Me Talk Pretty One Day (25 page)

Following a brief and unsatisfying flirtation with lemon-tainted water, I finally settled on tea, which is something I’d never
placed beside coffee in terms of things that will keep you awake. I’ve never been one of those people who talk about a “sugar
rush” or claim to feel the immediate effect of a vitamin tablet. I’m not terribly in touch with my body but have noticed that,
taken in great quantities, tea is actually pretty serious. Drink twelve cups at about eleven
P.M.
, and you’ll really notice the difference between going to bed and going to sleep. Even if you’re lucky enough to lose consciousness,
you’ll find you still need to get up every half hour just to empty your bladder.

So here lies the new me. It’s 5:48 in the morning, I’m thinking of making an outfit for my clock radio, and I’m so full of
caffeine that my scalp itches. To read a book or attempt a crossword puzzle would be an admission of defeat, and I know that
if I let my mind wander, it would most likely head off in the direction of the liquor cabinet. Rather than practicing my irregular
verbs or trying to make sense of my day, I pass the time by replaying one of my current, ongoing fantasies. These are the
epic daydreams I would normally call forth while walking around town or waiting in line at the grocery store. They’re like
movies I edit and embroider and watch over and over again, regularly recasting the villains and updating the minor details.
My current inventory is more than enough to keep me busy, and includes the following titles:

Alone in my basement laboratory, I invent a serum that causes trees to grow at ten times their normal rate, meaning that a
person can plant a sapling and enjoy its fruit or shade one year later. It really is a perfect idea. Nobody likes waiting
for a tree to grow — that’s why more people don’t plant them; it seems hopeless. By the time they’ve matured, you’ve either
died or moved to a retirement home.

My trees grow at an advanced rate for anywhere from two to five years before tapering off to normal, and they are a wild success.
Instant parks are created. Cities and subdevelopments are transformed seemingly overnight, and the hurricane states erect
statues in my honor. Frustrated parents attempt to use my serum on their children, but it doesn’t work on people. “Sorry,”
I say, “but there’s no cure for adolescence.” The lumberjacks and environmentalists love me equally, but a problem arises
when a group of lesser scientists spread the rumor that the leaves of my trees cause cancer in laboratory animals. I then
discover a cure for cancer just so I can say, “What was that you were carrying on about?”

The Mr. Science look changes from one night to the next. Sometimes I’m tall and fair-skinned. Sometimes I’m dark and stocky.
The only constant is my hair, which is always thick and straight, cut in such a way that if surfacing from a dive, my bangs
would fall to my lower lip. I keep it combed back, but every so often a lock will break free and hang like a whiplash down
the side of my face. Mine is a look of intense concentration, the face of a man who’s forever trying to recall an old locker
combination. When receiving my Nobel Prize, I’m so lost in thought that the peacenik seated beside me has to elbow me in the
ribs, saying, “Hey, buddy, I think they’re calling your name.”

I’ll sometimes have dinner with a group of happily cured cancer patients, but for the most part I tend to keep to myself,
ignoring the great mound of social invitations heaped upon my desk. Without making any great fuss about it, I cure AIDS and
emphysema, meaning that people can once again enjoy a cigarette after a rigorous bout of anal sex. There will be a lot of
talk about “turning back the clock,” most of it done by people whose clocks will not be affected one way or another. Psychologists
will appear on TV, suggesting that our former AIDS and cancer patients are desperately in need of counseling. “We have to
teach these people that it’s okay to live again,” they’ll say. Their self-serving message will be met with great peals of
laughter, as will the flood of books with titles such as
Getting Over Getting Better
and
Remission Impossible: The Conflict of Identity in a Post-Cancer Society
. After decades of falling for such nonsense, the American people will decide they’ve had enough pointless anxiety. Antidepressants
will go out of style, and filthy jokes will enjoy a much-deserved comeback.

