Fifty-Boy
15
Foul Play In The Bay
Atlantic City Hospital.
Emergency Room Note: Call from Mister Smith...
The patient has had an erection that has lasted approximately 3 1/2 to 4 hours.
He states it has gone down and he is able to bend it.
I recommended we see him.
Upon arrival at the Hotel Chelsea, the paramedics ascertained
that the patient did not have sufficient insurance coverage
to cover transportation and advised him to walk or take a Jitney...
Two guys in a fast car gave me a lift. I bled on their seats. The said don't worry about it, it's stolen, and laughed. I was in such pain I left my wallet and ID and all my stuff in their back seat. I figured I'd never hear of them or my stuff again.
With some difficulty and as he complained, much embarrassment,
the patient managed to arrive at our trauman unit and was seen.
He is now about four hours after injection.
He still has the corpora fairly firm, although the penis
is somewhat bendable, but not very bendable.
Using sterile prep and drape, the corpora aspiration was carried out.
I withdrew approximately 20cc's of blood from
the left corpora cavernosa with a 22-gauge needle.
This detenesmed the penis to the degree that we were able
to extract the penis from the teeth of the zipper
of the patient's pants which had become embedded
in the penis when the patient, attempting to relieve the pain
of his over engorged penis removed his pants too quickly.
We have cleaned and bandaged the wounded member,
which was coated with a slippery substance he described
as the industrial lubricant, WD-40.
However, at this time, there is still an erection.
He was given 1cc. of Phenylephrine with a concentration
of a.1 of a mg per cc.
He then had complete detenesmence.
He was given samples of Floxin to take, 300 b.i.d. for three days.
C. Hill, M.D.
I called home periodically during the first two weeks to maintain the fiction that I was still in Florida for work, like she cared, like she believed me... The conversations were a little slow.
"How you doing?"
"Yeah, you?"
"Nothing?"
Silence, long silence...
Occasionally I'd hitch a ride or hop a bus out to the Hamilton Mall to make myself feel better. Atlantic City didn't have one bookstore in the whole town and I missed it, bad, my coffee and my books. It was just one more withdrawal anxiety I had to deal with in my new life as a homeless dude.
I'd walk through those doors and smell the coffee and see all the shelves filled with books, and newspapers, magazines, CD's periodicals, reference manuals, section after section,
Mystery,
Romance, History,
Biography, True Crime, New York Times Best Sellers,
Humor, Travel, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Poetry, Crafts,
Classics, African American Interest, Local Interest, Espionage,
...And man, I'd have some kind of olfactory contact high that literally made me dance down the aisle. I'm not sure the people at the Barnes and Noble Cafe exactly appreciated the presence of a guy who'd been living under the Boardwalk dancing and singing in their store. I guess I didn't smell like I used to when I was bathing on a regular basis.
One night I went into the cyber-cafe and checked into Molly's chat-room as JUMBA, and there she was, and there he was... Everyone was chatting, but them, the Red Ripper and Molly. I learned that night about the
whiper-private-conversation feature. I was feeling really left out. Used to be, when
I tried to get a rise out of her, our conversations were something like this:
"You remember when you were between me and Tom in the hot tub the night I went with you to the gym?"
"Yes."
"And you had mine rubbing on your left thigh and his on your right?"
No response.
I go for broke. "What kind of effect did that have on you... any?"
"You were both hard."
"Yeah, but what kind of effect did it have on
you?"
"The water was moving back and forth, making me bounce on his... Or was that you making me bounce into him? It was hard to tell, you both had on baggy trunks."
"Yeah, but did it... How did you...? Didn't you get anything..." Ah, never mind."
Silence, long silence...
But when it came to the chat-room and Red Ripper, the girl needed no prompting.
"...Came all over the keyboard..."
"My seat was soaking wet."
"You
know what I wanna' do to you."
"You know what I
want you to do to me."
"Do it to me, baby." Oh, sugar..."
Oh, honey..."
The line was off the graph.
The next week I told her I wasn't in Florida, I was in Atlantic City, and I lost my job. She hung up. She would no longer accept my collect calls, and then finally she just didn't answer anymore. No answering-machine, nothing, just ringing and ringing. I wondered where she was.
Time went by and somehow I didn't even notice. Time was like the phone; it just kept on ringing 'til I realized I was listening to nothing. So I just hung up, hung up on life, on our life, but sometimes I still couldn't help thinking of her, if maybe she wondered where I was, if I was okay.
A little more than a month ago I was a citizen, sort of. I had a job, a life. Now I was out of money, my suitcase and my stuff was gone, lost in the car with the two jokers who dumped me at the emergency room. It was some kind of bizarre dream.
Then one of the men in the line at the Rescue Mission would shove me forward and say,
"Wake up, Jake. Tell us a joke."
And I was back at it, being homeless Jake Finn in the city with the billion-dollar smirk. Homeless Jake the Joke Man. Telling jokes was my shtick. It protected me, kept me sane.
"Duck goes in a store, says, Lady, you sell duck food?
Lady says, no.
Duck leaves.
Next day duck come in says, Lady, you sell duck food?
Lady says, no.
This goes on for ten or twelve days in a row 'til the lady is almost crazy with this firggin' duck.
Duck comes in says, Lady, you sell duck food?
Lady say, Look, if you come in here one more time and ask me if I sell duck food, I'm gonna' nail your friggin' feet to the floor.
Duck leaves.
Next day duck comes in say, Lady, you sell nails?
She says, No, I do not sell nails.
Duck says, You sell duck food?"
One of my greatest pleasures sitting in the common room at the Mission was watching the local news gal, Vivian Vivant. She was so pleasant to look at, so clean. She once interviewed me, took down my name, knew Chaplain Bill, who had my case, knew my spot under the Boards, and how to reach me anytime she wanted.
I told her, "You can call me anytime. If you ever need anything..."
She just smiled and said, "But Jacob, you don't have a phone under there, do you?"
She reminded me of Molly, but at the same time, she took my mind off Molly. Vivian Vivant was a little bit of feminine relief. She took my troubles away. She always protected me and called me Jacob, never Jake, or Finn-man.
I never missed her doing the morning weather on AM Atlantic City. I'd sit in one of the casino bus terminals and stare at her 'til security chased me away, then I'd just watch through the window. It didn't even matter what she said, I never heard any of it anyway.
I never heard much of anything anyhow. Life had got away from me. Things mattered less and less. After a while I stopped going to the Mission and scooped out a niche for myself under the Boardwalk down past the Monument near Roosevelt Place.
I had hung up on life. Only Vivian knew where I was. She was the only thing that kept me connected at all, her and my journal, and a used book here and there that I was able to pick up at a place called
Princeton Antiques - We Buy The Old, run by a big guy named Bob on Atlantic Avenue. A lot of the stuff I'm showing you here, in this story, I wrote in my journal, word for word, like some ptitful epic. Yeah, right...
Then something crazy happened. They found my stuff, my real ID...
The Press of Atlantic City
FOUL PLAY IN THE BAY
Bodies of two local robbery suspects recovered as stolen car plunges into Bay...
Body of Camden County man feared washed out to sea...
Forensic blood evidence... Personal affects... Identity withheld pedning notification of nex of kin...
I looked around and Lieutenant Wilmont Mathers was breathing in my face. He squeezed my neck again and said, "What's in the case? What're you doing in that building? You breaking into that building? Were you in that building, parasite?"
My four hundred thousand was slipping down my back.
By the time we reached the bus terminal I'd adjusted my package. He turned around in his seat and gave me a ten. "This'll get you to Philly."
"Greyhound therapy, one way. And I don't want to see you around here no more."
