me’s blog

Thus spake my Girls whilst disastrously attempting to impress a Harvard alum, and today, thus speak I.

Last night I went to the first official baseball game at the new Nationals Stadium.  Apparently there was something called an exhibition game on Saturday night, but for some reason it doesn’t count or didn’t matter or I don’t know why but we just don’t talk about it.  It’s like that season of Dallas where Bobby took a nine-month shower.

Anyway, Sunday night my sister and I took my dad to the first official game as a gift for his 69th birthday, and for those of you who know me, you’ll understand what a sincere demonstration of love such a gesture represented.  I’m about to complain, but dad, if you’re reading this, you know I love you more than, well, baseball.  More than lots of other stuff too.  And despite my forthcoming whinery, it really was - and always is - nice to spend the evening with family, even though mom wasn’t feeling well enough to attend.  Dad sent an adorable email the next morning thanking us for the wonderful time he had, and that made it all worth it.

That said…….

The cab ride to the stadium was fine, even though the driver couldn’t get any closer than two blocks from the stadium to drop us off, but whatever.  After waiting in line for 45 minutes just to get into the arena, then waiting another 45 minutes in line to get food, then linebackering (?) our way through throngs of people for about 10-15 minutes on a mission to find our seating section (plus about 5 more minutes because of an erroneous sign which very clearly instructed us to keep walking past our destination level), we finally got to our seats.  Lest you think I’m exaggerating, the game was scheduled to start at 8:05pm and we arrived at the stadium two hours early.  When our butts finally touched our seats, it was 7:55.  Of course by this time the loosely-defined "Philly cheesesteak" I’d waited in line for 45 minutes to get had gone cold, but I’m a trooper so I ate it anyway.  Looking back, it didn’t taste as bad as I thought it should have.  (See, I’m accentuating the positive there!)

Oh wait, did I mention it was about 40 degrees outside and I think I’m anemic?  I dunno, that’s what my sister said.  I have whatever condition it is that causes my hands to freeze way quicker than the rest of me.  Do any of my faithful readers (whassup Doug!) know if there’s a name and/or treatment for that condition?  If so, hook me up, stat.

The opening festivities began around 8ish.  This included the announcement of one unknown team member after another, accompanied by typically impressive DC fireworks and two ginormous American flags being held up by a few dozen soldiers, each flag the size of, um, about 1/4 of a baseball field.  Each player also had his own theme song, and I have to say that hearing Peter Gabriel’s "Big Time" was a highlight of the evening.  And, since I’m focusing on the positive, I am obliged to point out that the whole patriotic flags-n-fireworks display and the truly STUNNING rendition of the national anthem sung a capella by some opera chick was all pretty darned impressive, and it all became even more profound when juxtaposed with what came next.

It seems some chucklehead had the bright idea to invite president bush (I refuse to honor him with capitalization) to throw out the first pitch.  His name was announced, and out he  jogged.  As one might suspect, the crowd greeted him with somewhat of a mixed reaction.  To my ears, however, the majority of the sound coming from the 40,000 people in the stadium was an overwhelmingly disapproving "BOOOO!"  For a brief moment I felt a wee smidgen of pity for him, and I thought about how unfortunate it must be to be him right now.  Can he go anywhere without feeling the wrath of a nation scorned?  He pitched, the feeling passed, I finished my fries, and the ever-dapper (and dare I say, worthy of capitalization) Mayor Fenty told us that it was time to "PLAAAAAAAAAAY BAAAAAAAAALL!"

Then the game started and baseball was played and runs were scored and the Nationals were winning and we got colder and colder and colder and became increasingly tired and cranky and we left after the fifth inning.  And there was nary a cab to be found.

I guess now’s as good a time as any to do my little sports rant.  It’s news to few that I’ve never really been into sports at all.  However some people truly are surprised by this when they learn that I went to Duke University, the quintessential sports-obsessed learning institution where a student is actually excused from class if he or she is scheduled for a shift manning his or her tent while camping out for basketball tickets.  (Which raises a question - can a woman "man" a tent?  Things that make you go hmmm…)

Having grown up as a swimmer, I understand the concept of having pride in one’s team.  And yes, I was indeed voted "Most School Spirit" in my senior class yearbook, though I’m pretty sure that was mainly a result of the boldly creative fashion statements I made during Spirit Week and the artistic flair I brought to the decoration of our homecoming floats.

