Santa drinks cognac

In just a couple of days, I'll board a plane with its nose pointed towards the great island of Jamaica. I'm traveling alone, and packing only the essentials...sandals, sunscreen, pen & paper, and last, but surely not least, Charles Bukowski. He'll be coming with me. This way I won't be truly traveling alone. 

I am arriving without any plans. No reservations. No cards to play. No deadlines to meet. For this brief moment in time, I can just be a man, exisiting under the pleasant conditions of a Carribean shoreline, standing in the ancient wake of a pioneering spirit, feeling like a man without a country. People tell me it's dangerous to travel alone, and travel alone to Jamaica. "They have one of the highest murder rates for tourists," one of my friends tell me. I'm not used to traveling to countries my fellow Americans travel to. "Jamaica may be dangerous, but so is L.A." I tell him. I've traveled the globe from Africa to South East Asia, and Jamaica already feels more accommodating and hospitable then any of these other countries. 

I'll only be there for 6 days before departing to land of giants...New York City. The Big Apple. It'll be my first time to check out the city. This is where I will meet up with some friends to ring in the New Year. That's if I survive Jamaica! 

My Big Day

I survived. That's 2 days without coffee, 2 days without solid food, and 2 weeks without beer. Fitting a surgery in the middle of all that seems ancillary to everything else. 

Friday, of course, was the big day. One of many. The nurses, nurse practitioners, the nurses aides, the physician assistants all huddled around and wired me into their noisy, sophisticated machines. I was the new face in the snakepit, waiting mercilessly, on the brink of turmoil, for them to haul away 4 bloodied wisdom teeth.

"Just relax, and enjoy the show," one of them said to me. Her timing was early. The oral surgeon had just walked in with his silver briefcase full of his crazy cocktails. He looked earnest and ready to play. He was like the quarterback issuing careful strategy to his team. He saw each surgery as the Big Game, the stakes were pulling my teeth, and every play to get him there was crucial.  

"Are you giving all those to me?" I asked, staring down into his briefcase. 

"Some, yes. Once we get an IV started. How are your veins?" 

"Great. The best."

On any normal day, I have nice, fatty veins. But this was no normal day. I was cold and dehydrated from not eating or drinking anything for 12 hours. I squeezed the red ball he gave me good and tight as he tapped on my vein. 

He stabbed me in fold on my right arm and twisted it around. I hear the sound of my heart rate rising on one of the machines. I peek outside and see the clouds drifting by under a cool, winter sun. Life was passing by without me. The surgeon sighs and tells me he blew that vein. He pokes at a neighboring vein, but within minutes he would bring that count to 2. My body was resisting. 

As he was threading the needle into my hand, I lost interest and tuned into the music over the speaker. The singer happily sang, "Christmas is the best time of the year." She sang it with such an infallible truth and confidence, I felt like jabbing the speaker a few times with my IV needle. When the surgeon began whistling along with the music, I half expected him to stand-up and sing along in his best karaoke. But when I heard him break into that guttural sigh, I knew he had blasted through another vein - and that I had descended into a deep and dark corner, one degree away from Hell. 

By the time he had secured an IV in my left arm, I had forgotten there was a whole surgery still to take place. Somehow this had all seemed like a dress rehearsal. 

"What's your favorite cocktail?" the surgeon asked me 

"The white russian," I answer quickly. "I'll take two, please."

"Alright, imagine this as two white russians." 

He squeezes the anaesethia into my IV and quicker than I could count, "One hematoma, two hematoma, three hematoma," I was out cold. The last thing I remember is staring at my shoes, feeling my world crumble like sand, wondering if this is what it's like to die. 

I woke up two hours later, delirious. I had somehow moved from the operating chair into a wheelchair. How did I get here? Where is everybody? What is the meaning of all this? I need to do something, but what, I can't remember.

"Okay, here we go," I hear a woman's voice say. She pushes my chair through a door where I see my roommate Jon smiling big. His smile seemed pre-eminent, like it was the national anthem sung to a stadium of calm and frenzied fans. 

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I'm here to take you home, bud." 

"Home? What about my surgery?" 

"Your surgery's done," the woman told me. "Now it's time for you to go home, sleep and recover." 

Invariably she meant from the surgery. But maybe she was right. Sleep and recover. 

