...More Like Didgeridon't

Theresa blows into the didgeridoo, causing a low, droning sound. It blends with the ambient music playing from a CD player in the corner, next to the lit incense and healing crystals. I feel the waves roll over my bare back as I lie face down on a massage table.

“The body is made up of different vibrations,” Theresa said before beginning the session. “When we get sick, it’s because these vibrations are not in the correct tonal relationship. By exposing the body to different sounds and instruments, we can realign the tonal relationship and help the body heal.”

She puts the didgeridoo down and picks up a tuning fork. She strikes it with a little hammer, slowly moving it across my body, inches from my skin. The vibrations drown out the usual chatter in my head, stalling the constant rush of thoughts and feelings, as if my brain waves are cycling at the same frequency as the fork. I forget I am a skeptic.

Before the session began, Theresa asked me if there were any specific problems I wanted to target. I mentioned I was having trouble holding down food, and was constantly nauseous. She seemed confident she could help, and would focus the vibrations on my stomach.

She puts the tuning fork away and places hot stones on my back. The stones burn a little at first, but my skin adjusts and any tension or apprehension I had disappears. She places a Tibetan singing bowl by my side and hits it. The sound seems to move back and forth around the bowl, high pitched and barely audible. She repeats the process several times, and by the end I’m nearly unconscious. Not the fully asleep kind of unconscious, but a half-dream half-waking state. Kind of like the five minutes in between the alarm going off after hitting the snooze. She takes the stones off my back and rubs in some fragrant oil. She tells me to take as much time as I need before getting dressed and leaves the room.

Ten minutes later, Theresa reappears along with my Aunt, who suggested and paid for the session. My Aunt is also a client of Theresa, and firmly believes in tapping into different energies for healing purposes. Like me, she was dealing with cancer. She has tumors in her lungs, and I am recovering from a bone marrow transplant to rid me of leukemia. Unlike her, I am not one to turn to New Age medicine, but at this point I’m open to anything.

“What did you think?” asks Theresa. I can barely keep my eyes open.

I tell her I am relaxed, and that the didgeridoo was the best part. There’s something calming about the low droning sound, as if it envelops you. Theresa gets up and opens a chest against the wall. She pulls out a didgeridoo, smaller than the one she used before. She hands it to me.

“Playing it offers just as many benefits as the sound waves themselves. You can borrow this for awhile, if you want.”

I take the instrument, put it to my lips and blow. Nothing happens. Theresa explains the proper technique, and how the air has to be forced through in a spitting like puff of breath. After a few attempts, I get it going for a few seconds. Theresa is impressed.

“Not many people get it that quickly.”

I thank her for the massage and her generosity, and I leave with my Aunt who drives me home, as I’m too high on oxycodone and marinol to drive myself. My Aunt asks me how I feel, and I tell her I feel pretty good, and that I think my stomach is a little better. We decide on another session in a month, and say our goodbyes. I take the didgeridoo inside and into my room and sit on my bed. I place it up to my lips and blow, but I can’t get it going. The only sound it makes is a quiet gasp of air, the breath dying as it’s forced through the hollowed out hunk of wood. It takes a few minutes for me to catch my breath, and a rumbling starts in my stomach, rising up through my chest and into my throat. I put the didgeridoo down and rush to the bathroom.

Chivalry

“Are you a she male? You know, one of those transvestites or something?”

I pause my iPod and look across the aisle. A scabby faced man had moved from the back of the max to sit next to a young woman wearing too much makeup and not enough skirt. His face is close to hers, dangerously close, and the young woman scoots in her seat, back against the window. She stammers a quiet “no,” her face red, redder than the thick rouge smattered across her cheeks. The man pulls down his black hood and moves in closer.

“Do you still have your cock? You can tell me, I’m not gonna judge.”

I scan the train, hoping to see other passengers with worried looks on their faces, ready to intervene, but they’re all in mass transit mode, heads down, avoiding eye contact.

“I like chicks with dicks. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

I take off my headphones and turn towards the aisle, hands shaking. They shake partly out of fear and adrenaline, but also from the steroids I have to take to keep my immune system from attacking my body. I am almost two years on the other side of a bone marrow transplant, still dealing with the complications, my body weak and atrophied from convalescing. The man is large and unnaturally energetic, head darting from side to side, arms waving emphatically.

“What’s wrong with you? Leave her alone.”

The voice comes not from me, but a teenager sitting with several of her friends a few rows back. The man in the black hood gets up and walks over to the girl, inches from her face.