But what I’ve never been comfortable with is when I see spectators at sporting events getting so wrapped up in what’s going on, to the point where it’s as though they themselves are the ones playing, the ones winning, the ones losing.  It all comes down to volume and pronouns.  You know, when they’re screaming "WE WON THE GAME!"  Um, no.  Calm down.  YOU weren’t playing.  THEY were.  YOU didn’t get tackled.  HE did.  YOU didn’t help score a goal by ripping out that other girl’s weave.  SHE did.  Now I’m not talking about when people generally say something harmless in conversation like "we won last night."  It’s more when people are watching a game and they’re in the heat of the moment, getting all crazy and revved up as rabid sports fans are wont to do.  As though their very lives, their very futures, and the futures of everyone they love, are hanging on the balance of what those people on that field are doing right at that very moment.  Perhaps I’m being petty, but it’s just a big honkin’ pet peeve of mine when people seem to subconsciously blur the line between pride in a team and the reality that they’re not on it.  It’s a tiny little thing, but I feel like it may very well be a significant mental block that’s kept me from getting interested in watching and playing sports all these years.

That, plus the backwards roll trauma.  Plus the crowds.  Plus the cold.  Oh, plus the fact that I have little to no interest in sports whatsoever.  Although I suppose the mere fact that I’ve had fun writing this now quite lengthy entry has proven to myself that, despite all evidence to the contrary, to some extent I do indeed enjoy various aspects of certain sporting endeavors.

Tou-freakin’-ché, Rorelai!

This afternoon as I was taking an extended lunch break in the addictive 65-degree springtime sun, I saw some teenagers carousing in the park in Georgetown.  I don’t know if they were skipping school or on spring break or what, but they were just kinda hangin’ out.  Passing a soccer ball around, eating ice cream, playing a guitar or a djembe drum… just having a good time.  Perhaps even frolicking.  Watching these kids made me so damn happy that my favorite time of year has come once again.  Don’t worry though, I’ll save the rest of my SPRING ROCKS rant for next month when my favorite day of the year rolls around.

Back to the teens.  At one point they started showing each other various gymnastic skills they each possess - somersaults, cartwheels, headstands, handstands, etc.  And never before in my life has this thought crossed my mind, but for the first time, I wished that at some point in my life I’d learned how to do a handstand.  It just looked like so much fun today!  I suppose it’s never too late, but at this point, training myself to exist upside-down even if only for a very short period of time seems highly unlikely. 

You see, I actually remember when I was a wee little Cub Scout, and there was some kind of gymnastics badge or something, and the only thing I could do was a somersault - or a "forward roll" as I believe it was called.  I COULDN’T EVEN DO A BACKWARDS ROLL!  I don’t remember whether I lied and said I had done the backwards roll, or if I just skipped that badge and moved on to the next one.  I hope I didn’t lie.  That wouldn’t have been very scoutly.  Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure there was a cartwheel requirement for that badge too, so if I did lie, I must have lied about that too.  Damn.  If there’d been a lying badge, I’d have had that one all sewn up!  (No, there wasn’t a sewing badge.)

Anyway, the sight of these teenagers in the park getting all gymnasty (?) with each other combined with the Tears For Fears greatest hits cd that’s been in rotation at the office for the past few weeks then led me to ponder the phrase "head over heels".  What on earth does that mean?  People talk about falling head over heels for someone, but if your head is over your heels, you haven’t really fallen at all, have you?  You’re still erect, if you’ll pardon the pun.  So when people say they’re head over heels, that would seem to mean nothing’s changed, right?  Right.

Therefore I hereby submit a motion to coin the term "heels over head" to describe the reckless abandon with which a person falls for others.  Both because it seems a far more accurate figure of speech, and because, at this rate, that’s the only kind of gymnastics badge I won’t have to lie to get.

Bless me dear readers for I have sinned.  It has been waaaaay too long since my last entry.  I promise to try to write more often.  It’s not that I don’t want to or that I don’t have anything interesting going on in my life worthy of sharing with my faithful readers.  It’s just that you both mean so much to me that I don’t like to post anything too hastily, and these days my three jobs rarely allow me the time to give the two of you the attention you so richly deserve.  My sincerest apologies for that, and also for yet another report from my blog-friendly subconscious.

