Emergency Room

I occasionally suffer from diverticulitis. Small food particles become lodged inside pockets which, because I'm old, have formed in the wall of my colon. The diverticules, as these pockets are called, become inflamed, resulting in my bum going on holiday and stomach cramps which can be crippling in severe cases. The worst flare up put me in hospital for three days back in 2015, which was when I learned all about diverticulitis. San Antonio's resident expert on the subject, Dr. Narvaez, admitted to me that diverticulitis is not well understood, and the best one can do is to keep track of what sets you off and avoid eating it because it can be different for everyone. I'm fine with tomato seeds and broccoli, for example, but anything involving peanuts or - to a lesser extent - sesame seeds can be problematic, and granola - or muesli to Europeans such as myself - can be a nightmare. This is annoying because I've always loved muesli, which is probably why I seem to forget what it does to me every fucking time. I chop up chilli peppers three or four times a week and I'm always very diligent when it comes to scraping out the seeds, and yet I just can't remember that thing about granola.

Donna, our neighbour gives us food. Her son brings her boxes of food. She tells us that she can't eat any of it and gives it to us, despite that it's often nothing we're ever likely to eat either. It annoys the living shit out of me, quite frankly, but sometimes it can be difficult to tell someone to piss off or to stick it up their arse without coming across as lacking in neighbourly spirit. This latest unrequested care package contained granola and, as usual, I forgot that I shouldn't eat it. I had cooked pork for two days running, and on the second day I supplemented my pork and beans with a bowl of granola for pudding. I did the same the day after, despite a slight discomfort in my stomach which I had somehow failed to consider as significant.

On the third day, I went back to bed before noon. I'd already been to the supermarket for soup and Milk of Magnesia. The penny had dropped and I'd resigned myself to the usual period of convalescence, because a day or two of rest, laxatives and a liquid only diet usually does the trick before it becomes too painful.

I chugged the Milk of Magnesia, noticing that it was now cherry flavour, specifically that flavour of cherry found nowhere in nature with which everything medicinal is now presented. I went to bed, I slept, and the anticipated bottom explosion failed to arrive. If anything I began to feel worse and worse. I got up around three, went to sit on the bog and nothing came out. I felt hot. I had a cold sweat. I felt faint and nauseous when I stood. I staggered back to bed, resumed the one position which seemed to negate most of the discomfort, and slept again.

'You should go to the emergency room,' Bess says.

'I'll be fine,' I say.

I get up again around six, repeat the unproductive trip to the bathroom, but with more pain to accompany the ensuing nausea.

'Bess,' I croak like an ill person, hoping the desperation of my plea will be enough to carry it to the front room.

'You look bad,' she says.

'I think you were right,' I say. 'I think I need to go the hospital.'

I pull on a pair of pants, a t-shirt, and throw some paperbacks and toothpaste in a satchel, anticipating a spell in hospital. I find myself enfeebled, and Bess has to come around to the passenger side of the car and close my door for me. We drive slowly to Northeast Baptist, which is a relief once I realise where we're heading. I had assumed we would be going to the place I ended up staying three nights back in 2015. I can never remember its name, but it's some way away and I don't feel up to a long journey. I can't get comfortable in the car with the seat folding my middle section into an angle which amplifies the pain - because it is now impossible to deny that it is actual pain. I'm expecting an x-ray to reveal that it's probably nothing critical but they'll want to keep me in for observation, so I'll get lots of lovely heroin to dull the sensation. It probably isn't heroin, but last time they dosed me with whatever it was, it was wonderful and gave me a profound insight into the work of William S. Burroughs.

We enter the waiting room. The receptionist with a wonky eye takes my name and details. 'Is this correct?' she asks, handing me a wrist tag on which my name is spelled Lawerence.

'No,' I say.

She hands me a pen. 'Write how it should be spelled underneath.'

It's about six-thirty in the evening.

She produces a new wrist tag and tells us to take a seat. I think about the Lawerence I once met who has that spelling of the name on his birth certificate because his father was too stupid to get it right.

There are about ten people in the waiting room, maybe fifteen, and the number will rise as the evening goes on.

 

A woman named Sheryl comes in, followed by a young couple. Sheryl has been bitten on the hand by a dog. The young man behind her, whom I assume is called either Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba, identifies the common theme of hand injuries facilitated by sharp objects and shows Sheryl his own recently mutilated appendage.

'I just stuck my buck knife clean through,' he tells her happily. 'I did it on accident. I was splitting some fencing.'

Sheryl tells him about the dog biting her.

'I didn't feel nothing,' he continues. 'I drove all the way from Canyon Lake. I figured it was easier getting to some place I knew rather than look around, so I drove all the way. I didn't feel nothing.'

The line gets longer as another injured person turns up.

'I stabbed my buck knife through my hand on accident,' Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba explains to the newcomer.

'I wonder if he felt anything,' I mutter to Bess.

'I didn't feel nothing.'

I vaguely remember Wavis O'Shave on television back in 1982, hitting his own hand with a hammer and gurning felt nowt! I am almost certainly the only person in the entire state of Texas thinking about Wavis O'Shave at this moment, and I want to tell Bess but feel the recollection may require a disproportionate quota of footnotes.

Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba now has another interested party, some guy explaining how he did the same thing in 'Nam and just glued the wound shut with superglue.

'I didn't feel nothing,' Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba reminds the guy. 'I did it on accident.'

Everybody has injuries, and everybody has had injuries much worse than this one. One guy had his entire upper torso sheered clean off and was just a pair of legs. He'd been skinnin' a cooter with some ol' cracklin' wire. He did it on accident. None of these complete fucking clowns felt a thing.

The television mounted up on the wall is tuned to the news channel. Nineteen elementary school children and two teachers have been killed during a school shooting in Uvalde, the nearest small town to Pearsall which is where Bess grew up. This one is fairly close to home. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas was apparently addressing the NRA at the time. I'm already bracing myself to weather the outpouring of thoughts and prayers, and how we don't understand why this can be happening, and how it's a tragedy which must never happen again - although clearly it will, because we shall never understand the mystery of mentally unstable teenagers slaughtering toddlers with a legally purchased assault rifle.

