Double Flee A

today at the hospital

There's a guy at my workplace who used to be a girl. Then the surgery and the hormone therapy happened. This in itself is unremarkable. If I think he's hot does that make me gay? I don't, by the way. I'm really just pissed off that he has more facial hair than me, and that I haven't been invited to friendsterdotcom.

I was showing three nursing students how to operate a machine today. As I was facing it and doing things to it I explained what this and that does, and when I turned around, there were seven of them. They had multiplied into a gang, and it really shocked the hell out of me. Usually people fall asleep when I'm telling them about this junker, but my lovely girlfriend, also a nursing student, subsequently and rightly pointed out that no one is more eager to learn than nursing students. It was freaky. They're all looking at me like "Really? That's so interesting, tell me more!" without a hint of irony. (I had an english professor at a prep school I attended who similarly, without any irony, told the class his favorite movie was Dead Poets Society. It frightens young teenage boys when their teacher enjoys something as strange and as teetering on the edge of homoerotic-ness, as watching boys in pajamas running through the woods, chanting "running through the jungle, running with an axe, running through the jungle with a gol-den axe!") The forthrightness of the nurses and the brash young english professor are (thank bob) tied together by language alone. These are the sort people the medical field needs like Donald Trump needs a new haircut.

Behind a certain panel of glass in the bus stop is a blue schedule, so a reflection bears out better in it than other sections, which are splattered with salt and road-grit, and are mostly transparent. An asian girl was looking into it adjusting her scarf and her hat. I could see her eyes pretty well from where I was standing, but was pretty sure that I was so bundled and askance that she couldn't see me watching her do this. She kept adjusting the hat and the scarf just so, and at the end of each turn, she smiled right into the mirror. Only her eyes were visible, but I could tell. The hat and scarf were moving by so little I don't think it mattered, but she was going for a certain effect that I assume she finally achieved. It was like watching a bird. At some point in the history of the world someone must have been somewhere other than their homeland and been affectionately called a nickname they used to go by, but in another language, and they never knew.

There was nothing today like the violinist in the cancer ward. If I knew how to capture that moment with words, I'm pretty sure I'd be the greatest storyteller who ever lived. On the surface, it makes it seem silly to even try, but we've all got our white whales, and moments like that one are what remind me why it's worth chipping away.

posted by dale @ 6:01 PM