The Bloody Doors Off

Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

Barry Mcguire, Eve of Destruction
Songwriter: P. F. Sloan

At a rally tonight, the Orange Cheeto said he was going to invoke the Aliens Enemies Act of 1798.

A quick synopsis below, courtesy of the National Constitution Center:

“In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts with the support of the Adams Administration. The Alien Act granted the President unilateral authority to deport non-citizens who were subjects of foreign enemies. The Sedition Act attacked the core of free speech and a free press—the right to criticize the government. The atmosphere of partisan politics was particularly fraught in the 1790s—with the rise of the partisan press and the development of rival political parties. The Alien and Sedition Acts stacked the deck against the political opposition, criminalizing criticism of Federalist President John Adams, but not Vice President Thomas Jefferson—the leader of the political opposition. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison fought back, arguing in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that the Acts violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and a free press. While the Supreme Court never ruled on the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson defeated Adams in the election of 1800. Once in office, President Jefferson allowed the Acts to expire and pardoned those convicted under them.”

So this would give him — if elected less than a month from now — the power to expel any landed, illegal and (I’m sure he’d add legal) immigrants with a snap of his fingers. All he’d have to do is declare their home country an enemy of the US.

If he also ran the Seditions Act in tandem, it would also him power over the free press. He could shut down any and all media that isn’t favourable to him. One very right-wing media streamer Right Side Broadcasting, who filled the vacuum left by Fox News, who sometimes fact check the president, had a “reporter” covering the rally, telling viewers that the Springfield, Ohio migrants, who are there legally, are demonic, and raping and killing men, women and children. So I guess they’re safe.

Now, the Act expired soon thereafter, and the case was never heard by the Supreme Court at the time. But Trump can sign an executive order reinstating it, and as he’s got the majority of the Supreme Court in his back pocket, the same justices who said an official act by the President automatically gives him immunity, even for the worst crimes.

You can see where this is going.

People wonder why I am ‘obsessed’ with this election.

Because it might be their last.

And we’ve got a CONservative leader, Pierre Poillievre, who wants to “take Canada back”. (Was “Make Canada Great Again” already trademarked?) He’s a milquetoast version of the Orange Cheeto.

His party are leading in opinion polls. The ruling Liberals have a minority government, and their partnership with the NDP was recently dissolved. The first chance he got, ol’ Pollievre called for a non-confidence motion, which failed. He tried again, and also failed. But the bugger is chomping at the bit for an early election while the political winds blow out of his ass.

Which means, it could just as easily happen here.

And it makes me sick to my stomach that, come November 6th, the first domino may fall.

Fake news.

I did. Back in high school, during a drama club rehearsal.

You know high school auditoriums (or at least the ones built pre-1960s). Very large stage, orchestra pit below in front, then auditorium seating (wooden chairs).

We were rehearsing what we called a backstage production. Instead of facing out to a large empty room, our sets were rotated 90 degrees. Audience sat on the stage. The main curtain would be lowered to assist with the intimacy.

All the Laws of Nature. That was the play. Set in… Italy, during maybe the Renaissance? We all wore black tights as part of our costumes. I’ll loop back to this later.

I’d graduated from gopher (go for a coffee order from the cast, go for burgers from Jon Anderson’s across the road (and a few other places) in grade 9. My big break came late my freshman year. Okay, I definitely don’t remember the name of this one. But the name involved a blackout. The play started in complete darkness, and when the power goes out, the lights come up. Only the actors can’t see each other, or their surroundings. They were expecting a German art appraiser (a cameo). He comes in the final minutes of the play, Stumbles through the front door and promptly falls through a trap door on the floor and the door gets slammed shut. The guy cast in the role had to quit a week out from its debut, and the director threw me in.

Oh gods, I sucked. And I

In one performance, I didn’t duck fast enough after falling through the floor, and the door slammed on my head. (That was the closest I’d fine my name surrounded by stars.)