What a fucking puzzler it is.

My regard for humanity has been taking a real beating of late.

 

Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba takes the seat next to Bess and myself. He is joined by his wife. They discuss how far he drove and how he didn't feel nothing. We're sat opposite a very old woman in mismatching clothes, including a yellow t-shirt bearing the legend #DREAM #DREAM #DREAM. She is wearing shabby slippers and has a walker in front of her. She's on the phone with the volume turned up so loud that everyone in the hospital can hear the steady string of answering service messages and automatic declarations of numbers having become unobtainable.

'This is Grandma,' she says feebly for the umpteenth time. 'I'm in the hospital.' Somehow it's difficult to imagine her story having a sunny ending.

I'm called in to be seen, but it turns out that this is just the preliminary. A nurse takes my blood pressure, temperature, and pulse. He asks a few questions and then we're back out to the waiting room. It's starting to look as though the anticipated heroin may not be happening. I'm not even asked whether I'm in pain.

The waiting room fills. Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba has an unpleasant looking sister who now joins them in the waiting room.

A Hispanic guy sits next to the very old woman in the yellow t-shirt. They talk and their conversation is interspersed with passages he reads out from the Bible he's carrying. I'm distracted by the droning testimony of another guy. He's been yacking away for the past few minutes, something about fishing.

'You see that?' he says, showing his smartphone to a guy in a red shirt who isn't saying anything at all. 'There are eighteen kinds of snapper. Did you know that?'

He wears blue jeans, a camo baseball cap and clearly regards himself as a bit of a character. It's hard to tell whether he knows the guy in the red shirt, or whether the guy in the red shirt really gives a shit about varieties of snapper. He's that twat at work, the one who talks to everyone on the first day, and no matter where you've been or what you've done, he's been there too and done it but moreso.

Inevitably he falls into the orbit of Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba, having recalled an incident in which he too once stabbed himself with a buck knife on accident and didn't feel nothing; and Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba had no idea there could be that many kinds of snapper.

Bess and I work on not catching his eye.

Someone who has been here at least as long as ourselves wheels his wife back up to the reception. She is folded into a chair which isn't actually a wheelchair but seems to be one of those things used by people who need to keep the weight off one foot. I think she may be crying but the sound is weak.

'So how long?' the guy asks, not unreasonably given that this is an emergency room.

The receptionist mumbles something in response.

'Well, could we at least get a gurney or something.' He gestures to his wife. 'This isn't even a proper wheelchair.'

'I'm sorry,' says the receptionist, which seems unhelpful given that we're actually inside a hospital.

An old black guy is brought in by two cops. He is handcuffed and he's rambling. He keeps saying sorry and addresses everyone as sir or ma'am. He is immediately taken into the treatment room.

I look at my watch. It's after eight o'clock. 'I'm going to see if I can pee,' I tell Bess. 'I've got my phone so call me if anything happens.'

I find the bogs. The guy with the wife in the wheelchair that isn't a wheelchair is in there. He's really not happy. 'How long have you been here?' he asks.

'Since about half past six,' I tell him.

I produce about a thimble's worth of urine. The presumed inflammation of my gut has felt as though it's been pressing on my bladder, meaning I haven't felt inclined to drink much because it's been uncomfortable. So far today I've had one cup of coffee, sixty millilitres of Milk of Magnesia, and a small glass of apple juice probably amounting to about a half pint of liquid, if that.

I return to the waiting room.

'Did you see her arm?' Bess asks.

'Who?'

'The woman who wanted a wheelchair.'

'No. Is it bad?'

'It's terrible. It's all shredded up.'

The fisherman has now latched onto Sheryl. He's asking about the dog that bit her hand, then, 'what's your name?'

'Sheryl,' she says.

'Well, ain't that something,' he declares. 'I got a friend with the same name, although her name is Sherry.'

'So that would be a completely different fucking name then,' I mutter loud enough for just Bess to hear.

Bess is looking things up on her smartphone. 'There's only a ten minute wait right now at Texas Med Clinic,' she says.

'You think we should go?'

It's now half past eight. As it happens, although I'm still in some discomfort, it's nothing like so bad as when we first got here.

We leave.

'Thanks a lot,' I say to the receptionist as she snips the name tag from my wrist, although I doubt I sound particularly sincere.

We drive three minutes along Austin Highway to the Med Clinic. Josh or Greg or Caleb or Bubba's unpleasant looking sister apparently said something about COVID-19 being a hoax while I was in the bogs.

'I knew we shouldn't have gone to that place,' Bess says. She summarises three different horror stories including a miscarriage which occurred in the waiting room and a perfectly healthy limb almost amputated. The woman who had the miscarriage while waiting to be seen was nevertheless charged five thousand dollars despite having received no actual treatment. It's difficult to believe that a service for which one is expected to pay so generously can really be quite so criminally shit, but I've seen it with my own eyes. Both the guy who almost lost a leg and the woman who had a miscarriage are people I know fairly well and have chosen not to name. This isn't some friend of a friend deal.

We enter the Med Clinic. It's a much smaller place and there's no-one here aside from the receptionist. She takes my details, spells my name right, and we take a seat.

Bess and I make a pact. She will try to remember to avoid Northeast Baptist and I will try to remember what happens when I eat granola.

Ten minutes later we're called in to see a doctor.

'Mr. Burton,' he smiles. 'I remember you from last time.'

This strikes me as odd and unlikely, and it will take me two whole days to recall that I have been here before. It was a long time ago, prior to the spell in hospital, and before anyone had even mentioned diverticulitis. They weren't particularly helpful so we went to the medical centre on Broadway where a doctor was able to identify what was wrong with me. We were here for about five minutes which is probably why it didn't make much of an impression.

