eject

The Clutch and the Gas

(Alternate Title: The last sad blog I plan to write)

Frank is a 68 year old man with Parkinson’s Disease.
He can’t move or talk.
When I hold his arms and legs they feel like cement, fixed at the joint.

He is always making eye contact with me, because he’s in there. He’s in there and he can’t move and he wants to connect.
I love Frank right away because he looks like Harry Dean Stanton.

Because I can’t stand silence,  I just open up and begin to tell him things. I tell him about my husband. I tell him about my daughter who said “I love pigs so so much more now that I know they make bacon!” over breakfast. I tell him which nurses are horrible (though I think he already knows), and how the cook and the A-wing janitor were caught screwing in the staff bathroom.

He smiles, I have no idea how much effort that took him, like pulling on a stuck zipper.

I drop him by accident one morning. I was transferring him to the physio. mat from his wheelchair and he seized on me. Bodies are heavier than they look. We both fell onto the mat and he winced and moaned and I thought I had killed him.

He smiles.

I find out he was a truck driver from one of the RN’s.
During our arm exercise I tell him

“Put the truck into first,” he slowly (and I mean slowly) turns his head and looks at me, a huge smile creeping across his lips. His elbow extends, I tell him we are about to go up an incline and we have to shift again.
I see his feet starting to move, the clutch …. the gas…

I smile.

One morning I enter Frank’s room.

“Hello”

I look around.

“Holy Hell, you scared me.”

“My medication worked today.”

“This is weird.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Jesus. Don’t tell anyone about the shit I’ve been saying.”

He laughs, “I wouldn’t do that.”

That afternoon Frank walked.
He walked up and down the hall with a walker and one person on each side.
He talked. He could move.
He told me about his daughter, how she had moved to Toronto and was a History Professor. We talked about New York City and Empanadas.

His wife was coming to visit that afternoon.

I ran down the hall to greet her, I was ecstatic.

“Frank talked and walked today!! He walked all the way down the basement hallway and back with little help. It was slow, but it was amazing! He’s in a great mood.”

She sighed, ” Well, you know he used to walk and talk all the time.”

I felt like I had been punched in the gut.

What would it be like to watch someone slip away like that? Your man. I had been expecting her reaction to be of elation, but really she knew was no going backwards. These rare days when he did talk or move, it only made her heart hurt more. To see him as he was, when she had already dealt with the loss of him.

And the next day I walked into Frank’s room.

“Hey mister how are you?”

—-no response, Frank stares at me with his sad dark eyes.

I smile. I can’t cry, this is life, he knows and I know it.

I walk over to his side and put my face right above his, I hold his rigid hand and whisper,

“I swear Frank, I won’t drop you today.”

“The Bystander Effect” AKA: People are Assholes. *READ*

One hundred meters ahead of me was a paraplegic man struggling with his head rest that had come off it’s tubing.
Unable to lift his arms high enough to maneuver the thing, he was trying to do it with his head, with absolutely zero success.

This was something I noticed a lot with the neuro patients I had, nursing aids not completely finishing their work.
Most are over worked and underpaid, but Jesús Cristo… you put on the shoes, tie them up…you put on the coat, do it up… ditto with his fly.

I had one woman who would come into her afternoon session with me straight from her care home with her feeding tube OPEN, her undergarments unchanged from that morning.
I know, I know blah blah fucking blah nurses and aids are understaffed and I’m not privy to their work environment. I’m sure it’s hell. I wouldn’t want to do it. But when it comes to care giving? No fucking slacking off. You took the job, do it right.

Back to this morning with the man in the mall.
People were walking by him.
Observing his weakness like he was a fucking art exhibit.
Let’s gild the lily and let you also know that this man was black, and he was the only black man I noticed in the mall.
While it isn’t anyone’s duty to help others, you’d think compassion or just the simple ability for you to move your own damn body would be enough of a reason to help someone unable to help themself. Do people really just walk by and think, “Oh that poor man in the wheelchair his headrest came off and his head is flopping around all funny. Someone should help him!” or “Sucks to be him.” or “Oh My God, a black person in a wheelchair with a floppy head!!”

Is compassion something that some people lack, or something that people are just not willing to expose?
Lack of compassion is one of the greatest faults a human could possibly possess. Period.

Now I’m not a fucking saint, I don’t follow Christ or Buddha, but I do value human beings despite their faults, stench and idiocy.
Yes, even people displaying idiocy.
Even the mall gawkers. As much as I object to their choice in gawking, I can sympathize with whatever reasoning they had, even if it is pure idiocy.

