Balls

"Is that like a groin pull?" I asked the doctor.

 "Sort of," he replied, "but it's going to require surgery." He then took three big-ass tubes of blood from my arm and sent me out to set a date with the receptionist.

The whole night before surgery I spent smoking cigarettes, not drinking any fluids and frantically scrawling coded messages and diagrams on little slips of yellow paper. Fuck. I had to be there at 6 a.m. for what was sure to be some hellish performance of meatball surgery. My hernia repair.

Roosevelt Hospital on 10th Ave. is where my brother Steve was born. It's between 58th and 59th Sts. and has nasty couches in the waiting room. My wife and I got there 10 minutes early and went inside. This guy who looked like Paulie from GoodFellas told us we would have to wait and to go have a seat.

As we approached the love seat by the bay window, my wife grabbed my arm. When the rest of the world went vinyl, Roosevelt must have opted for fabric to sop the shit up like a biscuit, because the green upholstery was splattered with stains that looked like bloody piss and remnants of raw meat. Ebolaaidswestnilecrabs.

"Let's go stand outside, it's nice and cool," I suggested.

"It's fucking freezing," she replied. We went out the revolving doors and watched doctors smoke while crackheads asked us for change.

All of the patients are led through a door and marched into a well-lit room with like 30 dentist chairs all lined up in a row. The room is white and sterile and has that 7 a.m., just opened, still having coffee feel to it; kind of like the rush hasn't come yet so we're taking it kind of easy for now, boss. A nurse who looks like she listens to a lot of Tori Amos runs through a stack of procedural questions and she's firing them off 'cause she's asked 'em so many times before and wouldn't be surprised if you said that your blood pressure was high because of the bacon fat lattes and the speedball you shot five minutes ago in the john. I find her demeanor quite calming and know that she's seen grown men cry.

After the questioning, she gives me a stack of sealed plastic bags and tells me to get dressed. The dressing gown is one of those ass-out-the-back smocks with a complimentary thigh-length robe that ties in the front. It's sky blue. The wardrobe comes with terrycloth slippers that have little rubber traction things on the bottom. I keep wondering when they're going to start sticking needles in my skin. It's the worst part of anything like this.

The anesthesiologist introduces herself to me, and as we shake hands I hear the doctor of the girl in the next chair tell the parents that the breast enhancement procedure should go smashingly. The stately woman who will be supplying my sleep has got that Eastern-European-but-lived-in-America-a-long-time thing. Something about her accent makes me think that she's run drugs for some obscure czar or some stealthy, covert nuclear espionage for Afghani guerrillas. She's dead cool. We run through the same list of health-related questions that my first nurse had asked me. By now I just rattle off five no's in a row, one yes; half a pack and two more no's as my reply.

I walk to the O.R. ward with a Latina nurse who gives me a shower cap. "Joo got to wear dis here." We arrive at a gurney and I'm told to lie back and make myself comfortable. There's no denying that my new lid is the final accessory to the Doomsday ensemble. As people walk by, I try to glean cap style tips from the doctors and nurses. There's the Bozo the Clown, tucked behind the ears, but puff it all out, countered by the more streamlined Ms. Trapper John, tucked behind the ears and pulled into a fashionable bun at the back of the head. I opt for the more hoodie version of the Bozo, with the edges dropped over the ears and the front pulled down to my eyebrows for full-on street credibility, droppin' mad science in a Brooklyn styleee.

Just as I've made my final adjustments, this blonde girl walks up and says, "Time to start your IV." Doctors and junkies alike have praised me for having some of the most generous veins in my arms. My needle-phobia from youth has been somewhat squelched in moments like this by the fact that you just can't miss the target and it's always over very quickly.

She misses by a lot and I've got a tube sticking out of my forearm and she's digging around, asking me if it hurts and I'm gritting my teeth and saying no and then I'm saying yes and then I'm suggesting that she pull it out and start again, and then she's saying "Got it," and the tube is sliding in and I'm feeling faint and she's got a beamer and gets all apologetic and I'm like "It's cool," and we'll all just chill for a minute damn it. Phoah!