Right now this declaration of familiarity feels somewhat like part of a sales pitch. The doctor - whom I'll refer to as Doctor Kildare because I can't remember his real name - asks me to describe my symptoms, then interrupts me as I'm doing so. I've described more or less everything relevant as described above, adding the curious detail that I have no discomfort in the lower left of my abdomen - about where the colon swings around in the direction of one's arsehole - which is customarily the most obvious symptom of diverticulitis; so I have all of the symptoms except for that one.

'I think we'll need to take a urine sample,' Kildare suggests.

I remind him that I've hardly had any liquid today, so this seems overly optimistic given that I recently peed out what little urine I had stored up at the previous place.

'Well, we have all evening,' he says. 'You should at least try.'

I trot off to the bog and produce nothing, as predicted.

He keeps going on about a potential bladder infection, and how he's only able to diagnose it with a urine sample. I ask him to run through all the symptoms I would have. The only symptoms I have are those associated with diverticulitis.

'Do you drink alcohol?' he asks.

'Well, yes, but not much.'

Aha!!!, he doesn't actually say, but he's clearly thinking it. He starts on the usual lecture. Drink is bad for you, apparently.

I had no idea.

I really wish someone had mentioned this before.

'I sometimes have a beer with a meal,' I tell him. 'It's not like I'm some boozehound!'

His face lights up as he imagines my daily routine, sat on the curb, burping as I toss a newly emptied forty ounce bottle of malt liquor back over my shoulder, adding to the mountain of empties now higher than the roof of the house. He's also really warming to the bladder infection theme, as though he really wants that to be the problem. I imagine urine samples demanded from patients who come in with an arm missing or old school saucepans wedged firmly on their heads.

'Let's just forget about it,' I say. 'It's not going to happen.'

'Perhaps if you drink some water…'

Once again I trot off to the bogs with my little plastic cup and a glass of water knowing full well that I don't have a bladder infection and that it isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference anyway. I drink the water. I wait five minutes. Nothing happens, and I know that no-one is going to furnish me with either x-rays or heroin this time. Furthermore, even if I'm still feeling slightly ropey, I'm significantly recovered from earlier.

'This is bollocks,' I say to Bess. 'Let's just go home.'

I'm happy to walk right out of the door, but Bess insists I speak to the doctor.

'If I'm able to pee when I get home, I'll be sure to bring it back here,' I tell him.

'That won't do,' he says. 'You see we have to have it here,' followed by some mumbling about sterile clinical conditions.

'Oh well,' I say, and we leave.

Next day I do a nice big poo and feel a lot better. Doctor Kildare calls to ask how I'm doing. Bess tells him I'm fine.

I look forward to the survey in my email.

Satisfied.

Extremely satisfied.

Satisfied as fuck.

Schrödinger's Bollix

Phone pranks were what we did back when the telephone was the only available means of anonymous instantaneous communication. It involved calling up a complete stranger and giving them a hard time in a way which seemed amusing, particularly if you recorded the call for later playback. People who try too hard have since attempted to dignify the undertaking by terming it phone phreaking, emphasising the anarchic aspects, often in relation to anonymous calls used to strike back at large corporations; but it's rarely anything so ethical and is otherwise something you hopefully grow out of.

My first prank call, undertaken at the age of fourteen, was to a person with the surname of Rainbow which I'd found in the telephone directory. Mrs. Rainbow answered the phone and I asked to speak to Geoffrey. When she explained that no-one of that name was to be found at that address, I asked to speak to either Bungle or Zippy. Geoffrey was the presenter of Rainbow, a popular children's television programme featuring characters called Bungle and Zippy. I could barely get the names out because I was laughing so much. Despite the obvious hilarity, the exercise felt mean-spirited, pointless, and not a little retarded, thankfully curtailing a career of calling up random drinking establishments and asking to speak to Mr. Hardcock - who was certain to be in the bar somewhere and whose first name would naturally be Ivor.

Oh my sides!

A few of my friends filled tape after tape with prank phone calls. I made copies for myself because they were hilarious at the time, although listening back from this side of the millennium, they're revealed as mostly fairly boring, albeit with infrequent flashes of brilliance - usually occurring where surrealism eclipses the more traditional abusive element. One example of this was my friend Graham making lengthy and detailed enquiries about the cost of having a rather naughty picture tattooed upon his person - as he describes it in an exaggerated camp voice - a picture which he's far too embarrassed to identify, much to the general bewilderment of the tattooist. Such examples might almost count as performance art to my way of thinking, although even in such cases, my memory of the recording tends to be funnier than actually listening to it.

A couple of years after I grew out of what little appreciation I'd had for prank phone calls, they began turning up on mainstream radio shows in typically witless form. The most surprising thing for me was the realisation that this was apparently something which everybody did at some point or other. I'd assumed it was just me and my little pals, but mainly my little pals because they were funnier.

At some point in the early nineties, I was in correspondence with John, the editor of a fanzine dedicated to pranks, including this kind, specifically a fanzine taking the view of pranks as a means of striking back at authority by an otherwise disempowered populace - although not quite so dry as that may sound. John sent me a tape of prank phone calls made by a friend of his, someone called Noel who lived in a small town just outside of Dublin. Noel's phone calls were truly peculiar and very entertaining, rarely abusive, more often bizarre and preposterous foreshadowing the sort of thing for which Chris Morris became known. He'd call up a branch of Tower Records to complain about the Satanic backmasking on an Enya album and what it had made him do, or - and this one remains my personal favourite - answer a postcard placed in a newsagent window by someone who had found a pencil case. What made this particular call so fascinatingly odd was Noel playing the role of a person who quite clearly didn't own the pencil case, but hoped to obtain it by deception.