I just woke up from a brief but very intense dream.  In it, some Lost-esque chemical "purge" was taking place, meaning that the entire population of the world (or maybe just the country) was potentially being wiped out by some unstoppable poisonous gassing coming from some unknown source.  Somehow we knew it was coming but we didn’t know when, and we were utterly helpless to stop it.  And, unlike on Lost, we didn’t have gas masks.

There were rows of people lying down on the floor of long, barrack-like adjacent rooms, when one by one the ability to breathe simply began leaving people.  I remember fighting it as long as I could, trying to keep breathing until it became impossible.  A few seconds later the gassing subsided and I lost consciousness, when suddenly I saw my sister standing over me and smoking a cigarette.  (She doesn’t smoke in real life.)  I could hear her tell me that it was over, that it had only lasted a few seconds, and that if I could just push through it and start breathing again, I would be okay. 

A few seconds later I did manage to push through and start breathing again, and when I came to, the first thing I did was look for my parents.  My father was in the next room and had already not made it.  My mother was next to him and was still conscious but was trying unsuccessfully to breathe.  She said that it was her time, and that she couldn’t fight her way back from this, as she was too exhausted from fighting her battle with cancer for the past 9 years.  She told me that she loved me, and I held her as her eyes closed. 

And I woke up bawling my eyes out.

Aside from the obvious, literal, not incorrect conclusion that I’m a big ol’ honkin’ mama’s boy, does anybody have any deeper layers of interpretation as to what this dream could mean?

Sorry this is turning into a dream journal.  It’s just that, other than complaining about my new Monday-Friday day job, I don’t have much fascinating stuff going on in my life right now that’s worthy of sharing with my two faithful readers (make that three - hi Santiago!), and when I wake up from a dream and want to remember it, I’ve found the best way to do so is to get it out in writing.  And the only place I actually write stuff these days is here.  Plus it’s always nice to get an interpretation or two from you guys.  This dream had several holes in it, but I’ll share what I can piece together.

In the dream, it seems I had some random new day job different from the actual new day job I have in real life.  My boss at this imaginary job called to tell me to meet him at some sort of job-related assignment which happened to be in a house right across the street from the house where I grew up.  Suddenly I found myself there, in a room full of men and women who were drinking heavily and using copious amounts of the drugs I used to use, with porn of both gay and straight varieties playing on muted television sets in the background.  I also remember that 80’s music was being played from one of those mini-jukeboxes found atop tables in New Jersey diners.  (If I have a spotty dream, you can bet that one of the things I won’t forget is the music!)  The other thing I recall about the dream is that my sister was there, completely sober and - despite her love of 80’s music - clearly very uncomfortable.  Almost as uncomfortable as I was when I saw her.

Now, I don’t remember actually doing drugs in the dream, but the next thing I do remember is locking myself in the bathroom at the party, clearly having gotten myself very high, and staring into the mirror as I wondered if I could get away with pretending as though this hadn’t happened.  My real-life sobriety anniversary of five years is coming up in February, and the last thing I’d want to do is start all over again counting days.  So after much deliberation I decided to make myself presentable, leave the party, and not tell anyone that I’d relapsed.  When I left the bathroom, my sister had disappeared from the party.  I’m assuming she knew my ill-advised little secret.

Oh, and when I was pulling myself together in front of the bathroom mirror, I happened to notice that my hair was longer than it is now - maybe 3 or 4 inches on top, kind of thick and wavy, and it looked really good.  Such is truly the stuff of dreams!

The only other thing I recall is being outside the party with my imaginary boss from my imaginary new job, walking to his car, and encountering my parents’ next door neighbor and her son in their car, which was parked on the street.  My boss started a conversation through the open sunroof with Mrs. Addison, who clearly did not want to be talking to this guy.  He mentioned something to her about seeing her again soon at LegoLand (?), and she just kind of nodded, rolled her eyes, formed a politely noncommittal response, and drove off with her son.

That’s when I woke up.  First breathless with panicked confusion - then, moments later, relieved.

Thoughts?

