“I’m going to tell you a story not because I want you to do something for me,” he said.
“Um-hmm,” she hummed.
“I’m telling you this because it will help explain things to you.”
“About what?”
“About men.”
“Oh.”
Then he began. “A woman I know, she dated this guy who—well, he was everybody’s friend because he lived the life you would lead if you had no self-restraint.”
“None?”
“Well, not about the trivial things in life.”
“Like?”
“Eating a whole bag of cheese curls at one time. Pizza for breakfast. Never making your bed—sleeping till noon every Saturday. Stuff like that.”
“Oh.”
“Not like murder, or rape or being cruel to animals—obviously, he wasn’t into those kinds of things.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Anyway, this guy’s weight would go up and down. He never got any exercise unless there was a social element to it—like golf.”
“Which isn’t exercise.”
“Right. So he’d balloon up 20 or 30 pounds, get disgusted with himself, go on a diet . . .”
“I thought you said he didn’t care.”
“What?”
“You said he didn’t have any self-restraint. You have to have some control over yourself to go on a diet.”
“Well, yeah. Everybody has some limits.”
“Okay—you didn’t say that. Go on.”
“So this guy’s weight’s going up and down, he’s not getting any exercise, he eats all kinds of junk food . . .”
“Is he happy?”
“Sure he is—he’s doing anything he wants.”
“Unless he gets too fat.”
“Right.”
“Did women like him?”
“That was the other funny part. He wasn’t a great-looking guy, plus he’s kind of flabby, but he’s got a great personality, you know, cause he’s basically a happy person cause he’s figured out how to be happy, plus he’s a real ‘people’ person and you know, I think women respond to that.”
“Sure—I know what you mean.”
“He was fun to be around, no question about it.”
“Did he get–romantically involved with any of these women?”
“Yeah. Much to my surprise, every now and then he’d pick a woman out of the passing parade that he’d chat up at all the parties he went to.”
“And what were they like?”
“Very nice, very attractive, very marriageable, had he been so inclined, but he thought he was too young for that.”
“How old was he?”
“Let’s see, he’s five years younger than me, so I guess he would’ve been around thirty at the time.”
“That’s not too young.”
“I know, but he was still interested in having fun. Anyway, like I say, he’d hook up with very nice girls. He dated a lot of women but he was choosy about who he slept with.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I think down deep, even though he was a real gregarious guy and everybody’s favorite person to hang around with, he was very romantic. He took love very seriously.”
“So what happened to him?”
“Well, he was out bowling with this woman and some of their friends one night.”
“Bowling?”
“Just for fun. It wasn’t like he was in a league or anything. He’d broken up with this woman several times before but it wasn’t like they were making up. They were just having fun with some friends, maybe they’d get back together, maybe not. Anyway, this guy’s bowling and his left arm starts tingling and he says, you know, that’s funny, I’m right-handed, you’d think it would be my right arm. He gets up to bowl and all of a sudden he just collapses. People thought he was kidding but he was having like a stroke or a heart attack . . .”
“He’s your friend and you don’t know what happened to him?”
“I wasn’t there—I only see him like once every two years. Anyway, let me finish. So finally somebody figures out it’s for real but with all the noise and the people in the bowling alley it takes forever for them to get an ambulance to come. By the time they get him to the hospital he’s got brain damage, his left side is paralyzed and he’s lost a lot of motor skills on his right side.”
“That’s so sad!”
“Yeah. Thirty years old, his whole life ahead of him and he’s confined to a wheelchair. After he’d had some therapy he could walk a little but it took a lot of effort, and he couldn’t talk for a long time. He would write out words with his right hand to tell a nurse what he needed—food, whatever—and that’s the only way he could communicate for a while.”
“So where is he now?”
“Well, the girl he was with had a fairly skeptical view of their future prospects, since they’d broken up before. I assume he had to talk her into going out that night. You know, ‘It’s just a bunch of us having fun,’ whatever. He probably told her it wasn’t a date and she saw through that but was willing to go along for the ride.”