Slight concussion. Only no one took it seriously, including me.

Fast forward one year. Now I’m a sophomore. (Yes I know we don’t use these terms in Canada. I just don’t want to write a bland grade 10. This is my blog. My rules.) And I have to wear black tights for the role. (And this was not the most ridiculous look I’d carry in high school.)

We’re on break. I pick up my yellow Sony Walkman (cassettes) in my right hand (easter egg) and throw on my headphones with the fuzzy orange foam cushions. I remember there was some impediment that blocked my path down the middle of the stage to the dressing room. I had to scoot along the edge of the stage. The yellow curtains were drawn shut so you couldn’t see the empty chairs. Or the mass of metal music stands and metal chairs assembled in the orchestra pit. (The music room was being renovated.)

And you couldn’t see exactly where the stage ended.

I’m sixteen. I’m invincible. I’m a risk taker. I walk so close to the curtains I can feel the velvet brush my shoulder.

“Oh shit.”

The Walkman, which as I mention had been in my right hand — which should have made contact first as it was in my right hand which cleared the edge of the stage — somehow landed on the stage. Whereas I. Did. Not.

Everyone came running when they heard the musical death trap score first blood.

Once clear of the accident scene, I stood up and walked it off.

Nope, no one thought, “maybe we should take this guy to the hospital to be sure he’s okay”. And it never occurred to me.

But then the bruise came. From the top of my shoulder, down my arm, on the side of my torso, hip, thigh and calf. Unimpeded. It’s not bruises. It’s Bruise.

Try to get that into tights after. And it triggered a sizeable depressive episode. I couldn’t change in front of the cast, and present my hubris. I couldn’t be in any company. So every break, I slipped off to a nook offset the dressing room we weren’t using. After a time, one of the actors found me, and laid into me about my disrespecting everyone by isolating myself. (I guess depression wasn’t discussed back then. Definitely not with me.) I showed him the Bruise. He apologized.

A month after the final performance, a bunch of us were hanging out in the drama teacher/director’s office. (The only teacher who had one, and he allowed smoking. The other option was going out the door at the back of the room, which exited to the front of the school.) He had one of those one-a-day-sayings on his desk. One had already been discarded, and I almost stepped on it.

It read:

Paul’s Law. You can’t fall off the floor.

You’d think once in a lifetime would be a million-to-one shot. But in late March, I fell forward while picking up groceries from outside our condo, and seriously fucked up my right foot.

4 MRIs (3 for the foot, and one for my lower back) and 2 x-rays later.

What I know so far.

I have degenerative disks in my lower back. On my right side. Arthritis. Thankfully nothing’s out of place. My right foot? Well for starters, there is a cyst between the joints, which are also suffering from osteoarthritis. The fracture was a false positive. And a bone spur on my plantar in my heel. Cause of the nerve pain? I (hopefully) find out on Friday.

And if you think it started back then.

Let’s go back to when I was eight, and after bugging my mother for weeks to get a skateboard because all my friends had one and I don’t wanna be left out, I set out on my maiden voyage.

Which lasted exactly one second. Because I immediately lost my balance and fell backward. My right foot (which I tried to use on the back end — and in hindsight, I should’ve gone the other way) slammed onto the asphalt driveway. I hobbled back inside and down to the rec room, where I told my mother what happened and that I couldn’t walk and maybe I needed someone to look at it. She thought I was exaggerating. Said if I was still limping on Sunday (it was Thursday, Linda Carter was spinning into Wonder Woman on the television) she would take me to Scarborough General Hospital.

The x-ray came back. I’d chipped a fragment off my heel bone. The doctor said I’d walk with a limp the rest of my life.

I defied the odds.

Until March 25, 2024.

Now I limp (to varying degree, depending on the pain) and surmised after getting the latest results (you can’t cure osteoarthritis, but you can take Tylenol for the pain. Yippee.

The “temporary” use of a cane is looking a lot like a permanent fixture. Until the day comes I’m in a wheelchair. I’ve seen my future.