I just woke up from a very brief dream.  In it, I was awakened by the sounds of insistent knocking.  I groggily answered my front door to find a cool chick named Maryanna whom I haven’t seen since high school with a group of 15 or so people, as if they were expecting to find some kind of crazy party going on.  I told her that, um, it’s 8:30 in the morning and I have to go to work.  When I asked with polite sarcasm if that would be a problem, she said yes, pushing me out of the way and leading her entourage into my tiny little apartment to get the party started.  I then recognized a couple other random people who haven’t once crossed my mind since high school, and I got a little bitchy, telling one girl - a blonde field hockey player coincidentally named "Leslie", eh hem - that her hair hasn’t changed in 15 years, a lame-oh put-down wholly insufficient for achieving the desired effect of convincing her that there was nothing cool about starting a party at my house without my permission at 8:30am on a Wednesday.  As soon as I’d concocted that cleverest of digs, my alarm started buzzing and I woke to an empty apartment.

Faithful readers, leave thy interpretations in the comments sections below.  Just don’t say I’m old.  We know that already.

Some of you may know that for a while now I’ve been concerned
about and borderline irritated with my wonderfully awesome 68-year-old dad
for the way he’s been becoming increasingly feeble and slow and
tentative.  The biggest source of frustration has been the apparent lack of
any concrete reason for his steady decline.  Though he seems to have been
exhibiting signs of Parkinson’s Disease for the past few years, his doctor constantly and
repeatedly assured him that it was definitely not Parkinson’s.  It was just kind of happening, and my sister and I were supposed to
just kind of watch it happen.  As if! 

Lately we’ve been putting gentle pressure on mom to confront his
doctors and find out what’s really going on.   She has a way with
doctors.  And I don’t mean that in a dirty way.  Anyway, this weekend,
upon returning from their two-week cruise through the Panama Canal, the
parental units informed us that mere days before departing on the cruise they’d
learned that, in fact, dad does have Parkinson’s.

How’d they find out?  From a box on some medication that was prescribed
to dad which explicity says "FOR PARKINSON’S DISEASE" in bold letters.
This, of course, raised their eyebrows, so they asked the doctor, who
then and only then confirmed that yes indeed, dad does have
Parkinson’s.  Fortunately one of dad’s best friends from high school
also happens to be his lawyer.  Rest assured that they’ll be looking into this.

And me?  I’m sure the shock of it will hit me at some point, even though it didn’t really come as that much of a surprise.  But for now I’m still in the stage of being relieved.  Relieved to know that he
actually has something.  Relieved to know that we weren’t imagining
it.  Relieved to know that we weren’t just being too sensitive.
Relieved to know that it’s something that he can treat and fight.  It’s
TOTALLY the two-part "Sick & Tired" episode of Golden Girls, at the
end of which Dorothy finally finds out that despite what a multitude of
dismissive doctors have told her, she’s not crazy.  She actually does
have a real illness.  There’s that brilliant exchange in the restaurant:

DOROTHY:  Waiter, bring us a bottle of your best champagne!

WAITER:  What are we celebrating?

SOPHIA:  My daughter has a debilitating disease!

WAITER:  I see.

DOROTHY:  And it has a name!  I’m THRILLED!

WAITER:  Of course.

I mean, Michael J. Fox has had Parkinson’s for over a decade now, right?  And
he’s still kickin’.  So I’m not too worried about dad.  Who knows?
Maybe he too will write a book.  Or guest star on a reunion episode of
Family Ties.  God knows recently-arrested Brian Bonsall could use the
work.  And it’s always a pleasure to see the delightful Justine Bateman back on tv.

But I digress.  Point is, dad rocks, and he is going to get the best
care Georgetown can offer.  And fortunately he’s got his two kickass kids and his super wife to help get him through it.  ‘Cuz that’s what family is for.  And there ain’t no nothin’ we can’t love each other through.  What would we do,
baby, without us?  Sha-na-na-na.

Yet again I - and an obediently sitting good dog named Ubu - digress.  I’m curious if any of my three (are we up to three yet?) faithful readers have had any experience with Parkinson’s Disease.  If so, could you share some of your experience, strength, and hope with me?  If not, please just keep both of my parents in your thoughts or prayers or whatever.  Good vibes from family ties are what help me remain the smiling, happy guy I am.  And extended family and friends count as family too.  I mean, think about it.  If not for them - and for one Very Special Episode On Alcoholism - the world may never have been introduced to the talents of Tom Hanks.  Or, for that matter, Marc Price.

