My Dad said, “It takes two to tango.” Mine is “I try everything twice,” reasoning that, you know, on any given day it might not be great, so try it again. Twice might keep you from making a snap judgment. Twice might let you find something out… about yourself.
I’ve been bitten by vicious dogs twice in my life.
I’ve caught girlfriends with other men twice. Embarrassing for me, emboldening for the hims. You question yourself.
I’ve been rescued from almost drowning twice, once by a sister, the other by the neighborhood bully. Well, three times really, if you count the time I was snorkeling well off by myself, off the shore of Isla de Mujeres in Mexico. But no one was there to rescue me that time – life threatening, swallowing seawater, caught in currents, my corpse would have been washed out to sea and no one would ever have known what happened to me. Lucky to be here, or am I?
I’ve eaten uni twice and never got the hang of it. Looks like baby shit and tastes like salty mud.
I’ve eaten natto twice, the nastiest looking fermented food ever, tan soybeans caught in a mucilaginous, stringy, rubber cement kind of, dunno, some kind of microorganism. The first time I hurled, but… since I try everything twice, and I really do try to live up to that aphorism, I went back, found it from a different producer, and… wow! Those are some goooood rubber cement beans!
I’ve been through alcohol detox twice. Once in the hospital, then next time, on my own, alone with my own tormented soul without whatever it is they give you to shutter the shudders. A single room hall of horrors, where, by design I put myself there and then had only myself to find my way out of the maze. Not exactly true, I have understanding friends, and a daughter, and a particular sister, and a cell phone. Before I did this thing, I made arrangements. “If I run into trouble, I’m going to call you guys, and maybe one of you can take me to the hospital.” Roger agreed. His adult twin brothers are recovering alcoholics, something like, since 1984. He matter-of-factly told me it takes a couple times, but “You’ll get it, man.” He’s a kinda famous punk rocker from the eighties. He can have a couple of beers and he’s good. Not me. I’m wondering if a couple of times through this hell will be enough to teach me.
I was told by a doc, I am in the deep end of the pool. But a pool is a pool. It’s all the same except it’s deeper on one end. My pool is like that beach in Mexico. You could walk out and keep walking and the sand was soft and water just got incrementally deeper and the sun was blazing and the water felt good. But there comes a point where the waves lap up to your face and a few more steps and there’s no bottom and the current is persuasive and the clarity is gone and seaweed and sea creatures wash upon you and you think “I got this.” Do I?
My second time, for two days I could barely walk. Fuck! I could barely stand up. My hands trembled so violently I could not type. It took both hands for a glass of water. I forced myself to drink water and eat something, a slice of bread, and take vitamins and pills.
I heard songs repeating in my head for the two days and nights. “Why the fuck is Camptown Races playing over and over and over?” “What dark shit is in your brain that THAT is what bubbles up?”
For two hours it was an ancient refrain from some long obliterated monastery. For two hours I heard a folk song in some Eastern European tongue. For a while it was some electronic dance beat. That part was okay.
You should have seen me, walking around putting my ear to every speaker or computer to see which was emitting faint tunes, reasoning a short circuit or the fillings in my teeth, or soundwaves caught in the wind suddenly falling out of the sky, like a kite in dead air.
I chased the sound into a corner and put my ear there, my left ear, that’s where the sound was coming in, and put that ear to the corner and… nothing.
When I was a young man, I knew this guy who would lumber about and put the palms of his hands on the sides of his head and push. He was so unhappy. He asked me if I ever felt my head would explode, or if I felt like there was a hole in my head and brains were leaking out. I chalked it up to one too many acid trips, but it is a real thing, the exploding head thing. It has a diagnosis and everything.
By Wednesday, I walked outside and became convinced the treetops were crowded with a cacophony of tree frogs chirping as loud as a murmuration of starlings. It was winter, no tree frogs.
So for the next two days I heard bird songs. Summer songs in winter. That was the moment… did I have a stroke? Have I uncovered a hidden schizoid state? Am I a psychopath now?
I’d wake up from dreams so lucid they were in four dimensions, wake up during some discourse only to find myself speaking outloud and continuing the conversation with someone in the dream. I was caught between two realities: the dream state and the conscious state. Or was it the descent state versus the intent state? Or was it all one in the same – the specters I long ago planted in the creases of my brain, wriggling free like nightcrawlers after a storm, to remind me my universe is still almost entirely unknown to me? I would have written things down, but I could barely hold a pen.
Shit like that will drive you to empathize with people who hear voices all the time. Our stereotype of the town drunk, whiskered, gaunt, stumbling, mumbling, trembling, asking for a little something. I’ve now been inside him.
On the sixth day the sound hallucinations stopped. Just tinitis, lingering, like when you flush the toilet and the refill is still shitty.
It took two more days for me to begin to feel normalish, in my own skin again. The old Matt. The me who was the most awesome teenager, before dope and alcohol and bad sexual experiences and college knee injuries and marriage fucked me up, meaning, before I allowed them to. Because I didn’t know any better. Oh Big Sandy, sing it, “If I knew now, what I knew then.”
Today, at 2 pm, I went for a constitutional swim at the Y. It isn’t really a swim – it is a maximum of six old farts, each relegated to a portion of the pool so we don’t get the plague upon each other. My corner is in the deep end of the pool.
Remember the near drowning episodes? In a Herculean effort entirely of my own design, I took a swimming class. Still don’t know how anyone relaxes when you’re about to go under, but I did it, then I did it again. Now I am comfortable with just floating on my back, my knees bending some, so that my feet are below the water. I inhale deeply and bob up to the surface. I exhale and I sink. I sink until just my nose and eyes are above water, but it is enough. I have had to learn it is enough, and that if I struggle, I can’t maintain the delicate balance between bob up and just survive.
I listen to my breathing. I am comfortable, for now, with the idea that I am doing something impossible. Floating where before I sank. Swimming where before I flailed. I think of the pool water around me versus the solvent that was inside me.
I begin to let go, let go of worry, my surroundings. Transfixed on the square ceiling tiles, each with hundreds of perfectly organized little divots. Bob up, sink down a little. Bob up, sink down a little. Bob up, disappear, sink down a little, reappear.
I am aware of the ceiling and the water and my breathing. Nothing else is here. I feel as if I’m on a ceiling looking down at a tiled floor. My whole world is upside down. I’m loosely attached to a liquid ceiling, floating above everything. Seeing things differently and feeling things differently. How long can I remain here? Is this the destination? Or am to stay here for a couple of hours, a couple of days until whatever is next.
Tune in. Two-n-in.