I cure paralysis because I’m tired of watching skateboarders race down the wheelchair ramps, and I cure muscular dystrophy
just to get rid of the Jerry Lewis telethon. I eradicate mental retardation so no one will ever again have an excuse to make
a movie based upon an old television series, and I cure diabetes, herpes, and Parkinson’s disease as personal favors to some
of my favorite celebrities. I invent a pill that will allow you to drink seawater, and another that will erase the effects
of either twelve cups of tea or seven beers and two scotches.

All my discoveries make headlines, but the most controversial is a soap that rejuvenates aging skin. You take a bath or shower,
lather yourself with my product, let it sit for three minutes, and once it’s rinsed off, you look as though you’re twenty-five
years old. The effects last for three days, and the process can be repeated indefinitely. The soap is insanely expensive,
and everybody over the age of forty simply has to have it. Suddenly, nursing-home residents resemble oddly dressed graduate
students, and beautiful women in adult diapers are driving very slowly and blocking the grocery store aisles with their carts.
I like imagining the confusion my product will generate: the startled look of the authentic young single as his date deposits
her teeth in a bedside jar, the baby-faced eighty-year-old forgetting he’d agreed to play Father Time at the New Year’s party.
Former beauty queens will attempt to reclaim their titles, and no one will suspect a thing until the talent competition, when
they offer their renditions of “Sonny Boy” and “Ain’t We Got Fun.”

Sadly, my soap will not work on everyone. If you’ve had a lot of cosmetic surgery in the past — your eyes lifted, your wrinkles
pumped with collagen — your youthful self will appear freakish and catlike, like one of those aliens rumored to have visited
the town of Roswell, New Mexico. For reasons that confound medical science, the product also fails to affect those working
in certain professions — the editors of fashion magazines, for example. Here are people who have spent their lives promoting
youthful beauty, making everyone over the age of thirty feel like an open sore. Now, too late, they’ll attempt to promote
liver spots as the season’s most sophisticated accessory. “Old is the new young,” they’ll say, but nobody will listen to them.
Television executives will also be left out, especially those whose job it is to move a program from Sunday at eight to Wednesday
at nine-thirty, then back to Sunday and on to Thursday, all so they can sell a few more soft-drink or taco commercials. When
petitioned by these people to please, for the love of God, come up with something that can help them, I’ll redesign that goofy
plastic bird that perpetually lowers its head into a little cup of water. My version will work just like the old one but —
get this — it’ll be wearing a pair of sunglasses!

With the money I make from my numerous inventions, I build my own spaceship and discover another planet that looks a lot like
Earth and is only twenty minutes away. My new world has real estate developers and multinational corporations foaming at the
mouth, and I like to imagine the meetings during which they try to explain why the universe needs another Shakey’s Pizza or
Six Flags amusement park. I’ll listen to their presentations and lead them on a bit before suggesting that the recently named
Planet Fuck You Up the Ass with a Sharp Stick might not be for everyone.

I’m one fight away from being named heavyweight boxing champion of the world, and still people are asking, “Who is this guy?”
If forced to describe me to a police sketch artist, you might begin by mentioning my nose. It isn’t exactly upturned, it isn’t
“pugged”; but when they’re viewed eye to eye, you’ll notice that my nostrils are prominent and oddly expressive, like a second,
smaller pair of eyes assigned to keep watch over the lower half of my face, home to my full lips and perfect, luminous teeth.

When the sketch artist draws my eyes, you’ll step back, saying, “No, I’m afraid that’s not right at all.” After four or five
more unsuccessful attempts, the artist will lose his patience and remind you that “soulful” is not a precise physical description.
The difficulty comes in trying to separate my eyes from my eyebrows, which alter my face much the way that varying punctuation
marks can change the meaning of a sentence. I’ve got the exclamation point I wear when ambushed by photographers, the question
mark, the period I wear when I mean business, the dash, the thoughtful semicolon, and the series of three dots I rely upon
when rudely interrupted or when searching for just the right word. The eyebrows work in consort with my inky black hair, which
weighs in midway between curly and wavy, and calls for the invention of a new word.

“It’s… cravy,” you’ll say. “Like a storm at sea if the ocean were made out of hair instead of water.”