What a sad world that would be.

HOORAY to America Ferrera, who won the Emmy last night for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her excellent work as the title character on the utterly fabulous Ugly Betty, which is this self-proclaimed tv addict’s uncontested favorite show now that Gilmore Girls is no longer a contender.  Unfortunately Betty’s Vanessa Williams and Judith Light didn’t win for their equally superb (perhaps even superber!) work in their respective categories of Best Supporting Actress and Best Guest Actress.  But no worries.  I just can’t wait until the second season commences on Thursday, September 27.  OMG THAT’S NEXT WEEK!  WO-HOO!

And HOORAY to Sally Field, who won a truly well-deserved Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series for her amazing work on a new favorite of mine, Brothers & Sisters.  But BOO-HISS to the censors who bleeped her impassioned acceptance speech.  This is what she said, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur:

"And let’s face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place."

Also censored was the brilliant Kathy Griffin, whom I’ll be seeing here in DC once again on Wednesday night.  She won for Best Reality Series at the Creative Arts Emmys, or "Schmemmys" as she likes to calls them - the awards given out two weeks ago in the categories of lesser importance. (Less important than Best Writing in a Miniseries?  Whatever.)  The Schmemmys telecast aired on some cable channel this weekend, but her speech was cut.  Here’s what she said:

"A lot of people get up here and thank Jesus for helping them win this award, but I have to say nobody has been less helpful in getting me to this moment than Jesus… So I guess all I can really say is, ‘Suck it, Jesus! This statue is my God now!’"

Hilarious.  Absurd.  And pretty much, true.  But worthy of censoring?  What happened to freedom of speech?  There are no "bad words" in there.  It’s not like she said, "Jesus didn’t do shit to get me here!"  It’s not as though Sally Field went on a profanity-laced tirade about "the fuckin’ war."  So where is this invisible line drawn?  Does America - the U.S., not Ferrera - not have a sense of humor or a heart?  Sometimes this country is so retarded.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

Oh, and not that this is news or anything, but Ryan Seacrest? 

You’re a douchebag.

Anyone who has asked me for a piece of gum over the past few months has undoubtedly had to endure an enthusiastic spiel from me about the wonders of Stride gum.  You see, I’d always had problems with nearly all brands of chewing gum losing their flavor after about 15 minutes in my mouth.  Were I to continue chewing beyond that point, the gum’s taste would inevitably become increasingly heinous and would make my mouth feel fonkay, which always struck me as a cruel irony since the whole point of chewing the gum in the first place was to freshen my breath.

This spring I saw a commercial for Stride gum.  It’s the one where all the guys in the gum factory are talking about how Stride’s flavor lasts forever.  Then one guy pipes up about how that could eventually be bad for business, because with such enduring flavor, people will no longer have to buy as much gum as they used to.  Just at that moment, all the machines in the gum factory grind to a screeching halt.

A key part of my customary Stride spiel is that it’s the very first product I can ever remember buying strictly because of a television commercial.  I mean, the ad declares that the flavor basically lasts TOO LONG, so I thought, hmmm, I’ll be the judge of that.  Well you know what?  The commercial was right!  Stride’s flavor does indeed last a for a couple hours in my mouth, which was nothing short of a miracle to me.  For a while it seemed I’d found the answer to my prayers.

Then summer rolled around, and I began noticing something slightly disturbing.  The flat pack of Stride gum, once unwrapped, would sort of melt together in my pocket over the course of one moderately hot summer day.  Each piece of gum is individually wrapped in waxy paper, but the pieces would all kinda mush together and the paper would sort of melt into the gum, causing a kind of sweat to form on the outside of the wrappers, which would then adhere the wrapped pieces of gum to the inside of the pack.  Needless to say, it’s disgusting.  And once the wrapper comes unstuck from the pack, it’s a whole other adventure trying to unstick the gum from the wrapper.  By the time it’s ready to ingest, it looks like something that’s been scraped off a movie theater floor or out of the treads of some nasty-ass sneakers, making it a much harder sell to my friends.

"Um, but the flavor lasts forever!  I promise!  Just don’t look at it!"

