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8/24/05 I Don't Live Today
Hey Well, what started 1221 days ago as the damn near indecipherable (format wise, at least) Bad Idea From Hell has reached another milestone, issue #150. That's a LOT of fucking bullshit spewed out over the past 1221 days. Here's to 150 more. Maybe. To put into perspective how long ago this thing started, I was still technically married at the time, my divorce not being final till issue #3, I'd only gotten the boot from my home of 16 years three months previously, the girls still lived with me, college girl Sarah was in 9th grade and teen dream Rachel was in 5th, I was still working (HA) a day job- and I was pissing and fucking moaning like a son of a bitch. La plus ca change, la plus ca meme chose (or so I might say were I some puffy assed Gallic faggot). I guess I should start off with an update on my Dad, though it genuinely pains me to even think about him, much less write about him. In essence, he's not really even my Dad anymore, but a sick, broken down old man who's going to have to be taken care of for the rest of his life. I think people should just come with expiration dates and when you hit it, poof, you're done, you fucking dissolve or something. Be a lot better. My Dad was in the hospital for about a week after his stroke (and boy does that seem like forever ago, Bitner time sense notwithstanding), went to rehab in Institute for an all too brief stay, didn't do well, is currently back in the hospital, where he had to have a g-tube inserted on Monday. He's gotten some motion and feeling back in his left leg, some, but much less in his left arm- he can basically twitch it- and pretty much no sensation in his left hand. His major physical problem is that he still can't swallow, sadly ironic in a man who loved his eatin' as much as my Dad did. He's lost 26 pounds since his stroke, and it was time- past time, as far as I'm concerned- to get a feeding tube in his stomach before he fucking starved to death. The major problem is with his fucking mind, such as it is. Apparently there was a lot more damage done there than we'd first thought, or else he's stroked again since his first one, which is the theory I subscribe to, cos she wasn't anything like this right after the stroke. In essence he's become a petulant, demanding, ungrateful five year old. He's always been a big goofy pain in the ass, but never this hellishly childish, selfish prick. (THAT WAS ALWAYS YOU).
"Just try it, bucko", he growls. Jesus, Joseph and Mary, give me fucking strength. I mean, I suppose I should treasure it, he's hit me in the head a thousand times- (SO THAT'S WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU). Nah, I was already like this. In fact, that's why he was hitting me in the head. Anyway, he's clocked me a thousand times over the course of my life, easy, and this may very well be the last time ever, but it just didn't sit very well with me, to the point where I had to go out and walk around the parking lot a couple times to regain what composure I'm capable of- to come back to his room where he's hollering "Bill! Bill! Ice, dammit! ICE!". I swallowed real hard, sat back down, and spooned him some ice (just about the only thing he can swallow). He's fucking killing me, straight up. I think this has all pretty much snapped my mom's last tenuous grip on reality as well, her ability to comprehend and follow even the simplest of directions now is about nil. However, her devotion to my Dad is truly touching, she's right there by his side, wiping his drool and listening to his half sane rants without a word of complaint- during the day, anyway, we don’t let her stay at night, she needs what rest she can get. It almost makes me envious, I wish I had someone who cared about me like that, especially right now, a sweetheart who would tuck me to her bosom and stroke my head and tell me everything's gonna be all right. Cos you know what, when you have a love like that, everything is. Gonna be all right, I mean. At least if you're not some now dead evil stroked out bastard who's son is seriously contemplating patricide, consequences be mother fucking DAMNED. Cos he's not my Dad anymore, truly, but some really cruel brain damaged stranger. Man, this sucks.
