I Totally Meant to Do That (23 page)

“I give up, John,” I said. “Walk me home.”

We moved in silence through the growing dawn, defeated, knowing that tomorrow’s exhaustion would have no excuse, creeping along the base of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway like derelicts.

“That was strange,” John said with a chuckle. Yes. But it wasn’t as strange as what happened next: My mother called my cell phone.

“Hello?”

“It’s a boy!” she screamed.

“What?”

“It’s a boy! Lou went into labor around midnight,” Mom explained. “I would have called earlier, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Don’t worry about
that
,” I responded. She hung up so I could “go back to bed.”

I turned to John and said, “It’s a boy.”

“What?”

“My sister had a baby,” I said. Then I went home and slept like one.

York Samaritan?

It begins with a prophet who smelled of urine, carried his earthly belongings in a blue plastic bag, and did beseech subway riders, “Repent! The end is nigh.”

A man with a briefcase approached the prophet and tried to trap him, saying snidely and with air quotes, “Master, what must I do to receive eternal life?”

The prophet parted the sea of flies to answer him, “What do the Scriptures say?”

The yuppie answered, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“You are right,” the prophet replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But the man wanted to justify himself, so he asked the prophet, “Who is my neighbor?”

The prophet answered:

“There once was a man lying half dead on a path in Brooklyn; three people passed by him, including a lowly, impoverished writer named Jane.

“As the sun rose, Jane traveled the road to Brooklyn from Manhattan, where she had pimped herself as a talking head to an early-morning news program that taped in Rockefeller Center, so desperate was she for the measly media fee paid by the magazine that employed her. The man lying half dead had been working all night as well, providing relief to wicked men, peddling tiny vials filled with the unholy spirit, you know, selling heroin.

“She had passed the man, who lived in the apartment beneath hers, hours earlier while he was plying his trade. And she had said unto him, ‘Sup.’ But he replied not, speaking only into his phone, ‘Ask and ye shall receive in exchange for twenty dollars.’

“Jane had every reason to distrust this man, for he had persecuted her. One afternoon, while she washed laundry, he picked her lock and stole the portable electronic computing device that he knew was near the front door because he’d just been upstairs to ask if the exterminator had come, and seriously there was no sign of breaking and entering so it was definitely an inside job.

“And twice she had returned home to find police vehicles flashing lights the colors of wine and sky, because he had been out turning the other cheek until his eyes did swell and his nose did break, but, man, ye should have seen the other guy.

“Alas, Jane was too poor to find new dwellings, for she had spent her last pennies, in a most desperate moment, on a Super Lotto ticket. So she remained in the haze of his hemp and Halo parties, brushing past the thieves and lepers he invited to their stoop.

“And lo, how his phone would ring through the night. And loud how the dragon chasers would shout from the street, ‘Yo, Justin! I know you’re there!’

“Verily, Jane had every reason to despise the neighbor, yet her heart was filled with pity, for his alcoholic, abusive parents were both locked behind the bars of the state, which is why her saint of a landlady took him in off the street in the first place. Then again, she also had gout, so neither had her path been lit by wise decisions.

“And it then happened that, while approaching India Street, on the road from 30 Rock to her bed, Jane did encounter two lums-of-the-hood fleeing the building, who spake naught to her and scurried toward the rising sun. And lo, upon ascending her stairs, she did rediscover Justin her neighbor lying half dead on the second-floor landing in the middle of her path. Where he once had conducted business, now he lay prostrate, stripped of his raiment, shaking as a man filled with evil spirits. In his pallid skin, his eyes did roll and his tongue did loll and his mouth did froth. Jane saw that he was tweaking and saw that it was bad.

“He looked to her, slowly raised his arm, grunted with great effort, and reached his hand toward her in need and in terror.

“Gazing down upon his face, Jane said only, ‘Ew,’ then lifted her foot, stepped over him, and continued up the stairs.”

Concluded with his tale, the prophet asked the lawyer, “Which now of these three was neighbor unto him?”

The lawyer replied, “I think they’re all assholes.”

And the prophet said unto him, “Exactly. This is New York, you fool. Also, the aliens are trying to eat me because my hands are made of crackers. And I took your wallet.”

Something
slick and cold. Locate it, pinpoint it: face. It’s resting on my face. I have a face! A cheek, in fact. Oh, I’m getting good at this. OK, but what is it, a fish? No. The tongue of a giant Arctic beast? That’s ridiculous. Wait: It’s not on me; I’m on it. And so are my hands. I have hands!

I opened my eyes.

Tile. Of course: bathroom tiles. Whoa—my bathroom tiles. Yes, this is my apartment. I am a person. I’m a Jane! I live in Brooklyn. Those are my hands and that is the angle where the floor meets the wall. Check and check
.

I pushed my torso away from the floor.

Blood! That is definitely blood. I know what blood is. That is it. Oh
God … hey, I know what God is too. Or, well, I know the various ways in which we perceive God. I mean no one really knows what—Focus Jane
.

I tried to stand.

OK: I know those are underwear. I know those are knees. And I know that the latter is not where the former go. Aha! I was sitting on the toilet—yes, I remember now. I woke up to go to the bathroom. That is why there are sheep pajamas in a heap at my ankles. That is why it is night. It is night. That is why
.

I looked in the mirror.

This explains the blood: a gash above my left eye. Actually, gravity explains the blood. This is coming together: I fell forward off the toilet and landed on my eyebrow. Man, that’s rough; I’m glad I wasn’t conscious for it … wait, that doesn’t make any sense. Also, if that had been my trajectory, wouldn’t there be correlating—yep, throbbing pain in my kneecaps
.

I started to clean myself up.

Hmm, the blood on my face is dry. That can’t be good. How long was I out? The puddle of blood on the floor is wet. And the gash is still moist. I could sit and time how long it takes for more to dry, or I could wipe the floor and go back to sleep
.

I went back to sleep.

what happened: micturition syncope, meaning that my brain shut down because it didn’t get enough blood, due to a swift drop in blood pressure. This sudden dive was caused by vasodilation. Such an opening of the vessels occurs normally under various circumstances, such as waking from a deep sleep or emptying the bladder; the brain reacts by constricting the vessels so that blood is forced upward. However, when a body
is fatigued and severely dehydrated, the vessels can dilate beyond the brain’s ability to compensate. And when two otherwise normal dilations occur simultaneously—to a body already compromised—it’s like delivering a one-two punch to a fighter who’s leaning on the rope.

Basically, the cause was fatigue. Fatigue threw the kegger; everyone else was upstairs trying to do homework.

Figuring this out required visits to a few different doctors: one who determined I was hypoglycemic and said the problem had to do with my vagus nerve, another who guessed that I dehydrate too easily, an immunologist who ordered so much lab work that I almost fainted again during the withdrawal of thirteen vials of blood, and a gynecologist who discovered I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which means, among other goodies, that when I’m older I’ll have a mustache. Wheee!

All of these things are true, as it turns out, and each contributed to what I shortly thereafter dubbed “my Vegas experience.” What medicine couldn’t explain, though, or at least hasn’t yet, was the aftermath. I woke up as a tabula rasa, and not only in the sense that I didn’t know who or where I was; we’ve all had that feeling before, maybe in a hotel room or after vigorous trampoline jumping. This time was different. When I got out of bed the next morning my senses were heightened—cleared, as if something had Roto-Rootered out of me all of the gunk that clogs our receptors over time. Either that or I had superpowers.