A month and a bit ago, my friend the Happy Blogger convinced me--a year after writing angrily about the fact that it existed--to watch a movie called The Art of Getting By. I did so, begrudgingly, because she said she liked it a lot, but also because I was curious to see if it was as enraging as I predicted it to be. It was. But it was also engaging enough to sit through and actually had some downright endearing scenes. One of those scenes, the Happy Blogger and I agreed, contained the best lines in the movie:
"I'm allergic to hormones."
"What hormones?"
"My own."
And so we decided it would behoove us not to put together a story about a young man attempting to maintain a normal existence while struggling with the impossible frustration of an allergy to his own hormones. And so I'm proud to present my first draft of the prologue to that story. I'm not sure if I will be posting the rest of the story because of all the things I've ever written, I think this idea actually has a chance of having some sort of mainstream appeal and publish-ibility. So, you know, gotta keep the genius a secret.
If anything, I'll just update this post with any additions so that it's all in one place and not drifting loosely all over the blog. Like some other posts I know. If that's the case, I'll move it up to the top of the queue so it doesn't go unnoticed. But for God's sake, let me know if you like it. I'm dying here.
If anything, I'll just update this post with any additions so that it's all in one place and not drifting loosely all over the blog. Like some other posts I know. If that's the case, I'll move it up to the top of the queue so it doesn't go unnoticed. But for God's sake, let me know if you like it. I'm dying here.
PS - I know that some of the medical stuff is inaccurate or just plain wrong. I'm making this shit up, people. We don't all have time for research or fact checking. Anyways, enjoy.
Prologue
In the
first grade, I had a friend named Riley who was allergic to peanuts. When
you’re a kid, nobody really explains to you what an allergy is beyond that
touching or eating certain things makes you fall over dead. I don’t think they
even tell you when you’re the one with the allergy because the allergic kids
would tell you the exact same thing.
“I’m
allergic to those.”
“What
does that mean?”
"I
dunno. They make my blood stop working and I die.”
And in
most cases, I don't think the kids have ever really even had a reaction. It's
sort of just a fearful notion their parents dump into their smushy, soft little
heads without explanation. I know that for me, it was a beautiful lie I used to
avoid the embarrassment of not being allowed to enjoy all the sugary, fatty,
expensive delights the other kids’ parents were loving enough to let their
children ingest. I have a distinct memory of a pizza day in the second grade on
which I was offered a cup of orange soda from one of the supervising moms. I
had only tried sodie-pop maybe twice in my life and was pretty certain I didn’t
like the way the fizz made my mouth feel. So I told the mom that I was
“allergic to pop” and moved onto my bland, familiar companion, the 8oz milkbox.
In hindsight, I have to assume that her understanding nod was masked amusement.
This developed into a plethora of convenient allergies to whatever new thing
had any potential to be awful: pickles, Italian dressing, mayonnaise, bananas,
liver, whatever.
I didn't
know then and I wouldn't know for a good number of years yet that I had a real
allergy incubating somewhere deep inside me that would go on to ruin my life
worse than any sickness or sudden death ever could have.
My first
crush presented itself more as a bouquet of crushes on almost every girl in my
third grade class. I remember Brie, Kaylee, Katelyn, Josee, Talia, Dawn, and Aria. I
remember feeling all impressive when I helped Michael Grady wheel a TV cart
into our class and making eye contact with Brie like see how strong I
am, Baby? I remember laying in my bed, licking all up the back of my
hand so it was nice and wet so I could make out with it and pretend I was
kissing and dancing romantically with Jocelyn and Dawn. I remember a teacher
forcing me to help Katelyn clean up the pile of snow I had dumped in her coat
during recess and wanting to hold her hand while I flicked the snow off her
shirt. I was a soft, sappy child who in hindsight should have been beat up on a
constant basis by all the boys while they yelled at me about cooties or prenups
or whatever.
But all
of that was just a little boy who thought girls were pretty and wanted to hug
them because that's what you do to people you like. I kept liking girls without
thinking about it...as you do...but didn't land my first real concentrated
crush until a new girl started on the first day of the sixth grade. Alyson
Stewart had frizzy red hair and thick-framed glasses and laughed like somebody
had punched her in the stomach. She was a good half foot taller than all the
other girls, thought cursing was fun, and taught me how to play Chinese jump
rope. She liked my friend Joel but I always had been and always will be a
foolish, patient, hopeful sap. Alyson, though, was the first one to send me
into that wide-eyed, twitterpated, doodling-hearts-in-notebooks sort of
obsession. She was also the catalyst for my latent allergy.