As I slid the piece back on the tubing and locked it, as it SHOULD have been locked by the person who helped him into the damn thing this morning, OR the bus driver- the man turned his head to the right as far as he could,

“Thank you SO MUCH.”

I don’t know if I would have approached him so easily if it wasn’t for the fact that I can assemble and disassemble a wheelchair in 3 minutes.
I would have at least tried, or asked, despite not knowing.
People, in general, are bloody idiots.
This Hypothesis remains intact until further notice.

Age 14, I willingly played Steve Urkel in improv class

I was 14 years old when a group of A list modeling agencies were holding a cattle call for potential models. It was the “Age of the Supermodel”
Here is what I looked like at 11 years old. So by 14 I had grown into my teeth a little, was 5’7” and 92 pounds. But basically I walked into the casting call looking like this.

Nice. I was so naive at this point in my life that it didn’t even occur to me that I looked ridiculous. I was a white Urkel who was DROWNING in my Mother’s size 10 Chanel knockoff houndstooth jacket and stirrup pants.

I pinned my number on my Mom’s jacket and stood in line to get on the stage.
The catwalk was a large ‘X” set up in an empty mall food court, there were thousands of people gathered to watch.

C&C Music factory started blasting right as I hit the catwalk and realized I had no idea what I was doing. So I spun, and waved and walked to the music. I made sure I took EXTRA long pause n’ poses at the end of the runways. Because there were 2 runways I got to stop 4 times. “THIS IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE!!” ran through my head the entire time.

At the end of the runway parade, the agents thanked everyone and told us that if our number was called that we were to meet in the Manulife Tower at 4pm, 23rd floor.

One by one, the agents stood up and called out the numbers of the girls they had chosen.
My number wasn’t called.
It was 2:30pm.
I decided to go to China Express, pulled out my copy of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and eat lo mein.
At 3:45pm I ran across the street to Manulife Tower and got on an elevator full of tall girls and Mothers carrying overflowing modeling books.

The 23rd floor was wide open. Around the periphery of the giant floor were desks and stations for all of the different agencies. There were stacks of contracts, polaroid cameras, measuring tapes and more agents.
I headed for the only table with no girls waiting in line.
It was Wilhemina Models.

“Yes?” she said
“Hi”
“What do you want?”
“I’m here to sign up.”
“Your number wasn’t called.”
“I think it was”
“I chose only 3 girls out of 400. That is why there is no line here. I know what they look like darling.”
“Maybe you like me better now that you can see me close up?”

The woman whispered “I’m sorry” through a smile.

I walked over to FORD AGENCY.

“Hi.”
The man didn’t look up, “Number?”
“1149”
“1149, 1149, 1149…. no I” and then he looked up
“I’m sure you called my number.”
“Oh honey. I’m sorry but we didn’t”
“Really? Weird! I think you should take my picture with that camera.” I pointed to the polaroid camera.
“Is your mother with you?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, we don’t have you on this list.”
“I think you’d really like me. I work hard, I have since I was a small child. I can dance, I can act, but I can’t sing.”
A woman joined the man on the other side of the desk.
“Can you take off those glasses?”
I took off the glasses.
“Can you take off the jacket?”
I did.
“Right!” I said “You know I’m actually very very very photogenic, and my mother is small and has a great body so I will too one day.”
The woman took my photo and the man looked annoyed.
“I need to see your profile”
I stood sideways.
“Stop smiling” he said
Soldier face.
“I’ll do whatever it takes you know. I don’t even need to get braces. My teeth are perfect.”
“What is your name?”
“Kelly”
“Well Kelly, you are a little short, what are you 5’6”?”
“5’7” and I might still hit a growth spurt.”
“Do you have a book?”
“I have ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’”
“No, a book, book. A modeling portfolio.”
“No. But I can get my Mom to take a bunch of black and white and blow them up for you if you need them.”
The woman turned to the man “She is photogenic. Look at her face.”
The man looked at my face.
I remembered, soldier face.
“Here. Fill this out.” He slid and information sheet across the table.
“But promise me that you will only sign with us, and leave.”
“Done”
Two weeks later the woman called me in to meet her. She plucked my unibrow down to nothing and told me what kind of clothing to buy. She showed me how to walk in high heels and she booked my first job for Levi’s the following year… right after I willed my vision back to 20/20.

addendum- in the 90’s meth brows were just normal brows. i hate this photo.