I thought maybe this occurrence was unique to me, since I’d never met anyone else who was an out-and-proud Stride user.  I thought that perhaps when the awesome power of the gum’s unstoppable flavor was combined with my slightly above-average sweating tendencies during the summer, that the conditions were just right to fire up some kind of volatile chemical reaction in my pants and my pants alone.  Or something.  But last week my friend Hope confirmed that I am not alone.  She is also a Stride devotee, and she too has had to confront her own sweaty pack issues.

So today I decided to take action.  I called the now-blurry 1-800 customer feedback number on the soggy pack of Stride from which I’ve been peeling my gum today (pictured above), and I got a very nice young man on the other end of the line.  I expressed to him my great appreciation for Stride, then proceeded to air my concerns.  He said that the sticky pack situation was a huge concern during Stride’s first summer of production in 2006, and that they had taken steps to rectify the situation this year.  Obviously, however, the problem still exists, and apparently I am far from the first to sound the alarm.  He thanked me for my feedback, took down my mailing information, and said I would be receiving some Stride coupons in the mail within the next week.

It felt good to give something back, you know?  Maybe, just maybe, I made a little bit of a difference today.  And if nothing else, at least now I’ve got a little something to look forward to as the unpleasantly frigid - yet delightfully unsweaty - winter months approach.  Free, dry gum!  Huzzah!

My friend John had a bunch of people over to his place on Saturday night to watch my all-time favorite movie, "Clue". I think there were about 10 people there, two-thirds of whom were "Clue" virgins. HOW EXCITING! [Yes, I realize that this means 6.666 people in the room had never seen "Clue" before. Shut up.]

I’m one of those freaks who would typically rather rewatch a movie I’ve seen before than watch something new. When it’s my favorite movie ever and the room is full of several people who’ve never seen it before, well, the stakes are high. And you never know if the people you’re watching a movie with will be those kind of people for whom a special circle of hell is reserved. By that I mean those who talk or text or get up and walk around or generally distract in some way during the movie-watching experience. You people know who you are.

So you can imagine my sheer delight as the gang took in the movie in the way I’d hoped, laughing at all the appropriate spots and paying rapt attention to the rest. It was a perfect movie night experience. Until the end…

Those of you who know "Clue" are aware that a significant part of its brilliance stems from the fact that, in spite of all the detailed farce of the setup, the writing and blocking somehow manage to allow for three possible endings to exist. When the movie was in theaters back in 1985, viewers did not know which of the three endings they would be seeing. On the DVD, there is the option of picking one of the three endings, or viewing all three in succession. Unfortunately, since I was not the person who hit "Play" on John’s remoteless DVD player, I did not realize until the movie’s abrupt end that we were actually watching the version featuring only the first ending, which is arguably the least hilarious of the three.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that the BEST PART of the movie, and perhaps for me the best part of any movie ever, doesn’t happen until the third ending. Had the overall movie night experience been a drag from the start, full of texting talkers who’d seen the movie before or just weren’t that into it, I wouldn’t care. But these newbies were genuinely into the movie, and at the end they all said they really liked it. I was crushed that they hadn’t even seen the very best part.

Hopefully those 6.666 newly deflowered people from the other night are reading this, and hopefully they (and the rest of you) will take less than a minute to enjoy the classic clip below from the third ending of "Clue", featuring the late great Madeline Kahn.

Reprinted below is an email I sent to several friends and classmates after arriving home in the United States ten years ago today on September 1, 1997.  For the record, all of this took place before I embarked upon my reckless career as a drug addict.  Also for the record, the medical issue recounted below was gone by the time I left England and has never affected me since.  And I still have not seen any of the "Star Wars" movies.

**********************************************
From:  Me
Subject:  The Truth About Matt Bailer

Friends, Romans, countrymen, and everyone else I’ve ever met:

Sorry for the bulk email, but I wanted to let all of you know what happened to me this summer before rumors start spreading and the story spirals out of control like a game of Telephone gone horribly awry.  In the mother of all nutshells, I’m fine now, and I’ll be home in Maryland this semester, recovering from a mysterious near-fatal disease that kept me hospitalized in London for the past three weeks.  If you want the whole story (which you know I’ll make long but I’ll try to make entertaining and complete), read on.  If not, see ya later.  I’ll never know.