Gym class
in grade school follows a rigid schedule that presents the students with a
different theme or category of activities each week. Every year, we went
through the cycle of badminton week to soccer week to floor hockey week to
running week et cetera. I'm only assuming based on my recollection of there
being safety mats on the floor and by merit of the fact that we were practicing
handstands that said catalyst was somewhere in the middle of gymnastics week.
Split off into pairs, we were instructed to spot our partners while we all did
headstands and handstands against the wall. I'll have you know that I was completely
incapable of standing on my head. BUT! I can tell you that Alyson was more than
prepared to show off her handstanding ability. And that, my friend, was the
very moment that something glorious and terrifying was awakened in me. This was
the sixth grade. I think I was maybe 11 years old? It's been almost two decades and my memory of that moment is just as clear as if it was last week. I was just sort of lazily glancing around the gymnasium while my
partner, Andrew, pulled off his acrobatics with ease and it was really just
half a fraction of a second that I happened to notice Alyson flip up against
the wall and swing back down quickly to tuck her tshirt back into her jeans.
But that was all I needed. Obviously the black band I saw strapped around the
back of her ribcage was some version of a training bra or what have you. But to
my watery, innocent eyes, it was the finest lingerie and that brief blip in
time was the sexiest thing I had ever seen; the only sexy thing I had ever
seen.
"Casey."
"Hmm?
What? Did you see that?"
Andrew
had peeled himself from the wall and was waiting to watch me struggle against
gravity for five minutes.
"See
what?"
"Alyson.
Her shirt just fell down."
"Did
you see her nipples?"
"What?!
No..."
"Then
so what?"
"So
what it was awesome."
"I
saw my sister's nipples once."
Andrew
had six sisters in high school. They were all terrifying. I was about to launch
into a diatribe on exactly how gross that was when my throat clamped shut and I
bent double under a torrent of coughs and hacks. I squeaked out a
"whatever."
"What'sat?"
"I
said whatever," I breathed and scratched my arm.
Then the
seventh grade science teacher--he taught Phys. Ed. to the lower grades when our
teachers got sick of us—blew his whistle and relieved me from the Herculean
task he'd thrust upon me. I peeked over at Alyson whenever I thought she wasn't
looking, full of curiosity and longing as we all meandered back to our
classrooms. There were only two sixth grade classes in our school and of course
she wasn't in mine so instead of having the opportunity to gaze pathetically at
her hair for the rest of the day, I paused like a doofus in the doorway and
watched her disappear though theirs.
"Go..."
My
reverie was interrupted by dumb Erin James' nasally voice and ridiculous fuzzy
sweater. I awkwardly turned on my heel and shuffled through the door to escape
the static wail of her impatience. Sinking into my chair, I sighed forlornly
and tried to stare through the wall to my true love. The ringing Erin's stupid
voice had caused was still echoing around my skull. I turned and whispered to
my friend Britney,
"Do
you hear that?"
"What
did you say?" she chuckled.
I had to
yell now to hear myself over the screech.
"I
asked if you could hear that sound!"
"Casey,
keep your voice down," Ms. Dublin was glaring at me from her desk.
Another
cluster of aggressive coughs railed my body and the room went dark. I felt
something slam into my head and heard my breath trying to escape from my lungs.
A couple of the girls gave a shriek of terror, but they had nothing on the
cacophony in my head.
The next ten minutes felt like three hours. It was like listening to a carnival barker in slow motion in a pitch black room with a cold vise on my lips and helium pumping into my arms. At one point gravity shifted and the dark room moved around me as I catapulted through nothingness. The room shook violently a couple times and suddenly gravity was back and something was pressing against the back of my head. The carnival barker was still somewhere above me, heaving out his nightmare spiel. Then he suddenly stopped and something pierced my shoulder. My entire body was inhaled into the ground as the helium rushed through the hole in my arm and a pinprick of light appeared in front of my face. It gradually grew until everything was ceiling panels.
“How are
we doing, Mr. Kittlaus? You really gave us a scare, there.”
The
school nurse, Mrs. Ruele, was peering at me over her old lady spectacles. She
was only in her early 30s, maybe, but she had obviously bought her glasses
without consulting a friend. Or a mirror. I moved to prop myself up on my
shoulder but she gently pressed me back into the cot.
“Not
quite yet, Casey. You had anaphylaxis. You need to rest for a while.”
A bungee
cord had been stretched between my bowels and neck.
