Lodi

Trigger warning: this story has some elements that probably shouldn't be discussed in a church environment. There is definitely Gore if it is written correctly. Senior citizens with unnatural impulses. Corpses. There is also some sexuality about The Golden girls. It is a story about living and dying.

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There was a funny fellow in my residency at The John Mayo Clinic who had the terrible habit of misusing corpses. He was one of those recycling types of people – the ones who separate used tissue from unused tissue found in the rubbish containers. So this one day I hobble all the way into the morgue, holding my scrubs up by the waistband because I had lost my gut and Dr. Merrill is just standing there next to the cadaver, (as if he was going to eat hot ramen on her stomach), he hears me enter and throws the entire bowl of ramen at my head…

Causing the tray of sharps to fall, my scrub pants to fall… it was very cold in there and I hadn't done any laundry.

We both froze before yelling at each other.

Finally, Dr. Merrill admitted he was in the middle of saying grace when I interrupted his confessing certain longings to his creator and thought I was the devil coming to take his soul.

Well, I had no comeback for that moment. I could not scold the man while standing in the nude.

He put on his glasses. 

Stared ahead.

Adjusted the glasses again.

Then he started walking forward. First, he came in pace, ten great strides, and then he jumped in a slide to his knees and I nearly hopped out of the way…

Pop.

The exhilarating satisfaction of a doctor removing a sharps needle from the urologist's muse is nothing to remember or realize if you are thinking that you are being attacked.

I tried to pivot but I lack muscle memory. No memories of pivoting. I am afraid that I was addicted to Saturday morning cartoons and never quite got that athletic award for attendance and showing up.

So this Doctor Merrill, he removed some needles from terrible places. I suppose I looked like a porcupine down there for I was not up to grooming standards. My dating life was not a priority while residing. Life saving must come before sensuality and all that.

Doctor Merrill pops right up from his knees with a spent needle in his hand and says, "What did you have in here?"

For the life of me, I didn't know. 

"How can you not know what items you are carrying? What are you? A moron?"

This caused my psychosomatic-stuttering mouth to fail. I was grateful that the nosebleeds did not start because they are aggravated by stress and authoritarian figures. I wore the uniform of the hospital whites and I even had a plastic stethoscope around my neck to look appropriate to the staff. The fact was I was not actually staff. I was just a resident. 

The managers chose to give me a cot in exchange for doing a little labor. They said if I became a good Medical Delivery Technician – that I might be able to graduate to waste removal or something very important like that.

Now that I think of it, I was pretty much a drug mule: never being told exactly what pharmaceutical products I held in my trays. They did not tell me about the prescriptions or the patient's background and what side effects might happen if a needle hit me in the scrotum.

I've already heard about HIPAA. This was not a privacy issue though. I mean the doctors always speak in Latin and I thought the Roman Empire had fallen due to broken hips. They are really just trying to distance themselves from average people who sleep on a cot in the basement of their local clinic.

So I say to this freakshow, "HEY! Get off my jock, man."

He was already away from the offending region. I pulled my self-respect up to my waist again and held it there with two fingers acting like a clothespin. Then I used my other hand, which was free because it didn't have a tray, and I pointed the fingers of that other hand right into that doctor's face. I nearly tapped on his spectacles, yelling, "I don't need you throwing hot ramen at me. "

He apologized.

Then he slowly admitted that his mother had just died. I guess the woman was not a very accomplished chef because the family ate Top Ramen all of his life. 

Some people eat this food to save money, some eat this food to worship their ancestors from Asia – Dr Merrill had to eat this food for 29 years because his mother never learned to cook and so no one could show him how to do something else.

It was very sad.

I gave this poor man a hug. He got too close. And it really started to hurt down there.

I wanted him to check out my situation but at some point I knew he was going to maybe charge me some money. So I was very scared. 

At long last, with the fear of never being able to sit down again for the restroom, I asked the good doctor if he could figure out what was in the needles that stabbed me in the most private of areas.

"I mean… should I wear a condom to work?"

