I Remember My Year in New York

I remember how Kessler and I first became friends. When she randomly G-chatted me, "tell me something weird about yourself."

I remember when Mendenhall disappeared. We had fun coming up with theories of what she was up to, though I hated that she had a secret life.

I remember when I went to Cancun the second time. I hadn't seen my family in several months and I remember being so shocked that my youngest sister had boobs. She hated that I couldn't stop talking about them.

I remember when Smeekens came to visit. We all bought I <3 NY shirts in midtown.

I remember when Katherine came to visit. I remember drinking too much free wine at the Chinese restaurant and almost missing the Ingrid Michaelson show.

I remember that I couldn't remember the Of Montreal show. Only that the singer came out naked on a white horse at some point and that Carolyn cried when they covered Smells Like Teen Spirit.


I remember the terribly long trips to Coney Island. I was always hungover and the subway rides were unbearable. But once we got there it proved to be worth it: the stick game in the sand, the hotdog eating contest, the Broken Social Scene show.

I remember the Suitcase Lady.

I remember being terribly, terribly broke.

I remember when Reens and Neens came to visit. They fought of course and one of them locked herself in the bathroom while the other kicked a hole in the door. Several months later I got drunk and tried to fix the hole with a can of Spackle while drinking a beer. I felt like a man.

I remember living with drug dealers.

I remember our trips to Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Atlantic City.

I remember when we went to New Orleans. I was so hungover the day that we left. I tripped over nothing as we stood in line at the airport. Just fell on my ass as everyone looked on and laughed. And then the man sitting next me on the flight home tried to save me. I was too sick and tired for Jesus.

I remember happy hour. Lots and lots of happy hours.

I remember how much I hated the winter and how much Mendenhall loved it.

I remember throwing wine and cheese parties. Having friends over for dinner.

I remember awkward sleepovers and nights I could barely remember.

I remember when Wendy Jones came to visit. We fought rats off in the kitchen forcing them to jump out the window.

I remember smoking weed at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park with a Yugoslavian rickshaw driver at midnight.

I remember being lonely and depressed. I remember deciding that I just couldn't live there anymore, but worrying that I had made the wrong decision.

Me and Naked Jesus

When I first began my internship at St. John’s Regional Medical Center I was excited to report for my shift each week, eager to learn and observe all that the hospital had to offer. I didn’t even mind the 45 minute drive from the UC Santa Barbara campus to the facility in Oxnard. It was a scenic drive along the 101 freeway with the vast Pacific Ocean oscillating just outside my passenger window. College was all about seizing opportunities, gaining experience, and making contacts that would lead to a successful career, and I was sure that this internship was just what I needed to get an edge on the competition when it came time to apply to med school. Unfortunately this period of optimism didn’t last very long. I soon became disenchanted and grew to dread my time at the hospital, seeking out excuses to skip my shift any chance I got—homework, illness, beer. It wasn’t the subject itself that turned me off—I still find medical science incredibly interesting—but the tired, frustrated staff (doctors and nurses alike) who advised me not to go into medicine, and most significantly, the onerous, demanding, and just plain crazy patients who I was forced to contend with each week. Perhaps the biggest problem was that I was more interested in the patients’ illnesses than in the patients themselves. I’d find myself saying things like “you have multi-resistant staphylococcus, awesome!” which is not really an appropriate comment to make to an anxious patient. I lacked what you would call “a good bedside manner”. As a result, I often found myself in terribly awkward situations that I didn’t know how to respond to.

            On one of those early days of idealism and enthusiasm I made way to the medical-surgical unit on the third floor and checked in with the head nurse. She greeted me gratefully and informed me that there was a patient on the unit requiring a sitter. I made my way to his room convinced that I was in for a relatively easy, unexciting 4 hour shift. Time on the med-surge unit was often filled with undesirable tasks such as changing the diapers of bed-ridden patients, sponge-bathing a morbidly obese man, or feeding elderly invalids who lacked the motor ability to lift a fork to their mouths. Being a sitter usually just involved sitting in the room with a sleeping patient making sure that she didn’t stop breathing and reminding her of who and where she was when she woke up disoriented. The white board across from the bed displayed a name and condition and you simply had to repeat it: your name is Mrs. Jones, you’re at St. John’s Hospital, you’re recovering from surgery.