“Whurs
anflaxiz?” The vise was still on my lips.
“I’ll
explain when your parents get here.”
My pelvis
continued to pull down on my chin and vice versa.
“Uhn
gurna sherd merh prnts.”
“You need
to breathe, Casey. I can’t understand you.”
I
struggled against the tension on my neck to drag some air down into my lungs.
The moment I hit what felt like a regular rhythm, the bungee cord snapped. I
felt my head roll back and an unnerving looseness course through my body. I
squirmed uselessly on the cot, my eyes wide.
“I said
I’m going to shit my pants!”
“Language! The
feeling will pass in a moment. Just lay back and rest. We’ll talk it all
through when your parents get here. They're on their way.”
I let my
weight sag into the cot and stared hopelessly and confused at the ceiling. I
didn't even have a guess as to what Anna's Flack Tits was, but it had to have
something to do with Erin. I was feeling just fine until she did her weird
voodoo head thing. I tried retracing my steps for other possible causes of my
AFT. I'd had Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast like almost every other morning.
The walk to school took exactly thirteen minutes and could practically have
been a step-by-step reproduction of every other walk to school; nothing out of
place. We'd done math and social studies in the morning and they were boring as
usual. We played Chinese jump rope at recess and the only abnormalty was some
first grade girl toddling up and kissing Joeseph K on the arm and running away
giggling to her little friends. Britney called him a cradle robber and we
laughed our asses off. After recess, we'd gone straight to gym and...
The image
of Alyson's swaddled ribcage floated through my head and my blood reversed
direction. I felt a stirring in my shorts and tried to roll onto my side in a
panic but another fit of coughing kicked my arm out from under me and I
collapsed on my back, convulsing with each hack. Mrs. Ruele skittered back into
the room and steadied my shaking with a hand on my shoulder.
“Casey?
Try to relax and breathe deeply. You need to breathe right now, hun.”
It felt
like I was micromanaging each step of the breathing process.
Okay,
expand the lungs....
Now
contrict. Feel the air? Push the air upwards and out.
That's
right, up aaaaaand out! Good job!
Now find
some more air and grab it...
yup,
grab...
grab that
air, good, now pull it down.
Down,
down,
down,
pull harder, down...GOOOOOOOOD.
That's
one.
It felt
like Mrs. Ruele and I sat nodding at each other on the side of the cot for
another three hours. Her face calm and reassuring, mine desperate and
terrified. She was still coaching me on the basics of not dying when my parents
strode in ten minutes later.
“We're so
sorry. Greg was in the middle of a demonstration in the North East and I was
waiting for him and thought I should come but the bus might have taken longer
oh my god Casey.”
My mother
swept past my dad and knelt down beside the cot, folding me into her and
smothering my head.
“Mum, I'm
fine,” I wheezed.
“Yes, but
you weren't. Theresa, why is he talking like that?”
Mrs.
Ruele and my mother used to sell perfume or make Tupperware or something
together. It was always weird hearing grown-ups call each other by their first
names.
“He had a
bit of an asthma attack. He's calmed down now though.”
“Asthma?
I though he grew out of that six years ago.”
“Well
that's what we need to talk about. When was the last time you had Casey tested
for allergies?”
My
parents glanced at each other with identical looks of confused concern.
“Just
last year. He got sick after a visit to his uncle's house. We thought it might
have been the dogs.”
“I could
have told you that,” I offered drily. Kids think sarcasm makes them sound more
mature.
“And
nothing came up?”
My dad
leaned forward and shook his head, “It was just a coinicidence,” he insisted.
This time
it was Mrs. Ruele's turn to look concerned.
“Listen,
what exactly happened?” my mother demanded.
“Casey,”
sighed the nursed, “went into anaphylactic shock shortly after returning from
gym class. I just can't figure out why. If you say he has no known allergies,
it's a complete mystery to me. You're going to have to take him to a
specialist.”
My
parents listened to all this with increasingly terrified faces. I looked from
one face to the other to the other while they silently gaped at each other.
Then something occurred to me.
“Wait.
You mean my body stopped working because I'm allergic to something?”
“Probably.”
“Like
orange pop?”
My dad
choked out a chuckle and my mom stared at me. Mrs. Ruele just looked confused.
“Not
quite, Case. But we're going to figure it out, okay? Terry, is Casey excused
for the rest of the day?”
The nurse
nodded, “But make sure he gets tested as soon as possible.”
We were
already halfway through the teachers' lounge.
“Of
course. ASAP!”
