Well, the doctor thinks I’m right. I need an x-ray to make sure I haven’t slipped a disc, and then it’s straight onto physical therapy to treat a pinched nerve and severe back spasms. In the meantime, I’m loaded up on strong muscle relaxers and prescription strength ibuprofen — the advil was just not cutting it.
It’s ironic that the doctor prescribed the same pills I used to buy from a drug dealer in college to get high. My roommate and I would take two or three, chug half a bottle of wine, and roll around on our floor mumbling slurred laughter.
And now, here I am, my shoulder blades covered in Icy Hot, wrapped in a heating pad, waiting to schedule an x-ray. The Soma began to kick in during my hot bath, but I am far, far away from slurred laughter.
It’s Gay Pride week here in New York, and what better way to celebrate than a parade! Not being gay and extremely averse to humdity and parades was reason enough for me to sit this year’s out. But then, so did my very proud friend Jacob…
Me: The sun came out. Shouldn’t you be parading? Jacob: i have a bunch of boys drinking in my apartment. i plan on having an orgy shortly Me: Now that is pride. Jacob: i know, i take this week very seriously
I woke up with coal-black feet, a scrape along my leg, a series of black and blues, and the sinking feeling that last night I got out of hand. Perhaps I should have heeded my doctor’s warnings not to mix my painkillers and booze.
There was power hour, and sweaty drinking, and spilling beer all along the kitchen. I know at one point I jumped from my friend’s Williamsburg rooftop to another with a girl who was as daring as I pretended to me. I crept in a corner of the neighboring roof to relieve myself and wiped with the folded up paper in my bag: a list of physical therapists from my doctor. I struggled back up the rough black-tar slope back to home base clutching my underwear and laughing.
This morning I found on my desk a pristine list of physical therapists. Which makes me wonder what I wiped with in Brooklyn.
“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”
Wednesday afternoon I went outside for a cigarette with the Artist when I spotted the plastic bag floating high above Tenth Avenue. I laughed, and told him I watched American Beauty just last night and how silly that line was about beauty: so much beauty in the world, it’s all just too hard to take it. We both snickered and continued to watch the bag and that thing, no joke, it just flew straight across the sky like a dancer for at least five minutes, twirling and swooping and launching up higher until it hit a gust and flipped and spun elegantly close to oncoming traffic before zagging north down the avenue and rising back up above the buildings in a graceful arc. We were laughing, and I was smiling, this wide dumb smile and couldn’t stop, and eventually the bag just kept going over the rooftops and straight on to midtown, and I’m not kidding, we were like, shit, that is so so beautiful.
“Is it better to be intelligent and aware of your own mortality or blissfully ignorant and believe you’ll live forever?”
–J, the interweb
Dear J,
This questions runs in the same vein as the age-old is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all? I don’t know. It depends how much you like to suffer. However, I will posit that most of us of sound mind know we will die. At least, when asked, we will respond truthfully with that answer. It is dangerous to confuse consciousness with intelligence.
I have experienced back pain for as long as I can remember. The pain centers on my upper back, shoulders, neck, and jaw. My TMJ has resulted in a bite-plate lost somewhere in my closet, and a long trail of failed dentists. When I am happier, my jaw feels better. It’s an easy equation.
My back, however, is not simply a matter of stress. For about ten years, my upper back has been a mess of knots, pulls, and strung out nerves. It could have been the car accident in 2001, when my best friend flipped her tiny Mazda over into a pile of rocks, or the time in 1994 I fell out of that same friend’s second floor window onto a hard pile of mulch. It could be the double D’s I carry on a five foot three frame, or the posture I’ve taken on to hunch over. There’s the way I slump over the ubiquitous keyboard that has been under my hands since my first hp 386, or the handbag that must, absolutely must, carry reading materials.
More than likely, it’s my desk job: the crappy, wobbly chair that was built to comfortably seat a 250 pound 6 foot two man, the crappy 14 inch monitor, the keyboard raised so high it strains my wrists…
So I’ve been in pain for years. How shitty is that? I rarely have a day my back doesn’t hurt. Maybe it’s why I drink as often as I do. I shudder to think the amount of times I’ve gladly gone for happy hour after a particularly painful writing session. I have no problem popping muscle relaxers or vicodin or ativan — anything to help calm my back. I will melt into putty the second a boy offers me a massage.
(Too much back story, I know.)
Today something snapped. The pain is radiating from my back, starting at my shoulder and sending shock waves down my arm, snapping into my wrist, and pooling in my thumb. The whole hand is pins and needles, half numb, weak, and somewhat burning.
It hurts to write, which is unfair and cruel and bullshit. That’s my job. And it’s my fucking love. Take it away, and I am useless. I am the other kind of putty.
The agony is embarassing, because you can’t even see it. I wish body pain were bloody, because I think my coworkers think of me as a whiny brat. And I am. But I usually only tear up when things get too excuciating to bare. And I’ve hit the breaking point.
It’s taken too long to write this. It’s taken hours, tiny little bursts, which has made this fragmented and lame. Moreso than usual.
I can’t eat. I don’t know why. It might be the birth control pills, or the uppers from the other night, or my stupid heart. My weight has dipped vaguely in only the way it can on a curvy five foot three girl. Rather than enjoy my somewhat flatter stomach, I feel sick. Last night I sat down for all-you-can-eat tacos and half-heartedly ate three. When the fourth was served I ran outside for air. I returned to down more margarita before running to the bathroom to unsuccessfully gag. I have a lunch date today. I might need to make it a liquid lunch. Or I might need to hurl, and I have too much going on at work to spend any time scratching on the bathroom tiles. Decisions decisions.
Subway Philosophy is about New York, culture, sex, publishing, memories, alcohol, or a combination of the above. Originally taken from drunken musings on the subway, it has evolved into something extraordinarily similar to most young blogs: which is to say, redundant, romantic, and woefully introspective.