Hopefully the cyst will be gone by then, and we’ll have solved the nerve pain question.

Help. I’ve fallen. And I can’t get back up.

My mum died a week before I turned 50. I got the call early on October 6, that she’d had a heart attack while at the laundromat. She was sitting in a chair, and just slumped over. I convinced my brother Kevin to pick me up so I could accompany him to the hospital in Aurora.

Which was the right call. Before we’d gotten there, doctors had to restart her heart. Wayne and Donna were on vacation (somewhere south) and I stepped outside to call them. Larry was upset with me. But this was something I needed to do. It wouldn’t have been fair for them to get the news any later than it was.

I got back upstairs and joined them in a separate waiting room. As the on call physician steeled us for the worst, as we prepared to enter her room and make our peace, mum had a second, fatal, heart attack.

We ventured into the hospital room to say goodnight.

Her face was contorted, mum’s mouth open, silently screaming. Her eyes still open.

(Thanks, doc. That hasn’t haunted me for the past seven years.)

Still raw from shock and despair, we drove back to Sutton, and to the lone funeral parlour to begin making preparations.

It hadn’t even been an hour. I dunno, I thought maybe we’d take time to process before making plans. I was numb. She would be cremated, it was decided. The funeral held at this establishment.

And, because fate, or god, or the cosmos had a way of really messing me up, my phone rang. A recruiter had a potential contract with one of the major banks in Toronto (I won’t say which, but one of their downtown branches was known as the ‘Starbucks Bank’ because the coffee roasters had a permanent placement within.)

I dunno. Maybe it was mum, trying to ease the pain. Because I hadn’t been working and needed a decent contract.

(I went in for their testing a day or two later. It was paper-based. You know those ‘spot the 5 differences’ challenge with two near-exact images and you had to circle the missing pieces — or in their case, brand mistakes (which, sidebar, how the fuck would I know what their guidelines were, having never seen a presentation before)? Yeah, well, I fubar’d it but good. End of story. Taah Daaah.)

The decision was made, very grudgingly on my part, to hold the service on October 13th.

When I turned 50.

The surprise party planned was, rightly, cancelled.

Have you ever had someone wish you a happy birthday — and give you a birthday card — while simultaneously offering their condolences?

The room was at capacity. My nephew Jason, who lives in Calgary, facetimed so he could be with us in digital spirit.

I didn’t speak. Cowardice? The writer, with a loss for words when it came to eulogizing the woman who raised him and guided him to adulthood, and stood by his side even when he kept pushing everyone away? (I’ll never get to atone for this sin. And there’s a tiny part of my soul that believes I don’t merit forgiveness, but that’s an issue to unpack with my psychiatrist. Or my next psychiatrist, as I’m literally phoning in my sessions right now. He’s helped me immensely in the past, but it’s probably time to get a fresh perspective.)

I couldn’t even fucking cry. (Wellbutrin takers know this all to well.) I welled up, but tears didn’t fall.

After, tea/coffee and those tiny triangle and rectangular cut egg salad and tuna sandwiches. That my mum served at the ladies’ euchre night when it was her turn to host.

They got me a Blue Jays jersey, something I’d wanted but couldn’t justify the cost for. They added Troy Tulowitzki’s name and number on the back. (He was traded the next year. I’ve worn it once. It’s still in my dresser.

Yeah.

The second funeral? My uncle Bern passed a few years later, also in October. His funeral was held… on my birthday.

I didn’t go. I couldn’t. It was. It was unfair. (Narrator: It wasn’t unfair, the author was selfish. Another sin he carries.)

Not sure why this bubbled up now. I guess pumpkin spice season makes me feel wistful?

Anyway.

No button to tie this blog post into a nice bow.

Just like life.

You don’t always get the ending you want.