He did not understand that my real job is to be the third line dancer for the Lodi All Male Review. It wasn't one of those dance troupes that had to be all muscley and tone. In fact most of our clients were people forced to stay at the geriatrics care facilities.

You must trust me that this is better than other Correctional Facilities.

We tried to do bachelorette parties for a while but that didn't work. We even booked a few homosexual parties but the guest made fun of the host (for being cheap) because the locals are very particular since we live so close to San Francisco. We were told that Northern California has standards in Male Review Dancers. We did not meet those standards.

This is why I asked the doctor if the needles would affect my job.

Ummm…he didn't really want the back story. He just grabbed the piece of paper that came with the tray of needles and started reading all the long words. Then he sat down. Sat down on a stool next to a table with another corpse. He actually used the arm of that corpse to wipe the sweat off his head.

"This is very _not good_."

Yeah, that's cool. Some people have a way of just throwing around the "not good" phrase. He put down the paper and tried to look me right in the eyes… but I was starting to feel funny.

He said, "Were you trying to have children?"

"No man. I don't want to share my cot."

The doctor did not understand plain English.

So he said, "Is there anyone in your family with a history of mental illness."

Quackadoodle do?

I figure everyone has that Aunt Shirley that gives them a book of Guinness Sexual Records for their 8th birthday party. I did not think this was strange at the time.

"We're all clear, Doc."

He asked if I often had trouble with the movement of the bowels. Again, I don't speak Latin.

"Homie say what?"

He pointed to his buttocks and made the hand signal to show an explosion. "Are you like that or…" 

Then he just made a fist. This was supposed to be sign language about continents. Clearly he understood that I did not speak Latin.

"Oh…. I'm all good. Looks like you're trying to do me a solid."

He shook his head just like a grinning monkey.

Then the good doctor went back to reading his paper and putting his elbows on the body of a dead person so that he could use their breasts as a form of book holder. It's sort of worked since the newspaper doesn't require a 45° angle. Newspapers are usually semi rigid. Basically, you just need the part that you are actually reading to be flat. The rest of the dead person seem to work good enough.

I grabbed the large broom and started sweeping up all the sharps. I have the Doc Martin Boots and so I wasn't worried about getting my souls all messed up. My boots were featured on the movie called Romper Stomper where Russell Crowe would use the boot to smash people in the face. He was actually a Neo-Nazi before he started portraying angry people that do poetry and write on walls.

After sweeping for a while and considering if I should mop up the slimy goo that derived from the broken needles on the floor that had made a puddle…I wasn't that worried about exposure to others because small cats and dogs were not allowed in that morgue. Dead people in California cannot pretend that their pet is trained in medical service. Even if the fake certificate from the internet says they are.

The clock said I had only 8 minutes to get ready for our 4:00 p.m. gig at Lodi Senior Center. It was Roberta Schulnasey's 83rd birthday and our dance group was going to shake her girdle.

We are "Movers and Shakers", the highest Google-rated Male Dance Review troupe in the the ten mile radius south of Galt.

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Some say that the most important part of dressing for an All Male Review Dance Troupe is to find the perfect Speedo underwear. There are fellas who find animals with amazing noses like the elephant. Some try a boa constrictor theme and others go for fishnets. It's all about fish entrapment and wildlife management.

Me, myself? I modified a baseball glove and a bunch of rubber bands. I mean the baseball glove had to be sacrificed by sawing off one of the fingers. I'm not going to tell you which finger because that's none of your business and you'll just have to just buy a ticket.

We have recently raised the admission to two dollars. Inflation.

 I attached the finger of the glove around my waist using the rubber bands. This is technically one of our under costumes. As the entire performance progresses into a Beethoven style enchantment — we undress in layers. This is an example of the Russian Nesting dolls in humans. The audience never knows how many layers we are actually wearing.

I've had audience members go into full on facial strokes wondering if there was more. There is always more.

Now getting the right music for a crowd that ate Moon Bars while John Kennedy drove a convertible; the crowd that has the average age of about 79.5, is sometimes a challenge. The hardcore rap makes wonderful dance beats but the audience ladies might get so offended that they are not very inspired to tip.