Noel also produced a fanzine called ZGB, standing for Zippy, George and Bungle, characters from the aforementioned Rainbow. The thing was chaotic and incoherent, not so much a fanzine about Rainbow as one peppered with frequent mystifying references to the same. It seemed like the work of a man having a fight with himself. Noel and I eventually ended up writing to each other, exchanging tapes and the like, although I can't remember who first wrote to who. Our correspondence was conducted with some caution on my part because he seemed a little scary, and certainly unpredictable. I didn't want to find myself on the receiving end of one of his phone calls. His letters were very funny, and often peppered with references to his having discovered the phone numbers or addresses of various celebrities.

In September 1995 he visited London, simultaneous to a visit by the aforementioned John, the fanzine guy, who stayed on my sofa for a couple of nights. I was still a little wary of meeting Noel, but having just split with my girlfriend of the time, I was keen for distraction, and John being there would, I hoped, reduce the possibility of awkward or otherwise weird silences.

Whatever I expected, Noel was something else when I met him - genuinely warm, funny, and erudite. He was good company and in a way which seemed consistent with the impression I'd picked up from his tapes. If there was any element of malice or anything mean-spirited in him, it was nowhere near the surface. Against my expectations, he served to alleviate the tension of hanging out with John who was a nice guy but reserved and awkward.

The two of them went into central London, as tourists do, and came back with bags of goodies. John hadn't bought much, but what he had bought seemed earnestly countercultural. Noel on the other hand had been to the Japan Centre in Leicester Square for Godzilla related materials, but had also picked up VHS tapes of Blake's 7 and Ben Dover II.

We watched an episode of Blake's 7, which was ropey and nothing like so enjoyable as it had seemed when I was twelve. It was slow and took itself far too seriously for something so heavily reliant upon suspension of disbelief.

Ben Dover II, the second in what I'm sure must have been a long-running series, was an independent art cinema production aimed primarily at a male audience wherein the eponymous Mr. Dover travels the corner shops, petrol stations and rural post offices of England engaging in impromptu sexual acts with the women he randomly encounters along the way, acts which are recorded by his assistant, a man with a portable video camera. The likelihood of randomly encountered and generously breasted women dropping them for a stranger with a video camera suggests these engagements to have been staged, despite effecting to appear otherwise.

I've never had a particularly heavy pornography habit, but the general concept of watching a bluey with two other men in the room seemed to defeat the point. Noel was nevertheless insistent and admittedly I probably didn't put up much of a protest. Ben Dover II was surprisingly entertaining, rather than being just embarrassing to watch in the company of other single men. Ben himself came across as strangely likable in his enthusiastically rogering his way across the British Isles, and everyone in the video seemed to be having a genuinely good time. The moment which has stayed with me occurs as our leading man suggests that a young lady with whom he has recently become acquainted might additionally provide oral stimulation to the bloke holding the video camera as Ben himself attends to her other end.

'Oh,' we hear the cameraman exclaim as he pans down to the front of his own trousers. 'This is indeed an unexpected bonus!'

John went back to Wales, Noel went back to Ireland, and we all carried on with our lives unhindered by sexual partners, improbable though that may seem. I became increasingly frustrated over the next five years and even attempted unorthodox means of entering a relationship, to little avail as I explained in a letter written to Noel dated to October, 2000.

So far I've had a total of one response to my classified advertisement in a rude magazine. I politely declined the offer as I was looking for someone under fifty, and who had actually been a bird from day one, so it's back to the drawing board.

This was around the time of my trying to write Hueyteteotecuhtin, an exhaustive if potentially cranky summary of pre-Hispanic Mexican mythology. I'd maintained a sporadic correspondence with Noel, fuelled by our shared love of Brookside and rap music so naturally I mentioned Hueyteteotecuhtin in passing. He told me that he too had been writing a book, specifically a novel, for which he required an agent.

The four fuck ups left the service station, not before Iz Insayne entered the public toilets, took out a pornographic magazine (pocket size, Japanese), jacked off all over it and left it on the downturned seat for some unfortunate to find or some junkie to sit on or some stressed businessman to have a meal with. Iz did this quirky thing a lot. He didn't know why.

Soon they were on their way, halfway to Dover. Say was speeding at over the ton, Missile Tips and Mikester were talking about periods. Iz was bored.

'Hay Say, pull up alongside some speeding juggernaut will ya?' he asked.

Say took three minutes to catch up with an eighteen wheeler doing eighty.

'Steady as ye go,' cried Iz.

Iz wound down his window and took out his Luger and expertly fired at all the nearside wheels on the huge motherfucker of a truck. One shot took out each wheel. The juggernaut veered to the right, so Say braked and then quickly moved to the left side. Iz leaned over Missile Tips and opened her window. He then shot off the remaining tyres. Say floored the Merc. Iz looked behind and the juggernaut overturned and jack-knifed at the same time, smashing violently all over the motorway.

There was a forty-two vehicle pile-up, nine dead and thirty-three injured badly. There was also a pile-up on the other side of the motorway as ghoulish voyeurs slowed down to look at the carnage, and it was car-nage.

Iz couldn't stop laughing. 'I enjoyed that!'

Should I be able to find a publisher, Noel proposed, I could have 10% of the royalties. The novel was called Iz Insayne after its lead character. I assumed Noel was taking the piss but diplomatically pretended otherwise just in case he wasn't. He sent me the full manuscript, 110 pages thematically indistinguishable from the above aside from occasional passages featuring an increased level of sex, violence, perversion, or ethnic slurs meted out with casual abandon. I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do with it given that I had trouble reading the thing, so I passed it onto my friend, Paul Woods, then working for Plexus Books.

'Is he taking the piss?' Paul asked over the phone.

'I'm not sure,' I said truthfully. It seemed like a lot of time and energy had gone into Iz Insayne, perhaps too much for it to be no more than some elaborate wind up; but maybe that was the point. Noel's preferred form of social intercourse seemed to be to look you right in the eye with a big and absolutely sincere smile on his face as he figuratively probes a hand down the front of your pants and tells you - in a voice ranking high on the Val Doonican scale of warmth - the most preposterous shite you've ever heard. He creates a sort of cognitive dissonance between the quality of the act and the perceived sincerity of his intention. It's difficult to know quite how to react given that fuck off would be the most logical response, and yet you're not going to say fuck off to someone who so clearly means it.