“And he just happened to become a vegetable that night—God.”
“Yeah, but she was a real trouper about it. Felt bad for him, lined up a home, contacted the place where he worked to get disability payments.”
“Where were his parents?”
“They were both dead.”
“So she did it all herself?”
“Yeah—she’s a real saint. Of course, she still had her own life to lead, but she made a point of going to see him every Sunday, wheeling him around in his wheelchair, making sure he was okay.”
“She is a saint. So is that the end of the story?”
“Not quite. One weekend she’s over at the home where she’s put him. She pushes him in his wheelchair around the grounds for awhile to get him some sun and fresh air. On the whole, he seems to be getting a little better. He’s starting to make some progress, he’s beginning to make noises that sound like words instead of just grunts. He responds to, uh, external stimuli.”
“That’s great.”
“Right. So she wheels him back inside the building and pushes him over to the window because she knows he likes to look outside instead of just staring at the walls. She’s getting ready to go and asks him if there’s anything he wants before she leaves. He grunts and it sounds like a ‘yes’ so she says ‘Can you tell me?’ He grunts again so she gets him his pad and he begins to spell something out. First letter he writes is a ‘b’, so she asks ‘Bathroom?’
“He shakes his head as best he can and makes a sound like ‘no’ and writes an ‘l’. ‘Is it somebody’s name?’ she asks. He grunts again, starts to move the pen again and makes an ‘o’.”
“So he’s got ‘b-l-o’?”
“Right. She doesn’t know what he means. She wants to help but she can’t figure out what he’s getting at. He starts in again and makes a real wobbly ‘w’. She looks down at the paper and figures out that he’s actually written a word—‘blow’.”
“Meaning?”
“She doesn’t know—she goes to get him a tissue, thinking he needs to blow his nose. He kinda shakes his head when she gets back and looks up at her—she can tell he’s trying to send her a message. He moves his hand across the page again and this time makes a ‘j’.”
“’B-l-o-w-j’ isn’t a word.”
“I know, that’s what she’s thinking, but he’s not done. She can tell the effort is killing him—it’s almost like a physical therapy session. He drops his pen, she picks it up and hands it to him, he curls his good hand around it and starts in again. ‘C’mon, you can do it,’ she says—‘Try!’ He gets the pen under control and with a great deal of difficulty makes a little ‘o’. She still doesn’t see any pattern, so she says ‘Keep trying!’ His head is nodding to one side, his wrist and his hand are contorted from the effort, but he keeps going, dragging his pen across the paper, making a line and then putting a little circle at the bottom to make a ‘b’. And he looks up at her and she can tell he’s done.”
“Blowj—what’s next, ‘o’ and then—“
“Blowjob. He wants a blowjob.”
“Good lord.”
“Seriously.”
“So what did she do?”
“Nothing. The way she told me, she gave him a look that was part pity, part disgust. Then she left.”
“Did she ever go back?”
“Yeah, sure, every Sunday. That’s the kind of person she is. But she also did a little research and turned up a first cousin—I guess the only cousin he had.”
“And?”
“She wrote to the guy and said, you know, I have your cousin set up at this address, you’re going to have to take care of him because I’m not going to do it anymore.”
“So, that was that?”
“That was the end of that.”
She was silent for a moment and then looked away before speaking. “Why did you tell me this?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s . . . almost inspirational.”
“Inspirational?”
“It’s . . . a triumph of the human spirit. Here’s this guy, he was really happy, knew what he wanted out of life—and all of a sudden, everything that made each day worth living to him, everything he got up for in the morning—gone, wiped out in a second. And in spite of all that, he had the will power to . . . to dredge up from the bottom of his soul, and put into words, the thing that he . . .”
“Excuse me,” she said as she got up. “I’m going to bed.”
“Hey wait . . .”
“And I don’t mind if you stay up.”