When the sketch artist throws down his pencil, you’ll say, “Okay, then, how’s this: he looks kind of like the guy who used
to play Cord Roberts on
One Life to Live
. Or, no, I take that back. He looks
exactly
like the guy who used to play Cord Roberts on
One Life to Live
. Is that descriptive enough for you?”

It’s somewhat surprising that I’m a serious contender for the title of world heavyweight champion, not because I’m slow or
weak but because I’m a relative newcomer to the sport. I’d been just another Yale medical student and had never really thought
of fighting until I got shut out of an endotracheal intubation seminar and signed up for a boxing class instead. The teacher
recognized my extraordinary talent, lined up a few regional matches, and one thing led to another. I looked good in a hooded
sweatshirt, and so when asked to go professional, I said, “Okay. Why not?”

This fantasy takes care to avoid the more obvious Rocky I–IV comparisons. I never run around New Haven punching the air. Neither
do I speak to turtles or greet friends with a nontraditional handshake. Most important, I’m never seen as an underdog. You
have to care about something in order to hold that title, and I honestly don’t give a damn one way or the other. For me, fighting
is just a way to kill time until I get my medical degree and begin my residency. The boxing world feels cheated by my obvious
lack of passion, but the press loves me. They’re beside themselves because I’m white, and in writing about me, they’re able
to express their racial anxieties while pretending not to. People who normally can’t stand the idea of violence are suddenly
willing to make an exception. Even the Mennonites place their bets and sign up for Pay-Per-View.

The championship bout is five days away when the public discovers I have a boyfriend, who maybe doesn’t look like Hugh but
definitely cooks like him. I haven’t been hiding my homosexuality. I’ve never lied or purposely avoided the question, it’s
just that no one has ever specifically asked. I’d never seen it as any big deal, but the news seems to change everything.
Those who loved me because I was white now feel betrayed. They’d assigned me to be their representative. I was supposed to
kick some black ass in their name, but now they’re not sure whose side they’re on. Which is more important, my race or my
sexual preference?

The question is answered when hate notes and truckloads of pansies are delivered to my training camp, the little sanctuary
where I skip rope while listening to taped lectures on coronary collateralization and threadworm infection. The topics don’t
pertain to my specific area of study but, as I tell the reporters from Ring magazine, “I like to keep informed.”

A clause in my contract states that before the big fight I must submit to a Barbara Walters interview, so I do. The first
few minutes go pretty much as I’d expected. “What would you do if you were choking on a peanut?” she asks. “Show us how a
real champ performs the Heimlich maneuver.”

The hijinks over, we settle onto the sofa, where she clasps her hands and asks if it was hard for me to come out.

I know then that had Barbara Walters actually been choking on a peanut, I would have done nothing to help her. I hate the
way the word out has been sexualized and forced into service for all things gay. When
out
is used as a verb, I start to hyperventilate. If some people are “outed,” are other people “inned”? Can we say that someone
has been “besided” or “overed”?

I have a similar adverse reaction when interviewed by the gay press. “No,” I say, “I will not be entering the ring draped
in a rainbow-striped flag.” I must have been out of the country when they took the vote on that one. I abhor the rainbow stripe
and would prefer something along the lines of a simple skull and crossbones. In the last few days before the fight, my eyebrows
settle into a semipermanent question mark. I don’t understand why I have to represent anyone. Whatever happened to winning
the heavyweight championship for Hippocrates? Without really meaning to, I manage to alienate everyone but the endocrinologists,
and even some of them are put off by a remark I made concerning blood calcium levels in hypoparathyroidism.

It goes without saying that I defeat the standing champion, but the mechanics of the fight never really interest me. I bleed
a little, the other guy bleeds a lot, and then it’s over.

If I really can’t sleep, I kill time casting and recasting both my coach and the genetically altered Hugh. Then I play around
with my retirement speech and decorate the waiting room of my doctor’s office.

I’m a pretty, slightly chubby White House intern who’s had a brief affair with the president of the United States. Through
no fault of my own, the details are leaked to the press, and within hours people are buying bumper stickers reading,
SHAME ON YOU!
and
ANOTHER AMERICAN DISGUSTED BY PRESIDENT PLAYBOY
.