All this time spent in them the past three weeks just reinforces how much I truly, truly hate hospitals, with a passion deep and abiding (just like my feelings for you know who). Like Ron said, hospitals are the last place in the world you want to be when you're sick, and I couldn't agree more- although this is meant as no reflection on my many dear friends who are nurses. But if you were trying to design a place where the misery of being sick is compounded ten fold, you couldn’t do better than a modern hospital, what absolute noisy, chaotic, impersonal shitholes, truly. Which is why I never go to 'em. I've been in emergency rooms to get stitched up occasionally, the last time way back in '80 when I had 22 stitches put in my head, but the last time I was actually admitted to a hospital was WAY back in October, 1966. Even then it was the fucking psych ward, not the regular hospital per se. I've threatened to write about this episode before, "Bill Vs. Electroshock Therapy", but the truth is that I remember very little about it, sorry I can't recount any Nicholsonian exploits of getting the damn electrodes put to my fucking temples and then seeing the light, quite literally. All I can remember about the treatments is going down in the elevator, and this nasty grape flavored sedative they used to give me before hand, had almost this petroleum like taste and smell, and then waking up later back in my bed with a big ass (for a prepubescent kid) hard on. And this one bad breathed prick, I don't know if he was a doctor or what, who kept telling me that if this didn't work the next step was a lobotomy. Did it work? I guess so, I never had to undergo a lobotomy, but I was never quite sure, then and now, just exactly what they wanted from me and why they were literally frying my fucking brain to get it. Fuck, I wasn't bad then (or now, for that matter), I was just high spirited and hard headed. Dirty bastards (not my parents, the dicks who convinced them electrocuting me would make me behave better, and that it was all for my own good). Let me run into one of 'em now, I'll show 'em fucking crazy. And while we're talking hospitals, let's get some sex in. Sarah went in to have her little tonsils taken out late winter/early spring '93, I can't remember the exact date- yeah, I know, I'm amazed as well- but it was when we had that great huge snow that closed all the Interstates, and Loretta and I got snowed in over at Thomas Memorial with Sarah for three days- and nights. The first night Loretta and I slept in recliners, that sucks, so the second night I asked one of the nurses if we could sleep in the other bed in the room since it was empty, she said sure, they were being quite nice to us already, bringing us up meals from the cafeteria when they brought Sarah's, so Loretta and I slept in that hospital bed, close, but then we always slept close, come the third night I'm not so much sleepy as something else, so when we retire for the night, we get settled under the covers and right away my hands get busy and- L: You have got to be kidding me. So I ease in, and of course, as always, Miss You Have To Twist My Arm, once her arm's been figuratively twisted, starts getting all the hell into it, I had in mind just a nice, slow, hugged up fuck, but Loretta starts energetically humping and grinding against me, and making enough noise for the the two of us and then some- L: Jesus, Loretta, keep it down-
I think this issue is going to take a medical slant, small wonder. My Dad has a small pressure sore on the bottom of one foot, so I think this issue's trip down memory lane we'll discuss the pressure sore, and it's hellish end result, the full blown decubitus ulcer. When I first started working for CCIL I didn't have much experience with what's commonly called "bed sores", but I soon learned. One of my earliest cases was this stroked out lady lived in Mammoth. We're talking total brain destruction here, except the part that told her heart to beat and her lungs to breathe and her guts to digest and shit- "gorked" is the official term I think. She'd been that way for four years, and I'm thinking, this is going to be a goddamn nightmare. I'd been to Mammoth before working CPS, and I'm thinking hillbilly hell, with this fly covered living corpse shoved off into some darkened room. So we get to the house- and it's immaculate. There's not so much as a whiff of fecal or urine smell, we go into this lady's bedroom, which is bright and sun filled, curtains thrown open, her bed clothes are clean, her gown is clean, SHE'S clean, and her skin is totally clear, which just blows my mind to this day. This lady hasn't had a single incident of skin breakdown in the four years since she's had her stroke, she's getting 25 hours a week Medicaid waiver care, but basically she's being taken care of by her three daughters, and their kids. We're talking total care here, non responsive, g-tube feedings, diapers and suctioning and turning- her family turned her religiously every four hours, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Looking around, at this woman and her home, my admiration for these country folk was profound "You people are fucking saints" I told whatever daughter it was who was there at the time, and I meant it. The amount, and quality, of care that lady got was amazing. "Nah, we're just taking care of Ma like she took care of us." Well, she must've taken damn good care of them is all I can say. As for the other side of decubiti, Martha and I once went out to evaluate some guy for- something, maybe it was WV Select, up somewhere around Phillipi or Elkins or somewhere, it was out in the sticks, and this place was exactly what I'd feared the Mammoth home would be, old, dirty, dark and grim, stinking of piss and shit and rot. The guy we were seeing was a spinal cord injury, an old miner who'd had his back broken by a rock fall, and was paralyzed from the waist down. The curtains to his room were all drawn, it was like walking into some reeking animal's den. Martha is busy asking this guy her nursey questions and I'm staring blankly at the wall and thinking "that Kay Lyons sure had a great ass, I really think I fucked up not taking her up on her invitation", when a couple home care nurses come in to change his dressings. We stay in the room as they roll him over, and I get a good look at exactly what he's been thankfully hiding under the covers. He looks like he's been fucking savaged by a hell shark.