Brief warning:  Some parts may get a teensy-weensy bit graphic - nothing more graphic than normal body functions that I couldn’t perform for a while.  But you’ll deal with it.  I did.

Another brief note:  Despite my occasional tendency to hyperbolize and be a little bit jokey about what happened, everything in this message is true, exactly as it happened, with very very very few exaggerations, all of which will be painfully obvious.  But this is the story as truthfully, completely, and readably as I can tell it.

That said, here goes.

After seeing 30-some plays in 6 weeks during the brilliant Duke Drama in London program, I decided to stick around for a week after the rest of my group left so I could do my own sight-seeing and club-hopping and whatever.  So the entire group flew outta town on a Thursday, and I spent the next day bopping around London hitting this club or that cafe or whatever.

Friday night I was planning to go to my favorite place of dance, but I was feeling a little feverish so I decided instead to lie down and rest for awhile.  Well, as soon as I did that my entire body became really sore (like the kind of sore where you something brushes lightly against your arm and your entire body hurts really bad), and no matter what I tried I could not get comfortable.  I decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go out that night, sore as I was, so I’d just get to sleep early and then wake up early the next day.  Well, I didn’t sleep at all that night and instead tossed and turned, trying in vain to find a comfortable position, and hallucinating all night long.  At various points in these hallucinations I was in the court of some Jabba The Hut-esque king, then I was a math teacher, then one of a family of ants building a hill… I don’t know how I remember this, but I do.  When I was the math teacher, I was trying to come up with an equation that would help me find the perfect comfortable position I was looking for.  This part is not an exaggeration.  It was really freaky.

I got out of bed the next morning and followed through with plans I had to meet up with a friend.  I was still kind of sore, but walking around made it less bad.  I actually just felt tired and kind of sweaty, but it was a hot day so I didn’t think much of it.  I was supposed to spend the whole day with my friend (who had traveled two hours by train to come into the city and visit), but he said I looked awful at one point and advised me to go get some sleep.  He said he could come back later in the week.

So he went home and I went home, and I again laid down and again couldn’t sleep.  I tried for a while, but with no success.  And I was sweating like a pig in heat.  Then the really terrifying part happened.  All of a sudden, I could barely breathe.  I mean, I could breathe, but each breath was really short, and really REALLY painful.  It felt like something was stabbing at my lungs every time I breathed.  This was when I decided that I was sick.  I called my parents at home in the U.S. and told them what was up, and we decided I should head off to the nearest emergency room because, well, I couldn’t breathe and that’s kind of an emergency.

I went to the front desk at the dorm where I was staying and the girl who was working the night shift, Lisa, walked me to the emergency room which was thankfully only a couple blocks away.  There was a three-hour waiting list, but they checked my vitals upon arrival and, because my blood pressure was extremely low, they took me in right away and immediately began doing all kinds of tests.  Now, I don’t remember much about that first night or the next few days, but Lisa (who stayed with me all night that first night) tells me that they believed I might’ve had meningitis, so they put me in an isolation room for the night until the doctors could see me in the morning.

Well, I didn’t have meningitis.  What I did have, as they figured out a couple days later, was a condition called pericarditis, which is an infection of the sac surrounding my heart.  This infection caused the sac to swell up so that each time I breathed, my lungs would rub up against it and hurt like hell.  So they started treating that…

Then, two days later, they found by x-ray that I had developed a collection of fluid in  one of my lungs which, well, wasn’t supposed to be there.  Because of this, my lungs couldn’t operate at full capacity, so the oxygen level in my blood got really low, which made my heart have to work much harder to get its job done.  This condition is also known as pneumonia.  So now I had pericarditis and pneumonia.

They began draining the fluid out of my lung, yes, by sticking a drain through my back into my lung and providing me with a
little fluid-collection handbag to carry around with me at all times.  Well, not to carry really, because I wasn’t walking at all.  I could barely move while lying in bed.  I had to pee in bottles.

Then, the next day, they found out that I had developed an enlarged liver.  This condition is generally referred to as hepatitis.  So now I had pericarditis and pneumonia and hepatitis.

THEN, the next day, they found that I the sac around my heard which had been infected was now filling up with fluid.  The fluid was collecting between my heart and lungs, which once again made them start rubbing up against each other, again causing searing pain with each breath.  This time, however, the amount of fluid was growing and, basically, was closing in around my heart.