Years went by and we tunneled our way slowly into the initial decade of the century, our correspondence sporadic but still bringing the occasionally bewildering enquiry as to whether Paul had yet bothered to take a look at the manuscript of Iz Insayne. Noel took an evening class, learning to paint in oils. He took photographs of his work and sent them to me. This one is called Zippy, Frankula and the Lollipop Lady. The writing on the reverse of the photograph proposes that it was painted whilst on crack.

Personally, I think it's amazing - terrible and yet brilliant at the same time, compensating for its blunt aesthetic with sheer force of insane energy. I suspect this may have been a clue as to the artistic sincerity - or otherwise - of Iz Insayne, the possibly unpublishable novel, and even calling it outsider art means you don't get it.

In 2005, I interviewed for a relationship with Marian and my application was reluctantly accepted in the absence of more suitable candidates. Noel congratulated me with a letter of which the centrepiece was a crudely rendered, pornographic, and possibly illegal biro drawing annotated this is the sort of bitch you want to fuck, or similar. Being in the first throes of admittedly poorly-informed love, I couldn't help but take offense. It really did seem as though he was taking the piss this time, and the guesswork had become exhausting. I threw away the letter and didn't write back.

Noel resurfaced a couple of years later on the internet, specifically on a bulletin board of which I'd been made administrator. The owner of the board had angered more or less every single one of the three-hundred or so regular users, who had accordingly logged off never to return. The place was looking empty so I zipped off invitations to whoever I knew with a working email address. Next day we had five new members, one of whom had chosen the username SASKWAW in upper case, like the word Sasquatch as pronounced by a hillbilly. He made a few comments - mostly amusing bordering on illegal - then posted some anime image which looked a lot like Japanese kiddy porn. He gave no response when I sent him a personal message asking, is that you, Noel?

He was banned, which I suspect may have been his intention - a complete fucking mystery to the last. More than a decade has passed and I have no idea whether Noel still exists. I have an email address but I'm too scared to investigate, to find out whether there's still anyone at the other end. On the other hand, nothing lasts forever and maybe it doesn't matter, and what matters is that our friendship, our acquaintance - or whatever it was - had me laughing my ass off on a number of occasions and prevented my slow transformation into the sort of boring lump of shite which many of our contemporaries have seemingly become.

There probably isn't any single tidy conclusion to this story.

Boozehound

I've been here ten years and I still don't fully understand bars. There's one called Boozehounds fairly close to where I live. The sign incorporates an excited cartoon dog, tongue hanging thirstily from its mouth with its eyes forming the double O of the name - which lacks dignity from where I'm stood. The term boozehound doesn't seem like much of a compliment. In fact it's probably debatable as to whether it even counts as affectionate, and so it has struck me that the bar in question might just as well be renamed Alcoholics or Losers, and somewhere there's a gentleman's club - as they're euphemistically known - called Sex Offenders.

Anyway, today it seems I have met a genuine boozehound. He's sat on a mobility scooter in front of me in the fifteen items or less queue at HEB. He has three cans of beer on the belt and the basket of the mobility scooter is loaded with shopping bags. He has greasy black hair and is thinning on the top of his head.

I heft a catering pack of twenty-four tins of cat food onto the belt.

'You got some kitties, huh?' he says, turning to grin at me.

'Yes.' I look at the people presently being served. They've just paid for many more than fifteen items and now they've found some coupons they would like to use. Great.

'We got kitties at our place. They won't let us feed them. How many kitties you got?'

'About fourteen, I think. Why don't they let you feed them?'

He doesn't seem to hear the question, but honestly, I was only making conversation.

'I like beer,' he tells me happily, indicating his three cans.

I don't recognise the brand, something called the Bull in a black tin. I see Schlitz in ornate writing somewhere beneath the picture of a bull.

'I forgot to buy my beer so I came back.' He indicates the basket full of already bagged groceries. 'That's the most important thing,' he smiles. His accent reminds me of Cheech and Chong records, probably because I didn't grow up here.

'I like Dos Equis,' I offer, not really knowing what else to say.

'This is much stronger,' he says, grinning, eyes sparkling with anticipation. 'It's 8.5%, but your beer is only 1%.'

I suspect he's wrong, and subsequent investigation will reveal that it's actually 4.2%, but I don't feel massively invested in the subject.

'My beer, it really… you know…'

'It gets the job done,' I say, finishing his sentence for him, which he seems to appreciate.

'It gets you drunk,' he laughs in confirmation. 'I'm an alcoholic!'

I smile and nod to show that I've taken this on board. 'Okay.'

'You ain't from here. Where you from?'

'England.'

'Yeah, I thought so. I was born and raised here.'

'San Antonio?'

'I'm from Crystal City.'

'Oh yeah - I know it. I've been there.'

'How you like it here?'

'I like it fine.'

Coupons are finally accounted for and the conveyor belt moves at long last. The boozehound pays for his three tins of malt liquor, then turns back to bid me farewell. 'I liked talking to you, man.'

'Yes,' I say. 'You take care.'

'He lifts up the bag with the cans. 'I'm gonna have me one of these while I wait for the bus.'

He grins and drives the mobility scooter away toward the exit. This has probably been one of the more refreshingly honest conversations I've had this year.

The Free Bike

I'm heading back from McAllister Park and I pass the parking lot. I notice Carmen sat at one of the benches. Her bike is on its stand nearby. I usually pass her on the trail at some point each day.

'I had a flat!' she wails.

I see the back tire has a puncture and almost immediately I notice something large stuck in the tread, something woody about the size of a piece of corn. It's obviously the remains of some twig to which a huge, sharp thorn is attached. 'Do you want me to fix it?'