But I can take it, in fact I'm sort of morbidly fascinated, they pack his ass wound with about a bale of medication soaked gauze, roll him over and start to work on the wound on his right hip. I have a strong stomach, but when the nurse reached into his hip past her fucking wrist, and pulled out the bloody, pus soaked gauze from the ulcer there, the SMELL, dear God, rotting human flesh is about as vile a stench as you will ever encounter . . well, that was it for me, "I'll wait outside". I didn't vomit, but it was a damn close thing. One more, Martha and I again, we were up in Harrison County to see this guy, he was in another one of those dark, closed off houses where the despair just hits you in the fucking face when you walk through the door- I know I'm too damn sensitive, so sue me. He was a younger guy, living alone, again paralyzed from the waist down, wheelchair bound, he'd experienced that weird decube thing called tunneling. He developed a wound on his right thigh, a month or so later one showed up on his left, but what had happened is that the decube had done what's called tunneling, he had a channel of dead flesh connecting the two open wounds, that went from his left thigh, up to his hip, across his lower back, down the other hip and then opened up again on his right thigh. A week or so before we got there he'd been hospitalized, where they'd had to cut him open along the entire length of the tunnel, clean it out, and then sew it shut, over 600 stitches. I walked out of there thinking, what a fucking world, man. What a fucking world. I took Al to doctor and dentist both two weeks ago, for check ups, Al has been complaining off and on lately of his left knee hurting, I told his doctor, who checked it, said "Yeah, it's arthritis, seems pretty bad, I can hear it crunching around in there", I asked him if he'd check my left knee as well (my right knee is a total lost cause) real quick, and since Jarrod is a nice guy, he says sure, why not, instead of "Get your own fucking appointment", so I hop on the stool and he checks it out, goes, "Holy shit, your knee's twice as bad as this old mans'". No shit, Doc, but while we're still there a light goes on, I tell Jarrod how Al's been bitching a lot lately about how much his knee hurts (true) and that I've been treating it with over the counter Motrin, which doesn't seem to be helping, (again true), you think maybe we could get something a little stronger?
So, what else had Bill been up to? Had a cook out here what seems like a hundred years ago, but was actually just a few weekends ago. It went very well (although I popped the fuck out if what I'd hoped was my healing right knee bending down to put some ice in my freezer), even if as host I'm the one saying it, corny as it sounds the good vibes were very, very strong, I know it was quite a good thing for me, we had a campfire and some singing of folk songs, just a fine, fine damn time, truly. And a very special shout out to Doug for being the grilling machine that he is, the food was absolutely excellent- or so I'm told, I didn't get any, being well into the drinking to excess thing, and there were no leftovers. But everything I heard about the grub was overwhelmingly positive, and it sure smelled good. This has been sort of a bleak NL so far, so I'll pass along a couple jokes that were popular at the cook out. Q: Why should you drink apple juice? Q: What's brown and sticky? Ha. I set back a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon for someone who couldn't make it due to a prior commitment, it's still here and waiting for you, dear, the only catch is that you have to come out here and get it. What's Bill been reading? Finished those bios I got a while back at Flatwoods, Frank Herbert's, very clumsily written by his son, and hardly a tribute, Herbert comes across as a selfish, immature idiot, Elvis Costellos'- trivia note, he billed himself as Napoleon Dynamite on one of his mid 80's albums, and the Jefferson Airplane one, I don’t know why I keep bothering with books about them, cos while I like some of the music, some of it quite a bit, I just can't stand them as people, especially those self righteous, privileged hippie jack offs Slick and Kantner. They're both just so sickeningly SMUG.