“Son, are you doing religion?“

“Are you like me, you enjoy a good ham and cheese sandwich, but oh no! the bread is just too small and the ham is drooping and touching the dirty table you kept promising to clean with an antibacterial wipe but just couldn’t get to? Do you crave multigrain with more mass? Paper comes in eight and a half by eleven inches, so why shouldn’t your bread products? Now you can, with Ronco’s new letter-sized loaf.

Two wildly bizarre (and in the case of the latter, very SCTV with Dave Thomas pitching) lines of dialogue crop up in my head, unbidden. While I’m doing the dishes. The large pot still needs to be scrubbed. Had to abandon, make myself a sandwich (my stomach talked to me first) and sit down in front of my gigantic, curved monitor and breathe these to life.

Ah.

There’s the problem.

Well. Not a problem.

This always happens, a failure to launch if you will.

The idea hits. (Two this time! What?!)

I type it out.

And ask myself.

Um, what’s next?

Fuck if I know.

It took me years to properly birth A Song For Rachel. I was initially struck listening to music. Concept stuff. And an image pops into my mind’s eye, a woman struggling in frigid water after falling through the ice. There was a story to break there.

And, yep, you got it. Didn’t go any further.

Until the day an odd piece of dialogue popped into my head.

Beat.
MARY (CONT'D)
You have a healthy glow. My mother inhaled a pack a
day. The only glow around her came from a lighter.
The INTERN giggles.
INTERN
Sorry.
(quietly)
Healthy glow.
The INTERN snorts, clears her
throat and straightens in her
chair, attempting to compose
herself. She fails utterly, and
breaks out laughing.
INTERN (CONT'D)
I like you, Mary.

And I had. Everything.

I don’t want to wait years. Not months, days, hours, minutes.

I want now.

Realizing how I feel artistically bereft, not having written anything of real substance in over a year.

Take Beethoven. Dude became deaf and that didn’t stop him composing. It was always there for him. Mozart. Hemingway. Steven King. (Dude, slow down a little, okay? We’d like a breath between finishing one of your novels and digging into the next.) Prince.

I do NOT compare myself to any of them. I have … a modicum … of talent. I’m allowed to call myself a playwright. And I’ve been paid, motherfuckers. More than once. I’ve made it to zoom festival main stages, and made the short list with others. Wanna see my rejection emails? There are a lot. (In the trash folder. One day I may shred.) I was mortally wounded (metaphorically) from a savage review for my second ever Fringe show. (EYE Weekly. DRIP.) And I experienced euphoria as one online arts critic called my first show in Hamilton as one of his top 3 picks.

I was busy back then. Ideas came easier. Marlo and I joined two cold reads companies that hosted live reads of new works by local playwrights. I used it as a testing ground for a short play I’d written in a response to the previous week’s prompts given to a random playwright to incorporate into a short story in 7 days. (I wasn’t the winner. But the end product of that piece, Last Call, introduced a character I’d only hinted at in another story (Snow Angels). And, not to humblebrag, but Lost in Translation was accepted by a California drama collective to produce using Zoom, and posted to their website on YouTube.

Snow Angels, Lost in Translation. Last Call. The three best brief works I will ever write.

I felt like Aaron Sorkin during Covid. I was blogging, working to better previous works. Contacted several friends and held an online reading of A Song For Rachel. And Marlo successfully pitched it and directed as part of Alumnae Theatre’s Zoom series.

And then something happened.

Like a light switch to my creative storytelling drive was switched off.

But tonight. In the span of ten minutes.

And I’m at a loss. Soon I’ll second guess and declare that I’ll revisit them in the morning and if it still feels viable, I’ll create a new subfolder for them on my desktop.

But until then, it’s gonna bug me.

Is the son doing religion?

I don’t advertise this. But I sometimes get feelings of things to come.

earliest memory

I knew the moment my paternal grandfather passed away from cancer. I was at a high school drama club party, and I got hit with a feeling. Like someone had just walked through me. I went home and fell asleep, only to be woken by the phone call.

