Tag: Wounded Healers

 
One summer I worked at a meat packing and processing plant called JilSom. It was run by Irwin Goldfarb, a man who was given the job because his family didn’t know what else to do with him, who always drove a Corvette paid for in cash until someone gave up trying to explain and simply told him leasing through the company was better, who had two black, foresty eyebrows trying to mate along a ridge like a mogul where his forehead met his face, spent as much time under the hair dryer as did his wife but never with her, and yelled during staff meetings that God Damn It, It Was A Good Thing He Was Around Because His Company Was Being Run Into The Ground By The Flunkies He Had Working For Him And They Were Lucky To Have Their Jobs Anyway.

I wondered if he’d ever been to New Zealand.

He said this each week to his senior staff. Obviously he was correct because his senior staff, being vilified thus each and every week, never left. He also made it a point to let the workers, especially those spending their first day on the job, know how he felt towards his staff.

One of his staff, Jones, a man in charge of receiving and lorrying – placing things in the warehouse-size freezer so they could be found quickly and orderly – confided in me one day he was going to be president of the company in five years. He told me this in front of his crew. He was a Santa Claus-sized man with a blonde Van Dyke beard and eyes cold blue like the freezer he spent much of his time in. When he spoke, his voice was not careful or poised. It was always full of surety upon demand. He knew where everything was in his warehouse-size freezer and his voice let you know he knew. In his freezer, he was right. His voice, outside the cold of those four frost-covered walls, was something slightly else.

His office was on the other side of the building from Irwin’s. One day, as I was crossing the building to drop off some paperwork, Irwin came out of the shadows to me. “Where’re you going?”

I kept to myself pretty much although I knew I frightened him without knowing why. The longer I was with JilSom, the more his voice gained accusation.

“Receiving.”

“Tell Jones I want to see him.”

“Okay.”

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Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series

 
By the time we get to Manhattan Community College, CNN stops following us. The police, escorts, news crews, and curious are more news-worthy than we are. Even the Enquirer‘s and Midnight Sun‘s psychics have forgotten us, more concerned with some women in Toronto having Beriah’s child.

He hasn’t even been here a month.

CNN pays a crew to follow us and keep a directional mike on us at all times. People tire of Beriah’s snoring, even though it sounds more like a cat wheezing at night.

All we ever do is walk. We never challenge anybody and, now that the word is out, nobody challenges us. People have even stopped coming to be healed, although I hear there is a cult in Indianapolis which worships us from afar.

We stop in front of a boarding house on Albany. The manager comes to the door as he sees us walking across the street.

Beriah reads the sign in front. “We can sleep here.”

I scan the sign and, ever articulate, agree. “Huh? Yeah, yes.”

We start up the steps and the manager opens the door towards us. “You looking for a room?” He scans up and down the street then up at the windows on the buildings across the street. He keeps the door between us, him inside and the four of us outside, only his head and chest peering past the edge as if he were some Hollywood Indian gazing from around some tree at a wagon train of settlers crossing the plains. The image is insane. He stands behind a glass door.

“Yes, we are.”

He continues to look up and down the street.

I reach for the door. “May we come in?”

He looks at us hard, as if maybe to figure us out. He licks his lips. The skin just below his nose starts to glisten. “I – ”

The Healers walk away. The man points at their backs. “Guess you won’t be staying.” He steps back inside and closes the door before I can turn around.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you want to go in there?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you? He couldn’t keep you out. It would have been against the law.”

Beriah doesn’t stop, doesn’t ponder, only explains. “A law created by one to create an obligation in another.”

Cetaf doesn’t glance back, keeps moving forward “He didn’t want us there.”

Thinking I was learning, I said, “He was just afraid of you. He doesn’t know you.”

Beriah stops, considers. “Perhaps…Perhaps he resents us.”

“How can he resent you? He doesn’t know you.”

“Knowledge has never been a prerequisite to resentment. Besides, obligation breeds resentment, choice breeds acceptance.”

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Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series

 
Take the A train. But only to Fulton Street, at East New York and Broadway. A white haired, lightly tanned white man, his hair swept back and looking like it cost more to comb than this train is worth, sits wrapped in a black greatcoat. It serves a vivid contrast, like vanilla rum ice cream frosting on Devil’s food cake. It is hot and muggy down here. You can tell the one because everyone is sweating and the other because steam from the track cleaners hangs like an early morning mist around a fish trawler, flies and stench serving as gulls and fish tripe.

