7/15/10
It was the end of the school year, and I was saying goodbye to all of my friends, as well as anyone I ever associated with. I walked through locker rooms, classrooms, quads, giving hugs and wishing well to everyone. One of my guy friends was on his laptop, and I approached him with a favor to ask: I wanted him to look up this Biggie Smalls song, one whose title was eluding my memory, but which I recall being very “soulful” and despondent, like Cam’Ron’s “Harlem Streets” or Jay-Z’s “Never Change.” I even could vaguely remember how the melody went, but despite all my efforts I could not put my finger on the title! So I was extremely frustrated, because I felt it was an appropriate theme to our final parting. Peter White came over and tried to extract some more details about the song from me, but it was no use. I was disappointed, but got over it. As I left, I especially made a point to say goodbye to all the girls I ever spoke to, giving them hugs and of course a big smile.
Ms. Rosenbluth, one of my teachers at the time, was preparing for a yacht cruise, but before leaving campus she appointed me with the responsibility of delivering her a particular apple from a specific location. Then she left, purse swinging over her shoulder. I found whatever apple she had left for me, took it, and headed to the boat where she would be waiting.
While crossing over the aluminum bridge from the dock to the deck, I took a bite from the apple. Upon inspecting the gap I created, I discovered that the apple had been stuffed with prescription pills and other illicit drugs! The whole pulpy inside of the apple was like a landfill of chemicals, and I must have been the drug mule! Looking up from the apple in my hand, I see Ms. Rosenbluth sitting among a group of adults, poised and somewhat aloof, expectant…then she notices me. I’m speechless, mouth open, chunks of apple and capsules falling from my jaw, eyes empty with fear, staring at her dumbly. She looks ready to jump overboard and slice my head off, but she can’t because she is in public and among company. I only speak the words, loud enough to transmit, “I’m getting you fired for this.”
Ms. Rosenbluth’s glare responds in opposition to this threat, but as she’s getting up, possibly to seize the evidence from my hands, I rush out, then run like mad in no particular direction, apple cupped in both hands now, legs knocking into each other more than actually striding, because I am a scared lunatic. I have to find campus security and report that my teacher was either a drug abuser or dealer, but that nevertheless she had to be stopped!
At this moment, my dream self is struck with the unshakable feeling that it had once, at some former time, either itself dreamt this very sequence, or awakenly prognosticated the incident. Even more bizarre, my dream self recalls the motives it prophesied for his actions. Whether the prophecy was self-fulfilling or predestined, is indeterminate.
I feel a sense of accomplishment and gratification in busting my teacher for drugs – a criminal. Approaching campus, I think it best to show the security guard the apple. Instead, the black woman in the booth happens to be a moron and / or poorly trained, because the first thing she does is pick out each pill from the fruit and put them all in a metal tin, then walks me over to the headquarters to deliver the drugs to her superior. I was beyond appalled…the stupid bitch had just totally DESTROYED my case, because it could no longer be easily proven that the drugs had come from the apple! I was dumbfounded, stammering to the head honcho as convincingly as I could about what I had witnessed, with this bitch humming next to me, holding all that my life was worth in a box. Nevertheless, I try to explain what had happened. He nods when I’m done, then grabs the container from the woman and walks into an office, where other old, white, authoritative-looking men are sitting.
Everything was jeopardized, and to freak me out even more, at that moment Ms. Rosenbluth slides urgently into the office, doesn’t notice me thank God, and enters the chief’s quarters, probably to turn the story around to incriminate me! I creep around the office, laying low, feeling like a convict myself, wondering what will happen next, when I catch the security boss sweeping the halls, looking for me. Taking a risk, I make myself present, and he looks relieved; they believed my story and arrested my teacher!
Then, I became horrified: I actually took a bite out of that laced apple…who knows how many drugs I ingested simultaneously, and what sort of awful things are happening to me??? Am I going to drop dead any moment, or get so high and screwed up that my brain liquefies? Shit, Shit! I run to the nurse’s office, goddammit they won’t even let me in, I have to wait for the receptionist to buzz me in, then when I finally get to her desk, no one is there and I’m told to wait?! WHAT! And then, a bunch of Asians drunk off their asses blunder in, one of them slurring that they just got wasted on a booze cruise, and their friend needed immediate attention. For some reason, I grant them this; I forsake my health to let total strangers receive medical attention before me…why?
Well, when I saw the sick kid in question, I almost felt like throwing up, and my sympathy for his plight was more extreme than my own. This kid’s mouth was protruding grotesquely, his jaw might have even been unhinged, because there was a blockage of vomit in his throat. For some reason, his puke had dammed up in his mouth, and he was choking. I could see that he was getting no oxygen, and took control of the situation. Prying open his mouth with my bear hands, I inspect the mass of chum that is blocked up all the way from the back of his throat, as if his stomach were reversing itself out his mouth. I had his friends hold his jaws open, grabbed a broomstick, and jammed the handle (which looked like a toothpick, relative to the unnaturally widened, stretched-open mouth) deep down in there, shoveling out what I could to free a passage to the lungs. After loosening up the upset - bile and pink undigested food – by scooping globs of it out from his taut lips, the kid could freely vomit the rest up on his own, and did so, everywhere. He puked up his own bodyweight I’m pretty sure, as his friends looked on in stupefaction. I just ran out of there…I finally had to take care of myself.
Wandering the ship, I find a lonely perch of railing looking over the dark violent blue waters and force everything in me overboard.
Switch scene: From the fourth floor of Walsh Library, during finals week, I must run down to the first for some reason. Passing through a section of desks, I see Brandon Smith, completely wasted, annihilated, sick. His friend, a female, is comforting and coaching him as he vomits into a wastebasket next to his desk. His vomit contains an unnatural amount of dental floss. I don’t think I say much to either of them. I continue on until I get to the first floor, pass the help desk, then exit the place, intent on something.
No comments:
Post a Comment