'It's fine. I already called Stephen. He's on his way.'

'Are you sure? It wouldn't take long, and at least it's obvious where the puncture is.'

'It's fine,' she says. 'I'll take it along to Bike World.'

'Well, okay.'

We sit and talk about cats and wait for Stephen in his truck.

'Did you see that bike in the creek just by the boardwalk?' I ask.

'I know. Stephen spoke to the guy.'

'Really? It looks like a perfectly good bike apart from the wheel.'

Stephen pulls up in his truck. He hefts Carmen's bike into the back and we shake hands.

'I saw you yesterday,' I say. 'I wasn't ignoring you. It took me a moment to register that it was you. I waved but you were already gone.'

'I didn't think you recognised me,' he chuckles.

'Did you see that bike in the creek?'

'I spoke to the guy. He had two kids with him. I noticed there was a slight buckle in his rear wheel so I tried to tell him about adjusting the spokes but he didn't seem interested. Then when I came to the boardwalk I saw it. I guess he'd had enough and just tossed it away in anger.'

'I think I'm going to have it if it's still there.'

Fifteen or so minutes later, I come to the boardwalk and the free bike is indeed still there. It's a little smaller than mine and it's a mountain bike. The front wheel is bent into the kind of drunken pretzel by which theoretical physicists attempt to describe the shape of the universe, or time, or reality. Otherwise it looks fine.

I'm puzzled because it's clearly the front wheel that's fucked. The rear seems okay. I hoist it up onto the boardwalk and try to work out how I'm going to get it home, given that I'm on a bike. The free bike is light, but probably not light enough to carry. Maybe I can remove the crippled front wheel and somehow hitch the frame to the back of my bike and tow it along. I have the spanners I need because I carry them everywhere. I can't get the front wheel free of the forks because of the brake blocks, so I have to take off the brake blocks too. I can never remember which way you unscrew a nut, and the fucker won't give. Then it gives in spectacular fashion, and I somehow cut open the tip of my thumb with the other end of the spanner. Big fat droplets of bright red blood drip onto the boardwalk, onto the warped front tire, everywhere.

After five minutes of holding things against other things then frowning, I realise that all my ideas for taking the free bike home have thus far been putrid. I guess if I can at least get it to the other end of the boardwalk - which is admittedly the better part of a mile - I can hide the bike in the undergrowth and we can pick it up later when Bess and I go out for something to eat. The bike is fairly small and if I also remove the rear wheel it should fit in the car.

First I try wheeling both bikes, one in each hand. It's too awkward, so I pick up the freebie by the cross bar whilst wheeling my own bike along. It's awkward and I have to stop for a rest every twenty or thirty feet, my thumb still dripping a trail of blood as I go. I recall accidentally slicing a groove of three or four millimeters depth in one side near the nail with a box cutter about two months ago. The hit with the spanner has simply reopened an old wound.

People pass by because my progress is slow and laborious, someone every few minutes.

'Hey, you need a hand?' asks one guy.

'I'm fine,' I tell him, 'but thanks.'

'Someone just threw that away. We saw it earlier.' His wife makes noises to confirm as much.

'I figured all it needs is a new wheel, so why not?'

'Yeah, it seems like a good bike. How far are you going?'

'Well, I'm just going to hide it in the woods up ahead, then me and the wife can swing by and pick it up later.'

'You sure you don't want us to drop you somewhere? We're parked up at Ladybird Johnson.'

'Thanks but I'm fine,' I say. 'It's good exercise.'

Of late I've been spending about half an hour each day cutting branches from trees in the garden, mainly for exercise. I'm not going to bother today because hefting the free bike along has been more physically demanding than I'd anticipated.

'You're from Australia, right?' the wife says.

I laugh. 'No, England, but that's what everyone thinks. I lived in London for twenty years and I guess the accents sound similar.'

'Wow,' she says. 'That's the one place I really want to go. I went all over when I served - Germany, China, but I never made it to England. How do you like it here?'

'It's great.'

'Don't you miss England?'

'Not really. I definitely don't miss the weather - no sunlight for six months of the year, the rain…'

'I'm from Ohio so I hear you.'

'I thought Ohio was pretty sunny.'

'It's up by Lake Erie.'

'I'm thinking of somewhere else, maybe Iowa.'

We reach the end of the boardwalk and they head for the parking lot. I spend another ten minutes further dismantling the free bike, removing both the rear wheel and the seat. I can take the seat with me, but I bind the two wheels and the frame together into a more compact assembly with a length of bungee rope. Then I wander off into the wood next to the parking lot and leave it behind a drift of twigs, leaves, and crap.

Four hours later, we swing by in the car. The bike fits in the back just fine and we drive on to Charlie Brown's given that it's out this way. It's Thursday so it's trivia night. We experienced the first three questions of a previous trivia night and they seemed so simple as to border on ridiculous. One of them asked that we identify the punctuation mark comprising an apostrophe set above a full stop - a semicolon. We heard someone at an adjacent table confidently declare that he knew the answer to this one, and that it was called a polka dot. This evening we've decide fuck it - we're going to enter the trivia quiz, because we'll clean up if the other questions are that simple. We'll be like Superman when he first came to Earth.

 

I order chicken fried chicken and have a Dos Equis in one of those enormous German beer mugs. Bess has a chicken salad and unsweet tea. The woman running the trivia quiz comes around with boards and marker pens. We have to come up with a name for our team so I choose Tex Pistols because we were talking about the Sex Pistols in the car on the way over. Specifically, Paul Cook's Professionals named their most recent live outing the Pretty Vaccinated tour in reference to the Pistol's Pretty Vacant tour, which I thought was funny enough to tell someone.

The food is great.

The questions are asked by our hostess over the PA, flashed up as text on the screen behind the small stage, and we each get the length of one song to consider our answers. We write answers on the boards we've been given, which are the kind that can be wiped clean, and our hostess tours the room taking note of who wrote what before returning to the stage to deliver the answer as each song comes to an end. Songs include the Doobie Brothers' China Grove and Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama, both of which sound pretty good to me these days. I seem to be naturalising.