The man is barefoot. His toes are manicured. Despite the filth around them, his feet look healthy. The arches are strong. The great coat stops mid-calf and his muscle tone is obvious. He plays racquetball three times a week. He plays before daylight, before the courts are in demand, charging himself for the day before his competition arises. He plays to win. He opens his coat wide every time someone walks past. Underneath he is immaculately dressed. His pants are tailored and hemmed to stop just above the end of his coat. It is a great coat, and every time he spreads its black, devil’s food wings, people turn away in disgust, then out of the corner of their eye look back, and he catches them, and he laughs.

Cetaf is absorbed by the people and their reaction to the racquetball-playing man. Some are oblivious. Some show open interest until the game is played. Some show disgust before the serve then disappointment when racquetball-playing man fails to return their volley.

The train halts and the man rises. He stops in front of us, smiles, opens his coat. Cetaf, Beriah, and Jenreel smile and applaud, something they learned by watching others on the streets. The man bows and leaves.

Another man, a dirty man in a dirty gray rain coat, unwashed long black hair stringing over unwashed ruddy face, grease stained jeans and black hightop Keds, rises from the back of the train and walks over to us. He smells like he’s bathed in the track cleaners’ steam. “I’ve been watching you for the past three stops,” he says in a crisp academic accent. “You people are sick. You applaud that man’s depravity.”
Continue reading “The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) – Chapter 9 – “The Intersection of Loosely Wound Toilet Paper and Wadded Socks””

 
When we were thirteen, I told Denny O’Malley the idea of badminton was to try and keep the birdie in the air for as long as possible. I didn’t know if these were the rules but I wanted them to be the rules. Denny said nothing and played by these rules all day long. We laughed and had a good time, kidding each other when the shuttlecock missed a racket and fell to the earth where it stayed until our laughter picked it up again. Because of my joy, I forgot I made up the rules.

The next day Denny returned with a different look on his face. He told me I was wrong and my rules were stupid. How could anybody win with such stupid rules?

This from a thirteen year old?

I was wrong. He looked it up. “It’s just like tennis. You score it pretty much the same way.”

I winced slightly looking at him, fearing, preparing for what might happen. “We had fun, didn’t we?”

“We’re going to have more fun today.”

I didn’t fear Denny would hit me or beat me. That was not Denny’s way. What I feared was another tearing away of the joy of childhood another day of boyish laughter never to be repeated or known again.

Not exactly true. That whole day we played by my stupid rules I waited for that crushing blow, the slap on the face of my mother shouting, “You did it again, didn’t you, you little bastard. You wet the bed and you said you wouldn’t. God damn what’s wrong with you, boy? I’m going to put a clothes pin on that thing of yours and you won’t pee in the bed again!” from the porch as I played with my friends and followed by the laughter which bit deeper than any shark’s teeth, which punched harder than any fist could.

I knew Denny would go look up the rules. He was having too much fun not to.

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Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series

 
1-800-MD-TUSCH

Jenreel points at the sign as we enter the #9 train at South Ferry. Cetaf and Beriah are at street level. Ever since the war memorials they are fascinated people’s stories. We stop at each historic marker, each memorial plaque. Thank god we didn’t go to Ellis and Liberty Islands!

I feel the train lurch and worry that Cetaf and Beriah might be left behind.

The doors pulse shut and I’m reminded of a sphincter constricting.

“The sign is for a doctor, a type of healer, who specializes in problems of the rectum and anus.”

“Isn’t that how you people relieve yourselves of waste?”

I nod.

“You people have trouble relieving yourselves of waste?”

A bag lady bumps into me and knocks me back. Her hand clutches the pole in front of me and she stands between Jenreel and me. “Children don’t. Kiddies go whenever and wherever they need. That’s why they’s always smiling.”

She smiles wide and proud and releases her bowels. The smell is obvious, although she is so wrapped in rags nothing escapes.

A buzzer sounds and the doors clamp again but open quickly, stopped from sealing by some of Notre Dame du Bags’ luggage. She waddles out and Cetaf and Beriah come in. People make room for Cetaf as he squeezes through the door.

Jenreel points her out to Cetaf and Beriah as she crosses the platform and bumps into people. “She has no problems of the rectum and anus.”

I nod. “I think that’s why she’s so happy.”

Cetaf and Beriah also see the TUSCH sign.

Jenreel explains, “Some of them have trouble getting rid of their waste. The ones who don’t smile, evidently.”

I look around the subway car. Nobody’s smiling. Some are twitching. One or two mumble to themselves.

My eyes come back to Jenreel and he cocks his head at me. “You’re not smiling, Ben.”

“Constipated.”

“Oh.”

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Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series