We relax and talk for a bit. She's from some now-defunct zone in the former Soviet blahblahblah and she's got that spy accent as well. I wonder what kind of Chernobyl/Red October shit she's pulled. She's been in the States for about eight years and is almost an anesthesiologist herself. It dawns on me that I got stuck by a student, but it's all right. Now we're just waiting for the doctor to show up and I sign a form without reading it. My arm is getting cold.

Getting health insurance was an exercise in fighting the sinister forces-that-be. I work in a French restaurant in Soho, owned by the Irish Mafia and run by two petulant queens. They offer a health insurance plan provided that you've been there for over a year. It sounds nice, and since the turnover rate is so high in the restaurant biz, they rarely ever have to fork it over. After my year came and went I asked them when I'd get my card.

They replied, "When you send your application in, sweetie."

"Can I get an application?"

"Sure, darling."

A month later I reminded them. "Guys, I need insurance. I think I have a hernia."

"Oh, heavens. Does it hurt when you cough?"

"Well, not really, but?"

"You'll be fine then darling."

It was about six weeks later, after proper coaching from my insistent wife, that I stormed the office, refusing to leave until we had faxed the application to HIP. I got a packet in the mail a week later, and a reputation around the place for being a strong-arm brute. The queens were restless for a while after, berating me in front of their big-gay circle of friends a couple of times, who laughed and ordered another round of cosmos and rasmos and kamikazes. I felt no embarrassment, chalking it up to fag hags wanting desperately to commiserate and identify with the strange colorful bird, to stroke its plumage and be the first to get the cool gay points and free mixed drinks.

Now I had to keep my mouth shut and hold onto the job for long enough to complete the medical process. I soon became an exemplary employee, showing up on time and curtailing my habit of inviting the occasional asshole customer never to come back.

My hard work was now about to pay off as the doctor approached with a clipboard. He shook my hand, relaxing me with his calm, steady grip that silently said I could move your heart to your elbow and put your appendix in your ear and you'd be walking in a week. All pro.

The room I was wheeled into looked like a place where some awful technical shit went down. The machines and monitors and instruments started to make me second-guess this medical approach thing. They asked me to take the robe off and for some reason my coordination went to shit and all of my movements were jerky and misplaced and I got the blanket tangled with the IV tube and the smock tangled in something else and I'm fuckin' panicking and the Russian almost-anesthesiologist is trying to help me and the room is cluttered with implements of cutting and alien experiments and all the attention is on me and... somehow I get the robe off.

"Sorry guys, I'm getting a bit nervous."

As if on cue, the Russian injects something dull yellow into my IV tube. "This should help with that?to calm you down."

They continue to work and I look at them all. Nice bunch of cats, but the Oakley eyeshields are a bit much. The Russian asks if the drugs worked and I lie and say no and she gives me more. That's much better.

Everyone seems ready and I'm pretty stoned. They flip my blanket away and the jig is up. My dick is sitting there looking pathetic and smaller than usual like it always does in the capable hands of medical professionals. The Russian comes forward with another syringe of some evil looking liquid. I want to tell them to be careful but I don't get a chance.

They wheel me back to the dentist chair, where I nod off. My beautiful wife is there and she holds my hand, smiling at me and stroking my head while I drool and snore.

A little while later, they pull out my IV and tell me I can go. I almost puke but am able to walk like I've been shot. My girl blazes the trail out to 10th Ave. and steals a cab from some chick who has been waiting there for a while. When we get home she feeds me soup and painkillers and I succeed in puking. She holds a bucket under my chin. It hurts a lot, so I'm crying and puking and she's unfazed. My girl rocks. I'm a little embarrassed, but at least I don't brown my pants.

I'm wary of movement. Just sitting up sends shockwaves through my abdomen like a bunch of rusty butter knifes set on scald. My balls are the size of small oranges and the color of night. Yep, I've got big black balls that I ice down five times a day. I put a call in to the doctor to see if this is a normal side effect. He assures me that it is. I take an extra painkiller and listen to the neighbors' stereo.