The trivia quiz comprises twenty questions and goes on for more than an hour. The questions turn out to be fucking hard and surprisingly reliant on a working knowledge of Latin with which neither Bess nor myself are blessed. We get a few wrong and a few right, but about half of those we got right were guesswork.

'Maybe we're more stupid than we realise,' Bess proposes ominously. We're both shocked by the results. I consider those views I now hold which I believed were traditionally held by mainly stupid people up until fairly recently.

Perhaps I'm more naturalised than I realise.

Somehow we come in third, thus winning a twenty dollar voucher towards our next visit to Charlie Brown's - which is nice, not least because I've now had two enormous German beer mugs of Dos Equis which is a lot more than I usually drink, and I'm particularly refreshed - more refreshed than I've been in a while.

Next day I take a closer look at the free bike in an attempt to assess the damage. It turns out that there is indeed a buckle in the rear wheel as Stephen reported. Presumably the rider took note of what Stephen had told him, then met with the accident which folded the front wheel into its present shape; then hurled the bike away into the creek in a fit of anger. I guess I could replace a single wheel, but wheels aren't cheap, and it seems both are fucked. I root around online and find a helpful YouTube video about fixing lesser buckles in wheels by adjusting the spokes.

I'm going to need something called a spoke key.

I go into the bike shop on Saturday and immediately find what I'm looking for. I have the front wheel with me, the one shaped like a monster munch, mainly so I can check that whatever spoke key I buy will fit the spokes of the free bike. I explain this to the assistant.

He looks at me with uncertainty, and at the massively wonky wheel I have in my hand. 'I don't think you'll be able to fix that by adjusting the spokes.'

Another customer, a young man with a beard who happens to be browsing, snorts loudly. Whatever his intention, it feels somewhat as though he's laughing at the rube. I look him directly in the eye and growl, 'Well, I'm glad you found it fucking funny,' then turn back to the assistant. 'I know. The rear wheel isn't as bad, and that's the one I'm going to try to straighten up.'

I pay up and leave.

There are a thousand stories in the big city, and this was two of them, or possibly two and a half.

Ollie

I wrote about Ollie back in November, and now he's gone. Bess and I first saw him as a tiny black kitten shooting across a street near our house. We stopped the car, picked him up, and knocked on a few doors. One of them confirmed that he was part of the litter of a feral cat living in the alley at the rear of her house. We brought him home because it didn't seem like one more would make much difference.

He was small, very friendly, good with the other cats, and had a personality I've come to associate with black cats. He seemed unusually intelligent. He'd chase toys thrown for him then fetch them back for us to throw again - like a dog. He was also our first cat to work out how to open our kitchen door by somehow hooking a paw underneath then pulling or pushing depending on whether he was inside or outside at the time. The door is kept shut by a powerful spring so it was impressive, not least because he was such a small cat. He spent most evenings curled up on my lap, and his best friend was Polly, a calico female of about the same age and size. Otto, a more recently arrived kitten would often join him on my lap and suckle on whichever part of Ollie was nearest. Otto clearly missed his mother, but Ollie never seemed to mind.

 

The name was short for Oliver, suggested by my stepson, possibly because he likes black olives - the stepson, not the cat. My wife had suggested Goliad, because we'd driven through Goliad, Texas on the day we found him - which was our tenth wedding anniversary; and in reference to Bean, our previous small black cat. This will all make sense to anyone with a reasonably thorough knowledge of Texan history and what happened at Goliad, but I preferred Oliver because it reminded me of Oliver Hardy.

He was fine last night, and this morning we found him breathing unusually heavy, as though suffering from asthma. I suggested we make an appointment at the vet in case it got worse, whatever it was. This I proposed as an alternative to our ending up taking him to the emergency veterinary clinic. They'll see you at short notice, but they charge an arm and a leg, usually about five-hundred dollars for there's nothing we can do and he's going to die - which at fifty dollars a word would be an amazing page rate.

As I was about to leave, my wife told me that the vet had said they were able to see Ollie right away so she left before me. Half an hour later, she called me as I was out on my bike. The news was bad. His lungs had collapsed and there wasn't anything they could do which seemed like it would have a happy ending. They were going to put him to sleep.

I felt numb.

He'd been fine the night before. It was a lot to take in.

I rode to McAllister Park as usual. I'm presently feeding a feral cat called Fluffy at McAllister Park. We've tried to catch her but she outwits us every time. She's a beautiful long-haired silver grey cat and provisionally friendly, suggesting she was probably dumped by some shitbag who didn't deserve her. I can pet her fine as I empty a tin of Nine Lives into her bowl and she meows at me, but she heads for the hills as soon as you try to pick her up, or even at the sight of a cat carrier. We're going to set up a humane trap as we already know someone who wants to take her in, but in the meantime I'm feeding her daily because she seems to trust me - apparently regardless of my picking her up, even attempting to net her with a bath towel at one point.

Anyway, today was sunny and I fed and petted Fluffy as usual, then retreated to a nearby bench to drink iced tea, smoke a fag, and leave her in peace. Today, once she'd finished eating, she made a beeline for me, walking towards me - fifty yards away - meowing with her tail in the air, only swerving off course once she was within a couple of feet. It seemed like a good sign. I think I prefer to cats to people right now, and I don't really care how that sounds.

As usual, as I do ever day, I poured out some juice - as the colloquialism has it - for all the critters we've loved and lost, although the juice was iced tea in this case. I pour out the juice and go through the roll call of names under my breath, like a prayer, and I don't really care how that sounds either because I miss every last one of them.

Charlie, Maisie, Tony, Gus, Fluff, Squeak, Holly, Jack, Enoch, Bean, Pip, SOF, Selma, Emerald, Tony, Jessie, Mr. Kirby, Gary, Gus II, Gus III, Charlotte, Simon, Barney, and today I add Ollie. About half of the names are those of cats who simply went missing - as cats have been known to do from time to time - but the others are buried in our back garden.