Just sleep. And by the time I wake up, I'll be en route to Jamaica. Fully healed. Ready for the new year. 

Recessions, Depressions, and Extractions

I'm having my wisdom teeth taken out tomorrow. That's enough to make some people cringe with phantom tooth pains. The oral surgeon recommended the 4-banger package deal. I asked him if I get a discount for buying in bulk and he laughed. But I was serious. 

That's when I decided to brandish the big guns and tell him it's a recession. I figured he would discount my teeth like microwave popcorn, and slap a buy one get one free sticker on them. But I knew that was too good to be true. He would probably settle for the Firestone tire deal...buy 3 get the 4th free. That's a bailout fit for a dentist. But the instant I sealed my lips with "recession," he laughed again, harder this time.

I guess the recession excuse isn't as palatable as you might expect. 

I had visited happy hour at El Torito a couple weeks back and asked the hostess if they could match the beer prices at Rock Bottom across the street. "I don't know if you heard, but we're in a recession," I told her. "This could work out well for the both of us." She laughed, but admitted there was nothing she could do about it. That's when I took my dinner mint and walked across the street.  

The buyers market in real estate, the red tag events at the mall, and the return of 1980s gas prices don't appear to affect happy hour menus and molar extraction surgeries. I know. It was a surprise to me too! But I'm sure the list doesn't stop there. The excuse has to work somewhere. Someone will accept it. And I have to find out where. 

Here Boy! C'mon!

I just read that Pluto will soon be completing a 246 year journey around the sun. That's longer than most living things can survive here on Earth - in one lifetime. Sometime next year it will reach the pinnacle of its ecliptic and start again. The completion of this orbit, the last "planet" - or whatever it is now, a meteor? - symbolizes a rebirth and renewal in the world. The last time pluto would have been in this position was when North America was in the grip of the American Revolution. Those were the days when the threads of change were fraying into all layers of possibility. When men fought for principle before duty. When their was no country, only one very fragile dream. There must have been a sense of movement and of things happening. Energy so swept you felt like you could conquer the world. I don't know how much you can bend those lines with today because I see how bad things are in the world right now. But I think next year is going to be a good year for a lot of people. 

You can just kinda feel it.

your guess is as good as mine

The geriatrics came hobbling in and coagulated in the seats closest to the music. It was another harmless day at the symphony. I was on the main floor, seated on the aisle. Thankfully. I had arrived late. By the time I took my seat, everyone was tucked into their places. The band whittled through their warm-up notes as I looked around. I was the only person wearing a hat. In a sea of black suits and gray heads, I was the tall guy with the yellow and orange army cap. 

At first, an incredible wave of panic struck. It was feeling of having worn a white suit to your wife's mother's funeral. Of having blundered a major fashion fopaw. That's why when I first saw the man four rows up wearing a bicycle helmet, it took me double the time to realize I wasn't crazy. It was a deliberate part of his wardrobe. Which I thought his gray helmet was indeed a nice compliment to his cheap black suit and 1920s Mafioso shoes. But in a crowd of hatless and hairless heads, I'll settle for a bicycle helmet any day. 

Christmas Cheer

This year I'm stumbling through the "holidaze" like grandpa nipping the egg nog from his coat pocket. It's not by choice. It's really all about circumstance. I'm having my wisdom teeth removed next week. I'm starting a new job in January. Recovering from shingles - ow - all while scrubbing the insolent graffiti that has built up and covered my life this year. Finding that special refuge during these doomed and desperate days is something that's hard to come by. Maybe that's why I've decided to start a blog. Maybe that's why I just purchased a ticket to Jamaica for Christmas. Maybe...ah, who knows. It's all just speculation.

I've noticed a strange phenomenon that happens every winter season. Women of all ages slip into their warm and fluffy Uggs (I think is what they're called). It's not especially strange except for the fact these boots tread on San Diego soil where the weather hovers just above 70 degrees this time of year. Whenever the holidays close in on me, I put these dainty boots in my sights. I love them, admittedly because the feet inside probably feel as hot and stuffy as I do walking around the malls. You can't argue with style. But comfort has it's place too. And wearing snow boots on a balmy, cloudless day seems, well, uncomfortable. But don't let me tell you that, I think the boots speak for themselves. Let me think...what were they called again? Oh, that's right, "Uggs."