As for the movie, Danny and I had a long talk this weekend and have jointly decided to postpone filming until this spring. To say I'm incredibly discouraged would be faint understatement, but I understand, and go along with the decision. With what's going on with my parents right now I just can't do an 18 day straight shoot, 12- 14 hours minimum a day- the DF is in just about every scene, hey, I WROTE the fucking thing, what else would you expect?- and also my head is not in the best place to really give a good performance. Danny's trying to keep my spirits up, says don't worry, Spring is cool and will be here before you know it, we'll use the extra time to get some more bucks lined up, and that's fine, but I'm still bummed, terribly. Although Danny kept telling me the other night that the script is "wonderful". Think I'm just patting my own back, ask him. We went last out Friday, Danny, Robin and I, I had a night off from babysitting my Dad, scouting locations for the movie's bar scenes, went to all these little redneck bars on the West Side, it was fun. Man, I had a lot more I was going to get into this issue, but I'm flagging, so I'll do some wrestling news and close. The Grapes worked a triple show in Newville, PA- about an hour north of Martinsburg, about 6 hours from here- weekend before last, Danny and I accompanied Robin to the ring for her match in the big Women's Tournament they were having, her match ended in a no contest as she was working Kacee Carlisle, valet to the Goodfellas, the House of Pain tag champs, they came to the ring with Kacee and had to start running their mouths to the Grapes, we can't be having that, the Grapes and Goodfellas ended up brawling and the match had to be called. Sorry, ladies. Then we worked a Triple Threat tag match in the HOP show, I love three ways in bed, but in the ring they're a pain in the ass, this one went better that most, the DF took some big bumps- among others a Frog Splash from 300 pound plus Tytan, it hurt, there's no way to fake a big giant guy jumping off the ropes onto your chest- but when all was said and done DFZ hit Izzy Stoned with a Falcon Buster- sort of a reverse sidewalk slam/facebuster type thing I stole off a Japanese tape- and pinned his ass to get the win for GOW. (GOOD FOR FUCKING ME). Absolutely. It was so damn hot in that place- 1 pm start time, no air conditioning, 97 degrees outside with the sun pounding directly down on the building, Prodigy told me he saw a thermometer out by the ring read 103 degrees, and I don't think he was kidding. It was HOT, boys and girls. Then Johnny Valiant came out and did this reminiscence type thing, "An Evening With Johnny Valiant", pretty cool, he was there in the WWWF days of Bruno and Superstar Billy Graham and shit, he hit it off real well with me and Danny in the back, Danny wants to cast him as the bartender in the DF movie, fine with me, if we ever MAKE THE FUCKING THING.
Africa Mike and Ritchie- who'll be here for another semester before going back to Dar, great, Ritchie's a very neat guy- came along to film all the stuff for DVD release, that should be done in a couple weeks, and that reminds me, Mike's wife Sig, a very lovely person, is wanting to set me up with a friend of hers. Sig seems quite taken with me at the moment, just in the thinking I'm a good guy sense, it's amazing how often that happens to me, though, I meet women all the time who are all about me at first, I hear things like fascinating and intriguing and unique, then a few months or weeks (or sometimes just days) down the line it's "what the fuck was I thinking?!" Beats the hell out of me, ladies, what the fuck WERE you thinking?. As for Sig's friend, the only description I could get of her was "she's very nice" (shades of Andy and Barney trying to set up Gomer with Thelma Lou's cousin) nice 99 times out of 100 in my experience being a euphemism for "big as a fucking barn". I was kind of non committal, and it hasn't come up again, so for the time being at least I think I'm going to pass. Going back to Martinsburg this weekend for Hardcore Heat 2, main event is a Tai-Pei taped fist match, I really wanted to get in on that, but there's no way to do it with Danny, cos he said "Ain't no fucking way". What's a TP TF match? You wrap your hands really tight, get 'em all taped up, then you coat then with Super glue, and then dip your fists in broken glass, and then you hammer the fuck out of the other guy with them (and get hammered in return). I'm being serious, a match like that is exactly what I need right now. I think getting punched in the head with a glass coated fist would certainly distract you from pretty much anything. Whatever we end up doing Saturday is going to be some kind of hardcore shit, Joe, I need to get some Exacto knife blades from you sometime before Friday, one for me and one for Danny, I'm going to make him a real man's gig. I'm actually looking forward to a little self mutilation, cos it’s a good hurt, a hurt I can control, and I like it, I like the pain, I like the blood, I like the whole fucking deal. Finally, a cautionary tale. This is an imaginary story, like the ones back in the day where Superman would marry Lois Lane and they'd have a two headed baby or something, so don't get all worked up, okay? Wrestling, on all levels, is just fucking infested with drugs, performance enhancing and recreational, and some which do a good job at being both. Lots of guys have died way too young from it.