They quickly transferred me to a different hospital where they could drain that stuff out of the narrow space between my heart and lungs.  This advanced procedure was too difficult to do at my first hospital.  They did the procedure, with me basically out of it the whole time.  I began to recover from that over the next few days.

THEN, the following day, they found some fluid in my OTHER lung, and started draining that stuff out of me too.  By this time, I was a pro at the whole drain thing.  Just kidding.  I cried in my mother’s arms every time they dug into my back.  Oh yeah, so my parents flew over around the third day I was in the hospital, and I’d never been so happy to see them before in my whole life.  There were several points during that first week-and-a-half where all I could tell myself was that I wanted to die.  I mean, every day I found out something new was wrong with me, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the next day sure enough they’d come up with something new and awful for me to deal with.

And, maybe I’m weird, but I’ve never done two weeks before without walking, without showering or shaving, without seeing hardly anyone I know.  Fortunately, Lisa came to see me every day, and my parents, and a couple other people I had met over there.  I was losing my mind, really really depressed, and also physically in a TON of pain.  I mean, I’d never even been sick before in my whole life, never been in a hospital before in my whole life, and never been out of the country before in my whole life, and here I was, trapped in a hospital bed in London.  Some nights, despite quite strong and moderately successful pain killers (oral injections of morphine, anyone?), I simply couldn’t manage sleep, and I would just lie in bed whimpering and crying and tossing and turning (just a little ‘cuz it hurt to move too much), and the nurses - who are the closest things to gods and goddesses that I’ve ever stumbled across in this lifetime - would have to come by and politely shut me up for the sake of the others in the cardiac ward, all of whom were over 90.

It was not fun.

But then, when the third week rolled around I immediately started improving.  By Tuesday of the third week I was walking again, showering again, and using a toilet again.  Oh yeah.  Had my first experimentation with a little thing called constipation too.  After a week and a half of stillness, some things just don’t move so easily anymore.  Damn inertia.  After I’d been on that damned toilet for a half-hour, the nurse had to come in and hold my hand while I sweated and cried and tried to push, except I couldn’t really push without disrupting all the needles and drains and whatnot that were poking into my organs.  Goodtimes.   Anyway, slowly but surely, I got back to normal, if you can call me that.

Once I had pretty much recovered physically and mentally and emotionally, one of the nurses - Deborah, the one who had become sort of like my sister away from home - told me that at the point they drained the stuff out of the sac around my heart, if they hadn’t caught that when they did and drained it when they did, the fluid would have kept collecting around my heart and it would’ve tightened it up and soon - like, within a day of when they did the procedure - it would have drowned my heart and killed me.  The nurses from my first hospital kept calling the second hospital, just to see if I was still alive.  Seriously.  I’m convinced they had a betting pool going on behind the nurses’ station.

I spent a week recovering and, FINALLY, on the third Saturday, tI was released from the hospital.  The really bizarre thing, however, is that despite the dozens and dozens and dozens of blood tests they did on me (which remarkably didn’t get me any more comfortable with needles), they were never able to figure out what caused all of this to happen.  They said that my recovery was completely independent, and was not related to any medication they were giving me.  I just somehow got better.  Now, of course, that right there is a silver lining with an accompanying life-long dark cloud because, great, I’m better, but since they don’t know why I got sick in the first place, they don’t know if it will come back sometime or if it’s gone for good.  So the rest of my life could just be lived in constant fear.  What fun that will be.

I flew home Sunday afternoon, yesterday, August 31st, and will be spending the next four months at home in Maryland, armpit of the nation.  However, it’ll give me plenty of time to record the 30-or-so songs I wrote in England, and I’ll certainly rent a lot of movies (maybe I’ll finally see all the "Star Wars" flicks!), so maybe it won’t be too bad after all.  But I assure you that at many points I will be drastically, pathetically, hopelessly bored.  That’s why I’m asking for all of you, please, to stay in touch.

Oh, and thanks to those of you who actually cared enough to read all of this.  I’ll never know how many of you did, but know that, if you did, it really means a lot to me.  As Bette Midler put it, "God is watching us from a distance."

And there you have it folks.  That’s the truth about me.