Something on the radio today made me feel stigmatized. A story about someone who fell down the stairs and died on New Years Eve ended with the sanguine epitaph: “Police said the individual had a record of alcohol abuse.” I wonder if, in any context, my medical record with that as the only mark on it will come back to shit on me like it did this sap who fell to his drunken death the other night.
I remember the dermatologist’s assistant who asked me if I’d ever had any hospital stays. She had been dutifully typing down all the other answers I had to her previous questions about allergies and general medical history.When I said I’d been laid up in the hospital for alcohol abuse she stopped typing, put the keyboard away, and said “We all have tough times.”
I don’t know if the medical community going forward will be so gracious to me. I mean they will if I remain sober as I have this week (hah) and if I do not do stupid shit like fall down flights of stairs. I even sensed that the ER folks I encountered in May of 2015 sensed I was not their usual raging drunk. But I’ve talked about this already.
I might have scored 7 hours sleep, though I think it took 11 hours to get it. Definitely slept more sanely last night, with only one memorable electrical jolt. The weird thing was that I was hearing music come from somewhere, and I could not figure out where. Is it possible to hear things like this entirely in your head? I am sure it is but I don’t remember hearing big band arrangements of New Orleans zydeco music or Anne Murray imitating Elvis singing Christmas songs anywhere but in my head. I have noticed this phenomenon, or at least I think I noticed it, when it sounded like the air filter was talking to the box fan and together they created some sort of music. But I turned both those devices off last night and still heard music music music. It was faint as hell, and its focal point seemed to move around. But I swear it was there. I wore earplugs for the first time since forever. If they worked I think it is just because I wanted them to.
At the ghetto coffee shop where the two dudes working here are absolutely screaming at each other in whatever language they scream. Getting out of here.