I only go to work to get the tip.

This is another reason to always keep at least the rubber band belt: you need a place to put the tips that will remain sterilized. If you ever go into your local bank with 27 stinky dollar bills… you will see that it is legal to refuse United States currency.

I did not know that.

It might be a thing that has happened since Covid. Maybe since the birth of Bitcoin. I cannot say — but Smithsonian magazine says that you can trade in your money that was burned in a house fire as long as you have 50.1%.

Side note, back-alley pushers don't usually like those dollar bills with the tape in the middle. The dollars you ripped in despair and tried to use Scotch tape to make whole again. Some of dealers think that you are taping their fingertips.

End of side note.

So I try to take some work money into the bank and be a good citizen. I am rejected as a good citizen.

People are now able to reject legal tender. United States currency is not accepted if they smell dirty, have been used in the execution of crime. It can also be rejected if it smells too much like body odor.

Anyhoo… we had the music, the beats, someone had put a drum machine down on some Billie Holiday. We were thrusting and hip-swirling to that song called Strange Fruit. I'm told it's actually about someone swinging from a hangman's noose on a tree in the American South?

So we were shaking our booties to an updated song about lynching. Yeah. it was really going swimmingly for the old white ladies. They were all pretty much on their last laps around the park.

I mean some of them still thought they were players like that chick from Golden Girls named Blanche. You would get these nameless women with the hands that probably fondled off grandpa. They would put those Grandpa Loving hands ALL over your shoulders while you were trying to dance.

It's hard to dance with old lady breath on your neck. Some of them are pretty tall like Dorothy. I don't think that chick was born during the Great Depression – short people come from bad nutrition.

So I'm taking it slow to Billie Holiday…some people gyrate their hips clockwise…I go Australian and swirl my hips to the left.

I put both arms behind my neck like a chicken in a package at Safeway under plastic.

The hands behind your neck are also like the tail of a kite. It gives you a certain straightness when the throngs of spectators try to woo you in multiple directions. You must stay straight to fly.

My baseball glove finger is staying close to its thigh. There's some little lady that looks like that Italian, Sophia-the-pickpocket, she's trying to snap my waistline like it's a brazier. We're not kids anymore and still she persists.

That is one of the bad things about having a rubber band belt as a tip catcher. When the frenzy customers snap your rubber bands some of the dollars might fall off.

They did.

Now it's a completely reactive thing to stop dancing and drop down on the knees trying to get your tips. That is what work is all about.

So I'm down there groping a toe jam floor and trying to grab my Washington's before the other dancers stomp on them…

And something bad happened back there.

I mean I was all full of vigor and Hope and dreams and Taco Bell…

And that mysterious liquid that I was delivering to the morgue.

The first thing I know is that old lady Blanche had to scream.

Then super tall Dorothy start to look like she's holding her cheeks, Louie Armstrong style. People that suck on pipes or blow pipe get really big swollen cheeks like Louie Armstrong.

Yeah.

They hurl their contents like a baton. They cover the floor with chunks and exotic liquids.

And this is when the other Male Review Dancers began to slip.

What do you know?

Sophia comes over in the middle of our vomit twister party. She's trying to get a little pinch off of each of our cheeks. She's back there with wrenches and ratchets. She's giggling like she just stole some other lady's cat.

I have the fear of sobriety in me because I don't want to lose another Male Review Job in the valley. People actually talk to each other and Yelp about it. 

When you deal with senior citizens they could have really angery lawyer children. This one time I was dancing for a gangster's grandmother…she had a coronary after watching the dance

…Then the Stockton gangster came by and peppered my apartment building with something called a "street sweeper". It's actually just a machine gun outfitted with shotgun shells but it is really really scary. If you look in the side of your apartment building wall you will see a hole so big that you can put your fist through it.

The guy missed but I had to move.

And that's what got me living in a cot at John Mayo Clinic. In Lodi. It is also the home of A&W Root beer.