Once home, I look for a patch which doesn't already have a cat or a rabbit buried under the earth, and I dig a hole approximately the size of the cardboard box which came back from the vet. I pile up the heavy clay soil in a wheelbarrow, then spend ten minutes gathering a pile of largish stones from elsewhere around the garden. I've done this too many times, so it feels.

Bess comes out, and we take Ollie from the box. I'd already forgotten how soft his fur was - still is, in fact. I hold him and cry my eyes out. It's all been so sudden. He was fine last night. The vet suspected it was FIP or Feline Infectious Peritonitis, a coronavirus variant which tends to infect cats at a very young age and can be fatal, meaning Ollie had probably been living on borrowed time since before we got him.

I place him in the hole, scatter some cat treats for the afterlife, and empty the wheelbarrow. I cover the site with stones, treading them into the ground to discourage anything attempting to dig him up.

Polly has been hanging around the whole time, occasionally sniffing the cardboard box. I wonder if she knows her friend has gone the way of all flesh. He wasn't even a year old.

This is the eighth pet burial in our back garden, and it isn't getting any easier.

 

 

Wedding

Despite living in San Antonio, Texas, I encounter other English people with some frequency. They tend to divide into two types - those with which I have only the geography in common and whom I probably would have crossed the road to avoid back in the old country, and people I like. Sadly there seem to be more in the first category than in the second, which I suppose is simply the law of averages. Chris, who once shared office space with my wife, belongs in the second category and is getting married. I've been looking forward to the wedding because it means I'll get to meet Chris's family, who are not only from England but are from a bit of England to which I delivered mail back when I was a postman; and Chris's dad is apparently a Millwall supporter, which I find oddly exciting.

My wife and I drive downtown, to one of the big hotels. We leave the car in a parking garage opposite the hotel, and share an elevator with a young guy wearing a Stetson. Bess gives me a look but I'm thinking, wouldn't it be funny if he were here for the wedding?

He follows us into the hotel, and then out to the courtyard because yes, he's here for the wedding, having spent at least some time in the same office space as both Chris and my wife. Alex, Tristram and others from the same company are also present, which is nice because I vaguely know them by some definition. Alex was the first ever person to have bought an oil painting from me.

Chairs are arranged around the courtyard and a sort of mobile bar is being set up. A photographer wanders around taking light readings and guests drift in. We try to guess which side of the proposed family they represent. An older man in a suit arrives and I think, that's a south-east London haircut if ever I've seen one. His hair is silver, short on top and spiky like Joe Brown. It has to be Chris's dad.

Soon the chairs are all occupied, and we're watching Chris and Tessa get hitched. The vows include a line about honouring who you are rather than who I think you should be, or words to that effect, which Bess and I both consider a nice touch.

Chris and Tessa are pronounced man and wife, the bar opens, and I have a beer.

'You should go and talk to Chris's dad,' Bess says.

'Not yet,' I say. I have two more beers. It's been a while since I socialised and particularly with people I don't really know, and it's taken me a while to remember that I was never that sociable.

Eventually the time seems right, so I wander over.

'You must be Chris's dad,' I say.

'Stepdad,' he corrects me, but he seems pleasantly surprised to hear an English accent. His own is clearly south-east London.

'I think I used to deliver your mail,' I tell him. 'I was a postman in Catford back in the nineties.'

'My wife's from Catford!' he says, and I notice that he has introduced himself as Chris's stepdad.

'John and Jane,' he announces, 'although I don't expect you'll remember.' He now turns to his wife. 'He's from Catford!'

'I worked there,' I say. 'I used to live in Lewisham though. Chris told me you lived in—I'm trying to remember the road. Was it Springbank Road? Meadowbank? Summink like that?'

I'm thinking of Hither Green Lane, to which Ryecroft Road was conjoined. Ryecroft Road was the first place I lived in London, so Hither Green Lane stayed in my memory and was apparently where Chris grew up - except I can't remember the name right now.

'Crantock Road,' she tells me.

I manage to keep myself from saying holy shit in front of strangers, although I think it. I haven't thought of Crantock Road in probably two decades.

Inchmery, Sandhurst, Arngask, Crantock…

The sorting comes back to me from all those mornings stood at the frame slotting letters into alcoves, although the order is probably somewhat jumbled through disuse. 'Ernie Gough was probably your postman, I should think.'

Ernie was fucking great, so I remember him fairly well.

'Ernie,' Jane says, although I can't tell whether it's because she knows who I'm talking about or not, and I'm finding this a little disorientating.

'I hear you're a Millwall man,' I say.

'No. No,' says John. 'I used to go and see Charlton though.'

I recall Chris telling me about his dad singing hits from the Millwall terraces following a number of cold, refreshing drinks; and I realise that I didn't even realise his mother had remarried, and that I don't actually know anything about this man aside from what I'm learning right here and now. I wish Chris had told me some of this, then recall that most of it has, in any case, been information passed on through my wife; so it would probably be churlish to resent the inaccuracy of details he hadn't actually told me in the first place.

We talk for fifteen or twenty minutes, although it becomes confusing in part. I'm also aware that I possibly sound drunk due to my silently wrestling with narrative conflict, but regardless, it's great to have met these people, and to talk about the Bromley Road, and London, and how there was once a Robinson's Jam factory opposite the bus garage. It's strange that we're talking about this in San Antonio, Texas.

Inevitably they ask how I met Bess, and we talk about international travel and Covid restrictions.

Then we depart for different tables in the restaurant.

Speeches are delivered.

Food is eaten.

I regard the table to which they've exiled all the teenagers, allowing them to play with their phones and compare tattoos without interruption, and I marvel that I'm no longer among them; and that I barely even recognise their general kind. I'm not sure how that happened. Truthfully I don't know how any of it has happened.