ABSTRACT
The colonoscopy is more a day trip than a journey into night. First of all, I'm awake and I can watch on the monitors the probes progress into an alternating white and pink zone, tissue and substance, seemingly dry, although liquid runs out of my ass like a birth upon the insertion of the tube. Me and the doctor are now asshole buddies. Three female nurses witness the intimate act. I think, I can take this, I've had larger. The demerol does the job making me the dumb one among the skilled technicians. All I have to do is lie still. I am the reason for this congregation. I am vulnerable. I am in control. The feelings contradict themselves as I lay open. I say I'm in pain, I need more stuff, like a rat hitting the feeder bar for more relief and like a king calling for more libations. I am a victim, I am a lord. The proximity of death, either a fantasy or an actual situation makes one feel both supreme and supremely humble. David accompanies me to the hospital. He watches me walk out of the waiting room into the dressing room. I return dressed in the hospital gown, humiliated. Later, he says to me, you arrive a person and they turn you into a patient. He is waiting for me in the recovery room. I am still very high. He gets me apple juice. We wait for the doctor for two hours. The doctor arrives with polaroids of my intestine. He says, I'd say that's the wildest case of lymphadnopathy I'd ever seen 'cept I've seen so many.
