests itself in giggles and blushes. She is smiling. She knows something I do not know. There is something she cradles in her arm like a newborn that she does not want me to see. Something she possesses she does not want me to know about. A secret. Something that, maybe if I would take her behind her house, where no one can see us, maybe if I can take her someplace where the two of us would be all alone. Maybe she would show me. Maybe she would open up; maybe she would unzip. Maybe she would explain to me how things are, show me how life is a continuation process; explain to me vital stages of development. Maybe, if I could just get her alone for a minute. She would show all that to me. It would be like the dream I had about her in fifth grade; the dream which leads me hard and sore inside, my torso trying to mount the sheets all on their own. The dream where the two of us are in her room and she is explaining to me, telling me that “yes, ok, I will show you but…” disgusted at my query, still realizing that I need to know. Seeing  her reflection in my thick brown glasses that looks like our own wooden RCA as she slowly tugs near her waist and peels, showing me everything she feels that I need to know, even if she disapproves of it; even is she feels that it is wrongs, she still unbuckles and unzips and wriggles, pointing at her underwear as she did almost as decade before, she then slides her panties down to her ankles. She then tells me that I am slowed to do anything I want.

Rosemary Hospital Jamboree

The diagnoses is acute pancreatitis which is weird because the doctors claim it is mostly found in alcoholics and as of my 18 years on this planet you have slammed less than maybe thirty consecutive beers. I have not had anything alcoholic in semblance since I was in Germany six weeks ago on Easter Sunday and all of your classmates went crazy buying the only kind of beer that was available in the gas station across the street from your hotel, the beer that had little consecutive S’s above the nozzle when you opened the bottle, the beer that tasted like a lactating skunk and everyone in the room claimed they were getting drunk and peeing off the balcony and stumbling around until you scrutinized the label and saw what you believed to be the German word for alcoholic followed by the word Nein and you made a salient point of noting to your cohorts that this beer is non-alcoholic and that is the reason the noisome peddler at the gas station seemed to proud to sell it and everyone in the room sobered up real quick.

It is more than likely a misdiagnosis. There are  translucent tubes threaded i to your body. When you walk to the bathroom to the stalk ferrying your IV follows you in tandem like the chrome shadow of death.  When you wake up in the morning there is a middle-aged African American nursing assistant who  gives you a sponge bath and then hands you the sponge informing you to attend to your ‘Guy parts.”

You smile.

                                                                                    ***

My eyes seem to crack open as if I am hatching from a strip of black ice. Everything is dotted with tar dolloped with sips of color and then there is movement accompanied by stuttered wisps of animation.  Mom is telling me that everything is going to be okay and that I had some sort of flare up and that the doctors are nonplussed as to what precipitated the cause of such abdominal duress. The gruff almost sentiment sight of my further in his taupe pants and Rockport shoes is standing next to my mom. A physician comes in and presses on certain vectors of my lower tummy like he is performing CPR, inquiring if the pressure points he is pressing down on seemingly inflicts pain. I close my eyes again and it is night. I body surfed through what I will look back as being senior year in high school and the last week I will spend in the grilled sided raft of a hospital bed feeling like some sort of a castaway.

 From above the hard lights seem to squint. I hear my mother’s voice telling me Dave, I brought the books you were reading.

There is a copy of On the Road that has been my emotional crutch last semester senior year. The tattered copy of  leaves of Grass that has been my best friend since beginning junior year.

There is a spiraled notebook that I use to chronicle my poems.




                                                                     ***

The second day Kristina comes back in again after school.

 

            “Hey angel.” I say. She is wearing her dappled blonde skirt that seems to skid to a stop inches beneath her torso. She sits on the lip of the bed and I knot my arms around her waist, kisses the side of her abdomen with an audible mwah. Tell her it feels good. My mom always sways her head into her shoulder blade and smiles audibly when Kristina enters the room, asking her how she is doing, smiling again at her response when Kristina routinely informs my mom that she is doing fine.  

