Untitled

Untitled by black fungi
Part 01: Second Chances


[A/N: My muse is on steroids, and I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. Not beta-ed.]


"Ave Maria, gratis plena,
Dominus tecum, Ave Maria..."


When I was just a scrawny kid of four, old ladies used to pat my head and asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.


Now I would just lay off if it were a harmless pat on the head but did they have to ruffle my hair and pinch my cheeks with their scrunched up noses in my face as well? If I had taken counting blackheads and pimples as my perverse personal project, I hadn't been given perfect opportunities as that. And being vertically challenged then, my view was somewhat restricted to a world of hairy legs and stoking feet. It was a real brain-squelcher to come up with an acceptable answer and that piece of mash up there I called my "brains" just wouldn't run. Yours would too if you were presented with a fine specimen of a pair of century year old legs (that has never known a shaver) for inspection! An ant could build a fine little nest there.


As I was saying, these nice ladies were interrogating me on my future calling (as if it was their God-given right for them to know and would gasp in shock were I to snub them). They had this awful plastic smile plastered on their shriveled, pale faces while my raisin-sized brains worked furiously for an answer that would keep their wrinkly mouth shut. I mean riding a garbage truck is fun but you would give these walking ancients an early walk to their graves if you were to declare you wish to be a part of the sanitary disposal unit! I figured a "Doctor" would be a safe bet and judging by the look of their toothless grins, I'd say I scored an ace with that one.


And so a doctor I would be and wherever I went, I heard them mumbling, "Now Eugene's little man's gonna make good to society. He's gonna to be a doctor. Now ain't that sweet?" But I'm secretly guessing they wouldn't be seeking my professional advice at any rate. My clumsiness and absent-mindedness are cautions well-noted in the vicinity. I might just by chance prescribe cyanide for their everyday cold. Nevertheless, it was an honorable ambition, and like any other honorable ambitions, especially aspired by a child whose world might come to an end if he didn't get frosted cornflakes in the morning, it should by all means be rewarded with feigned awe and blustering words of encouragement.


Truth is I really don't aspire to become a doctor. An innocent drop of blood would send me flat on my back within a blink of an eye and my countless visits to the hospital unwittingly gave birth to foolish phobias. But like they say, if you repeat (think or say) something an infinite number of times, you might actually believe it despite the fact your sub-consciousness may say otherwise, and I had actually believe seeing myself through Med. school. I had actually believe that, ignoring the whispered scream in my mind, which should - had I had hold of all my faculties - set my thinking aright ... But I remained deaf and blind and remarkably daft for someone whose record books were almost never tainted with less than an 'A'.


I chased this dream like a madman, not knowing whose approval I was seeking but the raw urgency was there. I could feel it then coursing through my veins and it was my one subject every night at our dinner table. During my school years, when everyone was engaging in solely one sport or another as an extra curriculum activity, I was busy tending to superficial wounds (trying hard not to embarrass myself by fainting) and sitting through lectures on the effective ways to give the kiss of life. I mean besides French classes, of course. I was as good as they come and I was even honored by the headmaster with a pathetic medal for successfully getting Father Benedict to cough out a piece of chicken chunk stuck in his esophagus. It wasn't a pretty sight I can tell you that - I sported a mean shiner and bruised limbs, courtesy of the guys, for not letting that old dog choked himself to death.


Maybe I should. He gave us a devil of an assignment the day after, but let me remind you, I'm not playing God here. I think that's better left to the Big Guy up there, though were you to ask me, He sucks on His job. BIG TIME. Then again what do I know... I ain't God.


It was at sixteen, someone actually knocked me hard on the head and got those gears working clockwise again. I was crouching at a player's feet, meticulously bandaging her swollen ankle and at the same time in the futile attempt not to be overwhelmed by the pungent smell of sweat and used gym socks. I don't know if I should thank all feminists out there, God or whatever Force that compels her to nurture that jungle of mass hair on her legs but it brought me back to the time when I was nothing more than a boy of four, chirping away my answer to a harmless question... "What do you want to be when you grow up?".


I realized then that I've been doing things all wrong. I don't want to spend half of my lifetime in a hospital. I've already spent the other half there and contrary to popular beliefs, being ill most of the time does not necessarily instill a natural obsession to devote oneself to rid the world of diseases. Anyone who thinks that must be incredibly naïve or has the makings of a great legend. I am neither naïve nor do I fit into the latter category (unless of course if you were talking about putting the biggest prick to heel). I just wanted nothing to do with all those medic stuff. That little white lie was a just a ploy to escape those nosey parkers and their forever endless questions. Somehow it blew up in my face.


I had told myself there and then, "To hell with those 'nice old ladies'". They aren't altogether here now, perhaps even too senile to gasp in shock if I were to tell them I've gone one-eighty in my sexual orientation (Hell, they'd even throw a party for me!) and they are definitely not going to be around much, much later. Amen to that. So the question is, why am I being such an idiot? NO, I'm afraid I don't know why! If I knew, I wouldn't be asking, would I? I began to ask myself truthfully what I really wanted to be when I grow up. The last time I checked, it was me who was gonna be slaving away trying to raise dough to keep those taxpayers from biting me in the butt and I don't believe anyone's gonna cruise in here and take that load off me.


A dancer, that's what I wanted to be; that's what I want to be still. Yet I don't think my parents approved of my choice. How did I know? Well, I could fault it to my being oversensitive but the piercing shriek from Mother and a thoughtful frown on Dad's face seem like a pretty good guess. It is not a profession that would amount to the moneys they are making a year and it is not a profession the proud Nicholson would stoop to nor would the shrewd O'Connors be contented. No, a dancer is far less an honorable profession in my parents' eyes and might I add, "other" parents' eyes.


They couldn't understand. Believe me, it wasn't for lack of trying on my part. Trying to engage a sane conversation with them is like giving birth to Hitler and I am not about to deliberately perpetuate World War III right under my own nose. "You're a Nicholson," my father once said to me. "And all Nicholsons earn their keep in an *honorable* and dignified manner, and we don't go prancing around in tights to do that."


"... Benedicta tu in mulieribus
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus..."


10 years into the future, today and I earn my keep by stitching unpromising looking carcasses who - in more cases than one as I've observed - have a certain inclination to wrap their cars around innocent trees. It's a sort of fad, I suppose, though I can't be too sure. It seems to me like a painful way to go, whatever the fad is.


I never become the dancer I aspired to be; they wouldn't let me. Perhaps I shouldn't be too quick to point the finger... I know it was weakness on my part. I am never one for confrontations - it makes me violently ill. But I am good at my job, and having grown dreadfully accustomed to a disgustingly lavish lifestyle only a 6-figure monthly salary could offer, I can't really complain.


Umm... well, except something happened last Friday - I think I died.


TBC

DEC 07 2005