Well, actually, N got the shirt, and it wasn't crummy. A nice girl-cut Ozzy tee in white and black. Part of the problem with being a fan of the same music for so long is that, to some extent, I already have all the t-shirts.
OK, back up.
We got out of the hospital Monday at a very respectable hour, as the Drs and the nursing staff were very on top of their game. Home in time to get dinner and go to bed with little drama. A much better stint than the last, and one that bucks me up for the last one a month or so hence.
The next day, because Murphy is the One True Law and Scheduling is His Prophet, the boiler in our building was being replaced.
Of course, a new boiler is significantly better than the current state of 'hey, does this water seem hot to y--Oh Holy Christ I Just flash-cooked 40% of the skin off my thumb!!!'
But still, less than twelve hours out of the city-state--numbers plummeting like any hope that the tea party candidates have even the shed skin of a clue as to how to help the country heal--and the specter of bucket showers and toilets that won't refill has us heading uptown to the apartment of a colleague and friend of N's whose generosity is matched only by her view of the Hudson. So our plan is to go to the temporary residence after the clinic, and, to pack as light as possible, I figure I will wear what I am wearing to the concert that night throughout the day--less to schlep in my backpack, right?
At the clinic I get the Neulasta shot, having pre-medicated with the Claritin, as has become the norm.
And I am in leather pants. Which I can safely say are not found in great abundance in the leukemia waiting room at New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center. Wigs; hats that stay on indoors; huge splotchy bruises, sure. Leather pants...not so much.
I'm gonna knock 'em dead.
But my thunder is duly stolen by the bloodletter. The lovely and wonderful young woman who has been successfully--for the most part--drawing my blood, and whose steadily, happily growing belly has been one of the few way-posts against which I have been able to mark time passing, has outdone me. She arrived for work as on any other day, but by the time I was there for her sure-handed rattlesnake ministrations, she was three centimeters dilated and eighty-five per cent effaced.
Which, of course, means fuck-all to me.
And most everyone else, too, it turns out. It was humorously unnerving to see a flotilla of white coats--enough Drs to keep the explosively misbehaving lymphoblasts and self-hating marrow of dozens of people healthy, if not recovering, for years--wandering around the hallways of the leukemia wing like so many tipsy swans trying to score stale bread off the tourists:
'OK, so the cervix is eighty...'
'What was she wearing?'
'no, dilation is the cervix. Effacement refers to--'
'Can you self-dilate? I heard about this travel-nurse from Calgary--'
'she texted me like ten minutes ago. I think she's OK, but...'
'...'
You know what? I wish her well: new life trumps age like dogs trump humans, and so her and her pre-person would be at the top of my prayers if I believed the ghost stories, and I am more than happy to give way to her drama.
The only downside is that, because the assumption is that I will not need blood or platelets so soon after a stint, I have not been assigned a chemo nurse. So there's nobody to access my port. And, since I probably won't need anything injected into my system save the Neulasta, which is a stand-alone shot anyway, there's not a lot to be said for accessing me in the first place.
So it is off to the IV nurse, where I get the vein on the back of my hand popped into for my blood work. The IV nurse has worked with my Drs before and so draws a bit more than she needs to, which turns out to be prescient, as they want to get me pre-typed for what will almost certainly be at least platelets on the Friday visit.
All well and good. And I am gone. And the day crawls by with some errands and getting to stand and enjoy the lovely panorama of New Jersey (yes, go ahead and make your own little oxymoron/Garden State/What Exit? joke in there if you want, but it really looks nice from a few stories up and a river away).
And finally the hour draws near and N and I hie ourselves to Madison Square Garden, which is not square, is not near Madison, and could only be called a garden if hockey players' teeth that rolled into the Zamboni hopper fermented into some rogue form of mushroom.
We got there early because Halford was opening for Ozzy. I will not go into it, as I am sure some of you are still reeling from the Ronnie James Dio essay of a few months back, but Rob Halford is the lead singer of Judas Priest. He often records and tours on his own, most recently with a band called--in the interests of not confusing people
who have been banging heir heads up and down vigorously since 1983's Screaming For Vengeance at the very least--Halford.
If Judas Priest were touring, they could as likely headline the garden, though they tend to prefer Jones Beach Amphitheater, where you can watch the laser lights, the smoke machines, the steel-framed god-like machines, and the dusk over the Atlantic all at once.
But when Halford tours alone he has to take a second seat to more established acts.
No matter. I like Ozzy. And N fuckin' loves Ozzy. Sure, some of his music, and certainly his social conscience. But mainly his attitude. N and Ozzy are the only two people I have ever seen over eight years old who have, with utter conviction and a palpable belief that they will be listened to, told the sea to stop rushing at them. Ozzy on an episode of his reality TV show; N every time we go to the beach. They share a joyous indignation at the hugeness of certain aspects of life, and an equally elemental physicality when faced with things that delight them. Ozzy clapping and roaring and egging on the crowd bears a spiritual and oddly physical resemblance to N watching a TV show about dogs, learning to snorkel, or simply observing pigeons.
Oh, also, Halford is as gay as the day is long. I mean gay like Rock Hudson's slacks, and N is a hag of the highest order. While Halford only officially came out in the mid nineties, most of metal knew it long before that. Henry and I even dragged a gay roommate of his from NYU to a Priest show as portable gay-dar; we were pleased to have our hypothesis proven when, during some less-than-metal dance steps during 'Turbo Lover,' said gay divining rod piped in with 'Oh yeah. He's stepping. He's stepping.'
So we both had a blast. I tried very very hard to not scream and roar and howl and smash my beaten self about, and I did an OK job. One day out from chemo, I have to try and see the long view, right? At some point either near or during Ozzy's inquisitional portrait of British pseudo-satanist Alistair Crowley, I found myself crying.
I was in my body. In my body in a way I had not been for weeks, if not months. Swimming is glorious and freeing, running the 5K was a challenge and a triumph, chemathlons are little victories I hold very dear to my hemoglobin-starved heart.
But standing in the too-narrow space in front of an arena seat, leathered left leg straight for support and leathered right leg jacking down and downward, down into the floor, the cement rebound through your heel coursing straight back up your rigid body, rattling the prayer-wheel and Thor's hammer necklaces bouncing against your
out-of-shape chest; arms tensed always for balance and force, music talking to atrophied muscle and not bothering to clue in the mind, fist banging against right pocket, jangling the steel and rubber bracelets crowding your right wrist, left fingers tracing guitar notes as they fly by, and your head, your head bouncing on your tense but able neck, bouncing with a kick drum you can feel in your chest with more force that the straining heartbeats that have thumped you to sleep for so many long, quiet, fear-torn nights.
It's not much, and to most people it probably looks like some nimrod flopping around to loud music like a trout on a dock. But it is a physical interaction with a joyously violent music that has been of great value and solace to me for most of the years of my life. And--weakened and therefore dialed-back for my own safety and the piece of mind of the loved one hooting and cheering next to me--it was still a form of meditation, a secular litany and, most important, the driving of a stake into the ground; a stake that is me, rooted, jouncing, jangling, overwhelmed, full from the inside, with music.
Alive.