 There is a gentle ice-sculpture silence to Kristina’s presence that I find lulling, like listening to the incessant motorized swirl of traffic in the middle of the night reverberating off the sill of my window overlooking I-74 in the middle of the night, my IV stand offering chirps beckoning to be changed. 

 I have not washed my hair all week yet somehow the short crop battered above my brow grants me with the semblance of trench coat-donning Czech poet, four day no shave stubble dotted along the contours of my face. Everyone has been stopping in to see me.

Twice Patrick and Strick have come on their own and just sat in the opposite corner of the room, my eyes stuttering into morning cognizance seeing them seated  looking out the window at the gnarled and lock of interstate traffic below sipping coffee quietly asking how I am doing.

The doctor enters the room. Kitty Pekowski is still draped in my arms.

            “I always get nervous when I see teenage kids in bed together.” Kitty's face transitions into the color of cheap Kool-Aid. My mom looks at me sternly. The Doctor is scrutinizing a slate that from where I am seated looks like offensive football plays, making a circle, delineating what he thinks is wrong.

"It could have been triggered by gall stones." He inquires if I drink a lot of soda. I tell him no. I tell him I slam usually three-to-four pots of coffee a day and that I never sleep and that I stay up all night and write." 

The Doctor looks at me and then looks down as if he is reading a thermometer with his chin.

                                 

The Doctor continues blather on about medicinal jargon. Midway through his conjecture of what may of causes my flare-up Kitty stands up and straightens the hem of her dress. Without saying a word she heads to the bathroom located next to my bed, the room where I am escorted with a NA because I am plugged into a piece of intravenous machinery. The door locks in a stolid click and I can hear the marble clank of the horseshoe toilet descending. The next thing I heard is fluid trickling out of Kitty Pekowski. I try not to think about her panties wreathed around the caps of her knees, her dress flapped up like the bruise petal to a tulip. I try not to think about her vagina, releasing itself in a translucent ribbon from her body. The doctor is still looking at the large film negatives from the proceeding earlier in the day stating that my organs look funny. He asks me how often I drink and I honestly tell him that I will be nineteen in six weeks and have maybe had less than an accumulated case of beer in what constitutes my entire life.  Inside the bathroom urine is still trickling out of Kitty, tapering off in a Chinese water-torcher tempo. I try not to think about Kitty reeling off a strip of toilet paper and wading it into a carnation and swiping it between the flesh arch of her loins. I try not to think about her snapping her off-white panties back into place, padding the sides of her floral skirt down  before flicking the saluting chrome handle into a linoleum whorl.

 

The doctor is again speculating that it could be gall stones. In the bathroom I can hear her wash her hands. The paper towel dispenser sounds like it is farting as she rips a cardboard sheet from the nondescript lips of the dispenser.

The doctor continues to be befuddled. He asks if I have been under a lot of emotional stress with school. I want to tell him about how it felt like I spent last year under water. How I cried and shook every morning. How the only IV  I had pricked into the epidermal armor of my physical anatomy was that of  the black ink pen I brandished like a heroin-inflicting needle into  spiral notebooks I chronicled my every solitary thought in metered I deemed to poetic.

 When Kristina steps  out of the bathroom. I try not to look at the center of her body. She sits down on the freshly changed tissue of the bed and smiles. I kiss her forehead.

“Did you miss me?” Kitty inquires.

 I tell her yes. I tell her more than she will ever know.

                                                                  ***

Later that night, after Kitty has left, I think about what it would have been like if I would have followed he into the bathroom. I think about what she would have done if, while she was seated on the toilet with her skirt flapped up and her panties subtlety twisted below the caps of her knees, I wonder what she would have done if I would have whipped it out, if I would have unearthed the stiff wand of my Y-chromosome. I wonder if she would look at it like a baton. Like a fleshy bouquet, would she have coward, or would she have bitten into me with her nails and ingested me into her lips.

Later in the morning I grapple my tattered copy of on the road. In the center of the book mom has wedged a letter I received in the mail.

It is from Megan.

It is a Hallmark card.

The cover features two kids the size of good year tires dressed up in their grandparents clothing holding the stem of an illuminated rose.

But it's my book ( scribed 10 yrs ago exactly t'day)....