I could predict little things: a song cued up on the radio, outcomes of sporting events.

you can dance if you want to, you can leave your cares behind

I had a best friend, Doug. He’d gotten engaged to Kim and before their wedding, I dreamt of having an argument with the date I was bringing, and watched her walk away from me and spend the rest of the evening with another friend, George.

And then the narrative skipped ahead, and she I had married.

In this moment, I’m confident you know what happened at the wedding reception.

Never did get married.

christmas in july

But she did introduce me to a psychic one evening, booked an appointment for me. Before I’d said a word, she asked: “You have such wonderful stories to tell. Why did you stop writing?”

No one knew that. No one.

Her name was (is? I can’t find a social media presence) Christmas Henderson. She gave me a book of Longfellow poetry; said she didn’t know why, but it was meant to be in my hands. Shortly thereafter, I gave the book to my companion.

She loved Longfellow. It was her favourite poet.

9 1/2 weeks

In my early improv days, when I was taking intermediate classes at Harbourfront, a fellow improviser introduced me to his friend. She had a kind face, and the rest of her was inviting. My first thought as I shook her hand: “I’m going to have sex with her.” (Look, I’m not trying to be sexist or crude, and I don’t think this qualifies as cancelling me.)

I had recently come into possession of 2 tickets to Yuk Yuk’s at Yonge and Eglinton and invited her. She was enthusiastic about going. As we exited the subway, she turned to me and said, “Oh, I meant to tell you. I’m married.”

Record scratch.

Wow, I was wrong.

Only I wasn’t.

I hosted a party at my father’s townhouse (where I and my oldest brother were living at the time). He was away at a convention, I think. I had a friend DJ’ing in the dining room nook. The place was jumping. Literally. Everyone dancing in the living room and I swear the floor bounced.

She showed up at the party. And things got very interesting.

Ice cubes were involved. There was a make out session in the basement.

She said she wished she met me six months earlier. I asked why. “That’s when I got married.”

We embarked on a short, but passionate affair.

(Okay, we’re getting into cancel territory here. I did feel guilt. That was the catholic in me trying to escape its desolate plane of existence where I’d banned it to years prior. (I could not accept a lot of Church doctrine.) )

Let me say, not as an excuse. She initiated. You should’ve seen the dress she didn’t wear to the party. And I did mention the ice cubes.

It was hot. Taboo. It lasted about two months. The guilt got to her. I’d supressed mine. Broke down later. Promised never to do that again.

And kept my promise.

christmas in december

It was either December 1998 or 1999. (You’d think I’d remember that.) Working the midnight shift, the night before the office Christmas Party at the O’Keefe Centre. No, it was the Hummingbird then. I had a moment. One of my work colleagues popped into my head, unbidden. Suzi.

Sure I can predict things, but I can’t anticipate human interest. But at the party, I suggested wouldn’t it be fun if we pretended to flirt, and see if any of our colleagues picked up on it. Laughter, Hands stroking arms. We stepped outside into the crisp winter air, right outside the full wall glass windows of the party area. I suggested taking it up a notch, as no one seemed to pay us any attention. Maybe we kiss and see if anyone tells.

There were sparks. Shortly thereafter, we ran off to the underground PATH and began our adventure together.

“united 93, you are off course”

Four days before 9/11. I turned to my then girlfriend Suzi and said, “something is very wrong. something is going to happen” (or words to that effect, it was 23 years ago). I got home that fateful morning after working the midnight shift at my presentation specialist job and went to bed. Only to be woken 45 minutes later to come out and see the World Trade Centre on fire.

yes, i’m getting to the point

Someone walked through me tonight.

I’m gonna glow in the fucking dark any day now.

My lovely wife Marlo drove me to Ajax for a 2am MRI scan of my lower back. How does this relate to my tendonitis and a lesion lurking in my foot? The neurologist wants to rule out a herniated disc or pinched nerve.