That was the sort of thing I was expecting my day to consist of, so imagine my surprise when I entered the room that I was sent to and saw that the patient was wide awake, sitting up on his bed with his legs hanging over the side, the way you would sit when hanging out in a friend’s bedroom. He was an extremely thin man probably somewhere in his fifties (I’m really bad at determining age), dressed in green hospital scrub pants and a white t-shirt. He had shaggy brown hair with a full beard; he looked like Jesus. I introduced myself and took a seat in the chair opposite his bed. I had never sat for such an alert patient before (eyes open, sitting up) and wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. In attempt to break the ice I asked, “So how are you doing today?” Which is really a terrible question to ask someone confined to a hospital room, but where else could I start? The man made no acknowledgement that he had heard me, just continued staring down at his bed. I looked to the white board hanging above me for some indication of who he was and what he was in for but it provided no such information, just a greenish blur left behind after a half-assed erasure. And so we sat in a cloud of silence for several long minutes. Shortly thereafter he began grabbing at his bed sheets and mumbling incoherently. I rose from my chair to see if I could assist him in some way. Once I reached him I realized that he was attempting to pick the design, some sort of diamond or flower or other typical hospital linen pattern, off of the sheet. Apparently this man wasn’t as “there” as I had originally believed. At a loss I stood watching him as he put his thumb and index finger to the shape and squeezed them together just above it lifting an empty hand to his face, then repeating the process trying desperately to grab hold of the impression. I felt bad for the guy and wished that there was something I could do for him, but I didn’t know what that was.

            Eventually he got bored doing this and his next move shocked me beyond all else. He stood up, looked me straight in the eyes, and proceeded to pull down his pants. Horrified I grabbed his hands as they approached the tops of his thighs, just before he revealed his genitals, and began to pull his pants back up again.

“No, what are you doing? Don’t do that!” I demanded.

There was a brief struggle, me trying desperately to keep his pants up and he fighting against me to pull them down. He was surprisingly strong for being so frail looking, but lacked endurance and soon gave up releasing his grip on the pants and allowing me to return them to their original position. I was relieved, but it turned out that he actually hadn’t given up quite so easily. As I returned the top of his pants to the top of his waist he lifted his shirt over his head and cast it onto the bed. Frustrated I picked up his shirt and began to force it back over his head. While I did this he dropped his pants to his ankles so that once his shirt was on he was completely naked from the waist down. Then I pulled his pants back up as he pulled his shirt back off.

            Why was this man undressing before me? I was nervous, I was confused, I was uncomfortable. I tried to talk to him, to instruct him that he needed to stay clothed but he seemed unable to comprehend my speech and was angry that I wouldn’t allow him to get naked. He was intent on removing his clothing and I was baffled by his actions. I was also scared that a nurse or doctor would walk in to find me standing in the room with a disoriented, bare-skinned patient. Such a situation would definitely raise some eyebrows and I didn’t want anyone accusing me of taking advantage of the patient or acting inappropriate or any of the other things you might think upon entering a room to find an exposed incoherent person in the care of a competent other. Once again I quickly pulled his pants back up so that he was fully dressed. I rushed out into the hallway to seek help as he began to remove his shirt yet again. A nurse was passing by as I exited the room and must have noticed the anguish on my face because right away she asked, “Is everything alright?”

            “No, this man keeps trying to take his clothes off!” I informed her.

            “Oh yeah, he does that,” she answered matter-of-factly, “He likes to get naked and then wander into other patients’ rooms. That’s why he needs a sitter.” She chuckled, “just make sure he doesn’t leave the room like that.” Then she walked off down the hall to tend to her other charges offering no further explanation or advice.

