If you didn't quite get the meaning of my last post, as I am usually unclear even to myself, I passed a teensey kidney stone last Thursday night. It had been aching since the Monday before. It's not a pain one forgets easily, I know. I had an interesting experience with kidney stones when I was a teenager, it was 26 years ago, three months, two days, fifteen hours, but who would bother paying attention to that? Not me, right.
I was sixteen. I was taking alot of drugs, anything hallucinogenic was my favorite. I also drank quarts of herbal teas daily. I was in love with the herbs and was especially fond of Red Clover and Licorice Root to cleanse the blood and relax the nerves. I wore a tiny satchel around my neck, in it Cubeb Berries, to attract love. I knew it was safe, attracting love that is because if it didn't work out, Borage leaves under your pillow and in tea, and the bath, would mend a broken heart.
I liked to drink whiskey, beer and mouthwash (not really)too. I called it my macro-psychotic diet. I was very close to a realm without time, where scents ruled and the senses were full.
One day I was hiking with some friends and drank from a little stream, I was thirsty. The friends thought I was nuts, (but we already know about that)as the creek was in Maryland, just a stones throw from industrial parks and landfills.
That evening, I was in my friend Andre's basement, I love the name Andre, don't you?
Andre was in his early twenties, he went to college and had lovely blond curls. I wonder now if he was adopted, but no digressions-
The regular crew I hung out with was gathered at Andres on a weeknight, as usual. Almost every night was spent at Andres back then. My friends were mostly a few years older than me, all male, non had steady girlfriends that ever attended Andres house, not then. There were usually five to eight of us. I had women friends then, but I really didn't seem to be spending any time with them during this period.
That night we drank two bottles of Wild Turkey and I think I went home with the one who was obsessed with the idea of building underground houses. His name was Slab, really.
If this were really a memoir, I'd go on about the relationship with Slab and the sex and the acid, but I might be boring you, or making it all up. You never really know.
Do you?
Long story longer, but I will try to tell it fast now, what happens next that is.
My father, the nice one but naive, left me and my two siblings and my Jewish Mother (yes, we are all Jewish), for his Catholic younger than my mother, receptionist. Needless to say, I think, if Dad was the nice one, Mom was the? Disinterested self absorbed slapping type. Yes, that's it. She took the house and all of his bank account, so she could pay for my college tuition (I was in college by 16), or not. Actually, Dad convinced me he could not afford to send me to college as he had prepped me my entire life to do, as his academically smartest child. Thats right, mom spent his money on shiny pale blue sports cars and fur coats,and the singles club, and the "business" trips.
I woke up early the next day, as Mommie dearest was getting ready for work. She had been missing alot of work, her social life was demanding. I was doubled over in pain, holding my right side in clenched fists. I knew I was dying. In my mother's bathroom,I threw up over and over, moaning like a Rabbi with a bullet in his head.
"What's the matter with you?" she demanded.
She probably thought I was hungover. This was no hangover, even I knew that.
"I don't know, I drank some water yesterday from a dirty stream, maybe it's that"
"I'm going to be late, call your father." She ran out of the house
I called Dad, he sent one of his nurses, she was like family.
Shelly picked me up and I was really loosing it. The pain was unbearable. I was holding my side and falling down fainting trying to get to her car. I kicked her dashboard (wounded horse in a wooden stall?). I feel bad now that I kicked her dashboard, even if it was 26 years ago.
She said, "hold on baby, its gonna be OK"
I really did like her; she was a Lesbian, wait. I bet she still is.
I do not remember much else that day. I fainted a bit, the tests weren't showing the expected, the Docs were sure my appendix had ruptured, they gave me MORPHINE and I didn't care about anything that day anymore.
Then they sent me for an exploratory surgery, six inch abdominal incision, verticle, through the belly button on one side.
The appendix was healthy, but they took it anyway, you know, because you really don't need it and while they were in there, they might as well.
They sewed me back up.With numerous staples. I was in the Pediatric ward, on morphine, for three weeks, until finally one day, the Docs decided to scan my water tract with an XRay. They found the stone and told me I could go home to pass it.
There is so much more to this story. I am going to spare you, but it ends somewhere with me, the healer, attempting to heal myself from the harm and wrong of the evil-doers in the hospital. I was going to rebirth every cell in my body. I was going to fast for days, and I did, until I forgot when it was time to eat again.
I walked with Jesus in the desert. I made the rain fall by communicating with the clouds and skies and then I walked through the rain and rested under the sweet smelling canopy of pine trees. I walked the streets of the city and gathered poets and prophets and homeless people as friends.
After a certain lost period of time, I crashed. I forgot how to read, converse, brush my teeth, everything but cry and sleep.
The crash lasted nearly a year.
Last Monday, when I woke up with that pain one never forgets, I was frightened. Afraid to throw it, to let it go, to breathe.
In four short days with only a few brief hours of severe pain, Alas, the stone has passed
and I am as sane as ever.
Tate's Pole