Of course, the last MRI of my foot was inconclusive and THAT needs to be redone. I prodded my GP (well, her replacement while she’s on maternity leave) about not getting a new date. Turns out the requisition sent for the lumbar also included my right foot, but they will only scan one body part at a time. They texted offering a date on the last week of August (at 4:50 am). Which I can’t do. (Prior commitment.) I’m waiting for other date options.

Some day, historians will find this blog and curate it in a museum, as the origin story of Toronto’s superhero protector. Or it’s evil mastermind who removed Doug Ford from office and was heralded as Ontario’s saviour, until I instituted ice cream Tuesdays. Because no one wants to eat ice cream on a Tuesday in February.

I was hurt. I was angry. I was losing my best friend.

The digital clock shone 11:11. The superstitious say ‘make a wish’. I refused. What if it came true?

I burnt the meatloaf in the microwave.

Sleep if for the meek.

This won’t hurt, now, didn’t it?

Rest, brave soldier. Your watch is at its end.

I will be the first to admit I am woefully unprepared for what comes next. And maybe I should just keep my nose clean.

But I need to say this, for good or ill.

---

Because of his conviction, Trump cannot vote and is barred from all but the safest intelligence reports (and probably delivered paperless so he doesn’t steal those too).  

His supporters are rage crying on TikTok, right wing Maga social media personalities are calling for a war and the Speaker of the House asked the Supreme Court to “step in”. A Republican Congressman is subpoenaing NY Southern District DA Alvin Bragg for a kangaroo court hearing.

And, oh. Trump’s rabid following are threatening to doxx the jurors who convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records. So, you know, put fear in those who may be called to jury duty for the documents case (if Judge Cannon is recused and the engine of the law starts up again) in Florida, or the election interference case in Georgia, and the Washington, DC case where he tried to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election. Call that for what it was. An insurrection.

A majority of Qanon/MAGA folk probably own a plethora of semi-automatic and even deadlier guns and tactical gear.

America, I think you need someone to talk to. Please, don’t just “stand by and stand back”. Everyone should take a breath.

Maybe several.

Tendonitis. Nerve pain. My right foot is, for lack of a better medical term, fucked up.

Okay, it is getting better. I can walk without the cane without tendonitis pain (but I still have nerve pain in my right foot). My balance is still shit (I nearly fell over leaning back against a wall while getting undressed for the scan), so the cane goes where I go.

And earlier this morning (after midnight — has anyone watched that show? I kinda like it; it’s got potential. They tweaked the format a bit last week. I don’t like #Hashtag Wars as the elimination game) I managed to snag an MRI appointment at Michael Garron Hospital (MGH).

Marlo wasn’t available to drive me, so I Ubered. While in transit, I told the driver to drop me off at the Sammon Street entrance, and not Coxwell Avenue.

Naturally, he pulled in front of the non-emergency entrance on Coxwell. I needed to be at the entrance to K-Wing 1. Which I was told could be found on Sammon Avenue. So I shlepped south and made a right at the corner. The main entrance is quite wide; you can’t miss it.*

*What you can miss, is the second entrance less than 100 metres east, just past the underground parking. And it’s inset from the street so you could easily miss it in the midnight sky. There is also a sign on the sidewalk informing all that this is the entrance for the MRI. No. Really.

Naturally, I went in the first entrance. It was familiar. It had overhead signs to guide me to the MRI department, which took me into a labyrinth that even a minotaur could get lost in.

And I did.

I spent 20 minutes going in every direction. This made no sense. The booking agent told me that there was a phone after I got through the front doors, and dialing a four digit number would alert a security guard to let me in.

I’ll say it again. 20 minutes. And when I finally arrived at the Diagnostic Imaging reception, and followed the sign directing me to the MRI.

I was greeted by a curtained off hallway and the sound of construction.

Fuck. This is not good. Understatement.

After completing a circle back to the construction, I found my way back to the Sammon entrance.