            I headed back into the chamber, annoyance now added to the panic and discomfort I had heretofore been experiencing. I would have liked to have had some sort of forewarning so that I could have prepared myself for this man’s nudity. Perhaps I would have handled the situation better had I not been so startled by his propensity to undress.

The man was standing exactly where I had left him but was now completely naked. I picked his pants up off of the floor and instructed him to lift his feet and step back into them. Astonishingly, he obeyed allowing me to cover up his bottom half. However, when I grabbed the shirt and made to put it over his head, he once again removed his pants. And so it continued for the next 3 hours, he undressing himself and me frantically trying to redress him—hoping to avoid full-scale nudity for as long as possible. I did consider giving up my effort all together as it was futile, but I felt it would have been more awkward to sit idly in a room with a completely nude man than to at least try to keep him covered as much as I could. Plus it gave me something to do—sitting in a chair staring at a strange naked man would have been quite boring.

I'm on Tumblr!

Because I have difficulty getting rid of things I have decided to keep this blog strictly for posting stories. However, I will also be posting those stories and other random things on tumblr. So for (hopefully) more frequent and eclectic posts go here: http://rockstonic-juicemagic.tumblr.com/

Moving

Just a heads up to anyone (emphasis on the one) who follows this blog, I'm in the process of moving to tumblr. I currently have 3 blogs and rarely update any of them so I thought perhaps I'd be a bit better about that sort of thing if I combined them into one megablog. Tumblr seemed best suited for such a thing. I'll post the url once its all put together.

Where My Mad Rappers At?

Sometimes I like to pretend that I can spit sick rhymes:

Biochem 

(written during a particularly boring biochem lecture)

You talk too fast

I can't understand

trying to keep up just hurts my hand

so I stare confused

at these molecules

and I don't really care

which enzymes act where

this class is lame, I think I'll take a nap

and after lecture go to Gio's for some beer on tap

Blumpkin 

(written in LA traffic after my cousin defined "blumpkin" for me)

I was sittin on the toilet takin a dump

when this bitch started sucking all over my junk

I said "hey there, whatcha doin pumpkin?"

She said "don't you know? they call it a blumpkin!"

Flaunt It 

(written while drunk in a pool)

I'm so damn cool chillin in the pool

there's a bee on me

tryina get in this everyone wants to hit it cause I'm a sick bitch

sippin on gin and tonics and rocking Manolo Blahniks this is how I flaunt it.

A Hoodie Is A Goodie

My favorite item of clothing is definitely my hooded sweatshirt. I actually own a few and favor a different one each week; but in general, I can’t go wrong with a hoodie. I wear it in every season, in every situation. Whether its 9 degrees or 90 degrees, whether I’m out in the world or sitting alone in my room, whether at a social gathering or even at work, I prefer to have my head covered. I just feel so exposed and vulnerable when forced to reveal my cranium. My hoodie is my sanctuary, my comfort zone, my invisibility cloak. Yes, I realize that people can still see me when I’ve got my hood on, but it makes me feel so inconspicuous. Though in all honesty, it actually seems to have the opposite effect. My beloved hooded sweatshirt sadly makes others uncomfortable; apparently it gives me an air of mystery and stirs up feelings of foreboding in those around me. My sisters often scold me for looking inappropriate. My boss calls me “The Unabomber” and claims that I scare her. Shopkeepers eye me suspiciously when I enter their establishment. Pedestrians move to the other side of the road when they see me approaching. But I assure you, I have no desire to bomb, kill, or rob anyone. I am not a thief, or murderer, or drug dealer. I’m simply a nervous sociophobe; and sometimes my head is just cold or I'm having a bad hair day. So the next time you see someone roaming the streets hiding beneath a hoodie, judge not. The object of your fear may very well not be a degenerate, but a harmless neurotic.