“Fuck you, you little bitch. I’ll make you suck my dick.”

“Fuck you too asshole, you can eat my pussy.”

She gives it back as good as she gets, although I can’t help but think the oral sex insults don’t carry the same weight cross gender. The man gets off at the next stop, flustered and fuming at being shown up by a teenage girl, and I feel a little embarrassed as well, too caught up in my own insecurities to do what I should have done. I think to myself, “If he had touched either of those girls, I’d have done something. I’d have done something.”

I step off the train and start walking. The man in the black hood turns the corner heading towards me from his stop a few blocks back. His hood is up, his scabby face dark under the streetlamp’s light.

“What are you looking at faggot?”

I stop walking, pause my iPod, and take off my headphones. I say nothing. He gets right in my face.

“What are you gonna do fag? I could fuck you up and steal your shit, you faggot motherfucker.”

I am quiet and still, completely frozen. He seems large, immeasurably large, and I’m swallowed up in his shadow. I stare at his face, at his scabbed and pocked cheeks. In these kind of moments the fight or flight instinct is supposed to kick in, but I have neither. He clears his throat and spits in my face. It is hot and thick and pungent. He walks off, muttering “fucking faggot.”

I wipe the spittle from my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater. People walk by me, heads down, striding confidently to wherever they’re headed. I take a few deep breaths and walk to a nearby pub to find a bathroom. I turn the faucet for the hot water, let it run until it’s steaming, and scrub my face raw.

My First Time I Ate Too Many Cough Drops and Threw Up in the School Nurse’s Office and got to go Home

I was in the second grade at Line Creek Elementary school in Kansas City, Missouri and had a nagging loud cough. My teacher, Mrs. Dunning, found my cough to be a bit disruptive, and allowed me to take a Jolly Rancher from the jar of candy she kept on her desk that she gave out occasionally as a reward. She explained to me that a Jolly Rancher was basically the same thing as a cough drop, and as a seven-year-old kid I wasn’t going to argue with that logic. My cough persisted, and my parents allowed me to pick out some cough drops to take to school with me the next day. I’d heard stories from other kids about the deliciousness of Luden’s cherry cough drops, and convinced my parents to buy me a pack. Luden’s cherry cough drops were a deep red color, and even though its packaging claimed it as a reliever of coughs and sore throats, it tasted like any other cherry hard candy.

As soon as I was outside of my parent’s immediate attention, I started popping the cough drops, one after another, savoring the sweetness. I chewed them, a few at a time, not waiting for them to dissolve in my mouth as directed. I had finished off the entire box well before lunch time, and before too long a deep pain started throbbing in my stomach. I told Mrs. Dunning about my discomfort, and she gave me the laminated nurse’s pass she kept at her desk. I went to the nurse’s office, where there was a girl sitting on a vinyl bench that was covered with a strip of paper. The nurse told me to sit down next to the girl, and that she would get to me as soon as she could. I made my way over to the bench, but before I could take my seat, I felt my tongue grow large in the back of my throat. I tried to tell the nurse that something was wrong, but as I opened my mouth a torrent of deep red liquid poured out and landed on the paper on the bench, right next to the waiting girl. She screamed a loud and piercing scream as the regurgitated Ludens puddled up next to her, and the nurse rushed over from behind her desk. She cleaned up the mess, which fortunately had kept to the strip of paper, and arranged to call my parents to come and take me home.

My parents were both working and couldn’t come to pick me up, but a friend of the family was reached, and was able to take me over to his house until my parents could get me. His name was Doug, and he worked with my Dad and attended the same church as my family. Funny enough, he always had Jolly Ranchers in his pockets on Sundays at church, and he would throw them at the kids. I got to hang out at his house for a few hours, where I watched Nickelodeon on his cable television, (which my family didn’t have) and drank Coca Cola (which my parents never let me drink). This wasn’t the Nickelodeon of today, this was the mid-eighties Nickelodeon with shows like “Pinwheel” and “Today’s Special,” which was a terrifying show about a department store with mannequins that came to life at night when nobody was around. Eventually, my parents came and took me home, and I got over my cough, but not before my young mind made a few connections as to how the world could work given the right circumstances. Eating too many Luden’s cherry cough drops could give you a stomach ache and cause you to throw up in the nurse’s office at school, but that momentary discomfort could lead to an afternoon of creepy cable children’s programming and all the forbidden Coke you could drink.