I stepped out into the cool obsidian night and looked around. I even walked east until I hit the ramp to the underground parking. I wondered briefly about their being a door ahead of me, and discounted the notion at the speed of a fart. (This analogy does not play into the title of this blog post. Wait your turn.)

There were other, well-lit doors closer to Coxwell Avenue, but they only opened out.

By now I was getting shocked with nerve pain in my foot. I gave silent thanks for the cane, which kept me upright and mobile. I turned north at Coxwell, to the entrance the Uber driver had taken me to. The door lead me into a general reception/waiting area which twigged memories from 2013. (It hadn’t changed at all. And this time I wasn’t heading up five floors to H Wing.).

It felt. Wrong. And then this happened. I saw a sign. O, blessed message, delivered on the wings of Hermes (or a laser printer, which I suppose was the answer to Occam’s Razor. And it read:

“For access to the MRI department, use the Emergency entrance and call security.”

Goddammit.

And off I go, dragging my ass up to Mortimer and then east again, to Emerg. I spoke to the night shift intake worker. She confirmed my appointment in the computer database, but couldn’t give me clear directions. Thankfully, she consulted a security officer, who approached and began giving directions through another labyrinthian quest that Gary Gygax himself would have included in a module set in a medieval abandoned hospital**.

**Yes, I know hospitals don’t exist in Dungeons and Dragons. Fun fact: the first campaign I ever joined was in a high school club. As I had no clue about generating a character sheet, let alone a cool-sounding name, I leaned heavily on the DM for assistance. He dubbed my chaotic neural elf thief ‘Scrotum’. No, I didn’t clue in until half-way through the starting point. And so, I pulled a Leroy Jenkins and went feral on their asses. It was my first — and possibly best — presence attack in an RPG. (Though playing a superhero who fires a laser beam through a car’s hood before getting drop-kicked into a random family’s seventh floor apartment, and within a beat I told the trio watching television, “Don’t get up” before jumping out where a wall used to be.) A corridor was filling with water, perhaps 3 feet at this moment (the DM hated metric; he said “They didn’t use metric in medieval times, so we’re not using it here“). As the group entered the hall, I leapt from under water with a very sharp knife at the ready. It was a very short-lived campaign.

I was done with directions.

I asked him (very nicely) to take me there.

Off we went.

The first turn was promising.

The second seemed… familiar.

He was taking me the exact route I’d traversed 15 minutes before.

And it was getting perilously close to my appointment time, and I didn’t know — given they take appointments 24 hours a day — when the next person was scheduled and if I’d miss mine.

Yup, this hallway was familiar. So was the Diagnostic Imaging check-in that I’d recently passed.

And, on cue, was the curtained off section of hallway, echoing the sounds of construction equipment and chatter between the night shift. My security guard slipped past the white drapery and began a conversation. They would allow the security guard through, they said, but not me because I was a patient and not staff.

After I reiterated the problem of finding the proper entrance, a construction worker appeared and agreed to take both myself and the security guard the rest of the way. Which almost included a half-level stairway down (which made no sense, so I’m glad he realized the mistake immediately). And two minutes later, I was in K-Wing 1.

One hundred fucking metres. I walked over half an hour, when all I needed was to take a 30 second jog to my right.

Which brings me back to the title of this post.

I was feet to torso in the beast. The technician provided earplugs and sound cancelling headphones, and still that fucker was loud. I was embedded for 40 minutes. and of course you can’t have any metal, so the hopes of a television to distract me was out of the question.***

***At least my dental hygienist let me watch Animal Planet on Monday.****

****And she gave my a lolly for being a brave boy.

I spent the downtime running strange scenarios in my head, mostly What If stories that would make Stan Lee blush. Soon enough, we were done and I was instructed to sit up.

It’d been building, you see. And the plan was to get back to the dressing room before.

Best laid plans.

At least it was just one little fart.*****

*****That’s for Marlo. (No, not the fart itself. It’s an inside joke.) Happy date-iversary, honey.

And, thankfully, I wasn’t ass-deep in the tunnel when it ripped.