When Joe and I used to practice together, I used this Stage amp, 12 inch speaker, turn it up to 6-7 it was plenty loud, 10 was really loud. That Stage amp is my shoulder, and its pain level. Then we went to practice with Scotty, he played so fucking loud, I had that Stage turned up to 10, and couldn't hear it. Could not hear it. It was still just as loud, but Scott's drums were so much louder, My knees are Scott's drums. In addition, with one thing and another I've also been really tired this summer, not just tired, but truly dead dog exhausted, I'm getting ready for a match down south about a month or so ago- maybe a little more- and I can barely hold my fucking head up I'm so tired, I'm already seeing all those little white orbiting spots so quaintly called stars, and the match hasn't even started yet, it was a single so I didn't have Danny to throw most of the match off on, I need some first aid, and FAST, so I break one of my cardinal rules, and go running for the shelter of mother's little helper. There's a worker on the show who I know frequently needs help with that last little push over the cliff (his gear bag goes to 11) so I approach him discretely and ask, "Hey, Wayne, I mean, Anonymous Wrestler, you got any speed I can have?" AW: I've got some White Cro- Dexedrine capsules are cheap and plentiful in most locker rooms, so I figure he does. I figure right. AW: Yeah. You want one?
I work a good match, got energy to spare, artificial or not, and I think, fuck, sped up is the ONLY way to wrestle, at least when you're 48 years old and coming apart at the hinges. And you know, once a person breaks that barrier and decides to use drugs to enhance their in ring performance, it becomes a simple thing to decide to use them to feel better afterward as well, cos God knows they're easy to come by, and truly, what the FUCK, you know, some Lortabs, say, for where the knees are doing that molten/jagged glass thing- the shoulder is on 10, and can barely be heard- cos hell, 'tabs are easy to come by (not to mention you can trade them for sex with prostitutes) and by taking them you can save your hoard of Oxycontins, which are not only expensive as hell, but way, WAY too good to waste on just physical pain, save them for when your heart and soul are also in need of pain relief above and beyond, and since we’re going all the way here, and no amount of pain meds plus beer completely gets rid of the red hot knees, how about some Somas to help you sleep, especially since you got a whole bottle of them free from a friend who didn't like them, and when you hit on just the right combination of all of these, alcohol and pills like you luckily- or unluckily, depending on how you see things-hit there a while back, you feel better than you have in a long, long, LONG time? Indeed, why not? So . . what's the point of this imaginary tale, you ask, particularly since I didn't even marry Lois Lane (I want the Terri Hatcher version, and I got your two headed baby right HERE)? Just that if someone would happen to find a real death by misadventure from all these imaginary pills, cos juggling all this shit can be a delicate business and I'm more the "Let's just roll the car over the hill and see what happens" kind of guy, I want it on record it was a fucking ACCIDENT, not a deliberate checking out, okay? I was going to try and pick up the TSOA saga tonight- Bill had just been righteously blue balled by the exotic and alluring but ultimately unattainable Natalia, as we all recall- but it's just too late, and I'm too tired. Next time, promise. "I don't trust happiness. Never have . . . never will". Robert Duval, Tender Mercies I wish that I had Jessie's girl. Later Bill
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Will
I live tomorrow? 
