Bringing Sissy Back

Part of the reason the fan stays on in my room overnight, even in these days of a winter chill sneaking into the overnight air, is that the button on top of it that controls the level of blow strength has one blue light for each of its three settings. With a window that is boarded up and a door that needs to be kept shut lest a strange dog come join me in the middle of the night, those tiny blue dots are the only source of illumination within my room throughout the night. But are they enough?

When people ask me what it was like living in Portland, one of my stock answers is that it’s a great town for self-starters, but it was easy to wallow as someone who generally needs a kick in the pants to get things going. Lately with it becoming more and more frequent for me to roll back into bed as my hours of sleep sometimes approach the double-digits, I wonder if the sun might be the kick in the pants MIA from my mornings right now.

Sometimes acquiring some great handicap seems like it would be the greatest gift in the world. That suddenly putting me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life would be just the springboard I need to get things going. “Hey, who was that dude in the wheelchair who kept talking about how he wants to hatefist nerdy Jewesses and then have them carry him into bed after sex while he makes them suggest how many other names Tina Fey considered before she settled on ‘Liz Lemon’? That dude was something else. He was really onto something.”

But then one day I was seriously thinking about what it would actually be like. I was in the deep, deep tunnel of the 168th Street Station waiting and a 1 train began approaching as I spied its arrival from the front of the platform. It was late at night and I had been waiting there for a while after taking the elevator down from the A train that I had just transfered from above. “This could be it. Yr big chance. Jump in front of this train as it’s slowing down and cripple yourself. Be the guy who talks about how he jumped in front of a train not in an attempt to commit suicide, but just in order to put himself in a wheelchair as the perfect setup for telling this story to you listening to it now.”

Then my eye caught focus of the puddles on the tracks, the ones that form between the rails and serve as baths for the pigeons that call 168th Street a home. And it dawned on me that being in a wheelchair might be a little like when you step in a puddle. At first it’s the only thing that you can think about. “My foot is wet. It’s getting wetter. I knew it was time to get new shoes. My foot is now cold and wet and it is only going to get cold and wetter. Anywhere that could rescue me out of these wet shoes and socks is miles away and it’s just a reality that my second-best foot forward will be one that feels like it is an abandoned orphan.” Eventually you get used to it and go about with yr day. But a puddle is serious business and does not let you forget that it has done some damage to you. 

“How are you doing today?”

“Oh, I stepped in a puddle.”

“What’s been going on with you lately?”

“Still dealing with this whole wheelchair thing. You’d think after five years I wouldn’t feel so ashamed that I need to wait for someone else in order to get out of bed every morning.”

Why am I so convinced that life is just a serious of variables that is awaiting one factor that can truly make or break it? Thus with each new one that comes along, I put stock in this one change as the one that is about to fix or cripple my life. A window with sun coming through it, a new girl in my life, joining a gym–these all create the illusion for me that they will be the permanent lift out of the fog of overall dissatisfaction. That is until they become the window that never stays clean, the girl who I must just be incompatible with, and the gym membership that’s a waste of money–then they are the burdens that are keeping my days down. 

Right now it feels like my life would be better served if it was less clunky. It ended up this way because I decided that it needed a little more clunk. When does the train coming in stop appearing to be the light at the end of the tunnel and when does the light at the end of tunnel stop turning into the train that is coming right at me?

Right now it feels like my life would be better served if it was less clunky. It ended up this way because I decided that it needed a little more clunk. Build it back up. Scratch that. Tear it back down. Stomping the sand castle is not enough of a pallet cleanser so you go to a different beach. Then you give up building sand castles altogether. At some point it seems that you’re bound to just really throw yr hands up and see where the tide drags you out to, even if it means you wind up right back at shore, only now washed up.

Tags: sisyphus