Exactly.
I've almost swallowed my tongue- literally- a hundred times since his
stroke, to keep from yelling back at him, he's SO fucking abusive, I keep
telling myself, "he's your Dad and he's sick and he needs you, so no
matter what he says or what he does, you just fucking take it and do for
him what he needs, cos he'd do the same for you," over and OVER I
fucking say this, like a mantra, and I've done amazingly well, but
yesterday morning about 4 am- one of us has had to stay with him every
night he's spent in the hospital since this shit started, don't even
fucking ask- you're not allowed to stay overnight with him in rehab, and
he can't get back in there soon enough for any of us, although when he was
in rehab earlier he called my mom all night, every night, demanding she
come over there -it's been your boy Bill here that's stayed 9 out of the
14 nights so far, and if he's slept even one hour per night then I'm a
sane and patient man - and he was cursing me like a mother fucker (we're
back to yesterday, 4 am) cos I wouldn't go get his favorite nurse for him,
who works days, as I only tried to explain to him about a MILLION fucking
times, good as I've been, and my mom's complimented me numerous times the
past few weeks cos she knows I simply don't have the temperament to take
all the shit my Dad's been dumping, I finally snapped a bit and told him,
"What you fucking need you old bastard is some suffocation therapy,
that'd straighten you out" and then I unwisely turned my head and
WHAM, his great big rocky right fist- ain't no problems with that side-
slams into the side of my head.
As
for my Mom's surgery, I took her for all her pre-surgery test stuff last
week, (in between being called every name in the goddamn book- and it's a
thick book- by my Dad, for not holding the urinal correctly at 2:46 am,
among a thousand other things), it's on for the 30th. Here's hoping.
Not
being a fool, I did, and while no nurses came in the room while we were
actively engaged, next morning when the CNA brought in our breakfast and
giggled "Sleep well?", it was pretty clear we were overheard.
Not that I care.
His
entire left buttock- and this was a big old fella, we're talking a sizable
chunk of meat- is GONE, just this gaping red wound, so huge and raw I'm
thinking, "How the hell can he LIVE with that?!", the edges of
the wound are all scalloped, it looks just like tooth marks, and where the
hell part comes in is that the edges of the wound are all black, the
necrotic tissue there looking like it's burned, it looks exactly like some
huge shark, jaws white hot, came along and bit his ass off. Just a fucking
hideous sight, I'm telling you.
Jarrod
looks slightly suspicious, but Al for once, God love him, does what I want
him to and continues to bitch about his knee, so we get a prescription for
something stronger (thank you, Jesus) and no, I haven't been stealing pain
pills from some crazy old man, what kind of guy do you think I am? But,
you know, if he wants to give me some . .
If
I ever fucking meet them (and I may, I think Grace Slick has gotten in
touch with Danny about the Death Falcon movie, sure you can be in it
Gracie, you can be the zombie who takes it up the ass from the DF, bet
you'll hit some notes you haven't hit in a while there, slick), I'm gonna
spit in both their faces, swear. As well as blowing a load up Gracie's
bum.
There
were supposed to be some guys from wrestling mags at this event, turns out
they were just from these internet things, but the DF got interviewed by a
couple of them, that was cool, any press is good press, one of these guys
said he's already seen the seeding for the Lord Of The Rings next month,
DFZ is coming in at 14 out of 40, which is quite high, and again, very
cool, but I didn't see anything in print, just this guys word.
The
DF has been working his ass off this summer, this match on the 27th will
be his 20th since the first of May (by comparison, he worked 23 matches
all of last year), the physical toll is really adding up (not to mention
how tore down I'm getting trying to put ice in my freezer), and it just
keeps getting worse, here’s an analogy Joe at least will understand.
I
go in the bathroom and break open the capsules and snort them, again
discretely, or as discretely as one can when their nasal passages are on
fucking fire and they’re screaming at the top of their lungs, JESUS,
that shit burns, but snorting it puts it in your blood stream immediately,
and I can feel it, and it feels GOOD . . .